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In this article, I take the framework of neuroliberalism as an analytical lens to explore the functioning and implementation of a social impact bond-funded welfare service for young homeless people in the UK. After reflecting on the lines of connections and divergences between social impact bonds and neuroliberal logics, I draw attention to the limitations that exist in welfare interventions inspired by neuroliberal thought. On the one hand, the studied intervention functioned mainly through designing trustful, ideal-type relationships as a means to ‘fix’ people, thereby focusing on behavioural and biographical deficiencies and spreading good life ideals of a marketized world. On the other hand, I demonstrate how this focus on adjusting micro-contexts and tinkering with the affective, relational infrastructure fails to understand systemic constraints. Those were particularly evident with regard to the precarious labour market environment and colliding welfare agendas individuals were confronted with.

This article explores the reasons for the local rejection of a proposed national park in Switzerland. Using a mixed-methods approach and resorting to qualitative and quantitative data, we follow the thread of trust issues in the participatory planning process of a protected area. Different rationales and discourses, both project-specific but also more general, influenced the opinions of local stakeholders. Connecting these different opinions was the issue of (dis)trust, which weaves in and out of prominent lines of argumentation and informs individual sentiments. The application of a multidimensional trust framework helps to understand the influence of different types of trust on protected area negotiations. We discuss how a focus on rational trust building can help to sharpen the diverse goals of contemporary protected areas with integrated conservation and economic development schemes, as well as enable the emergence of other types of trust to facilitate conservation debates.

Pastoralists in Western Mongolia face a range of challenges during their annual grazing cycle due to the simultaneous but conflicting needs for secure allocation rules and a high degree of flexibility. In this paper, I analyze the seasonal arrangements and corresponding strategies that households adopt to deal with unpredictable environmental conditions and the demands of supplying livestock with sufficient forage throughout the year. In contrast to game theory simulations, I argue that dilemmas are: a) often not a question of cooperating or not, but form continua of more or less; and b) socially embedded as people operate in a multitude of relationships that influence their decision-making. Therefore, sharing information in a manner that prioritizes the requirements of individual households while not jeopardizing social reputation is crucially important. Rhetorical skills play an important role in this regard, but there are also situations when herders blatantly ignore state law or local institutional arrangements and risk confrontation to ensure the survival of livestock leading to a situation where free-riding may at times become the dominant strategy.

Background: The environment can play a relevant role in performance in runners. This study aimed to verify the distribution of the best European road runners across the continent, and to investigate variables related to country representatives in the European Senior outdoor top list 2019. Methods: The sample comprised 563 European runners, aged 18–48 years, ranked in the European Senior outdoor top list 2019 for distances of 10–42 km. Country-related variables were gross domestic product (GDP), competition place, population size, and sports investment. The countries were categorized as “top ten countries” or “other countries”. Binary logistic regression was used for analysis. Results: The United Kingdom showed the highest prevalence of runners in the ranking (men—17.6%, women—23.0%), followed by Spain (male ranking—12.1%) and Germany (female ranking—8.6%). For men, sports investment (OR = 1.13, CI95% = 1.03–1.28) and country GDP (OR = 0.96, CI95% = 0.93–0.98) showed an association with the chances of the athlete to reach the Top 10 ranking, while among women, the only variable significantly related was the competition venue (OR = 3.97, CI95% = 1.40–11.23). Conclusion: As in other sports considered “non-expensive”, the economic and demographic characteristics of the place where athletes train can provide advantages in performance.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at harnessing economic complexity for sustainable and inclusive economic growth by calling for a decade of joint action. In this paper, we show how the action-oriented collaborative culture of complex and competitive economic ecosystems in places outside the major population centers may generate significant positive external effects for society and the environment at large. We illustrate this by means of two small case studies in Switzerland, a country with a federal system that enables decentralized economic development. The first case study investigates the economic ecosystem of the small town Monthey to show how productive migrants and embedded multinational companies increase the knowledge and know-how of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The successful collaboration of insiders and outsiders accounts for the internal economic complexity that makes the region innovative and competitive. The second case study highlights the importance of the federalist system by showing how the canton of Solothurn succeeded in nurturing globally competitive export-oriented SMEs. We conclude that the success of these inclusive economic ecosystems in unexpected places may only be understood in the specific geographical, historical and political context, as well as the general openness of these regions toward entrepreneurial migrants and global business. The importance of local social capital makes it hard to replicate such success stories. Nevertheless, they indicate that the global knowledge economy may not just pose a threat, but also offer great opportunities for productive regions beyond the major global high-tech clusters of economic complexity.

Although sustainable responsible investing (SRI) has increasingly become popular on the financial markets, the potential of raising capital from private investors for sustainable development has not been efficiently seized thus far. The lack of knowledge and training about SRI by financial advisors has often been identified as one of the main reasons for this investment gap. In order to accelerate the role of financial advisors as change agents for SRI, this study proposes several strategic communication interventions that advisors could employ in their advisory talks to raise more attention and engagement among private investors for SRI. The interventions proposed are oriented on the 5A model of SRI decision making by Herwig Pilaj and drawn from an interdisciplinary literature review on sustainability, communication, and attitudinal and behavioral change. The results provide a perspective and practical guide for financial advisors on how to effectively communicate SRI to private investors. Limitations and areas future research are discussed.

With the diffusion of digital technologies, new forms of sharing have emerged called ‘the sharing economy’. Digitalization has been the enabler for covering a broad range of sharable resources (technical aspect of sharing) and for operating beyond the limits of small groups and personal relationships (social aspect of sharing). This two-fold digital transition of sharing has enabled unprecedented efficiency in coordinating access to resources. It has created new patterns and practices of sharing in the space between traditional sharing on the one hand and the formal market economy on the other; leading to the emergence of a new class of resource allocation systems which we call ‘the digital sharing economy’ (DSE). We analyse the DSE as a socio-economic phenomenon without referring to normative presuppositions, such as the presence of pro-social motivations for sharing. Building on a comprehensive definition of the DSE, we propose a theoretical framework for it that embraces and structures the broad variety of sharing platforms and the practices promoted by them. By separating our analysis from normative premises about sharing, we hope to contribute to an unbiased discussion of the sharing economy phenomenon and to lay the ground for differentiated assessments which refer to explicit normative frameworks such as sustainable development.

Issues continuously compete for attention in the news media and on social media. Climate change is one of the most urgent problems for society and (re)gained wide public attention in 2019 through the global climate strike protest movement. However, we hypothesize that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 challenged the role of climate change as a routine issue. We use extensive news media and Twitter data to explore if and how the pandemic as a so-called killer issue has shifted public attention away from the issue of climate change in Switzerland. Results show that the climate debate fell victim to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the news media and the Twitter-sphere. Given the vast dominance of the pandemic, there is a strong indication this finding applies similarly to various other issues. Additional hashtag co-occurrence analysis shows that some climate activists react to this development and try to connect the issue of climate change to the pandemic. We argue that suppression of climate change by the pandemic is a problem for its long-term resolution, as it seems to have turned climate change back into a struggling issue.

As the international community’s best expression of a collective vision of a desirable future, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a framework against which to assess the broader impact of emerging technologies. Implications of technologies and practices for removing CO2 from the atmosphere (CDR) are not fully understood and have not yet been mapped against the full range of SDGs. CDR is widely seen as necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement’s global goal of limiting warming to 1.5-2°C, yet local geographical, socio-economic, and political interdependencies are often overlooked. This review synthesizes the best available understandings of potential implications of CDR options aiming to complement emissions reductions. It seeks to identify effects on and interactions between specific social, environmental, and policy environments, in which various CDR options could be pursued. Climate change mitigation and co-benefits from CDR could significantly benefit SDGs, yet poorly designed CDR policies could also challenge SDGs. Specific CDR options could generate conflicts over land, water, biomass, or electric power resources, and exclude communities from policy benefits with negative cascading effects for a range of SDGs. In the literature, implications of CDR activities on sustainable development are derived from current pilot activities, inferred from similar practices already operational or model outputs regarding land, energy, or material requirements. Important gaps remain. We identify questions for further disciplinary and inter- or transdisciplinary work strengthening understanding of how CDR could either support or threaten the achievement of the SDGs. Key policy insights CO2 removal (CDR) appears essential for limiting warming to well below 2°C; such stabilization of global climate is a precondition for at least partially achieving the SDGs. CDR options can generate positive and negative local/regional impacts on various SDGs via physical, social, economic, and political channels. None of these options are universally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The scale of implementation of CDR and related impacts are highly dependent on policy design and national planning processes. More research is needed to clarify how policy design can allow CDR options to generate synergies between, and prevent harm across, multiple SDGs.

Different water related risks such as lake outburst floods and water scarcity are typically assessed by separate methods and often by separate research communities. However, in a local context such as in mountain regions of the developing world different water risks are intertwined and shaped by multi-dimensional natural and socio-economic drivers. Progressing glacier melt and the associated growing number of lakes rises the threat of glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs); at the same time declining melt water supply changes the hydrological regime, resulting in changing water availability, especially during dry seasons. Here, we address this challenge by integratively assessing water scarcity and GLOF risks and their interactions for two study sites in glacierized catchments in the Cordillera Blanca and Urubamba in the Peruvian Andes. We used hydrological modelling, GLOF flow path modelling, and interviews with local people and technical experts to assess the hazard and risks of water scarcity and GLOFs. We incorporate perspectives of people living in those areas in order to gain a more comprehensive view on risks. While metrics of flood and water scarcity hazards are difficult to compare, we found insightful results using a comparative analysis of elements at risk from different water related hazards with different probabilities of occurrence. Furthermore, our study shows that considering the diverse local perspectives on risks as well as the social, cultural, economic and political context is essential to more successful and sustainable disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and integrated water management.

The Paris Agreement requires mitigation contributions from all Parties. Therefore, the determination of additionality of activities under the market mechanisms of its Article 6 will need to be revisited. This paper provides recommendations on how to operationalize additionality under Article 6. We first review generic definitions of additionality and current approaches for testing of additionality before discussing under which conditions additionality testing of specific activities or policies is still necessary under the new context of the Paris Agreement, that is, in order to prevent increases of global emissions. We argue that the possibility of ‘hot air’ generation under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) requires an independent check of the NDC’s ambition. If the NDC of the transferring country does contain ‘hot air’, or if the transferred emission reductions are not covered by the NDC, a dedicated additionality test should be required. While additionality tests of projects and programmes could continue to be done through investment analysis, for policy instruments new approaches are required. They should be differentiated according to type of policy instrument. For regulation, we suggest calculating the resulting pay-back period for technology users. If the regulation generates investments exceeding a payback period threshold, it could be deemed additional. Similarly, carbon pricing policies that generate a carbon price exceeding a threshold could qualify; for trading schemes an absence of over-allocation needs to be shown. The threshold should be differentiated according to country categories and rise over time. Key policy insights Without additionality testing, market mechanisms under the Paris Agreements might lead to an international diffusion of ‘hot air’. To avoid this, an independent assessment of NDC ambition is in order. Otherwise, activities under the mechanisms need to undergo specific additionality tests. Additionality testing of projects and programmes should build on the experience developed under the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. Bold approaches are needed for assessing additionality of policies. To avoid cumbersome assessment of all activities triggered by such policies, highly aggregated approaches are suggested, ranging from payback period thresholds for technologies mandated by regulation to minimum price levels triggered by carbon pricing policies. Over time, the stringency of threshold values should increase.

The role of market mechanisms was far from certain in the lead up to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The use of ‘constructive ambiguity’ led to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with Article 6.2 specifying a mechanism with limited international oversight, and Article 6.4 establishing a ‘Sustainable Development Mechanism’ (SDM) subject to detailed rules. Clear operationalization of these mechanisms remains a challenge, especially regarding the critical accounting issue that could not be resolved at the 2018 Katowice Climate Conference (COP24) – how to apply corresponding adjustments, especially regarding sectors not covered by targets under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs). By using fictitious examples, we explain two possible approaches to using Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) under Article 6.2 for achieving NDCs: a ‘target-based’ one where the acquiring Party adds the ITMO amount to the target level of its NDC; and a ‘tally-based’ one where the acquiring Party removes the ITMO amount from the final tally of its NDC. We discuss how these approaches influence the way to make corresponding adjustments and to avoid ‘double counting’. The first one leads to ‘target/budget-based accounting’, the second one to ‘emission-based accounting’. For mitigation outside the scope of the host Party's NDC, we propose using a tally-based interpretation of ITMO use, as opposed to the target-based variety used in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and stress the need for additionality testing. This interpretation allows for mandatory corresponding adjustments for all ITMO usage, while the host Party NDC level remains unchanged. A buffer registry is created for corresponding non-NDC adjustments of the selling party. Key policy insights Under the Paris Agreement, transfers of emissions units between two countries through the Article 6 mechanisms need a corresponding adjustment on both sides to prevent double counting. Corresponding adjustments can be applied either to emissions targets under NDCs or measured emissions levels. The transfer of emissions reduction credits generated outside an NDC should lead to a corresponding adjustment of a buffer registry of the selling country, but not its emissions level/NDC target. Such credits should only be generated if additionality of the reductions is shown.

News media play an important role for public awareness and perception of climate change – and thus citizens’ behavior. Few studies focus on media coverage in poor and developing countries such as India – the third-largest polluter and an important player in global climate change policies. Further, even these few studies on Indian media coverage span short time periods, focus on specific events, and evaluate pre-defined themes. Applying LDA topic modeling on 18,224 climate change articles published between 1997 and 2016 in two Indian newspapers, we find that climate change coverage in India has increased substantially in the last 20 years. We categorized the coverage into 28 different topics related to four overarching themes: “Climate Change Impacts”, “Climate Science”, “Climate Politics”, and “Climate Change and Society”. Climate change has gained more media attention since 2007 in general with a particular increase in focus on the theme “Climate Change Impacts”. Implications about shifting media discourses and its potential to educate people and change policies are discussed.

This study focuses on individuals’ subjective reasons for complying with rules for common pool resource management. We examine the topic of individual rule compliance, which the commons literature has addressed only marginally, and outline recent empirical findings. Hypotheses are derived based on rule compliance theory and explored using data gathered in a Cuban community sharing a solar energy system. The statistical analyses reveal that compliance with rules for energy management is influenced by various factors. Depending on the particular rule, factors such as sanctioning, legitimacy, and compatibility, among others, influence the frequency of individual rule compliant behavior to differing extents.

Along with the large middle-income countries Brazil, China, and South Africa, India has been put under increasing pressure to shoulder parts of the mitigation burden and commit to national emission reduction targets. India, however, refers to its limited capacity and widespread poverty. Is India hiding behind its poor? While others examine the distribution of emissions within the country to answer this question, we study domestic policy making for energy subsidies and access to clean energy. Empirical evidence suggests that domestic policy making is at least partially consistent with the pro-poor arguments advanced at the international level. Given their large number and the country's democratic system, the poor do have some weight in Indian politics. However, pro-poor policies end where they do not translate into greater vote shares. Moreover, India's international position ignores the existing complementarities between climate-friendly and pro-poor activities.

Is higher education capable of promoting learning for change? Can transformative learning nurture spaces for innovation in education for sustainable development? A call to action from saguf.

By increasing the popularity of smart phones equipped with GPS sensors, more volunteers are expected to join VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) activities and therefore more positional data will be collected in shorter time. Current statistics from open databases such OpenStreetMap reveals that although there have been exponential growth in the number of contributed POIs (Points of Interest), the lack of detailed attribute information is immediately visible. The process of adding attribute information to VGI databases is usually considered as a boring task and it is believed that contributors do not experience a similar level of satisfaction when they add such detailed information compared to tasks like adding new roads or copying building boundaries from satellite imageries. In other crowdsourcing projects, different approaches are taken for engaging contributors in problem solving by embedding the tasks inside a game. In the literature, this concept is known as "gamification" or "games with purpose" which encapsulate the idea of entertaining contributors while they are completing a particular defined task. Same concept is used to design a mobile application called “RoadPlex” which aims to collect general or specific attribute information for POIs The increased number of contributions in the past few months confirms that the design characteristics and the methodology of the game are appealing to players. Such growth enables us to evaluate the quality of the generated data through mining the database of answered questions. This paper reflects the some contribution results and emphasises the importance of using gamification concept in the domain of VGI.

Citizens’ attitudes toward science are related to their use of science-related information from various sources. Evidence is scarce regarding citizens’ individual media repertoires for staying informed about science as segmentation studies so far have primarily focused on scientific attitudes. In this paper, we explore audience segments regarding their science-related information behavior and whether such segments are comparable or vary between two countries with similar information environments. Based on two surveys in Switzerland and Germany, we identify national audience segments that differ in their science-related information repertoires, and analyze their sociodemographic characteristics and science-related attitudes. In both countries, we find very comparable information user segments ranging from those who inform themselves frequently about science (“Active Seekers”/“Science Consumers”) to those who hardly get in contact with any information about science and research (“Non-Users”). Those segments which get in contact with information about science frequently show generally more positive attitudes.

People differ. Not only do they vote for different parties, buy different products, have different hobbies and use different media. They also differ in their interest in, attitudes on, and behavior...

There is increasing recognition in academic circles of the importance of adaptive governance for the sustainability of social-ecological systems, but little examination of specific implications for the 34% of land-use where human activities are pervasive but potentially commensurate with functioning ecosystems: agricultural production systems. In this paper, we argue for the need to view food systems and agro-ecosystems as multi-scalar complex adaptive systems and identify five key challenging characteristics of such systems: multi-causality; cumulative impacts; regime shifts; teleconnections and mismatch of scales. These characteristics are necessary features of multi-scalar adaptive systems, and apply equally to social and natural subsystems. We discuss the implications of these characteristics for agricultural production systems and consider how governance can rise to these challenges. We present five case studies that highlight these issues: pollinator declines; payments for ecosystem services; pest control and pesticide resistance; downstream aquatic systems in Tasman Bay, New Zealand; and riparian buffers in Puget Sound, USA. From these case studies we derive recommendations for managing agricultural systems, both specific and general. Ultimately, adaptive governance of agro-ecosystems will likely hinge upon three paradigm shifts: viewing farmers and ranchers not only as food producers but also as land and water managers; seeking not yield maximization but rather resilient management of food ecosystems; and critically, as it transcends the production-system literature, engaging broad audiences not only as consumers but also citizens.

The authors would like to thank J. E. Stiglitz and A. C. Janetos for fruitful comments on an early version of the paper, M. D’Errico for precious suggestions on macro-network data from the ECB Data Warehouse, and J. Glattfelder for help on equity holdings data extraction from Orbis. We also would like to thank A. Barkawi, P. Monnin and M. Tanaka for their comments during the Bank of England conference on Climate Change and Central Banking. S.B. acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Fund Professorship grant no. PP00P1-144689. All the authors acknowledge the support of the European Projects Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) SIMPOL (grant no. 610704) and DOLFINS (grant no. 640772), and the European Project SEI Metrics (grant no. 649982). International audience The urgency of estimating the impact of climate risks on the financial system is increasingly recognized among scholars and practitioners. By adopting a network approach to financial dependencies, we look at how climate policy risk might propagate through the financial system. We develop a network-based climate stress-test methodology and apply it to large Euro Area banks in a ‘green’ and a ‘brown’ scenario. We find that direct and indirect exposures to climate-policy-relevant sectors represent a large portion of investors’ equity portfolios, especially for investment and pension funds. Additionally, the portion of banks’ loan portfolios exposed to these sectors is comparable to banks’ capital. Our results suggest that climate policy timing matters. An early and stable policy framework would allow for smooth asset value adjustments and lead to potential net winners and losers. In contrast, a late and abrupt policy framework could have adverse systemic consequences.

© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. The Paris Climate Agreement is an important step for international climate policy, but the compensation for negative effects of climate change based on clear assignment of responsibilities remains highly debated. From both a policy and a science perspective, it is unclear how responsibilities should be defined and on what evidence base. We explore different normative principles of justice relevant to climate change impacts, and ask how different forms of causal evidence of impacts drawn from detection and attribution research could inform policy approaches in accordance with justice considerations. We reveal a procedural injustice based on the imbalance of observations and knowledge of impacts between developed and developing countries. This type of injustice needs to be considered in policy negotiations and decisions, and efforts strengthened to reduce it.

In environmental change studies, often multiple variables are measured or modelled, and temporal information is essential for the task. These multivariate geographic time-series datasets are often big and difficult to analyse. While many established methods such as PCP (parallel coordinate plots), STC (space-time cubes), scatter-plots and multiple (linked) visualisations help provide more information, we observe that most of the common geovisual analytics suits do not include three-dimensional (3D) visualisations. However, in many environmental studies, we hypothesize that the addition of 3D terrain visualisations along with appropriate data plots and two-dimensional views can help improve the analysts’ ability to interpret the spatial relevance better. To test our ideas, we conceptualize, develop, implement and evaluate a geovisual analytics toolbox in a user-centred manner. The conceptualization of the tool is based on concrete user needs that have been identified and collected during informal brainstorming sessions and in a structured focus group session prior to the development. The design process, therefore, is based on a combination of user-centred design with a requirement analysis and agile development. Based on the findings from this phase, the toolbox was designed to have a modular structure and was built on open source geographic information systems (GIS) program Quantum GIS (QGIS), thus benefiting from existing GIS functionality. The modules include a globe view for 3D terrain visualisation (OSGEarth), a scattergram, a time vs. value plot, and a 3D helix visualisation as well as the possibility to view the raw data. The visualisation frame allows real-time linking of these representations. After the design and development stage, a case study was created featuring data from Zermatt valley and the toolbox was evaluated based on expert interviews. Analysts performed multiple spatial and temporal tasks with the case study using the toolbox. The expert interviews were helpful to gain initial insight into the usability of the tools and to highlight further improvements and challenges; revealing certain usability issues and indicating that analysts consider the linked views to be potentially very beneficial and they appreciate seeing the data in its spatial context.

With the increasing number and impact of events hosted by cities, understanding the nature of popular support for them and the resulting urban transformations is a crucial task. I examine residents’ perceptions of the preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, asking how support differs across social groups and what factors predict support. I find that negative impacts from preparations dominate public opinion, but that there is nevertheless a solid support base for the event. Support tends to be strongest among non-Russians, the younger generation, and residents who have good knowledge of the preparations. Perception of positive impacts—in particular, expected image improvement—is the strongest predictor of support, while perception of negative impacts shows a much weaker association with support. I conclude that delivering on the positive aspects of events might be more important for administrations than minimizing the negative side effects. Keywords: megaevents, Olympic Games, impacts, attitudes, perception, support, Russia

In the run-up to the Copenhagen negotiations, commentators, politicians and the public had great expectations of some state taking the lead towards a new global climate deal. Is there something in such a call for leadership? In two steps, this article provides an empirically informed answer to that question. The first part develops a theoretical account of the relation between leadership and cooperation in international climate change mitigation policy (ICCMP). Starting from a five-dimensional leadership account and a simple game-theoretical analysis of the impediments to cooperation, it is predicted that (1) increased leadership facilitates cooperation in ICCMP and (2) different leadership modes contribute to cooperation in varying degrees. The second part tests these hypotheses: a new leadership index measures the extent to which the EU exhibited leadership at the negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) between 1995 and 2008. This positively correlates with the level of cooperation arrived a...

Unlike in other disciplines, research output in economics is commonly measured based on the disciplinary reputation of the journals in which an author has published. Here, I examine how much output measures based on journal reputation tell us about the academic interest and relevance of economic papers as measured by frequency of citation. Using data from the 2008 Handelsblatt ranking of economists in German speaking countries and interdisciplinary citation data from the Web of Science, I find that researcher scores based on journal reputation explain only about 30 percent of the variation (variance) in article citations. When the top 10 (20) percent of the researchers according to journal reputation scores are excluded, the percentage of explained variation in citation frequency drops to 8 (3) percent. Furthermore, using environmental economics journals as an example, I show that the traditional output measures strongly discourage applied and interdisciplinary economic research. The findings confirm that the traditional output measures provide incentives for narrow economic work even if that work is of interest to only few other researchers. Responsible hiring committees and funding institutions should take these problems seriously and re-consider existing standards in the evaluation of economic research.

In this paper we report results from a qualitative user experiment (n=107) designed to contribute to understanding the impact of various levels of complexity (mainly based on levels of detail, i.e., LoD) in 3D city models, specifically on the participants’ orientation and cognitive (mental) maps. The experiment consisted of a number of tasks motivated by spatial cognition theory where participants (among other things) were given orientation tasks, and in one case also produced sketches of a path they ‘travelled’ in a virtual environment. The experiments were conducted in groups, where individuals provided responses on an answer sheet. The preliminary results based on descriptive statistics and qualitative sketch analyses suggest that very little information (i.e., a low LoD model of a smaller area) might have a negative impact on the accuracy of cognitive maps constructed based on a virtual experience. Building an accurate cognitive map is an inherently desired effect of the visualizations in planning tasks, thus the findings are important for understanding how to develop better-suited 3D visualizations such as 3D city models. In this study, we specifically discuss the suitability of different levels of visual complexity for development planning (urban planning), one of the domains where 3D city models are most relevant.

Certified emission reductions (CERs) from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects have traditionally served as an indirect link between cap and trade systems around the world. However, since 2010, import restrictions have increased. Reasons for import limitations include the supplementarity principle, genuine concerns about the environmental integrity of CERs and social benefits of CDM projects, pressure from domestic emissions mitigation industries, concerns about competition in the industries in which reductions take place, as well as the attempt to pressure advanced developing countries to accept national emissions commitments under a future international climate policy regime. It is shown that import limitations lead to a decrease in CER prices and a race to generate CERs as quickly as possible. Such effects are visible in the CDM market after the EU announced its import limitations. The exclusion of CERs from specific project types will distort the CDM supply curve and increase the CER price unless the marginal abatement costs of the excluded project type are above the CER world market price. Similarly, exclusion of CERs from specific host countries will increase the price. Substantial differences are found in CER access to national carbon markets around the world.Policy relevanceCDM regulators could try to improve access of CERs to cap and trade schemes through improvements to additionality testing, standardizing baseline and monitoring methodologies and stakeholder consultation. However, regulators should be aware that standardization is no panacea, and controversies may resurface if standardized additionality determination (e.g. through benchmarks or positive lists) are applied for a certain period and found to be problematic. However, domestic policy concerns such as an unwillingness to send money abroad to buy credits, an inability to control market prices, and competitiveness impacts cannot be resolved by CDM reforms. If, despite such reforms of the CDM, blatant protectionism continues, a challenge before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) could be launched to stop discrimination of service exports from specific countries.

In recent years, large development and market integration programs have altered the socioeconomic structures and cultural identity of rural communities and ethnic minorities in Southwest China and influenced the management of natural resources. This article analyzes livelihood strategies in the Shuiluo Valley, a remote area of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Agricultural activities and the management of natural resources were studied in five villages of Muli Tibetan Autonomous County, Sichuan Province. Characteristic for rural societies in transition, livelihoods were found to be flexible, combining subsistence agriculture, off-farm employment, and the exploitation of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. Accessibility of villages did not influence household income and livelihood activities, and poorer households were not found to depend more on natural resources or on income from agriculture than wealthier households. The option of gold prospecting constitutes a major difference compared to more nontimber forest product-based livelihoods in adjacent areas of Southwest China.

A flurry of studies in recent years has analyzed the role of media in climate change communication. This article provides a systematic, large-scale, and up-to-date overview of the objects and characteristics of this research field through a meta-analysis. It identifies 133 relevant studies and analyzes them empirically. The results show that research activity has risen strongly over time, and that the analytical spectrum has expanded to include an increasing number of countries, more types of media including online and social media, and different methodological approaches. The analysis also demonstrates, however, that scholarship in the field still concentrates strongly on Western countries and print media.

Much public participation research is built on the assumption that participatory arrangements empower citizens and disrupt existing power structures. This article challenges that claim. Drawing on one participatory venue considered most likely to empower citizens in Basel, Switzerland, the study shows that meaningful collective power has been conferred to citizens. However, resourceful and organisationally privileged actors have influenced the impact of citizen’s demands on public decision-making in significant ways. The study concludes that the production and implementation of collective power deriving from citizens depends on distributive power sources residing in governments and bureaucracies. As a result, participatory arrangements that aim to direct state action have to conform to some extent to the rules and structures underlying ordinary policy-making. The case study highlights the intertwined relationship of the ‘power to’ and the ‘power over’ and shows how the interplay between these two forms of power places conditions on the empowering potential of participatory arrangements.

It is widely acknowledged that private finance has a key role to play in achieving low-carbon development and resilience to climate change. However, while there have been several studies that have closely examined the data on public climate finance, there have been few such studies of the private climate-related finance data. There is a political dimension to accounting for ‘private finance’ given the commitment of industrialized countries – enshrined in the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements – to mobilize US$100 billion of public and private finance for developing countries by 2020, on an annual basis. The availability and quality of data for different types of private climate finance flows with climate benefits (investments, carbon market payments, and voluntary funding) are analysed, and these flows are assessed according to various criteria for inclusion in the $100 billion figure. While existing data suggest that private climate finance invested in developing countries and mobilized by indus...

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project developers have long complained about the complexities of project-specific baseline setting and the vagaries of additionality determination. In response to this, the CDM Executive Board took bold steps towards the standardization of CDM methodologies, culminating in the approval of guidelines for the establishment of performance standards in November 2011. The guidelines specify a performance standard stringency level for both baseline and additionality of 80% for several priority sectors and 90% for all other sectors. However, an analysis of 14 large-scale CDM methodologies that use performance standard approaches challenges this top-down approach to the performance standard design. An appropriate performance standard stringency level strongly depends on sector and technology characteristics. A single stringency level for baseline and additionality determination is appropriate only for greenfield projects, but not for retrofit ones. Overly simple, highly aggregat...

Amphibians are a suitable indicator group for monitoring possible negative direct or indirect effects of GMO cultivation at the individual and population level. Direct effects could occur in aquatic ecosystems via uptake of GM pollen or GM detritus by anuran larvae. However, indirect negative effects caused by changes in cultivation practices (changes in pesticide use, for instance) are more likely. The VDI Guideline 4333 aims to ensure comprehensive monitoring of the different life-stages of anuran species that are common in agricultural landscapes of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The guideline includes a novel approach to tadpole monitoring. To assess immediate effects, tadpole, metamorph and adult deformation rates are compared with naturally occurring deformation rates. Adult population size, adult body condition and juvenile emergence are monitored over multiple years to assess long-term effects of GM crop cultivation on population viability. At each study site, monitoring has to be carried out at multiple amphibian breeding sites which differ in their exposure to GM crop cultivation. All monitoring data have to be stored in a central database for future meta-analyses. This will ultimately allow for generalized statements about the impact of GM crop cultivation on amphibians. Although specifically designed for GM crops, VDI Guideline 4333 may also serve as a model for studying the effects of a wider range of stressors on amphibian populations in agriculture and forestry.

Small island states were able to obtain some remarkable achievements in the climate change negotiations by building a cohesive coalition, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The cohesion of the Alliance, however, has been affected by changes in the UNFCCC process. The multiplication of issues on the climate agenda and the increasing number of negotiation groups may help or hinder compromise and finding common ground. To track how AOSIS has fared in the climate change regime, this paper compares the activities and positions of AOSIS as a group, and of individual AOSIS members over three distinct periods in the climate change regime: its early phase from 1995 to 2000; an implementation phase from 2001 to 2005; and the more recent period from 2006 to 2011. Over time, group activity has declined in relative terms, with some issues such as forestry receiving particular attention from individual AOSIS members. Despite controversies in some areas, AOSIS has remained a tighly coordinated and cohesive alliance that continues to be a key player in global climate policy.

With continuing loss of open space around growing urban centers, measures to maintain periurban landscape quality are gaining importance on political agendas. Understanding the demand for alternative approaches to landscape management is crucial for designing efficient policies and acceptable financing arrangements. Here, we analyze voter support for a proposition to create landscape reserves in the densely populated canton of Zurich, Switzerland. We then contrast the pattern of voter support for this “regulation” measure with the support among the same population for a “financing” measure that proposed to maintain landscape quality through increased public spending for the management of landscape amenities and historical heritage. The demand for both landscape regulation and financing increased with decreasing local open space. The role of income differed between the two propositions and between more urban and more rural populations. Our descriptive results should contribute to the design of widely accep...

Literature on the mobility of pastoralists and resource access is widely available, but conceptualization and understanding of the socioeconomic processes expected to affect the outcome are inconsistent. In this article, drawing on research conducted in the Yerer and Daketa Valleys, eastern Ethiopia, we use the notion of entitlements to examine how, under increasing pressure for resource access, various agro-pastoral households manage conflicting interests in common grazing resources. We observed that in times of drought and resource scarcity incumbent agro-pastoralists find peaceful sharing arrangements with intruding pastoralists. Asset-poor agro-pastoralists enter into mutually beneficial arrangements with pastoralists, trading their resource endowments to grazing land for other assets from the pastoralists, whereas wealthier households prefer a reciprocal risk-management strategy. These multiple arrangements have distributional effects because asset-poor agro-pastoralist households can stabilize or enhance their household assets and their capabilities in times of drought, and thus benefit from assisting pastoralist migrants to the common grazing land.

This paper presents the results of interviews and a questionnaire study on public knowledge of the concept of biodiversity and of plant species richness in Switzerland. Despite its extensive use in science and policy making, the concept of biodiversity is not widely recognized or known to people in Switzerland. Overall, 60% of all study participants (161 grammar school pupils, 110 non-graduates, and 96 graduates in the Canton of Zurich) had never heard the term biodiversity, while the others had come across it primarily in the media. Few study participants considered their school education a relevant source of information about biodiversity. Study participants most frequently referred to the diversity of plants and animals when defining biodiversity, but also quite often believed that biodiversity had something to do with ecological concepts such as the equilibrium between all components of nature. Both young people and adults held widely inaccurate ideas of the plant species richness of communities. Particularly for Switzerland, plant species richness was strongly overestimated.