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Interaction between mitigation and adaptation is a key question for the design of climate policies. In this paper, we study how land use adaptation to climate change impacts land use competition in the agriculture, forest and other land use (AFOLU) sector and how a mitigation policy in agriculture might affect this competition. We use for this purpose two sector-specific bio-economic models of agriculture and forest combined with an econometric land use shares model to simulate the impacts of two climate change scenarios (A2 and B1, 2100 horizon), and a greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture policy consisting of a tax of between 0 and 200 €/tCO 2 equivalent. Our results show that both climate change scenarios lead to an increase in the area devoted to agriculture at the expense of forest which could have a negative impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. The mitigation policy would curtail agricultural expansion, and thus could counteract the effects of land use adaptation to climate change. In other words, accounting for land use competition results in a reduction of the abatement costs of the mitigation policy in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superstorm Sandy hit the northeastern United States in October 2012, knocking out power to 10 million people and highlighting energy and critical infrastructure system vulnerabilities in the face of a changing climate. The increased frequency and intensity of such disruptive events is shifting priorities in electricity system planning around the world, including how multiple stakeholders consider linkages between climate vulnerability and energy. This research links smart grid development with adaptation to changing climates and explores how different stakeholders grapple with system vulnerabilities and climate disruptions. To illustrate this, the in-depth case study assesses post-Sandy discourse to compare how electricity sector stakeholder groups in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont associate energy, smart grid, and climate change. To explore how different energy system stakeholders frame the impacts of Superstorm Sandy on energy system planning, we conducted 22 focus groups with a broad range of organizations representing diverse aspects of the electricity system including utilities, regulatory authorities, research and development agencies, regional transmission organizations, academic research institutions, consumer advocacy and environmental organizations across the three states. We used these data to examine post-Sandy discourse about climate mitigation and climate adaptation, routine system management, and the potential value of “smart grid” for future energy system planning. We found that both New York and Massachusetts stakeholders focused more on climate adaptation than climate mitigation, while stakeholders in Vermont focused more on mitigation. In all three states stakeholder discussions of adaptation focused most heavily on system resilience and reliability, whereas discussions of mitigation focused on demand-side management and demand response followed by alternative energy strategies. These results suggest that extreme weather and climate disruptions will differentially shape discourse around smart grid and energy system change and shift the focus among energy system stakeholders on climate adaptation compared to climate mitigation. This research demonstrates variation between political jurisdictions (states) and energy system stakeholders in energy system planning in the face of new challenges related to an uncertain and rapidly changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting inclusive and sustainable economic and social development whilst simultaneously adapting to climate change impacts and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions – Climate Compatible Development (CCD) – requires coherent policy approaches that span multiple sectors. This paper develops and applies a qualitative content analysis to assess national sector policies of ten southern African countries to determine their approaches for water, agriculture, forestry and energy and their compatibility with the aims of the three dimensions of CCD (development, climate adaptation and climate mitigation). Results indicate that sector policies currently only partially support shifts towards CCD, with approaches that both complement and detract from CCD being prioritized by national governments. Agriculture offers the greatest number of potentially viable approaches capable of achieving the development, adaptation and mitigation aims inherent in CCD, while energy the least. National governments should focus on developing coherent, cross-sector approaches that deliver such potential triple wins in order to promote new forms of inclusive and sustainable economic and social development, whilst facilitating adaptation to climate change impacts and supporting mitigation activities. Doing so will also go a long way towards ensuring the progress needed for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Climate Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model was used to assess the impacts of climate change and proposed adaptation measures on yields of corn ( Zea mays L.) and soybean ( Glycine max L.) as well as aggregated yields of C 3 [soybean, alfalfa ( Medicago sativa L.), winter wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.)] and C 4 [corn, sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor L.), pearl millet ( Pennisetum glaucum L.)] crop types from representative farms in ten Southeastern US states. Adaptations included annual biochar applications and irrigation. Historical baseline (1979–2009) and future (2041–2070) climate scenarios were used for simulations with baseline and future CO 2 concentrations of 360 ppmv and 500 ppmv, respectively. Four regional climate models (RCMs) nested within global climate models (GCMs) were used to run future simulations. The experiment was analyzed as randomized complete block design with split-plots in time for baseline vs. future comparisons, and as a randomized complete block design with repeated measures for comparisons between future periods within each RCM_GCM model. Compared to historical baseline scenario, increases in future corn yield ranged between 36–83%, but yields decreased by 5–13% towards 2066–2070 due to temperature stress. Future soybean yields decreased by 1–13% due to temperature and moisture stresses. Future aggregated C 4 crops produced higher yields compared to historical C 4 yields. There were no differences between future aggregated and historical C 3 crop yields. Both crop types were negatively affected by progressing climate change impacts towards the end of 2066–2070 simulation period. Reductions in future aggregated C 3 crop yields ranged between 10–22%, and between 6–10% for C 4 crops. We explained lower reductions in C 4 compared to C 3 crops due to a lesser degree of photorespiration, better water use efficiency, and better heat tolerance under conditions of high light intensities and increased temperatures in C 4 crops. Irrigation resulted in increased future corn yields between 29–33%, and 3–38% of aggregated C 4 crop yields, with no effect on soybean or aggregated C 3 crop yields. In some regions, biochar applications caused significant yield reductions of 9.5–20% for corn, 5–7% for aggregated C 3 , and 3–5% for aggregated C 4 crops, depending on the model. Yield reductions were ascribed to alterations in plant nutrient availability. It was concluded that under drier weather scenarios, irrigation may be a promising adaptation strategy for agriculture in the Southeastern US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers and citizens must choose from among a growing variety of strategic options as they try to cope optimally with climate change. As a means of more accurately predicting different types of climate change engagement, we empirically distinguish individuals’ felt responsibility for mitigation (FRm) from felt responsibility for adaptation (FRa), and assess support for different climate action strategies (mitigation and adaptation). We surveyed two U.S. samples two months apart, and the replication study confirmed Study 1′s findings of differing predictive powers for FRm vs. FRa. Each type of felt responsibility, controlling for the other, served as a mediator between belief in global warming (as well as belief in anthropogenic cause of climate change) and its corresponding climate action strategy (mitigation vs. adaptation). FRa predicted adaptation measures but not mitigation measures, while FRm predicted mitigation measures more strongly than it predicted adaptation but did predict both action strategies. We also found important individual differences: people’s disposition toward behaving proactively correlated positively with all types of climate engagement, and political orientation (liberal/conservative ideology) interacted with climate action strategy (mitigation vs. adaptation) in predicting all engagement variables. Comparing levels of support across the political spectrum, the mitigation measures were highly polarizing, while the adaptation measures were less divisive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate geoengineering as a possible substitute for mitigation and adaptation measures to address climate change. Relying on an integrated assessment model, we distinguish between the effects of solar radiation management (SRM) on atmospheric temperature levels and its side-effects on the environment. The optimal climate portfolio is a mix of mitigation, adaptation, and SRM. When accounting for uncertainty in the magnitude of SRM side-effects and their persistency over time, we show that the SRM option lacks robustness. We then analyse the welfare consequences of basing the SRM decision on wrong assumptions about its side-effects, and show that total output losses are considerable and increase with the error horizon. This reinforces the need to balance the policy portfolio in favour of mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing quest for synergy between mitigation and adaptation due to concerns of inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the compartmentalized approaches to climate change. However, little has been done to explore the necessary enabling conditions for synergistic design and implementation. This paper proposes an analytical framework to assess enabling conditions for synergies at the national level and applies it to developing countries to explore the potential move toward synergy. Four enabling conditions for integrating adaptation and mitigation, i.e. policies and strategies, programs and projects, institutional arrangements and financial mechanisms, were used to score developing countries relative to each other. We hypothesized that low income and vulnerable countries might more likely pursue synergy given the urgency for both adaptation and mitigation. Despite the relative infancy of the synergy concept, about half of countries studied exhibited good synergy potential, 80% of which were middle-income developing countries. The assumption of vulnerability as a precursor for pursuing synergy was supported by the fact that small island states possessed relatively high synergy potential. Income was weakly associated with the synergy potential with least developed countries having low synergy scores. Emerging economies possessed strong synergy potential which might be associated with better capacity available and/or potential for shaping their global images due to their growing emissions. In sum, the proposed analytical framework could be useful to identify areas of emphasis to promote holistic and efficient climate policies. As this study largely focused on the enabling conditions, further studies are needed to scrutinize and manage the mitigation-adaptation balances in countries possessing good synergy potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Five bottlenecks constrain the uptake of adaptation research in adaptation policy and practice. [•] Analysis of the bottlenecks confirms and reinforces the weakness of the linear model of science-policy interaction. [•] An actor-oriented approach to adaptation research can help to overcome the bottlenecks. [•] Climate adaptation often addresses both the impacts of climate change and the consequences of climate policy. [•] New methods in modelling and visualisation and in policy analysis can better reflect and support adaptation action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Climate change is an important strategic issue for the insurance sector. [•] Insurers can be powerful allies when fulfilling climate commitments. [•] Expected contribution to climate commitments of the industry is more extensive than demonstrated industrial reality. [•] Nordic insurers take a proactive approach to deal with climate change. [•] Nordic insurers structure their actions around their core activities, not mitigation and adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Forestry worldwide has a history of relying upon quantification, drawing on science and economics to compute core concepts such as the relationship between tree-based stand descriptors and marketable timber volumes. This number-oriented approach is grounded in rationalisation and sustained yield objectives that emerged in the eighteenth century and persisted throughout most of the twentieth century. With the rise of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) as a governing idea in the 1990s, forest policy and management broadened its orientation to encompass different values, including biodiversity and cultural values. Adaptive Forest Management (AFM) has emerged as a more recent paradigm, responding to the complexity of forest ecosystems by building on systematic learning from operational practice, making space for more qualitative approaches. With the development of climate change policy and carbon accounting, the balance changes once again towards the role of numbers in forestry management. In both Australia and the UK, international politics, policy and national debate linking climate change to forests prioritise one public good – carbon sequestration – over others. The quantifiability of carbon makes mitigation more easily communicated and translated into other sectors and across levels of government, so when policy actors attempt to promote the role of forestry in climate change, its contribution to mitigation is receiving more recognition than adaption. At the sub-national level, there is a growing awareness of the urgency of adaptation, but advocates struggle with the challenges of making adaptation legible in the absence of widely recognised forms in which to express results. Our analysis suggests that ways need to be found to combine the historically strong language of number with other, more qualitative languages, to realise the full potential of forestry in climate change policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Forests and climate change are increasingly dealt with as interconnected policy issues. Both the potential synergies and policy conflicts between forest conservation and restoration and climate change mitigation now receive sustained and high level attention from academic, policy analysis and practitioner communities across the globe. Arguably the most pronounced contemporary policy manifestation of this is the debate on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (or REDD+) by which governments and private investors from developed countries may compensate actors in tropical forest countries for reducing forest loss beneath an agreed baseline. Problems of climate–forest policies implementation and governance, however, can also be found in countries such as Canada, the USA, the UK and Australia. The future of instruments like REDD+ is uncertain with growing critiques on payment and performance-based mechanisms and unresolved issues of governance, government and accountability. This paper, and the special issue it introduces, illustrates that in the REDD+ debate many contentious issues have resurfaced from past debates. These issues include the participation and rights of local communities in forest policy and management; the relationship between internationally agreed payment and performance-based programmes and formal democratic decision-making processes and structures; the complexities of rights to carbon versus tenure rights; and the ways in which – in spite of the high expectations of both developing and developed countries to combat carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through the REDD+ mechanism – effective climate-focused forestry policies are seldom found in most tropical forest-rich countries. REDD+ is now very much the dominant discourse at the forest–climate interface, and one with a primary focus on measurability to communicate carbon mitigation results across various levels. However, this serves to disperse and displace, rather than resolve, policy-making on non-carbon values. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Various environmental challenges, particularly the rising severity of the impacts of climate change, require a systematic shift in and decarbonization of the global economy. Due to their high environmental impacts, buildings and construction have a special role in decarbonization. Environmental modelling of building stock dynamics can help policy makers and inform decision making. This study presents a systematic review of both the latest scientific literature on environmental modelling of building stocks and related EU policy initiatives. Our findings illuminate the strengths and limitations of existing approaches as well as the potential of such modelling and the required directions for future development to provide effective policy support. Based on the assessment of 104 scientific papers, our study shortlisted and analysed 22 environmental building stock modelling approaches. While promising, these show various limitations on their effectiveness in supporting decarbonization efforts while avoiding burden shifting. Future building stock models should offer extended system boundaries and comprehensive life cycle assessment, improved hotspot analysis and impact monitoring across spatiotemporal scales. A long-term perspective on the entire building stock covering climate and other environmental impacts is needed, as outlined in the latest standards. By linking existing studies to related EU policy objectives, we identify various studies that investigate scenarios and strategies relevant to EU policy makers and highlight research gaps. Future research should enable comprehensive environmental assessment of building stocks across scales and emphasize the monitoring of multiple environmental impacts of building stock development to ensure compliance with environmental targets and minimization of trade-offs. [Display omitted] • Integrated review of EU policy documents and latest approaches for environmental modelling of building stocks. • We analyse scope, methods, tools and data to find existing studies mostly focus on housing stock and on short to medium time horizons. • Existing studies are limited in the number of archetypes, as well as coverage of building parts, life cycle stages and environmental indicators. • The scope and level of detail of existing models hence require elaboration to effectively support EU policy for decarbonization of building operation and construction. • Future research is particularly needed on environmental hotspot analysis and monitoring of impacts across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite a great deal of research on public perceptions of climate change science, very little empirical work has attempted to investigate how members of the lay public might evaluate the justice dilemmas inherent within climate policy decision-making. This exploratory study contrasts arguments about justice from a mitigation perspective, with those from an adaptation perspective and draws insights about the contours of politically acceptable climate policy. Using think-aloud protocols and a structured elicitation approach with members of the lay public to generate quantitative and qualitative data, this study suggests that the two types of climate policy trigger different sets of arguments about justice. When asked about mitigation burden-sharing participants overwhelmingly invoke arguments about causality. In contrast, in discussions of adaptation participants emphasized the needs of the afflicted parties and their ability to cope. Furthermore, social and spatial distances were not a factor in allocation of mitigation burdens, but were used to discount the distribution of compensation towards adaptation. These initial data about public perceptions of justice in this area suggest that the public would view adaptation and mitigation as complements not substitutes. These findings also highlight the importance of exploring public reactions to the sub-components of climate policy individually. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: One of the central questions in climate change debates concerns fair burden-sharing, i.e. justice in the distribution of costs of undertaking climate-managing policies. In this paper it is argued that in order to distribute such costs justly, it is necessary to have a nuanced understanding of what types of burdens they represent. Climate managing policies are usually divided into responses that seek to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mitigation) and responses that seek to prevent harm arising from a changing climate (adaptation). Some have argued that there are normatively significant differences between mitigation and adaptation: that the two responses adhere to different logics and evoke different patterns of burden-sharing. This paper argues that the relevant distinction is instead between negative and positive climate duties, i.e. whether an agent has a duty to undertake climate-managing policies on account of the harm its excessive emissions are causing or simply on account of its ability to assist those in need. The paper offers a typology of the different mitigation and adaptation responses that can be sorted under the negative/positive distinctions. This way of conceptualizing the issue not only enables us to better address the burden-sharing question, offering a more nuanced understanding of the types of climate burdens that are ascribable to agents and pointing out the appropriate roles of contributory responsibility and ability. It also clarifies aspects of the climate negotiations, and explains why it matters whether adaptation finance transferred to vulnerable countries is portrayed as compensation for harmful emissions or simply as donor countries discharging their humanitarian duties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Changes in land use and management practices to store and sequester carbon are becoming integral to global efforts that both address climate change and alleviate poverty. Knowledge and evidence gaps nevertheless abound. This paper analyses the most pressing deficiencies in understanding carbon storage in both soils and above ground biomass and the related social and economic challenges associated with carbon sequestration projects. Focusing on the semi-arid and dry sub-humid systems of sub-Saharan Africa which are inhabited by many of the world''s poor, we identify important interdisciplinary opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed, in order for the poor to benefit from carbon storage, through both climate finance streams and the collateral ecosystem service benefits delivered by carbon-friendly land management. We emphasise that multi-stakeholder working across scales from the local to the regional is necessary to ensure that scientific advances can inform policy and practice to deliver carbon, ecosystem service and poverty alleviation benefits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: To benefit from a wide-spread public support for climate policy, aid agencies strive to show the climate relevance of their development activities. Using project-level aid data and country-level political data for 21 DAC donors from 1995 to 2007, we test whether this may lead to politically motivated misreporting. Through keyword search in individual project descriptions and complementary hand-coding we assess all aid activities for their actual climate change-related content, and thereby construct our most relevant control variables. Econometric results reveal that indeed, project coding is influenced systematically by the donor governments’ ideological orientation as well as by national voters’ environmental preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International transfers in climate policy channeled from the industrialized to the developing world either support the mitigation of climate change or the adaptation to global warming. From a purely allocative point of view, transfers supporting mitigation tend to be Pareto-improving whereas this is not very likely in the case of adaptation support. We illustrate this by regarding transfer schemes currently applied under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto framework. However, if we enrich the analysis by integrating distributional aspects, we find that international adaptation funding may help both the developing and developed world. Interestingly this is not due to altruistic incentives, but due to follow-up effects on international negotiations on climate change mitigation. We argue that the lack of fairness perceived by developing countries in the international climate policy arena can be reduced by the support of adaptation in these countries. As we show – taking into account different fairness concepts – this might raise the prospects of success in international negotiations on climate change. Yet, we find that the influence of transfers may induce different fairness effects on climate change mitigation negotiations to run counter. We discuss whether current transfer schemes under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto framework adequately serve the distributive and allocative objectives pursued in international climate policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There is a growing awareness that both adaptation and mitigation measures are needed to reduce the impacts of climate change. Historically, due to a wide variety of reasons, mitigation and adaptation have been framed by scientists and policy makers as two different approaches to deal with the same problem: climate change. As a result, there are large differences in the way knowledge is produced, the analytical approaches that are used, and the designed policy strategies. This paper discusses the origin of the adaptation–mitigation dichotomy. Second, the paper addresses the relationship between climate change responses and spatial planning since there is a growing awareness that spatial planning can function as a switchboard for mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development objectives. Furthermore, the paper explores the role that spatial planning can play in developing effective mitigation and adaptation options in an integrated manner, searching for synergies and trade-offs. This creates the necessity to take climate change responses into account in spatial planning practices. We argue that climate change could also lead to changes in the traditional administrative structures that spatial planners are accustomed to. Since many of the main impacts of climate change have a water dimension, we discuss the river basin approach as the new administrative level at which spatial planning can increase the effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation measures and integrate these into other sustainable development policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change require actions to be taken in many sectors of society, but so far this is hardly happening. This paper suggests possibilities for widening climate change policy by strengthening inter-linkages between climate policies and various relevant policy areas to mainstream climate change concerns. It argues that, if these inter-linkages can be strengthened and policy coherence is improved, the effectiveness of climate policy can be enhanced while also supporting these other policy areas. The contention in this paper is that improved policy coherence and mainstreaming requires climate policies to go beyond the UNFCCC framework to realise its full potential and to better deal with possible trade-offs. The potential benefits in the policy domains of poverty reduction, rural development and agriculture, disaster management, energy security, air quality and trade, and finance are examined, and the institutional and organisations linkages highlighted. Finally, opportunities for mainstreaming are identified to make better use of possible synergies between climate and related policy areas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]