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Climate change is a constant threat to global food security. In Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA), extended dry spells, heavy rainfall, flooding, and tropical storms have driven a large percentage of the population to a severe food crisis. Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) is a potential comprehensive solution whose adoption can mitigate climate change and its ramifications on the state of food security in the region. CSA combines innovation, the use of technology, extensive research, stakeholder involvement, and data to increase food production, optimize resource allocation and utilization, and enhance the region's ability to feed its population. The adoption of CSA has succeeded in increasing agricultural productivity in several parts of SSA and will help towards the building of resilience food systems across the region amid constant and unpredictable climate change and its far‐reaching impacts in the region. For the sustained and universal adoption of CSA within the region, there is a need for more stakeholder involvement in its development and adaptation to the needs of specific communities. Furthermore, it is necessary to leverage the positive impact of the approach by expanding its scope beyond climate change mitigation to prevention and control, and ultimately help in achieving the United Nations SDG 2 and 13. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep eutectic solvents show great potential as CO2 absorbents, which is highly desirable for the sustainable development of CO2 reduction and prevention of global climate changes. Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations in the isothermal–isobaric ensemble at pressures of 1 MPa and 5 MPa and at the corresponding experimental density are carried out to investigate the CO2 absorption in choline chloride: ethylene glycol deep eutectic solvent. Based on the structural analysis, there is a strong anion and hydrogen bond donor effect and a minor cation effect on CO2 solvation in the solvent. Instead of cooperation, a competition between the anion and the hydrogen bond donor (ethylene glycol) for the interaction with CO2 is indicated. While at a lower pressure, the ethylene glycol–CO2 interaction dominates, at a higher pressure, it is the chloride–CO2 interaction. Thus, it is possible to use the same advantages within the deep eutectic solvent as the CO2 absorbent as in ionic liquids, but in the hydrogen bond, a donor can be exploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanity is facing multiple possible apocalypses, with narratives that often miss an important point: The apocalypse probably won't be quick or final. It will be an environment, not an event or an end point for humanity. The apocalypse is more likely to bring misery than catharsis or salvation. Although worst-case scenarios theoretically make it easier to prevent dire outcomes, in the case of slow-moving apocalypses such as climate change, it's difficult for humans to envision the scale of the problem and to imagine how we will actually experience it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mount Everest (Qomolangma), the highest mountain on Earth, is an unrivaled natural research platform for understanding multispheric interactions over heterogeneous landscapes. The land--atmosphere interactions in this iconic mountain region have paramount importance for weather and climate predictions at both regional and global scales; however, observing and modeling these interactions is inherently challenging due to the extreme environment. The scarcity of multiscale observations hinders progress in this field. Thus, establishing a comprehensive network to systematically observe the land--atmosphere interactions across multiscales in this unrivaled region, is the basis for gaining a better understanding of weather, climate, and climate change. As one of the 69 national observation and research stations in China, the Qomolangma Special Atmospheric Processes and Environmental Changes (QOMS) observation network of land--atmosphere interactions has been established over the northern slope of Mount Everest since 2005. This network consists of six sites with different underlying surfaces, which significantly improves the observational capabilities for the climate system. These observations have promoted the understanding of land--atmosphere interactions and their impacts on multiscale weather patterns, atmospheric circulations, and climate and have provided data support for informing and guiding model development and remote sensing monitoring. Facing an unprecedented opportunity with enormous development possibilities, we emphasize the considerable potential of these observations for understanding and predicting weather and climate in the Himalayas and beyond. Additionally, we expect to extend the future focus to model--data fusion and to societally relevant applications, such as natural disaster prevention and climate change mitigation and adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the critical role of safety professionals in organizations. Topics include making organizations carbon-neutral by adopting approach with hierarchy of controls; adopting a safety and health framework to communicate climate change and mitigation; and leading their organizations towards sustainability and carbon neutrality.

Policy work in both the United States and the European Union ("EU") is underway on how best to structure border carbon adjustment ("BCA") mechanisms to protect the competitiveness of domestic industries while these enterprises make investments in reducing their greenhouse gas ("GHG") emissions. Often, these investments are costly for domestic industries, and may therefore result in lost sales in a global marketplace where companies in other jurisdictions face no parallel obligation to address climate change and thus can bring products to the market at lower cost. Such shifts in sales and production not only cause economic harm and potential job losses in nations with high levels of commitment to climate change action but also result in carbon leakage--meaning that emissions are not ultimately reduced but rather shifted to nations with more limited GHG emissions control requirements. But while the United States and the EU share an ambition to use BCA mechanisms, they have embraced different approaches to BCA design and implementation. The European Commission has determined that the adjustment methodology should credit only explicit GHG pricing tools, including carbon taxes and GHG emission allowance trading schemes, in determining which exporting countries would escape BCA tariffs. On the other hand, the U.S. government believes that border adjustments should be based on a broader climate change policy calculus, which would consider a wider set of policies that reduce GHG emissions. In this Article, we develop a taxonomy of approaches to comparing policies in importing and exporting countries and identify the two options that are most feasible from a technical and political perspective--we call these two options explicit BCA mechanisms and effective BCA mechanisms. We then further analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches. In particular, we compare explicit versus effective BCA mechanisms on the basis of their environmental effectiveness, administrative efficiency, compatibility with World Trade Organization ("WTO") law, and political viability. We conclude that BCA mechanisms that compare effective GHG prices promise better environmental outcomes and are more likely to be found compatible with WTO law than BCA mechanisms that exclusively compare explicit GHG prices. In addition, we argue that, while implementing BCA mechanisms that compare effective carbon prices creates some additional administrative challenges, many jurisdictions have trade policy pricing experience that could be harnessed to address these potential obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the mediating role of the future time perspective in the relationship between climate change awareness and the hope of preventing the climate emergency. The study group consisted of 398 adults. The data were collected using the awareness scale of university students about global climate change, climate change hope scale, and the Zimbardo time perspective inventory future time perspective subscale. The data were analyzed by SPSS 25.0, LISREL 8.70, and PROCESS v3.4 for SPSS. The results showed that the mediating role of the future time perspective in the relationship between climate change awareness and the hope of preventing climate change was statistically significant. The results also demonstrated that the future time perspective should be taken into account in interventions to increase the awareness and hope of individuals about climate change. This may be particularly important in countries such as Turkey, where action plans to prevent climate change have only recently come into force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impersonal cooperation among strangers enables societies to create valuable public goods, such as infrastructure, public services, and democracy. Several factors have been proposed to explain variation in impersonal cooperation across societies, referring to institutions (e.g., rule of law), religion (e.g., belief in God as a third-party punisher), cultural beliefs (e.g., trust) and values (e.g., collectivism), and ecology (e.g., relational mobility). We tested 17 preregistered hypotheses in a meta-analysis of 1,506 studies of impersonal cooperation in social dilemmas (e.g., the Public Goods Game) conducted across 70 societies (k = 2,271), where people make costly decisions to cooperate among strangers. After controlling for 10 study characteristics that can affect the outcome of studies, we found very little cross-societal variation in impersonal cooperation. Categorizing societies into cultural groups explained no variance in cooperation. Similarly, cultural, ancestral, and linguistic distance between societies explained little variance in cooperation. None of the cross-societal factors hypothesized to relate to impersonal cooperation explained variance in cooperation across societies. We replicated these conclusions when meta-analyzing 514 studies across 41 states and nine regions in the United States (k = 783). Thus, we observed that impersonal cooperation occurred in all societies—and to a similar degree across societies—suggesting that prior research may have overemphasized the magnitude of differences between modern societies in impersonal cooperation. We discuss the discrepancy between theory, past empirical research and the meta-analysis, address a limitation of experimental research on cooperation to study culture, and raise possible directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has led to a multitude of ecological disruptions and downstream reproductive health consequences that impair our reproductive capacity and, in turn, harm the health and survival of future generations. Atmospheric changes, driven by anthropogenic emissions, expose global populations to droughts, heat waves, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events-posing major threats to public health and exacerbating environmental health disparities. Existing evidence demonstrates the potential for climate-driven events to impact reproductive health outcomes, yet very few studies have explored this relationship. Recently, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics released position statements regarding reproductive health and environmental exposures. Unfortunately, such initiatives have yielded little action within the health care system. To address this stagnation, health care workers must meld research findings into actionable preventive medicine strategies and transition to a more action-oriented approach to address the climate crisis. The objective of this article is to elucidate the urgency of the climate crisis in relation to reproductive health and push the health care workers to recognize their intrinsic opportunity as leaders in climate action at local, state, national, and international levels. We call on health care organizations and health care workers to leverage their inherent positions as climate action leaders to increase climate resilience and mitigate climate-related adverse reproductive health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A coincidence in the timing of floods and their drivers can be used as a proxy for the causality of flood generation. Here, we investigate the relationship between the seasonality of floods, maximum annual rainfall, and maximum annual soil moisture data of 886 basins in Brazil for 1980–2015 to shed light on process controls of flood generation. Floods tend to occur at the same time of year as soil moisture peaks and lag behind rainfall peaks by 3 weeks. In Amazonia, central and northern Brazil, flood timing is more correlated with the timing of soil moisture peaks than with that of rainfall peaks, which is interpreted as resulting from high subsurface water storage capacities. In southern and southeastern Brazil, on the other hand, flood timing is highly correlated with both soil moisture and rainfall because of low subsurface water storage capacities. These findings can support flood forecasting and climate impact studies. Plain Language Summary: In warm regions, floods are usually generated by a combination of intense rainfall and wet soils. In this paper, we analyze the average timing within the year of floods, extreme rainfall, and soil moisture to elucidate how floods come about in the main Brazilian rivers. We find that in some regions, such as Amazonia and central Brazil, floods tend to occur when soils are wet. In other regions, such as southern Brazil, floods tend to occur when rainfall is most extreme. We believe that these differences are related to differences in the soil water storage capacity. The understanding of the regional importance of each of these components helps increase the efficiency of flood prevention measures and climate change adaptation. Key Points: Flood peaks tend to occur at the same time of year as annual soil moisture peaks and lag behind annual rainfall peaks by 3 weeksFlood seasonality is linked mainly with soil moisture peaks in Amazonia and central Brazil, where soil storage capacity is highFlood timing is highly correlated with rainfall and soil moisture peaks in the south and southeast, where soil storage capacity is low [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the urgency to tackle climate change, which needs reimagining human relationships with the local and global community, including people and other living beings. Incorporating the voices of youth, indigenous people, and those hit hardest by climate change is imperative to address climate change. It mentions that good science and transformative spirituality are needed to sustain the work and open the hearts and minds to collaborative efforts.

Given the potential power of social presence on individuals' cognitive and affective responses, the current study hypothesizes that individuals' social presence differentiates the level of perceived subjective norms and societal injunctive norms for climate change prevention behaviors. Based on prior literature, users' threat perception is suggested as a moderating variable that can maximize the effects of social presence. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a 2 (social presence: present vs. absent) × 2 (threat: high vs. low) between-subjects factorial online experiment (N = 280). The results confirmed significant, positive effects of social presence on both normative beliefs. The effects of social presence were found to be stronger for participants in high threat conditions. Increased subjective norms led to more positive behavioral intentions toward global warming prevention actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author view on growing global warming in the United States including among Commonwealth countries, that urgent and ambitious action is needed to address climate change in order to, at the very least, achieve the legally binding goal set by the 196 countries that were signatories to the Paris Agreement set at COP21 in Paris in December 2015.

El articulo discute sobre el panel de alto nivel sobre desplazamiento y el impacto de los desastres y los efectos adversos del cambio climático. El articulo también discute sobre la planificación de soluciones en el contexto de los desplazamientos relacionadas con el cambio climático y los desastres las soluciones de las programas de organización de las naciones unidas y la Estrategia Nacional sobre la prevención del cambio climático en Desplazamiento Interno.

Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly threatening interpersonal violence, yet global evidence for related impacts and potential transmission mechanisms remains limited. We examine whether and how climate change, particularly climate extremes, affects interpersonal violence. Using the panel data of 140 countries and regions from 2000 to 2019, we find that hot and wet extremes precipitated increase in homicide rates globally. Economic level, inequality, and resources scarcity were important intermediaries through which climate extremes affected homicide, while the direct effects still dominated the total effects. We then reveal the heterogeneous effects of climate extremes, further suggesting that poor countries and regions with relatively small contributions to climate change were particularly sensitive to climate extremes. These findings elucidate a strong climate-violence link, helping explain implications of facilitating violence prevention and mitigating climate change. • We provide global evidence of how climate change affects interpersonal violence. • We use global high-resolution CEIs data to yield more accurate results. • We provide an in-depth investigation of the impact mechanisms. • We find evidence of significant climate-violence links. • We find heterogeneous effects across different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the crises and gender-specific challenges of climate change and climate action described above, there is an urgent need to promote gender equality and social inclusion in environmental and climate change policies and actions, and to contribute to gender-transformation and social reform. In their review of 185 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in November 2019, Sophia Huyer I et al. i found that only 69 of the 165 NDCs (37 per cent) - in which countries present their climate-related policy intentions and action programmes - make reference to women/gender in diverse ways, and that current NDCs do not address structural causes of gender inequalities; only a few countries have developed a gender and climate change action plan. It is not just a question of mentioning gender equality in Climate Change policy discourses; what finally matters is actual shifts towards gender equality in the context of climate actions on the ground. Even in the most progressive movements, like XR, gender dynamics tend to reflect unequal gender relations, and gender justice is often of low priority. [Extracted from the article]

The judgment in State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation marks one of the first successful challenges to climate change policy based on a human rights treaty. In this case, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the lower court's opinion that the Netherlands has a positive obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to take reasonable and suitable measures for the prevention of climate change. Although the Supreme Court recognized that climate change is a consequence of collective human activities that cannot be solved by one state on its own, it held that the Netherlands is individually responsible for failing to do its part to counter the danger of climate change, which, as the Court affirmed, inhibits enjoyment of ECHR rights. In reaching that conclusion, the Supreme Court determined the exact level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction that the Netherlands is required to meet to comply with its ECHR obligation, specifically, a 25 percent reduction compared to its 1990 level by the end of 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance called willful hermeneutical ignorance, where ignorance is actively maintained by a gap in a person's conceptual resources. This kind of ignorance is active in the sense that it resists correction. For instance, climate science denial may be motivated by ideological reasoning and other biases, it is often not responsive to the introduction of more evidence, and it can be maintained as consequence of conceptual gaps, or hermeneutical lacunas, that make possible a certain degree of blindness to evidence. I then identify three hermeneutical lacunas in the epistemology of science that prevent the uptake of evidence for anthropogenic climate change – one from Lawrence Torcello and two from the work of Dale Jamieson. Finally, while climate science denial's resistance to correction poses significant challenges for effective education about climate science, this framework also suggests a way forward: education that emphasizes building basic concepts required for understanding and interpreting scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends in global, regional and national CO2 emissions and removals from forest for the period 1990-2020, are estimated for the first time using data from the Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2020, providing new information with respect to the previous FRA 2015. Estimates indicate significant reduction of deforestation emissions over the study period, albeit more slowly than previously assessed, from an average of 4.3 Gt CO2 yr-1 during 1991-2000, to an average of 2.9 Gt CO2 yr-1 during 2016-2020. Remaining forest land was a significant net carbon sink globally and over the entire period, albeit decreasing in strength, from -3.4 Gt CO2 yr-1 in 1991-2000 to -2.5 Gt CO2 yr-1 during 2016-2020. The overall net contribution of forests to atmospheric CO2(i.e., the combined effect of deforestation and forest emissions/removals) was an overall emission source of roughly 0.4 Gt CO2 yr-1 on average during 1991-2020, more than one-third less than previously estimated. Remarkably, the new data also suggest an overall net sink of about -0.7 Gt CO2 yr-1 during 2011-2015, never reported before. Forest emissions/removals data independently reported by countries to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change were in excellent agreement with the FAO estimates over the entire period 1990-2020, confirming a large sink on forest land estimated for 2011-2015. Data are made available as open access via the Zenodo portal (Tubiello, 2020), with DOI 10.5281/zenodo.3941973. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local governments have a key role to play in implementing climate innovations as they have jurisdiction over a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions. Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC3) is the first longitudinal study exploring climate innovation in Canadian municipalities. A tri-university research collaborative, it focuses on British Columbia (BC), whose voluntary efforts to set and meet climate change goals were far more ambitious than those offered by the federal government (and almost any other province in North America at the time). These efforts included introducing a carbon tax and the Climate Action Charter voluntary agreement in 2007. Since then, 187 of the 190 local governments in BC have signed the Charter to take action on climate change. Research in the first phase of MC3explored the dynamics of innovative local responses to the coordinated suite of government legislation, complimentary policy instruments, financial incentives and partnerships with quasi-institutional partners. In the second phase, the 11 original case studies were revisited to explore the nature of transformative change in development paths and indicators of change. Methods include sentiment analysis, decomposition analysis of regional/local emissions, and modelling relationships between climate action co-benefits and trade-offs. This paper provides a synthesis of research outcomes and their implications for environmental governance at multiple scales and the potential of policy innovations to accelerate transformation towards carbon neutral economies. Key policy insights Local governments are on the front line of identifying indicators of change in current development paths and policy innovations to effect the necessary changes for transformation to carbon neutral economies. Barriers to transformational change include lack of coordination or concerted action across multiple scales of governance, electoral cycles and large swings in leadership, and lack of policy coherence across governance levels. Drivers of climate innovation include leadership at multiple levels of governance. Understanding the co-benefits (and trade-offs) of climate actions is important for integrated strategies that achieve broader sustainability goals, as well as accelerating more innovations on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges faced by climate policy makers today is to design and implement policies capable of transferring climate policy goals into sectoral actions towards transformational pathways. Hence, climate policies need to be of cross-cutting character, lead to coherence with sectoral goals and reconcile diverging sectoral interests. Against this background, Mexico has undertaken significant efforts to reform its energy sector, including goals for clean energy and energy efficiency, and the adoption of implementation mechanisms via the Law for Energy Transition of 2015. Furthermore, Mexico has introduced a complex climate governance system, including ambitious mitigation goals. In this paper, we applied concepts of climate policy integration to analyse whether integration between the policy subsystems of energy and climate change occurred in Mexico in terms of political discourse and negotiation, policy goals and instruments, and implementation; as well as the factors at work that lead to climate policy integration. We find that on the level of political discourse and negotiation, an integration process between the energy and climate subsystems occurred, influenced by the availability and market maturity of clean energy, mitigation scenarios and external events, such as the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference. However, a combination of decisions on integrated climate-energy policy outputs, and preparing the public administration system for the implementation of integrated policies, is needed to enable appropriate institutional mandates, budgets and instruments and avoid institutional fragmentation. Omitting to take these decisions was identified as a major shortcoming in the political-administrative system, preventing higher levels of climate policy integration. Key policy insights The Mexican Energy Transition Law shows that policy windows can be used by policy makers to attain integrated energy-climate policy outputs and to advance national mitigation and energy sector goals. In order to make full use of integrated policy decisions, the administrative system has to follow suit by also introducing mandates, budgets and policy instruments of an integrative character. Climate policy integration in practice implies identifying and using the full potential of policy windows in order to ensure the raising of ambition under the Paris Agreement as well as achievement of sectoral policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limiting climate change to less than 2°C is the focus of international policy under the climate convention (UNFCCC), and is essential to preventing extinctions, a focus of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The post‐2020 biodiversity framework drafted by the CBD proposes conserving 30% of both land and oceans by 2030. However, the combined impact on extinction risk of species from limiting climate change and increasing the extent of protected and conserved areas has not been assessed. Here we create conservation spatial plans to minimize extinction risk in the tropics using data on 289 219 species and modeling two future greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCP2.6 and 8.5) while varying the extent of terrestrial protected land and conserved areas from <17% to 50%. We find that limiting climate change to 2°C and conserving 30% of terrestrial area could more than halve aggregate extinction risk compared with uncontrolled climate change and no increase in conserved area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political leaders can influence public beliefs about climate change, and climate beliefs can influence climate actions. But, much is still unknown about (1) whether changes in political landscapes influence public's climate beliefs and (2) the psychological process through which climate beliefs influence pro-environmental sentiments and actions. Achieving a better understanding these influences are the dual purposes of this paper, we investigated during the unique setting of the 2016 US presidential elections. First, we explored to what extent the American public's belief in the anthropogenic origins and negative impacts of climate change were influenced by the 2016 US presidential election and earliest administrative days of a climate-skeptical political leader, Donald Trump. We found Trump's influence on public climate beliefs may have increased after his election in such a way that may have polarized public climate beliefs. Compared with pre-election levels, supporters' climate beliefs grew weaker and, further, opponents' climate beliefs grew stronger after his election. Second, we tested a novel conditional mediation model that proposes climate beliefs interact to exert their influence on climate actions via moral behavioral sentiments. Specifically, we found people's origin and impact climate beliefs interact to influence climate actions by activating moral sentiments about their own environmental behavior (i.e., guilt, striving to be a better person), with the particularly weak moral sentiments reported by those with both weak belief in climate change's anthropogenic origins and its negative impacts. Moral sentiments, in turn, predicted respondents' willingness to save energy to reduce climate change and their support for the Paris Climate Agreement. These results suggest the election of climate-skeptical political leaders can impact the public's climate beliefs. Moreover, climate beliefs interact to influence the moral sentiments people feel about their own behavior, and consequently, influence their climate-friendly behavioral intentions and policy preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worldwide rise of climate skeptical political leaders endangers sorely needed political efforts to mitigate climate change. In addition, climate skepticism expressed by the political elites may spread to the electorate, thus ultimately affecting mitigation actions at the population level. It is crucial to better understand the psychological mechanisms underlying elite influences on public opinion formation and polarization. Here we show how affective processes contribute to these top-down influences using longitudinal data in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Findings revealed a general decrease in climate change beliefs immediately after the presidential election (November 2016). We moreover found an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions toward the Republican Party after the election of President Trump. Most importantly, the positive emotional shift towards the Republican Party mediated the decrease in climate change beliefs: Individuals with pronounced increases in positive emotions toward the Republican Party most strongly reduced their belief in climate change after the presidential election. The effect was intensified among Republican partisans, pointing towards a mechanism underlying political polarization. Using data based on a major real-world political event, our findings illustrate how partisans update their beliefs by referring to the positions of relevant political authorities. We moreover demonstrate how emotions drive top-down influences of political leaders on partisans' opinions and beliefs. Finally, our findings reveal how intensified emotions can contribute to the aggravation of the public climate change divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Malaria remains a major tropical vector-borne disease of immense public health concern owing to its debilitating effects in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past 30 years, the high altitude areas in Eastern Africa have been reported to experience increased cases of malaria. Governments including that of the Republic of Uganda have responded through intensifying programs that can potentially minimize malaria transmission while reducing associated fatalities. However, malaria patterns following these intensified control and prevention interventions in the changing climate remains widely unexplored in East African highland regions. This study thus analyzed malaria patterns across altitudinal zones of Mount Elgon, Uganda.Methods: Times-series data on malaria cases (2011-2017) from five level III local health centers occurring across three altitudinal zones; low, mid and high altitude was utilized. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation regression and Mann Kendall trend test were used to analyze malaria patterns. Vegetation attributes from the three altitudinal zones were analyzed using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used to determine the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model was used to project malaria patterns for a 7 year period.Results: Malaria across the three zones declined over the study period. The hotspots for malaria were highly variable over time in all the three zones. Rainfall played a significant role in influencing malaria burdens across the three zones. Vegetation had a significant influence on malaria in the higher altitudes. Meanwhile, in the lower altitude, human population had a significant positive correlation with malaria cases.Conclusions: Despite observed decline in malaria cases across the three altitudinal zones, the high altitude zone became a malaria hotspot as cases variably occurred in the zone. Rainfall played the biggest role in malaria trends. Human population appeared to influence malaria incidences in the low altitude areas partly due to population concentration in this zone. Malaria control interventions ought to be strengthened and strategically designed to achieve no malaria cases across all the altitudinal zones. Integration of climate information within malaria interventions can also strengthen eradication strategies of malaria in such differentiated altitudinal zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformative narratives developed are built around what we call win-win strategies (WWS), which are practicable solutions that provide near-term economic benefit to individual businesses, municipalities or countries, and at the same time contribute to meeting climate mitigation, adaptation and other sustainability goals. An example of the latter is an investment-oriented climate policy that switches the European economy to a pathway with higher growth, lower unemployment and lower emissions (Tàbara et al. [43]). This narrative was supported by mainstream climate change research and the traditional view of science-policy interactions based on the knowledge-deficit model (Simis et al. [41]). Conclusions Arguably, the most dominant narrative about climate change is the "doom and gloom" narrative, which emphasises problems, costs and adverse impacts of climate change, as well as global top-down solutions. [Extracted from the article]

The dryness/wetness patterns are a significant reference for stakeholders in developing reasonable strategies in regard to water resource management, prediction, prevention of extreme events, and management of agricultural activities; however, no attempts have been made to systematically quantify the dryness/wetness patterns and drought conditions over the Three‐River Headwater Region (TRHR) of China, where the ecosystem is highly sensitive to climate change. The spatio‐temporal characteristics of dryness/wetness for TRHR, as well as the reference evapotranspiration (ETr), precipitation (Pre), and drought risk, were all investigated for the period of 1961–2015. Using the methods of FAO‐56 Penman–Monteith (FAO‐56), standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), the Manner–Kendall (M–K) test, Pettitt test, factor contribution rate, and correlation analysis, the variation in the patterns of dryness/wetness, ETr, and Pre, and the causes behind dryness/wetness were discussed. Results indicated that the TRHR underwent a wetting tendency, which was characterized by decreasing ETr and increasing Pre based on the SPEI‐12M during 1961–2015. Moreover, 1971–1980 was the driest period, while 2001–2015 was the wettest period. A significant difference between seasons was detected in the dryness/wetness patterns during all study periods, as well as in extreme droughts. The TRHR underwent an overall wetting trend with 85% of the stations' SPEI‐3M showing increased variation during spring, in contrast with the north–south distribution pattern of the dryness/wetness with variation in the SPEI during summer. Moreover, it can be seen that droughts with higher longest drought duration (LDD) and total drought duration (TDD) were mostly located on the edge of the eastern and northern TRHR. The influencing factors demonstrate the vital roles of Pre and ETr in generating variation in the dryness/wetness patterns of the southern and northern parts of the TRHR, respectively. There is evidence indicating that Niño3.4, North Atlantic oscillation, and Arctic oscillation played more important roles in the variation of dryness/wetness patterns and Pre in TRHR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon pricing, which is widely implemented by many governments as an effective tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a low carbon economy, not only reduces carbon emissions, but also provides significant income to governments. Nowadays, the question of what purpose and how governments use revenues from carbon pricing and whether the use of revenues makes an additional contribution to reducing emissions is a special importance. The aim of this study is to analyze the usage areas of the revenues obtained from carbon pricing, the suitability and effectiveness of these income usage areas for the environmental purpose of carbon pricing. In this study, the use of carbon revenues is discussed under five headings: tax reduction, allocation to the general budget, prevention of climate change, direct transfer and financing of development. Although there are generally legal and political restrictions on the use of carbon revenues, there is no consensus on the use of income between governments. While some revenue uses contribute additionally to the reduction of emissions, some do not contribute to the reduction of emissions and if there is transparency about how to use carbon revenues, both the public acceptability of carbon pricing and the effectiveness in revenue use will increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]