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Though a small fraction of the US citizenry, agricultural producers are directly responsible for the stewardship of almost half of the country's land. This group is therefore an especially important one to understand from the standpoint of how they process and respond to science as it relates to agroecological phenomena. Data from a sample (n = 111) of farmers and ranchers located in the US state of Colorado are used to expand our understanding of how food producers process scientific claims. These insights, I argue, help us think through public understandings of science more generally. Using semi-structured interviews, the paper unpacks an identified asymmetry in how respondents perceive climate science and the science associated with genetically modified food and seed. These tensions are interrogated with the help of a novel methodological design that generated data converted to shading matrices—also known as heat maps. The heat maps illuminate certain cultural values among respondents, which were reinforced by motivated reasoning. This allows for an interrogation of tensions and inconsistencies in respondents' remarks about a variety of scientific claims. The heat maps, coupled with the qualitative data, allow for an exploration into how respondents perceive certain salient socio-technical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negligible levels of energy-related GHG emissions attributable to the Southern African subregion translates into the sub-region contributing relatively little towards global climate change. Notwithstanding, the member states comprising the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are among the most vulnerable to the trans boundary effects of global climate change. Existing SADC climate change policy documents highlight the important role of the energy sector in climate change mitigation. Furthermore, various international, African Union and SADC legal instruments stress the crucial role of harmonised law and policy as climate change adaptive measure. It is the central hypothesis of this paper that harmonised subregional law and policy aimed at regulating SADC member states' mitigation efforts in the energy sector is a crucial climate change adaptive strategy. This hypothesis is based on the mandates for the formulation of a SADC climate change action plan and for mitigation in the energy sector. These mandates are contained in the texts of the SADC-CNGO Climate Change Agenda, 2012 and the Southern Africa Sub - Regional Framework on Climate Change, 2010 respectively. It is the main aim of this paper to investigate recent developments in the formulation of harmonised SADC law and policy on climate change in general and law and policy pertaining to mitigation in the energy sector specifically. In achieving the stated aim, themes to be investigated by means of a literature study are those of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change and harmonised sub-regional policy on mitigation in the energy sector as adaptive measure in the SADC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Mitigation and adaptation represent two solutions to the issue of global warming. While mitigation aims at reducing $$\hbox {CO}_2$$ emissions and preventing climate change, adaptation encompasses a broad scope of techniques used to reduce the impacts of climate change once they have occurred. Both have direct costs on a country's gross domestic product, but costs also arise from temperature increases due to inaction. This paper introduces a tipping point in a real options model and analyzes optimal investment choices in mitigation and their timing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change poses worldwide challenges, perhaps most in coastal areas. Governments on different scales respond with planning and policy measures, many with drastic impact. In this paper we assess the role of cultural heritage in planning for climate change on the former island Goeree‐Overflakkee in the Netherlands. We do so by exploring the theoretical discourse on the nexus of climate change and heritage discourses and relating these to an analysis of mitigation and adaptation measures on the island of Goeree‐Overflakkee in the Dutch river delta. It appears that the scale and political urgency of climate change induces involvement of many different governments, resulting in an inconsistent integration of cultural heritage in these plans and policies. These outcomes demonstrate that in order to integrate heritage in climate adaptation and mitigation planning, governments cannot rely on established planning traditions for other spatial challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prospect theory (PT) is a widely accepted theory for decisions under uncertainty. However, so far a systematic application to climate policy (CP) does not exist. One important postulation of PT is that outcomes are perceived as gains or losses, relative to the reference point. When it comes to CP, different decision-makers may have different reference points. For example, one decision-maker perceives the current climate as the reference point whereas another decision-maker may have another one, say climate in 100 years. For the former, climate damages are losses and the benefits of CP are reductions of losses. For the latter, benefits of CP are gains. PT suggests that the former places a higher value in CP than the latter. After a critical review whether and how PT may be applied to CP, the paper systematically presents this and other cases where PT offers new insights into climate-related analyses, notwithstanding the importance of well-known aspects such as discounting, altruism, political and economic costs. It is shown that accounting for PT may contribute to a better understanding of some well-known puzzles in the climate debate, including different preferences for CP amongst individuals and nations, the role of technical vs. financial adaptation, and the apparent preference for hard protection measures in coastal adaptation. Finally, concrete possibilities for empirical research on these effects are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an application of dynamic games for the design of efficient climate policies involving both adaptation and mitigation elements. More precisely, this paper extends the integrated assessment model Ada-BaHaMa to a game theoretic framework where several world regions define non-cooperatively their energy and climate policies all the while being affected by climate change damages induced by their total greenhouse gas emissions. The paper provides also a numerical illustration for a setting with two players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In debates of climate action, low carbon development has been widely advocated as an opportunity arising from climate change. This paper problematizes low carbon development, arguing that there are undesirable, unintended or perverse effects that give rise to distinct and serious security concerns. The literature on climate security has addressed the effects of climate threats on conflict but there is a notable paucity of research analysing the security implications of responses to climate change in the form of low carbon development. The paper presents critical analysis of the ways low carbon development yields new security concerns as well as entrenching existing ones. Five dimensions of security are examined: spatially uneven effects of low carbon development; violent imaginaries of the global south and the production of 'ungoverned spaces'; non-violent yet harmful instances of conflict; marginalization and dispossession; depoliticized, techno-managerial effects of resilience. The paper shows that climate (in)security manifests in variegated ways between different populations and spatial scales. Consequently, how, when for whom low carbon development becomes a threat or opportunity is socially constructed and deeply political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate finance helps mobilise additional development funds to help developing countries reduce CO2 emissions and local communities adapt to changing climate. Increasingly, however, concerns have been raised about the implications of climate finance on gender equity. Drawing on the 'contextual-procedural-distributive' equity framework, this paper conducts an extensive review of literature on forest sequestration, climate-smart agriculture and disaster management. It indicates that the effectiveness of climate finance is constrained from a lack of awareness of the gender gap in access to land and capital. To maximise the impact of climate finance, it urges policy makers to tackle deeply rooted structural inequalities. © 2016 UNU-WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program (CCHAP) is a program within the First Nations Inuit Health Branch of Indigenous Services Canada (which was previously under the responsibility of Health Canada). The CCHAP supports Inuit and First Nation communities in mitigating and adapting to the health impacts of climate change. The impacts of climate change on Indigenous health can be observed in multiple areas including, but not limited to, food security, cultural medicines, mental health and landbased practices. This program seeks to address the needs of climate change and health in First Nation and Inuit communities to support resiliency and adaptation to a changing climate both now and in the future through its emphasis on youth and capacity building. The commentary is based on the Program's eleven years of experience working with and for Indigenous communities and provides an overview of the CCHAP model and the work it has and continues to support. This paper demonstrates three examples of community-based projects to mitigate and adapt to the health impacts of climate change to demonstrate climate change resiliency within Indigenous communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the evolution of research into tourism and climate change, illustrating how early work concentrated on the impact of climate change on tourism, whereas current work also explores the impact of tourism on climate change. It goes on to elaborate a research agenda on both topics. The need to open up tourism research to other fields and professional worlds - such as climatology, the International Panel on Climate Change and transport research - is stressed, as is the need to organise the research community on a global basis, with more collaborative and comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reporting to the public on climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation requires journalists to be equipped to engage with a wide range of technical content in order to communicate it in an accessible and engaging way. Recognizing the need for journalists from a wide range of backgrounds, including those from community newspapers and radio stations in South Africa, to be able to undertake this task, the South African Department of Environment Affairs in partnership with GIZ commissioned the authors to develop and deliver a four-day climate change reporting training programme. This paper presents an overview of the structure and content of the course, and details the reflections after undertaking such an endeavor. Based on the lessons learned, and an awareness that this kind of training may take place in the context where working community-level journalists may have a low knowledge base (of both the journalistic craft, as well as the content of climate science) the following recommendations emerge: scientific training may need to be combined with basic journalistic training (depending on the participants); learning-by-doing is central to journalists building their capacity in climate reporting training; and mother-tongue delivery of material is critical to the success of such technical training courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are gaining prominence committing to respond to the threat of climate change, e.g., by developing local climate plans or strategies. However, little is known regarding the approaches and processes of plan development and implementation, or the success and effectiveness of proposed measures. Mainstreaming is regarded as one approach associated with (implementation) success, but the extent of integration of local climate policies and plans in ongoing sectoral and/or development planning is unclear. This paper analyses 885 cities across the 28 European countries to create a first reference baseline on the degree of climate mainstreaming in local climate plans. This will help to compare the benefits of mainstreaming versus dedicated climate plans, looking at policy effectiveness and ultimately delivery of much needed climate change efforts at the city level. All core cities of the European Urban Audit sample were analyzed, and their local climate plans classified as dedicated or mainstreamed in other local policy initiatives. It was found that the degree of mainstreaming is low for mitigation (9% of reviewed cities; 12% of the identified plans) and somewhat higher for adaptation (10% of cities; 29% of plans). In particular horizontal mainstreaming is a major effort for local authorities; an effort that does not necessarily pay off in terms of success of action implementation. This study concludes that climate change issues in local municipalities are best tackled by either, developing a dedicated local climate plan in parallel to a mainstreamed plan or by subsequently developing first the dedicated and later a mainstreaming plan (joint or subsequent "dual track approach"). Cities that currently provide dedicated local climate plans (66% of cities for mitigation; 26% of cities for adaptation) may follow-up with a mainstreaming approach. This promises effective implementation of tangible climate actions as well as subsequent diffusion of climate issues into other local sector policies. The development of only broad sustainability or resilience strategies is seen as critical. • Trends in mainstreaming climate change issues were analyzed for 885 cities EU-28. • EU cities provide numerous local mitigation (#664) and/or adaptation (#321) plans. • Mainstreaming was investigated as vertical and horizontal approach. • 9% of cities have mainstreamed mitigation LCP; 12% of mitigation LCPs mainstreamed. • 10% of cities have mainstreamed adaptation LCP; 29% of adaptation LCPs mainstreamed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since entry into force of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1994, negotiations on controlling future greenhouse gas emissions have turned into one of the largest development issues of our time. In February 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force and 9 months later a historical first meeting of the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 1) was held in Montreal side-by-side with the 11th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP 11). After several years of stalemate, the Montreal meeting has resulted somewhat unexpectedly in a constructive outcome that has opened the door for new momentum in climate talks. Along with several key technical decisions, an agreement was reached to hold separate talks to discuss the futures of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. This paper discusses the main outcomes of the conference and explores possible ways forward. It concludes that success in the UNFCCC process is imperative to address climate change in both developing and developed countries, even if the most effective actions are taken outside the immediate context of the legal process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Paris climate conference which inscribes loss and damage as a permanent feature of the global climate regime, this paper examines the relevance of the global Loss and Damage agenda for national climate change policies. Through a structured review of the emerging policy and academic literature two primary challenges are highlighted: first, the difficulty in establishing formal attribution of loss and damage to anthropogenic climate change, and second in determining with clarity the limits to adaptation beyond which loss and damage can be described as unavoidable. In examining these two challenges, we arrive at a framework for national level policy that emphasises the underlying developmental potential of Loss and Damage. In offering this viewpoint, the narrative arc on Loss and Damage is expanded from a technical agenda towards one more attuned to existing policy and mechanisms at the local and national levels. A Comprehensive Risk Management approach is proposed as a practical framing for national and local policies to address loss and damage which could lead to addressing both the underlying and accumulating development failures and risk management capacities that shape loss and damage outcomes. This moves Loss and Damage from a reactive to a proactive responsibility and enables action now – not only once attribution and the limits to adaptation are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change necessitates a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while adapting to increased climate risks. This broader climate transition will involve largescale global interventions including renewable energy deployment, coastal protection and retreat, and enhanced space cooling, all of which will result in CO2 emissions from energy and materials use. Yet, the magnitude of the emissions embedded in these interventions remains unconstrained, opening the potential for underaccounting of emissions and conflicts or synergies between mitigation and adaptation goals. Here, we use a suite of models to estimate the CO2 emissions embedded in the broader climate transition. For a gradual decarbonization pathway limiting warming to 2 °C, selected adaptation-related interventions will emit ~1.3 GtCO2 through 2100, while emissions from energy used to deploy renewable capacity are much larger at ~95 GtCO2. Together, these emissions are equivalent to over 2 y of current global emissions and 8.3% of the remaining carbon budget for 2 °C. Total embedded transition emissions are reduced by ~80% to 21.2 GtCO2 under a rapid pathway limiting warming to 1.5 °C. However, they roughly double to 185 GtCO2 under a delayed pathway consistent with current policies (2.7 °C warming by 2100), mainly because a slower transition relies more on fossil fuel energy. Our results provide a holistic assessment of carbon emissions from the transition itself and suggest that these emissions can be minimized through more ambitious energy decarbonization. We argue that the emissions from mitigation, but likely much less so from adaptation, are of sufficient magnitude to merit greater consideration in climate science and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caribbean economies, lifestyles, activities, practices and operational cycles are intricately linked to climate, making them vulnerable to its variations and/or changes. As examples, climate extremes impact agriculture, fisheries, health, tourism, water availability, recreation, and energy usage, among other things. There is however limited incorporation of climate information in the long term developmental plans and policies of the region. This is in part due to a knowledge deficit about climate change, it's likely manifestation in the region and the possible impact on Caribbean societies. In this paper, a review of the growing bank of knowledge about Caribbean climate science; variability and change is undertaken. Insight is offered into the basic science of climate change, past trends and future projections for Caribbean climate, and the possible implications for the region. In the end a case is made for a greater response to the threats posed by climate change on the basis of the sufficiency of our current knowledge of Caribbean climate science. A general profile of what the response may look like is also offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Scenarios are used to explore the consequences of different adaptation and mitigation strategies under uncertainty. In this paper, two scenarios are used to explore developments with (1) no mitigation leading to an increase of global mean temperature of 4°C by 2100 and (2) an ambitious mitigation strategy leading to 2°C increase by 2100. For the second scenario, uncertainties in the climate system imply that a global mean temperature increase of 3°C or more cannot be ruled out. Our analysis shows that, in many cases, adaptation and mitigation are not trade-offs but supplements. For example, the number of people exposed to increased water resource stress due to climate change can be substantially reduced in the mitigation scenario, but adaptation will still be required for the remaining large numbers of people exposed to increased stress. Another example is sea level rise, for which, from a global and purely monetary perspective, adaptation (up to 2100) seems more effective than mitigation. From the perspective of poorer and small island countries, however, stringent mitigation is necessary to keep risks at manageable levels. For agriculture, only a scenario based on a combination of adaptation and mitigation is able to avoid serious climate change impacts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: As investment and policy decision-makers grapple with the implications of climate change, benefits are seen in making available to them climate information at spatial and temporal scales that match the realms within which those decision-makers operate. For such an endeavour to have lasting economic and social benefits, however, the information must be carefully placed within the broader environmental, economic, social and institutional context within which decisions are made. This paper illustrates the challenges and opportunities of doing so, and uses information on the cost of inaction to illustrate the contributions that may come from advancements in climate modelling and information delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As policymakers and stakeholders increasingly consider relative merits and complementarities of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, it is important to improve analytical capacities to support this process. Because a single analytical approach is unlikely to fit all needs, this paper explores potentials for an integrated analytical framework that incorporates both top–down and bottom–up approaches. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Special Climate Change (SCC) fund was established by the Marrakesh Accords under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This fund will finance climate change activities in the areas of: adaptation, technology transfer, certain specific sectors, and activities to assist oil-exporting countries diversify their economies. These activities are to be complementary to those funded by the Global Environment Facility and by bilateral and multilateral funding. This paper describes the origins of the SCC fund and proposes a framework for the prioritisation of its activities. The fund has a complicated history that is intrinsically linked to numerous Convention issues, which explains the range of activities included in it. The framework proposed is based on certain principles: sound scientific knowledge, the ultimate objective of the Convention, “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” and the status of the climate negotiations. This appraisal suggests that the fund should prioritise adaptation, followed by mitigation and finally economic diversification. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Many early career researchers (ECRs) have the capacity and drive to contribute to climate adaptation and mitigation solutions. Strategic investments in training and support, especially in broad-based efforts that span traditional disciplinary boundaries, can help ECRs meet this potential and become emerging leaders equipped to address pressing climate-related challenges throughout their careers. In 2018, the inaugural USDA Northeast Climate Hub's Graduate Climate Adaptation Partners (GradCAP) Program was launched to provide professional development opportunities and a platform for collaboration to graduate students studying climate resilience in agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture. This essay represents the unified voice of this consortium of emerging leaders. Here we offer perspectives, experiences, and recommendations for building capacity among ECRs, specifically with regard to interdisciplinary research, long-term research, and community engagement. We discuss these three tenants, which we term Convergence, Continuity, and Community, as essential elements in the development of successful leaders prepared for the complex challenges ahead. We encourage institutions, particularly universities and government agencies, to commit resources and pursue structural changes to provide support for mentorship and training that span these focal areas. As a result, more ECRs will have the capacity to engage in meaningful solution-oriented research and make lasting societal contributions toward the sustainable production of food and other natural resources in a changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For three decades, advocates for climate change policy have simultaneously emphasized the urgency of taking ambitious actions to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and provided false reassurances of the feasibility of doing so. The policy prescription has relied almost exclusively on a single approach: reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs. Since 1990, global CO2 emissions have increased 60%, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have raced past 400 ppm, and temperatures increased at an accelerating rate. The one‐prong strategy has not worked. After reviewing emission mitigation's poor performance and low‐probability of delivering on long‐term climate goals, we advance a three‐pronged strategy for mitigating climate change risks: adding adaptation and amelioration—through solar radiation management (SRM)—to the emission mitigation approach. We highlight SRM's potential, at dramatically lower cost than emission mitigation, to play a key role in offsetting warming. We address the moral hazard reservation held by environmental advocates—that SRM would diminish emission mitigation incentives—and posit that SRM deployment might even serve as an "awful action alert" that galvanizes more ambitious emission mitigation. We conclude by emphasizing the value of an iterative act‐learn‐act policy framework that engages all three prongs for limiting climate change damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tens of billions of US dollars are programmed from developed to developing countries to assist them in dealing with the impacts of climate change or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is the world of climate finance, a stream of money which includes public funding set to swell to $100 billion yearly by 2020. These sums conceal agenda-setting stories on how different countries are coping with climate change. Drawing on data analysis and interviews with beneficiaries of climate finance, this article examines local and adaptation funding as two entry points into the field, connecting different perspectives on climate finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In climate change policy, adaptation tends to be viewed as being as important as mitigation. In this article we present a simple yet general argument for which mitigation must be preferred to adaptation at the global level. The argument rests on the observation that mitigation is a public good while adaptation is a private one. We show that the more one teases out the public good nature of mitigation, the lower will be the incentives to invest in the private good adaptation while it increases a policy maker's incentives to invest in the public good mitigation. Conclusively, private adaptation yields a significant loss to global welfare. We then discuss what this implies for the current state of the art literature and what should be the lesson for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has far-reaching effects on human and ecological systems, requiring collaboration across sectors and disciplines to determine effective responses. To inform regional responses to climate change, decision-makers need credible and relevant information representing a wide swath of knowledge and perspectives. The southeastern U. S. State of Georgia is a valuable focal area for study because it contains multiple ecological zones that vary greatly in land use and economic activities, and it is vulnerable to diverse climate change impacts. We identified 40 important research questions that, if answered, could lay the groundwork for effective, science-based climate action in Georgia. Top research priorities were identified through a broad solicitation of candidate research questions (180 were received). A group of experts across sectors and disciplines gathered for a workshop to categorize, prioritize, and filter the candidate questions, identify missing topics, and rewrite questions. Participants then collectively chose the 40 most important questions. This cross-sectoral effort ensured the inclusion of a diversity of topics and questions (e.g., coastal hazards, agricultural production, ecosystem functioning, urban infrastructure, and human health) likely to be important to Georgia policy-makers, practitioners, and scientists. Several cross-cutting themes emerged, including the need for long-term data collection and consideration of at-risk Georgia citizens and communities. Workshop participants defined effective responses as those that take economic cost, environmental impacts, and social justice into consideration. Our research highlights the importance of collaborators across disciplines and sectors, and discussing challenges and opportunities that will require transdisciplinary solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports and reflects on the design and use of the board game KEEP COOL on climate change. The game covers and integrates central biophysical, economic, and political aspects of the issue. By using a board game as common language between students and scientists from different scientific cultures, knowledge of different disciplines can be integrated and different views can be discussed. Thus, even complex issues such as the free-rider problem, trade-offs between adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, and path dependencies can be studied. KEEP COOL is the first game on climate change that is readily available from a commercial publisher. It has successfully been used in multiple settings, for example, as a tool for interdisciplinary research, public relations, public understanding of science, and, in particular, teaching. The experience with the game indicates that it can be effectively used in seminars with students to obtain a holistic picture of the issue and to lay out a common language for deeper reflections on climate change. This contribution also identifies some pitfalls and essential instruments for its adequate use for teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Resilience, adaptation and mitigation are unique but complimentary actions in the fight against climate change (CC), particularly in developing countries. Although evidence suggest the inclusion of stakeholder opinions as part of the frameworks for combating CC, this evidence is not well substantiated, and is not extensively described in sub-Sahara African CC literature. While language remains a big issue in CC discussions, processes comprised within climate actions are equally as important as both the language and the results. It is on the basis of the confusion surrounding the language adopted as actions geared towards combating CC that this study seeks to examine the opinions/perception of CC actors in three West African nations. It looks at perceived and/or suitable solutions to selected CC-imposed challenges in the midst of socio-economic and environmental concerns. A total of 475 individuals, representing NGOs, public and private organizations involved with CC issues, as well as private persons concerned about CC, were recruited across Nigeria, Niger, and Benin, over a two-year period (April 2017–April 2019). A questionnaire containing 15 items was administered. The results of data analysis using chi-square and Fischer's exact tests show that the mean number of CC actors differs within and across all three countries for all climate action types against CC-imposed challenges. While CC adaptive plans and projects are thought to yield immediate results, they are also observed to be cheaper in comparison to mitigation and resilience projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a climate communication recognition scheme (CCRS) for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites (WHS), in order to explore the communicative power of heritage to mobilize stakeholders around climate change. We present this scheme with the aim to influence site management and tourist decision-making by increasing climate awareness at heritage sites and among visitors and encouraging the incorporation of carbon management into heritage site management. Given the deficits and dysfunction in international governance for climate mitigation and inspired by transnational environmental governance tools such as ecolabels and environmental product information schemes, we offer "climate communication recognition schemes" as a corollary tool for transnational climate governance and communication. We assess and develop four dimensions for the CCRS, featuring 50 WHS: carbon footprint analysis, narrative potential, sustainability practices, and the impacts of climate change on heritage resources. In our development of a CCRS, this study builds on the "branding" value and recognition of UNESCO World Heritage, set against the backdrop of increasing tourism—including the projected doubling of international air travel in the next 15–20 years—and the implications of this growth for climate change. The CCRS, titled Climate Footprints of Heritage Tourism, is available online as an ArcGIS StoryMap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As global temperatures warm and populations and incomes rise, the demand for cooling will soar, creating a positive feedback loop between global warming and electricity-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This study explores the relationship between temperature, electricity, air conditioning (AC) and CO2 emissions, and the sustainability of cooling in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With the highest share of AC in household electricity consumption in the world and its already very hot summers warming by 3 °C in many areas over the last 40 years, Saudi Arabia provides an important case study of how the cooling challenge can be managed. Data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF ERA5) is used to illustrate local warming trends (1979–2018) and show the relationship between temperature and power generation within a typical year using hourly data (2011–2015). Using annual data (2010–2018), we then show that since 2016 the rapid growth in the Kingdom's electricity demand for AC and its associated CO2 emissions have plateaued. This suggests energy efficiency measures, higher electricity prices and a shift from the use of oil towards gas in the power sector are having a positive effect on energy sustainability. We identify key policies and technologies that will be important for the sustainable use of cooling in Saudi Arabia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the lead‐up to the 2015 Conference of Parties meeting in Paris, 186 countries, representing over 95% of global emissions, submitted Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The NDCs outline national goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions and identify financial needs for unfolding mitigation and adaptation efforts. In this study, we review various analyses of the NDCs that cover the aggregate impact and strength of emissions reduction commitments and discuss recent literature on the adequacy and sectoral focus of the NDCs. We then argue that the NDCs are more than just goal setting reports; they are important discursive documents that are contested, negotiated, and ongoing. To supplement the existing literature, we examine the discursive narratives embedded in the NDCs from the 19 founding nations of the Climate Vulnerable Forum and the top 10 greenhouse gas emitters. Our literature review of quantitative and sectoral aspects of the NDCs highlights the inadequacy of the NDC commitments in the context of limiting warming to 2°C, discusses the uncertainties in the promised mitigation strategies, and identifies the reliance of many countries on policies such as those on forests or renewable energy. Our own analysis of the discourses in the NDCs adds critical depth by highlighting the stark contrasts in NDC discourses between North and South, as well as between historical emitters and emerging economies. These contrasts reflect deeper debates regarding justice and equity between nations within the UNFCCC negotiations. This article is categorized under:Climate and Development > Decoupling Emissions from Development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]