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This study examines the relationship between institutional trust from an individual and societal perspective and perceived corruption and climate attitudes of individuals in Latin America. To this end, multilevel modeling was used to test whether the attitudes of individuals from 285 regions of Latin America are influenced by these constructs. Based on the results, it was found that in contrast to studies in developed countries, where institutional trust is positively associated with pro-climate attitudes, in Latin America institutional trust acts as an inhibiting factor and is inversely related to climate attitudes. Furthermore, the perception of corruption in public institutions was also identified as a factor inhibiting collective action to combat climate change. Moderation analysis revealed that individuals' level of education significantly influences this relationship, with a notable difference in climate attitudes between individuals with low and high levels of trust, especially among those with less education. These findings highlight the importance of taking regional specificities into account when examining the relationship between institutional trust, perceptions of corruption, and climate attitudes, and underscore the need for public policies that promote transparency and accountability of institutions to foster effective collective action on climate change., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The recent literature has explored the ambiguous theoretical links between inequality and environmental impact. However, few studies have investigated those links in developing countries. This paper explores the role of income inequality in the per capita emission of CO2 in Latin America. We estimate the impact of income inequality on carbon dioxide emissions, while simultaneously considering national income levels. The results suggest quadratic relationships between environmental impact and both gross domestic product per capita and inequality. Income inequality influences CO2 emissions, but the direction depends on income level. The complexities of the results are analytically explored in the paper. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is an important driver of migration, but little research exists on whether migrant communities in the U.S. identify climate change-related factors as reasons for migrating. In 2021, we conducted a multidisciplinary, collaborative project to better understand the nexus of climate change and immigrant health in the Atlanta area. This paper presents one arm of this collaboration that explored both the role of climate change in decisions to immigrate to Georgia and the ways that climate change intersects with other possible drivers of migration. First generation migrants from Latin America were recruited primarily through CPACS Cosmo Health Center and were invited to participate in an intake survey and an in-depth interview. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Findings suggest that while participants may not have explicitly identified climate change as a primary reason for migration, in both surveys and in-depth interviews, participants reported multiple and intersecting social, economic, political, and environmental factors that are directly or indirectly influenced by climate change and that are involved in their decisions to migrate. The narratives that emerged from in-depth interviews further contextualised survey data and elucidated the complex nexus of climate change, migration, and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the health-related impacts of climate change in Latin America disproportionately affect the most marginalized sections of the population, there is a need to enhance countries' adaptive capacity through improved health systems. Though public health institutions have delineated guidelines to enhance health care systems' preparedness for climate change, embedding a human rights perspective in their translation into laws and policies further adds important value. Crucially, a rights-based approach strengthens health responses to climate change by calling attention to how climate law and policy fail to account for persistent and interlocking socioeconomic inequalities. This is an area that has not been fully present in the provision of health services in Latin America, which rely almost exclusively on a conventional epidemiological perspective and do not consider the historical and sociocultural nature of health challenges. Hence, this paper draws on two case studies-Brazil and Colombia-to identify the extent to which their national climate change laws and adaptation plans incorporate a human rights-based approach in their tasks to enhance their adaptive capacity through the expansion of affordable and quality health care. With respect to the countries' laws, the absence of explicit references to the right to health exemplifies the fragmentation between the international human rights framework and international climate change law. Further, both countries' adaptation plans hold considerable room for improving their engagement with the human rights framework, particularly by establishing mechanisms to promote transparency, monitoring, and the participation of marginalized groups., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (Copyright © 2021 Viveros-Uehara.)

Recent reviews of the conservation literature indicate that significant biases exist in the published literature regarding the regions, ecosystems and species that have been examined by researchers. Despite the global threat of climatic change, similar biases may be occurring within the sub-discipline of climate-change ecology. Here we hope to foster critical thought and discussion by considering the directions taken by conservation researchers when addressing climate change. To form a quantitative basis for our perspective, we assessed 248 papers from the climate change literature that considered the conservation management of biodiversity and ecosystems. We found that roughly half of the studies considered climate change in isolation from other threatening processes. We also found that the majority of surveyed scientific publications were conducted in the temperate forests of Europe and North America. Regions such as Latin America that are rich in biodiversity but may have low adaptive capacity to climate change were not well represented. We caution that such biases in research effort may be distracting our attention away from vulnerable regions, ecosystems and species. Specifically we suggest that the under-representation of research from regions low in adaptive capacity and rich in biodiversity requires international collaboration by those experienced in climate-change research, with researchers from less wealthy nations who are familiar with local issues, ecosystems and species. Furthermore, we caution that the propensity of ecologists to work in essentially unmodified ecosystems may fundamentally hamper our ability to make useful recommendations in a world that is experiencing significant global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refines the spatial resolution and spillover effects of a micro-econometric analysis of adaptation of agricultural portfolios to climate change using the Global Positioning System (GPS). From the household surveys collected across South America by the World Bank, the GPS recordings of exact farm locations such as latitude, longitude, and altitude are matched with high resolution grid cell climate data from the Climate Research Unit as well as geographically referenced soils and geography data from the Food and Agriculture Organization. The choice of agricultural systems at the farm level is estimated using spatial Logit model and the conditional land value is estimated for each system of agriculture after correcting for selection bias and spatial spillovers. Future choices and land values are simulated using the fine resolution climate scenarios by the UKMO (United Kingdom Meteorological Office) and GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies). This paper finds that, under the UKMO HadGEM1 (Hadley Center Global Environmental Model 1) scenario by around 2060, the choices of the specialized systems are expected to fall, but the mixed system would increase. The land value of the crops-only falls by 29 %, but the mixed system land value falls only by 12 %. Under a milder GISS ER (ModelE-R) scenario, the land value of the mixed system increases by 6 %. With full adaptations of agricultural systems, the expected land value falls by 17 %. Without adaptations, the damage increases. This paper demonstrates that adaptation behaviors can be best studied by a fine resolution micro-econometric analysis of agricultural portfolios using the GPS reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded theory is a powerful method to comprehend processes and experiments based on the logical relation to a problem that require collective actions. In most of the cases, the intent is to propose solutions to real-world problems based in a pragmatic and meaningful way. Although grounded theory is well-discussed method in social sciences, in the field of climate change, it is poorly used. The aim of this paper is to provide a description on the practical process of doing research in the climate finance field using the grounded theory approach. The article presents methodological not substantive results of a research focused on the governance process of REDD+, a performance-based climate finance mechanism to incentive developing countries to reduce forest-related emissions. Academics, both scholars and students, can be benefited with the results presented in this paper—a systematized process to use grounded theory method to understand a complex real-world problem which can be a useful step-by-step methodological approach for theory building in applied sciences in other policy domains and flexible systems management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and variability are known to have an influence on human wellbeing in a variety of ways. In Latin America, such forces are especially conspicuous, particularly in respect of extreme climatological, hydrological, and weather events (EWEs) and climate-sensitive disasters (CSDs). Consistent with the need to study further such connections, this paper presents an analysis of some of the vulnerabilities of environmental health issues and climate-related impacts that are focusing on EWEs and CSDs in Latin American countries. The research includes an analysis of the (i) human and socio-economic development; (ii) geographical and socio-economic determinants of vulnerability and adaptability of environmental health issues (exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity); (iii) occurrence of CSDs from 1988 to 2017 and their direct impacts on human wellbeing (Total death and Affected people); (iv) an online survey on the perceptions of the effects of EWEs on human wellbeing in a sample of countries in the region; and (v) discussion of possible solutions. The socio-economic and development indices, and the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) and Climate-Risk Index (CRI) disaster statistics suggest that the impacts of CSDs are primarily related to socio-economic determinants of human wellbeing and health inequalities. Also, >80% respondents to the survey say that the leading causes of climate-related human impacts are the lack of (i) public awareness; (ii) investment and (iii) preparedness. The paper concludes by adding some suggestions that show how countries in Latin America may better cope with the impacts of Climate-sensitive Disasters., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Objective/Context: This paper studies the role of the Chilean state during the great drought of 1967-1969 as a mediator between human beings and nature. Institutional adaptations and the effort to improve the infrastructure were elements of continuity with respect to previous droughts, but there were novelties as well, such as attempts to pursue weather modification and the artificial melting of glaciers. The support of technologies and scientists operating from peripheral state institutions was essential for these purposes. All the above took place in the context of the Cold War when the predominant environmental imaginaries made human intervention look favorable and necessary for the modernization of countries. Methodology: Diverse primary sources were used, such as ministerial documents, decrees, bulletins, and reports of different state institutions that allowed understanding the logic of state management during the water crisis. Similarly, research in national and international press helped identify how imaginaries about the environment were expressed and disseminated publicly, which tended to validate novel efforts to control nature. Originality: This is an original study for Latin America, which addresses the early appearance of science and technology in the efforts of what today would be known as geoengineering: mainly through the observation of new actors, which expanded the traditional forms of mediation between humans and nature, led by the state, concerning climate crises. Conclusions: In the 1960s, optimism grew for the human capacity to control and manipulate water resources by appealing to ways other than those previously known, associated with infrastructure development. Expert knowledge was placed at the service of peripheral institutions of the state to promote these changes with lasting consequences. The human desire to control nature at all costs was validated, which helps explain the temporal projection of experiments with artificial rain and glacier control to the present day in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines which factors influence women's descriptive representation in state delegations to the international climate change negotiations. Due to the gendered nature of climate change as an issue, it is important to study the representation of women in the negotiations and to examine its normative and functional implications. Theoretically, I propose to look at institutional, socioeconomic, and cultural factors as potential explanations for the variation in the proportion of women in state delegations across countries. I examine this variation by drawing on a dataset containing all member state delegations to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations from 1995 to 2011. The theoretical arguments are then tested on these data using a fractional probit model. This is the first comparative study of women's descriptive representation in international environmental negotiations. It contributes to our understanding of the variation in women's representation both over time and across countries. In particular, I find that women's representation is higher in countries that enjoy a higher level of development and a higher degree of political gender equality. The effects of other institutional and socioeconomic factors such as the level of democracy or gender-equal development remain statistically insignificant. Cultural factors measured by regional proxies show that Eastern Europe and Latin America are positively and the Middle East negatively linked with women's descriptive representation in delegations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a comparative study of the socio-state capacities developed during the processes of institutionalising protected natural areas (PNA) in Latin America. It sets them within a framework of their interdependence with global governance processes and in relation to the role human rights have played for these purposes. Taking an approach that combines analysis of multilevel collective action with process monitoring, this work traces the trajectories of national and multilateral institutions; analyses the main dynamics that arise in the delimitation of the protection of natural areas in the countries with the greatest biodiversity in the region; and explores the possibilities for new agreements on the global agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes slope management through terrace agriculture in Latin America's hilly to mountainous terrain to assess the practice's potential role in climate-change adaptation in the region. We review the historical geography of slope management in variable climates and highlight the role of social, rural innovation, and hybrid knowledge in the face of climate change's effects on agriculture. Although the literature on terrace agriculture in the region is extensive, further research is needed to better foresee the future of terrace agriculture, particularly in terms of its role in facing sustainability challenges posed by future climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs an Input-Output simulation model to assess the potential employment effects resulting from investments in 40 sector-specific decarbonization transformations across Latin America and the Caribbean. Using a Multi-region Input-Output framework (Eora26), our findings indicate that investments in energy production and buildings sectors offer promising job creation opportunities, averaging 5.5 total jobs per $1 million invested. Similarly, in the waste, industry and agriculture, forestry, and land use sectors demonstrate significant potential, yielding approximately 5 total jobs per $1 million. The analysis models investments as demand vectors, producing results for 17 countries in the region. These estimates endogenize the diverse economic structure and state of development of these countries. We argue that country-level analysis is needed to identify climate strategies that maximize job creation while achieving net-zero emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Latin America is particularly susceptible to the consequences of climate change and has low insurance penetration. Urgent solutions are needed to establish a better socioeconomic framework to cope with ordinary and extraordinary losses following climate-related events. Developed countries have a role to play in mitigating these losses by sharing with developing countries their long experience in scientific research and more advanced weather and climate monitoring and forecasting.The Geneva Papers (2007) 32, 29–34. doi:10.1057/palgrave.gpp.2510120 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total factor productivity (TFP) analysis has been the focus of a large number of methodological and empirical studies over the past several decades. One remarkable gap in this literature is the omission of climatic variables as regressors in the models used to derive TFP measures. The purpose of this paper is to narrow this gap by developing climate-adjusted (CA) TFP measures. We combine information from the Climatic Research Unit with Food and Agriculture Organization data for 28 Latin American and Caribbean countries over a 52-year period (1961-2012) to estimate random parameter stochastic production frontier (SPF) models. The goal is to investigate the impact of climatic variability on TFP. The estimated coefficients from the SPF models are used to construct a climatic effects index across countries and over time. The average annual variation in climatic conditions is stronger at the end of the 2000s compared to earlier periods. Climatic variability has a negative effect on production in 20 of the 28 LAC countries analyzed, and this is more severe over Central America and the Caribbean. The average reduction in output across the region attributable to climatic variables is between 0.02 and 22.7% over the last decade compared to the period 1961-1999. The estimated average annual growth rate of CATFP (0.69%) is consistently lower than TFP (1.08%), confirming the adverse impact of climatic variability on agricultural output and productivity in LAC. The results show considerable variability across countries, and this points to the importance of accounting for climatic effects in analyzing TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tecnología y Ciencias del Agua is the property of Instituto Mexicano de Tecnologia del Agua (IMTA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite dramatic changes in rural Latin America over the past century that often excluded rural smallholders, peasants, and indigenous peoples, these same populations continue to assert agency and initiate solutions to meet their own needs and goals. This special issue focuses on transformations in rural Latin America, examining how marginalized and rural populations both already are and can increasingly become key actors in generating emancipatory transformations within the context of a changing climate. Acknowledging that climate change is just part of a "tsunami of change" that rural people are facing, these papers explore how climate and other challenges are negotiated on the ground. In this introduction, we focus on transformation as a concept, suggesting that it provides an important conceptual tool with which to integrate emancipatory politics into these multiple processes of change. This introduction draws out some considerations for emancipatory transformation. We suggest that climate change is, in some ways, a red herring, drawing attention away from the ways in which vulnerabilities are produced in particular spatio-temporal contexts. In addition, we suggest that transformations should be considered as hybrid, multiple, and intersectional; a static or monolithic vision of transformation belies the messy realities that rural people face in their everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The development of a genomics-derived discipline within geology is timely, as a result of major advances in acquiring and processing geologically relevant genetic data. This paper articulates the emerging field of “geogenomics”, which involves the use of large-scale genetic data to constrain geological hypotheses. The paper introduces geogenomics and discusses how hypotheses can be addressed through collaboration between geologists and evolutionary biologists. As an example, geogenomic methods are applied to evaluate competing hypotheses regarding the timing of the Andean uplift, the closure of the Isthmus of Panama, the onset of trans-Amazon drainage, and Quaternary climate variation in the Neotropics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Development in Practice is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Papel Político is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims at surveying the current philosophical issues concerning the climate change crisis in Latin America. The work attempts to analyze some central policies, particularly those that fostered economic progress in the region at the expense of human and environmental depletion. Historically, Latin America remained at the periphery of philosophical inquiry following the long standing multiple manifestations of colonialism. As a result, the systematic philosophical reflections about climate change in the region have been scarce at best. Here, I have addressed three main topics: political ecology, economic development, and indigenous issues. Latin American political ecology generally seeks to identify the ontological schemes necessary to mitigate, cope, and adapt to the climatic crisis. In addition, developmentalism played a significant role in exacerbating the state of Latin American political, economic, and ecological systems. Environmentalists all throughout the region strive to find alternatives to replace the failures of developmentalist policies. Consequently, indigenous concepts such as Sumak Kawsay or 'good living' offer alternate philosophical modes for Latin Americans, with their complex ethnic diversity, to derive their ontological and epistemological foundations on the problems posed by climate change. My work represents a sketch reporting the various inception points of different eco-philosophical views portraying legitimate instances of Latin Americans thinking critically about their own reality and surroundings. These may serve as alternate methods to forge models that could potentially contribute to universal philosophical concepts endowing humanity with broader epistemic tools to tackle the crisis at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based watershed management (CBWM) is today a major policy directive on water resources for most countries. In Latin America, since the 1970s, international aid development agencies have been encouraging decentralisation in water governance through watershed management interventions centred on social participation. This paper discusses whether CBWM projects financed by Canada in some Latin American communities contribute to achieve environmental justice (EJ) in order to shape adaptive capacity to global climate change. It reports the results of a comparative case study between Brazil, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Honduras in terms of justice and equity. The central finding is that EJ framework can serve as a methodological tool to better inform on watershed governance and management towards adaptive capacity to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change can be addressed by mitigation (reducing the sources or enhancing the sinks of greenhouse gases) and adaptation (reducing the impacts of climate change). Mitigation and adaptation present two fundamentally dissimilar approaches whose differences are now well documented. Forest ecosystems play an important role in both adaptation and mitigation and there is a need to explore the linkages between these two options in order to understand their trade-offs and synergies. In forests, potential trade-offs can be observed between global ecosystem services, such as the carbon sequestration relevant for mitigation, and the local ecosystem services that are relevant for adaptation. In addition, mitigation projects can facilitate or hinder the adaptation of local people to climate change, whereas adaptation projects can affect ecosystems and their potential to sequester carbon. Linkages between adaptation and mitigation can also be observed in policies, but few climate change or forest policies have addressed these linkages in the forestry sector. This paper presents examples of linkages between adaptation and mitigation in Latin American forests. Through case studies, we investigate the approaches and reasons for integrating adaptation into mitigation projects or mitigation into adaptation projects. We also analyze the opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation-mitigation linkages into forest or climate change policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important proportion of Latin America's forests are located in indigenous territories, and indigenous peoples are the beneficiaries of about 85% of the area for which local rights to land and forest have been recognized in Latin America since the 1980s. Nevertheless, many of these areas, whether or not rights have been recognized, are subject to threats from colonists, illegal loggers, mining and oil interests and others, whose practices endanger not only the forests but also indigenous people's territory as a whole. In this context, REDD could constitute a new threat or intensify others, particularly in places where indigenous tenure rights have not been recognized, but REDD could also offer new opportunities. This article describes the limitations of thinking only in terms of communities, rather than territories, and examines the extent to which REDD has been conceived considering the characteristics of this new territorial configuration. It also identifies the challenges that REDD may face with this new =stakeholder', such as numerous specific characteristics of territories, given their heterogeneity, in the context of past experiences regarding =forest options'. This paper analyses the situation in already-titled indigenous territories in particular, and also discusses problems facing territories in the titling process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Important transformations are underway in tropical landscapes in Latin America with implications for economic development and climate change. Landscape transformation is driven not only by national policies and markets, but also by global market dynamics associated with an increased role for transnational traders and investors. National and global trends affect a disparate number of social, political and economic interactions taking place at the local level, which ultimately shapes land-use and socio-economic change. This paper reviews five different trajectories of landscape change in tropical Latin America, and discusses their implications for development and conservation: (1) Market-driven growth of agribusiness; (2) expansion and modernization of traditional cattle ranching; (3) slow growth of peasant agriculture; (4) logging in production forest frontiers; and (5) resurgence of agro-extractive economies. Contrasting trade-offs between economic development and forest conservation emerge across these landscapes, calling for nuanced policy responses to manage them in the context of climate change. This discussion sets the background to assess how reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing carbon stocks (REDD+) aims should be better aligned with current landscape trajectories and associated actors to better address climate-change mitigation in forest landscapes with effective and equitable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Desarrollo Económico is the property of Instituto de Desarrollo Economico y Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Poorer countries are generally believed to be more vulnerable to climate change than richer countries because poorer countries are more exposed and have less adaptive capacity. This suggests that, in principle, there are two ways of reducing vulnerability to climate change: economic growth and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Using a complex climate change impact model, in which development is an important determinant of vulnerability, the hypothesis is tested whether development aid is more effective in reducing impacts than is emission abatement. The hypothesis is barely rejected for Asia but strongly accepted for Latin America and, particularly, Africa. The explanation for the difference is that development (aid) reduces vulnerabilities in some sectors (infectious diseases, water resources, agriculture) but increases vulnerabilities in others (cardiovascular diseases, energy consumption). However, climate change impacts are much higher in Latin America and Africa than in Asia, so that money spent on emission reduction for the sake of avoiding impacts in developing countries is better spent on vulnerability reduction in those countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at assessing the sustainability of development in eleven Latin American countries. For that purpose, we establish an evaluation index system grouped into four subsystems (economic subsystem, social subsystem, ecologic subsystem and institutional subsystem). The weights for the index subsystems of sustainable development are based on the concept of entropy. The empirical results show that the sustainable development strategy in this group of countries is not efficient and is characterized by a lack of coordination between the four dimensions. This quantitative evaluation provides a new perspective for research in sustainable development researches and guidance for public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are seventeen countries that host 70% of the planet's biodiversity and 45% of its population: the megadiverse countries. Six of the world's megadiverse nations are in Latin America. Carbon stocks, biodiversity, and the life of millions of inhabitants are at risk due to high deforestation rates in the region. Furthermore, the economic and political stability of most Latin-American states depend on extractive practices. At a world-wide level, land use change, including deforestation, accounts for nearly 20% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2006, the UNFCCC financial mechanism to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has implemented close to 150 initiatives in Latin-American megadiverse countries. REDD+ has a high potential to become the climate change mechanism to transform deforestation trends and to make biodiversity an actual source of income for megadiverse countries. These six states are the priority target ofREDD+ donations in the region. However, in contrast to mainstream theorists who have labeled transnational governance as the brand of climate change, REDD+ proves otherwise. Traditional hierarchical North-South inter-national relations mark the rhythm and governance of this mechanism. Furthermore, a shift from multilateral efforts to bilateralism is evident as they currently represent 89% of total REDD+ flows and 80% of climate finances in the region. The risk of bilateralism is that ODA depends on the political priorities of the donor and recipient countries alike, becoming a potential threat to REDD+ sustainability. This paper examines each of the programs and projects accounted as REDD+ between 2006 and 2020. The goal is to define thefinancial flows corresponding to each of the countries analyzed, and moreover, the governance model resulting from these interventions. This article starts with an overview of the regional deforestation evolution and the climate change responses registered in this period in Latin America followed by the influxes ofREDD+ in the region and an analysis by each megadiverse country. The results have been contrasted with governance categories developed by different authors. The purpose is to state the governance model promoted by REDD+ in Latin-American megadiverse countries and its implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnitude of net carbon dioxide emissions resulting from global forest carbon change, and hence the contribution of forests to global climate change, is highly uncertain, owing to the lack of direct measurement by Earth observation and ground data collection. This paper uses a new method to evaluate this uncertainty with greater precision than before. Sources of uncertainty are divided into conceptualization and measurement categories and distributed between the spatial, vertical and temporal dimensions of Earth observation. The method is applied to Forest Reference Emission Level (FREL) reports and National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (NGGIs) submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by 12 countries containing half of tropical forest area. The two sets of estimates are typical of those to be submitted to the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the UNFCCC and the 2023 Global Stocktake of its Paris Agreement, respectively. Assembling the Uncertainty Fingerprint of each estimate shows that Uncertainty Scores are between 10 and 14 for the NGGIs and 5 and 10 for the FREL reports, and so both exceed the threshold of 2 when it is advisable to evaluate uncertainty by standard statistical methods. Conceptualization uncertainties account for 60% of all uncertainties in the NGGIs and 47% in the FREL reports, e.g., there is incomplete coverage of forest carbon fluxes, and limited disaggregation of fluxes between different ecosystem types and forest carbon pools. Of the measurement uncertainties, all FREL reports base forest area estimates on at least medium resolution satellite data, compared with only 3 NGGIs; after REDD+ Readiness schemes, mean area mapping frequency has fallen to 2.3 years in Latin America and 3.0 years in Asia, but only 8.3 years in Africa; and carbon density estimates are based on national forest inventory data in all FREL reports but only 4 NGGIs. The effectiveness of the Global Stocktake and REDD+ monitoring will therefore be constrained by considerable uncertainties, and to reduce these requires a new phase of REDD+ Readiness to ensure more frequent national forest inventories and forest carbon mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past two centuries, the world has witnessed a remarkable increase in the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases (GHGs), namely carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), as a result of human activities after 1750 (preindustrial era). During 1750 the concentrations for these gases were 280 ppm, 715 ppb, and 270 ppb, respectively which increased to 379 ppm, 1774 ppb, and 319 ppb, respectively in 2005. It showed an increase of 0.23, 0.96, and 0.12% annually. The same has further increased to 385 ppm, 1797 ppb, and 322 ppb, respectively in 2008 representing 1.6, 1.2, and 0.9% increase, respectively from 2005 levels at an annual increase of 0.53, 0.43, and 0.31%, annually. Increase in atmospheric CO2 promotes growth and productivity of plants with C3 photosynthetic pathway but the increase in temperature, on the other hand, can reduce crop duration, increase crop respiration rates, affect the survival and distribution of pest populations, and may hasten nutrient mineralization in soils, decrease fertilizer-use efficiency, and increase evapotranspiration. The water resources which are already scarce may come under enhanced stress. Thus, the impact of climate change is likely to have a significant influence on agriculture and eventually on the food security and livelihoods of large sections of the urban and rural populations globally. The developing countries, particularly in South Asia and Latin America, with diverse agroclimatic regions, challenging geographies, growing economies, diverse agricultural production systems, and farm typologies are more vulnerable to the effect of climate change due to heavy dependence on agriculture for livelihood. These regions also are demonstrating poor coping mechanisms to adapt to these challenges, and as a result there is evidence of negative impacts on productivity of wheat, rice, and other crops to varying extent depending on agroecologies. Upscaling of modern technologies such as conservation and climate smart agriculture, judicious utilization of available water for agriculture through microirrigation and water saving technologies, developing multiple stress-tolerant crop cultivars and biotypes through biotechnological tools, restoration of degraded soils and waters, promoting carbon sequestration through alternate production technologies and land use, and conservation of biodiversity must be promoted at regional and country level to ensure durable food and nutritional security. Reliable early warning system of environmental changes, their spatial and temporal magnitude, coupled with policies to support the diffusion of this information, can help interpret these forecasts in terms of their agronomic and economic implications for the benefit of farmers and to provide agriculture-dependent industries and policymakers with more informed options to support farmers. These countries need to formulate both short-term and long-term policies for improvement, sustenance, and protection of natural resources. There is an urgent need for capacity building through international collaboration in order to develop databases and analysis systems for efficient weather forecasting as well as preparing contingency plans for vulnerable areas. The objectives of this paper are to summarize the available information on adaptation strategies and the mitigation options for climate change to meet the food security in South Asia and Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many developing countries, agriculture is the cornerstone of their economy. Whilst extreme weather events are an accepted phenomenon in some Latin American countries, others such as Bolivia and Peru are not so used to their apparently increasing frequency. Developing new policies and strategies to cope with climate change and its associated extreme events therefore requires robust knowledge on the reported impacts, consequences and implications. This paper presents the findings from a systematic review of published evidence on the impacts of climate change on cropping systems and rural livelihoods across a range of agricultural and socio-technical dimensions. Adaptation measures need to consider not only the weather and physical dimensions of climate change, but also its social consequences. Factors influencing agriculture, including water resource impacts, crop profitability, environmental constraints, social and political transformations, and traditional knowledge and practices, were identifed and reviewed to provide a comprehensive assessment of these key aspects, which are highly relevant to the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Younger Dryas (YD) climatic reversal (12.86–11.65 cal ky BP), especially the warming initiated at ∼12.6 cal ky BP, and the associated vegetation changes have been proposed as past analogs to forecast the potential vegetation responses to future global warming. In this paper, we applied this model to highland and midland Neotropical localities. We used pollen analysis of lake sediments to record vegetation responses to YD climatic changes, which are reconstructed from independent paleoclimatic proxies such as the Mg/Ca ratio on foraminiferal tests and Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA) for paleotemperature, and grayscale density and Titanium content for paleoprecipitation. Paleoclimatic reconstructions at both highlands and midlands showed a clear YD signal with a conspicuous warming extending into the early Holocene. A small percentage of taxa resulted to be sensitive to these YD climate changes. Response lags were negligible at the resolution of the study. However, changes in the sensitive taxa were relevant enough to determine changes in biodiversity and taxonomic composition. Highland vegetation experienced mainly intra-community reorganizations, whereas midland vegetation underwent major changes leading to community substitutions. This was explained in terms of threshold-crossing non-linear responses in which the coupling of climatic and other forcings (fire) was proposed as the main driving mechanism. Paleoecology provides meaningful insights on the responses of highland and midland Neotropical vegetation to the YD climatic reversal. Biotic responses at both individual (species) and collective (assemblage) levels showed patterns and processes of vegetation change useful to understand its ecological dynamics, as well as the mechanisms and external drivers involved. The use of paleoecological methods to document the biotic responses to the YD climate shifts can be useful to help forecasting the potential consequences of future global warming. Due to its quasi-global character, the YD reversal emerges as a well suited candidate for providing useful insights of global scope by analyzing the corresponding biotic responses virtually at any geographical and biological setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While urbanites are vulnerable to a suite of risks that climate change might aggravate (e.g., mortality from extreme temperatures and property damages from floods), urban populations and decision makers may also be positioned to most effectively respond to such risks. Research is needed however, exploring both the multilevel factors and processes that determine urban risk and the complex pathways from hazards to impacts, and from perceptions and coping responses to adaptation. This paper analyzes whether and under what circumstances urban populations experience risk in selected Latin American neighborhoods of Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Mexico and Santiago; it assesses their adaptation capacity, i.e., ability to perceive and respond to hazards. It finds that urban risk depends on scale: hazards, adaptation capacities, responses and their underlying societal and physical drivers vary across urban households, neighborhoods and cities. Informality is a state of regulatory flux, where access to land and livelihood options cannot be fixed and mapped according to any prearranged sets of laws and planning mechanisms, that has a profound influence on risk and adaptation capacities across scales. For instance, informality becomes the site of considerable state power where some forms of growth in risk-prone areas enjoy state sanction while others are criminalized. The informal status becomes both a source of stigmatization that disempowers informal neighborhoods and a systemic determinant of lack of access to assets and options for adaptation capacity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the concept of a decentralized power system based on wind energy and a pumped hydro storage system in a tall building. The system reacts to the current paradigm of power outage in Latin American countries caused by infrastructure limitations and climate change, while it fosters the penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) for a more diversified and secure electricity supply. An explicit methodology describes the assessment of technical, operational and economic potentials in a specific urban setting in Caracas/Venezuela. The suitability, applicability and the impacts generated by such power system are furthermore discussed at economic, social and technical level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Wave climate is highly variable on the world''s coast and its temporal changes and extremes usually imply consequences like erosion or impacts to infrastructures. Alterations in wave climate were little addressed in the four IPCC reports although variations in wave climate may cause extensive coastal impacts. Changes are also often related to climate pattern variability. This variability as well as long-term trends has been an issue of research in recent years. In the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) an understanding of wave climate and its variability is scant. In this paper we use an extensively calibrated and validated wave reanalysis to describe the wave climatology in the region at different time scales and for scalar and directional wave parameters. Long-term changes are identified in the wave heights and mean direction of the energy flux shows high spatial variability. Correlation patterns of the mean significant wave height and direction of mean energy flux lead to the detection of prominent modes of influence of several climate indices. A wave climate type approach is also used to identify wave variability along the region that allows an identification of different wave climate types in terms of wave parameters and occurrence frequency. In line with the results, the influence of El Niño events shows a higher frequency of occurrence of certain sea-states with respect to non ENSO years. We also explore how climate change affecting storm patterns may be translated into a modification of sea-state occurrence and therefore implying different consequences for coastal zones depending on local wave propagation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

World histor y is full of conflicts caused by the scarcity of natural resources: gold, diamonds and oil. However, the water that has not previously been considered a source of conflict, with the climate change it becomes "the blue gold" of this century. This paper analyzes the risks of water shortage worldwide, particularly in Latin America, which despite its abundant resources, is facing scarcity of this element. The population growth, inappropriate management policies, lack of innovative technology and corruption aggravate the situation, putting in danger the development of the Latin American region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nations of the global south there has been an overall dismissal of emissions reduction practices surrounding global warming, and perhaps rightfully so. Developed countries have been identified as the primary contributor towards the climate change issue, and many countries perceive that the curbing of emissions will lead to the stagnation of economic growth and prosperity. For developing nations, embracing emission reductions or carbon emission offsets appear to make little sense if in fact such actions would result in the economic contraction expected. However, we suggest that the climate change issue, although perceived as an obstacle to growth and prosperity, holds several strategic competitive advantages for first movers. Three factors are discussed regarding first mover advantage and we use the energy industry of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region as our example. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: Few people living in informal settlements in the Global South spontaneously claim that they are "resilient" or "adapting" to disaster risk or climate change. Surely, they often overcome multiple challenges, including natural hazards exacerbated by climate change. Yet their actions are increasingly examined through the framework of resilience, a notion developed in the North, and increasingly adopted in the South. To what extent eliminate' do these initiatives correspond to the concepts that scholars and authorities place under the resilience framework? Design/methodology/approach: Three longitudinal case studies in Yumbo, Salgar and San Andrés (Colombia) serve to investigate narratives of disaster risks and responses to them. Methods include narrative analysis from policy and project documents, presentations, five workshops, six focus groups and 24 interviews. Findings: The discourse adopted by most international scholars and local authorities differs greatly from that used by citizens to explain risk and masks the politics involved in disaster reduction and the search for social justice. Besides, narratives of social change, aspirations and social status are increasingly masked in disaster risk explanations. Tensions are also concealed, including those regarding the winners and losers of interventions and the responsibilities for disaster risk reduction. Originality/value: Our findings confirm previous results that have shown that the resilience framework contributes to "depoliticize" the analysis of risk and serves to mask and dilute the responsibility of political and economic elites in disaster risk creation. But they also show that resilience fails to explain the type of socioeconomic change that is required to reduce vulnerabilities in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinizes the assertion that knowledge gaps concerning health risks from climate change are unjust, and must be addressed, because they hinder evidence-led interventions to protect vulnerable populations. First, we construct a taxonomy of six inter-related forms of invisibility (social marginalization, forced invisibility by migrants, spatial marginalization, neglected diseases, mental health, uneven climatic monitoring and forecasting) which underlie systematic biases in current understanding of these risks in Latin America, and advocate an approach to climate-health research that draws on intersectionality theory to address these inter-relations. We propose that these invisibilities should be understood as outcomes of structural imbalances in power and resources rather than as haphazard blindspots in scientific and state knowledge. Our thesis, drawing on theories of governmentality, is that context-dependent tensions condition whether or not benefits of making vulnerable populations legible to the state outweigh costs. To be seen is to be politically counted and eligible for rights, yet evidence demonstrates the perils of visibility to disempowered people. For example, flood-relief efforts in remote Amazonia expose marginalized urban river-dwellers to the traumatic prospect of forced relocation and social and economic upheaval. Finally, drawing on research on citizenship in post-colonial settings, we conceptualize climate change as an 'open moment' of political rupture, and propose strategies of social accountability, empowerment and trans-disciplinary research which encourage the marginalized to reach out for greater power. These achievements could reduce drawbacks of state legibility and facilitate socially-just governmental action on climate change adaptation that promotes health for all. • Use invisibility to explore biases in understanding of climate-health risks. • Review invisibilities linked to marginalization of peoples, places, diseases. • Contend that invisibilities arise from structural imbalances in power and resources. • Tension shapes whether the benefits of being seen by the state outweigh the costs. • Propose strategies to enable the marginalized to reach for greater power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Climate change has significantly altered species distributions in the wild and has the potential to affect the interactions between pests and diseases and their human, animal and plant hosts. While several studies have projected changes in disease distributions in the future, responses to historical climate change are poorly understood. Such analyses are required to dissect the relative contributions of climate change, host availability and dispersal to the emergence of pests and diseases. Here, we model the influence of climate change on the most damaging disease of a major tropical food plant, Black Sigatoka disease of banana. Black Sigatoka emerged from Asia in the late twentieth Century and has recently completed its invasion of Latin American and Caribbean banana-growing areas. We parametrize an infection model with published experimental data and drive the model with hourly microclimate data from a global climate reanalysis dataset. We define infection risk as the sum of the number of modelled hourly spore cohorts that infect a leaf over a time interval. The model shows that infection risk has increased by a median of 44.2% across banana-growing areas of Latin America and the Caribbean since the 1960s, due to increasing canopy wetness and improving temperature conditions for the pathogen. Thus, while increasing banana production and global trade have probably facilitated Black Sigatoka establishment and spread, climate change has made the region increasingly conducive for plant infection. This article is part of the theme issue 'Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: approaches and important themes'. This issue is linked with the subsequent theme issue 'Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: epidemic forecasting and control'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Desarrollo Rural is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aim We developed a set of statistical models to improve spatial estimates of mangrove aboveground biomass ( AGB) based on the environmental signature hypothesis ( ESH). We hypothesized that higher tidal amplitudes, river discharge, temperature, direct rainfall and decreased potential evapotranspiration explain observed high mangrove AGB. Location Neotropics and a small portion of the Nearctic region. Methods A universal forest model based on site-level forest structure statistics was validated to spatially interpolate estimates of mangrove biomass at different locations. Linear models were then used to predict mangrove AGB across the Neotropics. Results The universal forest site-level model was effective in estimating mangrove AGB using pre-existing mangrove forest structure inventories to validate the model. We confirmed our hypothesis that at continental scales higher tidal amplitudes contributed to high forest biomass associated with high temperature and rainfall, and low potential evapotranspiration. Our model explained 20% of the spatial variability in mangrove AGB, with values ranging from 16.6 to 627.0 t ha−1 (mean, 88.7 t ha−1). Our findings show that mangrove AGB has been overestimated by 25-50% in the Neotropics, underscoring a commensurate bias in current published global estimates using site-level information. Main conclusions Our analysis show how the ESH significantly explains spatial variability in mangrove AGB at hemispheric scales. This finding is critical to improve and explain site-level estimates of mangrove AGB that are currently used to determine the relative contribution of mangrove wetlands to global carbon budgets. Due to the lack of a conceptual framework explicitly linking environmental drivers and mangrove AGB values during model validation, previous works have significantly overestimated mangrove AGB; our novel approach improved these assessments. In addition, our framework can potentially be applied to other forest-dominated ecosystems by allowing the retrieval of extensive databases at local levels to generate more robust statistical predictive models to estimate continental-scale biomass values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]