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The purpose of the present paper is to examine a selection of macro- and micro-linguistic features (at text and sentence/word level respectively) of the South-African Green Paper 'National Climate Change Response' from 2010. Our overarching assumption is that the Green Paper needs to handle competing interests, beliefs and voices in a narrative structure favouring specific courses of action. How does the government portray the complex natural and societal phenomenon of climate change, and how does it take into account the many and often competing national and international views and interests which come into play? Our hypothesis is that the Green Paper constructs a narrative and that it relates to a number of voices other than that of the authors, through linguistic markers of polyphony, such as negation, sentence connectives, adverbs and reported speech. Thus we propose a narrative and polyphonic analysis of the Green Paper, at the level of the text as a whole (macro-level) but also with attention to linguistic constructions of polyphony or 'multi-voicedness' (micro-level). We find that the narrative-polyphonic properties of the Green Paper contribute to a strategy for building consensus on climate change policy. The South African government assumes the role of main hero in its own climate change 'story', and there are subtle forms of interaction with different and typically non-identified voices, such as concessive constructions and presuppositions. These results support our overarching interpretation of the whole document as striving to impose a South African consensus on the issue of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a detailed review of the research literature on how nomadic pastoralists are being affected by climate change, how they are adapting, and challenges with using traditional knowledge in adaptation. It focuses on research that investigates local, and particularly traditional, knowledge of water, pasture, their variability, and livestock. This knowledge underpins nomadic livelihoods, so is a foundation for effective adaptation. Changes in the total amount of precipitation, and particularly shifts in its timing, and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, are having the greatest impacts on herding livelihoods. Herders in drylands worldwide face common adaptation challenges: declining traditional water sources and pasture degradation. Herders' adaptation strategies fall into five major categories: movement to areas with better water and pasture, improving seasonal access to water, improving seasonal access to feed, shifts in herd composition, and livelihood diversification. Movement is central to nomads' adaptation, yet, as climate change takes hold, restrictions on movement are increasing for both socio-economic reasons and climate reasons. Many papers emphasised the importance of combining traditional knowledge and current science to guide adaptation decision-making at household, locality, and national levels. There is widespread concern about the decline in traditional knowledge. All the papers reviewed emphasised the need to support passing on traditional know-how. Herder women's know-how, in particular, is marginalised in the research literature, so their traditional knowledge should be a focus in further research. Herders' adaptations are mostly localised, incremental, and have a relatively short-term focus. As nomadic pastoralism moves further outside the range of historical experience, the possibility of more profound transformations looms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a contribution to the ongoing debate about the selection of the approach for carbon accounting in wood products to be used, in the future, in the national greenhouse gas inventories under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Two accounting approaches are used in this analysis: the stock-change approach and the atmospheric-flow approach. They are applied to the Portuguese Eucalyptus globulus forest sector. To achieve this objective, the fluxes of wood removed from the forest are tracked through its life cycle, which includes products manufacture (mainly pulp and paper), use and final disposal (landfilling, incineration and composting). This study develops a framework to the estimation of carbon sequestration in the forest of E. globulus, a fast growing species, more specifically, in the calculation of the conversion factors such as bark and foliage percentages and densities, used to convert wood volumes into total biomass. A mass balance approach based on real data from mills is also proposed, in order to assess carbon emissions from wood processing. The results show that E. globulus forest sector was a carbon sink, but the magnitude of the carbon sequestration differs substantially depending on the accounting approach used. The contribution of the forest ecosystem was smaller than the aggregated contribution of wood products in use and in landfills (including industrial waste), which reinforces the role that wood products play in national carbon budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a Special Issue on "National Indicators of Climate Changes, Impacts, and Vulnerability" edited by Anthony C. Janetos and Melissa A. Kenney Introduction Climate assessment efforts in the USA are a legally required and important process to share the state of knowledge about status and projected trends of climate changes and impacts and are used to support risk management decisions and policies (Jacobs et al. [11]). Contributions to this special issue The first paper in this special issue is I A framework for national climate indicators i (Kenney et al. [19]). In the first topical paper, I Toward an integrated system of climate change and human health indicators: a conceptual framework i (Liu et al. in preparation), the human health implications of climate change were explored to identify indicators. In I Indicators of climate change in agricultural systems i (Hatfield et al. [10]), the authors develop a conceptual framework that links the climate system to crop and livestock productivity as well as the impacts of land on other grassland and forest systems. [Extracted from the article]

Previous studies have projected a significant role for bioenergy in decarbonizing the global economy and helping realize international climate goals such as limiting global average warming to 2 ˚C or 1.5 ˚C. However, with substantial variability in bioenergy results and significant concerns about potential environmental and social implications, greater transparency and dedicated assessment of the underlying modeling and results and more detailed understanding of the potential role of bioenergy are needed. Stanford University's Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) initiated a 33rd study (EMF-33) to explore the viability of large-scale bioenergy as part of a comprehensive climate management strategy. This special issue presents the papers of the EMF-33 study—a multi-year inter-model comparison project designed to understand and assess global, long-run biomass supply and bioenergy deployment potentials and related uncertainties. Using a novel scenario design with independent biomass supply and bioenergy demand protocols, EMF-33 separately elucidates and explores the modeling of biomass feedstock supplies and bioenergy technologies and their deployment—revealing, comparing, and assessing the modeling that is suggesting that bioenergy could be a key climate containment strategy. This introduction provides an overview of the EMF-33 study design and the overview, thematic, and individual modeling team papers and types of insights that make up this special issue. By providing enhanced transparency and new detailed insights, we hope to inform policy dialogue about the potential role of bioenergy and facilitate new research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal wetlands are significant components of the coastal landscape with important roles in ecosystem service provision and mitigation of climate change. They are also likely to be the system most impacted by climate change, feeling the effects of sea levels rise, temperature increases and rainfall regime changes. Climate change impacts on estuarine coastal wetlands (mangroves, saltmarsh) have been thoroughly investigated; however, the impacts on coastal freshwater wetlands (CFWs) are relatively unknown. To explore the current knowledge of the impacts of climate change on CFWs globally, we undertook a systematic quantitative literature review of peer-reviewed published literature. We found surprisingly little research (110 papers of an initial 678), the majority of which was conducted in the USA, focusing on the effects of sea level rise (SLR) on CFW vegetation or sediment accretion processes. From this research, we know that SLR will lead to reduced productivity, reduced regeneration, and increased mortality in CFW vegetation but little is known regarding the effects of other climate change drivers. Sediment accretion is also not sufficient to keep pace with SLR in many CFWs and again the effects of other climate drivers have not been investigated. The combination of unhealthy vegetation communities and minimal gain in vertical elevation can result in a transition towards a vegetation community of salt-tolerant species but more research is required to understand this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for developing a social Cumulative Effects Assessment (CEA) which analyses the impacts of climate change on maritime crime and maritime insecurities. The use of a CEA methodology, including the use of the Effect to Impact Pathway will enable mapping the relationships between certain ‘Activities’ (e.g. human-induced emissions of greenhouse gasses), the ‘Pressure’ engendered (e.g. warming sea temperatures) and their ‘Impacts’ (e.g. food shortages) via ‘Receptors’ (e.g. fishing communities) on specific sectors of society (in this case maritime migration and maritime crime, e.g. illegal fishing). This paper provides a Proof of Concept (PoC) for using such a methodology and shows the applicability of a multidisciplinary approach in understanding causal chains. In this PoC, the authors are generating a Non-Geographic Assessment Map that investigates the ‘Impacts’ that the human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have on maritime security. The proposed analytical tool can then be applied in further studies to assess the dependencies and synergies between climate change and the occurrence of maritime insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to clear the misinterpretation on the study done by Kirshen and Fennessey (KF) devoted to Climatic Change and Water Resources Planning Criteria. Water supply system of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority; Total system demand of the KF study; Description on the KF scenario.

Evidence of the health impact of climate change has been extensively documented in recent scholarly literature. In order to mitigate the adverse health effects induced by climate change, the need for conducting vulnerability assessments (VAs) has been emphasised. A higher vulnerability to climate change is often linked with substantial risks to human lives and built environment. Despite the potential of VAs in alleviating risks posed by climate change, only a limited amount of scholarly work in this domain has been conducted in the Indian context. The present research addresses this lacuna and contributes to the limited scholarship on climate change and health VAs in India. Drawing on the VA framework introduced by the fourth assessment report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this paper estimates district-level health vulnerabilities caused by climate change using multi-dimensional indices. The indices are multi-dimensional since they integrate 50 district-level indicators from 8 data sources for all 640 Census 2011 districts. The statistical technique of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been used for integrating the indicators. The findings of this paper indicate that nearly 56% of India’s population in 344 districts is highly vulnerable to the health impact of climate change. The results show that high vulnerability in certain districts is mediated by high adaptive capacity (AC). Since climate exposure varies across districts, the paper highlights the need for local-level responses and Complex Adaptive System (CAS) thinking to understand the implications of climate change and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the operationalization of climate-related indicators in violent conflict research. The climate-conflict narrative gained traction in recent decades and climate change is often referred to as a 'threat multiplier' by both policy makers and scholars. Yet, the relationships between climate-related phenomena and violent conflict are complex and context-specific. However, limited attention has been given to the climatic indicators applied in climate-conflict research. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing 32 studies published from 2004 to 2020 on the operationalization of climatic indicators and their relationship with violent conflict. It first categorizes climate indicators operationalization into five clusters: natural disasters, basic climate variability, advanced climate variability, freshwater availability, and the ENSO. The study evaluates the climate indicators for each cluster and shows that at an aggregate level these clusters examine 68 different climate representations. When paired with their respective conflict types, it finds a total of 113 climate-conflict combinations. Most operationalizations represent various forms of climate-related phenomena and variability rather than climate change. Some indicators are advancements over time, for example moving from changes in average rainfall to standardized precipitation indices. However, other indicators refer to various natural processes, making it challenging to determine whether climatic variability impacts conflict. The paper then demonstrates a discrepancy between the pathways through which climate may affect violent conflict and the representation of these pathways in the selected climate indicators. It discusses how the selection and operationalization of climate indicators requires careful consideration, and the phenomena researched should be well-specified in research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is increasingly acknowledged as a fundamental risk to the stability of the financial system. The linkage between residential mortgage lending and local heatwave projections has hitherto received little attention in the climate finance discourse despite recognition of the detrimental effects of extreme heat on economic output measures. Through economic, demographic and other channels, future climate conditions can affect the housing market and, thus, the residential mortgage market. Moreover, the potential for contagion is high considering US residential mortgages’ key role in financial cycles and cross-border effects. First, our paper furthers conceptual and empirical understandings of the nexus between future extreme heat and lenders’ credit risk. Second, for the contiguous US states, we show that interest rates are higher and loan terms are shorter in areas forecast to experience a larger increase in the number of hot days over the coming decades after controlling for a range of factors. Rate spreads are higher still in areas where the number of hot days is projected to be extreme. It is lending from non-banks, rather than banks, that appears sensitive to the changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an experimental auction, we explore how verifiable information affects the willingness to pay (WTP) for two climate friendly goods given the politicized climate change debate. We test whether the dissemination of (scientific) verifiable information lets subjects cut through the media noise. We define our baseline by first examining how noisy information (pro and con) about climate change affects WTP. We then consider how third party verifiable information within this noisy information affects WTP. Our results suggest subjects could cut through noisy information to process verifiable information. We find a significant WTP premium for climate protection. The verifiable information treatment increases the premium for both shade-grown coffee (by 51 %) and recycled paper (by 48 %). This suggests the WTP premium for climate change depends on the available information flow and the characteristics of the climate friendly good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate students can face difficulties collaborating across disciplines and outside of academia. Stakeholder-engaged research (i.e., research involving partners outside of academia) presents challenges for developing a project, finding collaborators, and co-creating knowledge. Past reflections on how to navigate stakeholder-engaged research assume a faculty member leads the project and do not often address implementation from a student-led approach. In this paper, we provide insight on our team science process from an applied, graduate student perspective. We reflect on the formation of our student team and the implementation of a tourism planning research project with community partners. We discuss challenges and focus on practical tips to overcome these challenges. Specifically, we include reflections on co-developing a research project, building authentic partnerships, negotiating power dynamics, and the role of institutional support. Lessons learned from this project can guide other graduate student teams working with stakeholders, as well as faculty seeking to train graduate students in stakeholder-engaged research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines various studies on weather and climate extreme events (WCEE) to identify thematic trends and research gaps and suggest directions for further studies. The review identifies 14 subthemes and 23 research focuses, that address impacts and issues in the pre-, during-, and post-disaster phases. Using a matrix of WCEE dimensionality and content matrix analysis, we analyze the distribution and research focus of these studies, revealing areas with both extensive and limited research. While significant literature exists on certain WCEE subthemes, with a strong focus on damage assessment, spatial extent, losses, and disaster management approaches, only a limited number of studies have explored crucial areas such as risk prediction, urban planning, water quality, urban resilience, and public health dimensions. These areas are vital for effective disaster risk reduction. To bridge the knowledge gaps in these areas and other areas with multi-dimensional outlooks within the context of WCEE, we recommend prioritizing research in these subthemes. Our findings underscore the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need for additional research to enhance our understanding of WCEE. Through evidence-based strategies, policymakers and practitioners can develop measures to enhance resilience and mitigate the impacts of WCEE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing concern that climate change poses an existential risk to humanity. Understanding these worst-case scenarios is essential for good risk management. However, our knowledge of the causal pathways through which climate change could cause societal collapse is underdeveloped. This paper aims to identify and structure an empirical evidence base of the climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse pathway. We first review the societal collapse and existential risk literature and define a set of determinants of societal collapse. We develop an original methodology, using these determinants as societal collapse proxies, to identify an empirical evidence base of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse in contemporary society and then structure it using a novel-format causal loop diagram (CLD) defined at global scale and national granularity. The resulting evidence base varies in temporal and spatial distribution of study and in the type of data-driven methods used. The resulting CLD documents the spread of the evidence base, using line thickness and colour to depict density and type of data-driven method respectively. It enables exploration of how the effects of climate change may undermine agricultural systems and disrupt food supply, which can lead to economic shocks, socio-political instability as well as starvation, migration and conflict. Suggestions are made for future work that could build on this paper to further develop our qualitative understanding of, and quantitative complex systems modelling capabilities for analysing, the causal pathways between climate change and societal collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of ‘climigration’ is an emerging and increasing challenge to human settlements. Climigration refers to community relocation undertaken in response to climate change impacts. This paper adds to early but critical scholarly discussions by providing a land-use planning framework for organising and responding to the governance, policy, institutional and cultural implications of climigration. This paper argues that land-use planning will be increasingly required to manage climigration events over the coming decades and will rely on input and guidance from other disciplines to do so effectively. Climigration is conceptualised as an end-point of climate change adaptation in this paper. Empirical content derives from a multidisciplinary systematic quantitative literature review of international case studies of community relocations. Planning factors with critical, moderate or negligible influences on relocation success are synthesised. These are linked to the roles and functions of land-use planning systems to provide a framework for approaching climigration. The paper provides three interlinked conclusions. The first is that spatial planning systems have potential and capacity to respond to climigration as an extreme form of climate change adaptation. The second is that anticipatory policy frameworks offer the greatest advantages for successful climigration planning. The third conclusion is that maladaptation is a potential but avoidable threat connected to climigration planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just over 40 years ago, I wrote a paper entitled 'Climate change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?' In it, I attempted to explain why despite a rise in the atmosphere's CO2 content there had been no significant warming. I predicted that a natural cooling was about to give way to a warming, and that industrial emissions of CO2 would amplify this warming. The paper published in Science in 1975. Warming did follow in 1976-1977. However, a retrospective look shows that my analysis was flawed. What is more-and to my chagrin-based on the words 'global warming' in my Science paper, I was given the title 'Father of Global Warming.' Not only did I not like this title, I had done little to merit it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tangible progress to address climatic change remains painfully slow. As a result, practices to deliberately manipulate the Earth's carbon and energy cycles to counteract climate change have gained traction and they are increasingly incorporated into mainstream debate. This paper examines one of the less documented examples of climate geoengineering, namely the creation of 'super low carbon cows'. Driven by the public's desire for a low carbon pint of milk or beef burger, I show how a combination of bioengineering, technological fixes and management practices have resulted in, and are informing, everyday changes to the way in which animals are bred, cared for and eaten—and in turn, how it affects the food that we consume. Thus, the role of the cow within the Anthropocene now extends from meat machine and sentient being to climate change saviour. I seek to show that super low carbon cows represent part of a wider climate 'responsibilisation' in which business interests and corporate storytelling are governing and enacting everyday mundane practices of climate engineering as part of the corporate carbon economy. Yet, as with other climate 'fixes', this paper shows that the super low carbon cow provides, at best, an imperfect correction. Critical gaps in the evidence of the efficiency of the solutions being advanced remain whilst manipulating an animal to be more climate friendly evokes unease when considering the wider sustainability and ethical impacts. Perhaps most critically, reliance on climate engineering to provide cheap and easy ways to control our climate fails to question, far less address, the ever-increasing demand, production and wastage of food. It also potentially undermines the already weak political will for other essential and more radical responses to climate change. In doing so, I contrast the extensive efforts to change the everyday behaviours of a cow with the limited attempts to meaningfully challenge the everyday practices, consumption lifestyles and dietary choices of the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a systematic literature review was conducted to synthesize understanding on farmers' perception on climate change. Farmers' perception of climate change is conceptualized as comprising of three dimensions—first, as farmers' "awareness"; second, "conceptual understanding"; and third, the "experience" of climate change. The review included 162 papers published during the period January 2000 to July 2019. The highest number of studies was conducted in Africa, followed by Asia. A large majority of farmers report being aware of climate change. However, only a few studies elicit the difference between climate variability and climate change from farmers. A negligible number of studies attempt to identify the role of agricultural activities in greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Furthermore, authors compare farmers' perception with meteorological evidence, which is more aligned in terms of change in "temperature" rather than "precipitation." The insights from the review provide guidance on conceptualization and operationalization of the variable "farmers' perception of climate change" for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important and under-quantified facet of the risks associated with human-induced climate change emerges through extreme weather. In this paper, we present an initial attempt to quantify recent costs related to extreme weather due to human interference in the climate system, focusing on economic costs arising from droughts and floods in New Zealand during the decade 2007–2017. We calculate these using previously collected information about the damages and losses associated with past floods and droughts, and estimates of the "fraction of attributable risk" that characterizes each event. The estimates we obtain are not comprehensive, and almost certainly represent an underestimate of the full economic costs of climate change, notably chronic costs associated with long-term trends. However, the paper shows the potential for developing a new stream of information that is relevant to a range of stakeholders and research communities, especially those with an interest in the aggregation of the costs of climate change or the identification of specific costs associated with potential liability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid adaptation is necessary to maintain, let alone expand, access to reliable, safe drinking water in the face of climate change. Existing research focuses largely on the role, priorities, and incentives of local managers to pursue adaptation strategies while mostly neglecting the role of the broader public, despite the strong public support required to fund and implement many climate adaptation plans. In this paper, we interrogate the relationship between personal experiences of household water supply impacts from extreme weather events and hazard exposure with individual concern about future supply reliability among a statewide representative sample of California households. We find that more than one-third of Californians report experiencing impacts of climate change on their household water supplies and show that these reported impacts differently influence residents’ concern about future water supply reliability, depending on the type of event experienced. In contrast, residents’ concern about future water supplies is not significantly associated with hazard exposure. These findings emphasize the importance of local managers’ attending to not only how climate change is projected to affect their water resources, but how, and whether, residents perceive these risks. The critical role of personal experience in increasing concern highlights that post-extreme events with water supply impacts may offer a critical window to advance solutions. Managers should not assume, however, that all extreme events will promote concern in the same way or to the same degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a global trend away from delivering 'climate information' towards producing 'climate services' for decision-makers. The rationale for this shift is said to be the demand for timely and actionable climate knowledge, whilst the means of its delivery involves a shift from public good to more privatised forms of climate science. This paper identifies important implications of this shift to climate services by examining the role of consultants, drawing on an in-depth study of adaptation consultants in Australia. The role of consultants is instructive, not just because these private sector experts are engaged in climate services, but also because publicly funded climate science agencies are increasingly encouraged to behave as consulting firms do. Four imperatives of knowledge businesses—to be client-focussed, solutions-oriented, resource-efficient and self-replicating—are described. The paper argues that an emphasis on climate services shifts the incentives for climate science away from the public interest towards the ongoing pursuit of profit. There is a subsequent diversion of effort away from publicly accessible and transparent climate information to private knowledge for discrete clients. Climate services also emphasise knowledge for climate solutions as opposed to the politically charged identification of climate risks. The paper concludes with a warning that the trend towards climate services undermines the knowledge required for societies to adequately respond to the scale, speed and severity of climate change. At the heart of this issue is a climate services paradox: how to achieve customisation without exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coffee is one of the most important globally traded commodities and substantially contributes to the livelihoods of millions of smallholders worldwide. As a climate-sensitive perennial crop, coffee is likely to be highly susceptible to changes in climate. Using a systematic approach, we explore evidence from the published academic literature of the influence of climate change and variability, specifically drought, on coffee production. A number of mostly negative impacts were reported in the current literature, including declines in coffee yield, loss of coffee-optimal areas with significant impacts on major global coffee-producing countries and growth in the distribution of pest and disease that indirectly influence coffee cultivation. Current research also identified positive effects of climate change such as increases in coffee-producing niche, particularly in areas at higher altitudes; however, whether these gains might offset losses from other production areas requires further investigation. Other advantages include increases in pollination services and the beneficial effects of elevated carbon concentration, leading to potential yield improvements. Future priorities should focus on major coffee-growing regions projected to be adversely affected by climate change, with specific attention given to potential adaptation strategies tailored to particular farming conditions such as relocation of coffee plantations to more climatically suitable areas, irrigation and agroforestry. The majority of studies were based in the Americas and concentrated on Arabica coffee. A broader spread of research is therefore required, especially for the large growing regions in Asia and for Robusta coffee, to support sustainable production of the global coffee industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on the applicability of the global indicators of climate change adaptation policy drivers contained in Berrang-Ford et al. (2014) (Climatic Change, 124(1–2), 441–450. 10.1007/s10584-014-1078-3) for small island developing states (SIDS). SIDS are a globally recognised 'special' case in terms of environment and sustainable development issues as they are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. While acknowledging that the choice of final indicators in the Berrang-Ford et al. (2014) assessment was primarily the function of the results of bivariate analyses with their Adaptation Initiatives Index and that there is no certainty of statistically significant relationships with any measure of adaptation initiatives, this paper proposes the inclusion of a number of predictor variables for a future SIDS-specific quantitative analysis. By doing this, this commentary helps to contribute a more nuanced understanding of potential national adaptation policy drivers in SIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scientific assessments for climate change adaptation and risk reduction are based on scenarios for climatic change. Scenarios for socio-economic development, particularly in terms of vulnerability and adaptive capacity, are largely lacking. This paper focuses on the utility of socio-economic scenarios for vulnerability, risk and adaptation research. The paper introduces the goals and functions of scenarios in general and reflects on the current global debate around shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). It examines the options and constraints of scenario methods for risk and vulnerability assessments in the context of climate change and natural hazards. Two case studies are used to contrast the opportunities and current constraints in scenario methods at different scales: the global WorldRiskIndex, based on quantitative data and indicators; and a local participatory scenario development process in Jakarta, showing a qualitative approach. The juxtaposition of a quantitative approach with global data and a qualitative-participatory local approach provides new insights on how different methods and scenario techniques can be applied in vulnerability and risk research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all climate change studies of plants and animals adopt an 'equilibrium assumption' that analyses of natural distributions provide reliable estimates of species climatic requirements. Yet commercial forestry trials around the world have shown that many tree species can grow successfully under climatic conditions somewhat different from those of their natural distributions. Under climate change it is reasonable to assume that a long-lived tree species, already well-established at particular sites, may be able to display some of the climatic adaptability shown in trials outside its natural distribution. The purpose of this paper is to outline how some species distribution modelling (SDM) and ecological niche modelling (ENM) studies have estimated species climatic requirements beyond those shown by conventional analyses of just their natural distributions, and to show how recent developments are facilitating these analyses. Some of the earliest SDM studies of trees demonstrated the desirability of assessing species climatic requirements using data from outside, as well as within, their natural distributions. In recent years, with the advent of large biodiversity databases and some revised SDM analysis methods, there has been a revival of interest in measuring species climatic requirements using data from beyond their realized niches. It is recommended that at least for tree species, natural distribution data, and where possible results from plantings beyond natural distributions, should be analysed in climate change studies. When this is not possible, some alternative methods of estimating species climatic requirements are identified and some of their advantages and disadvantages are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change impacts and their consequences are determined not only by the intensity and frequency of different climatic hazards but also by the vulnerability of the system, society or community exposed. While general agreement exists about the importance of assessing vulnerability to understand climate risks, there is still a tendency to neglect global and regional vulnerability patterns because they are hard to quantify, despite their value in informing adaptation, disaster risk and development policies. Several approaches to quantifying global vulnerability exist. These differ in terms of the indicators they use and how they classify countries or regions into vulnerability classes. The paper presents the structure of selected approaches and explores two indices in depth. The aim of this paper is to assess the level of agreement between selected international indicator-based assessments of vulnerability, at the level of climate regions. Results suggest that the two major global vulnerability assessments analysed largely agree on the location of the most and least vulnerable regions when these assessments are aggregated to a regional scale using the IPCC’s climate regions. The paper then discusses the robustness of the information derived and its usefulness for adaptation, disaster risk and development policies. Measuring progress towards reducing vulnerability to climate change and hazards is key for various agencies and actors in order to be able to develop informed policies and strategies for managing climate risks and to promote enabling conditions for achieving the SDGs and building resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integral part of the communications strategy for Working Group I (WGI) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to support its authors, in all geographical regions, to engage a diverse range of audiences with climate change. Building upon a Communications Handbook for IPCC authors and a bespoke photo library, both produced by Climate Outreach for WGI in 2018 ahead of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C, this paper describes the findings of a global survey that gathered practical examples of efforts by WGI authors to engage non-specialist audiences around the world with climate change. A total of 107 survey responses from 44 countries were evaluated against a theoretical framework outlining key principles of effective public engagement drawn from the social science literature. Ideas for how climate scientists can enhance their communication efforts are discussed, illustrated with case studies drawn from the survey responses showing WGI authors using creative techniques to engage people with climate change, including in Senegal, Argentina, India, the Bahamas and Indonesia. This is followed by guidance for the IPCC on developing communications strategies in a way that gives climate scientists confidence to communicate their work and promotes evidence-based techniques. By critically reflecting on the communication practices within the IPCC’s global author network, the paper provides insights and recommendations on how to continue to strengthen the connection between the theory and practice of climate science communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread demand for animal-sourced foods poses challenges in addressing climate change due to their significant greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative proteins like cultured meat show promise with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but have faced public resistance, posing substantial barriers to their broad development and adoption. This paper reports a survey that examined the perceived naturalness of protein sources as an important factor that predicts perceived risks, benefits, and support for consumption. A diverse sample from the United States considered six different protein technologies, including three newer alternative proteins such as cultured meat and three more conventional proteins. Newer alternative proteins were perceived as less natural and were less supported than conventional proteins. Additionally, the more participants perceived protein sources as natural, the less risky and more beneficial they perceived them to be, contributing to their support. These results suggest that perceived naturalness, and associated risks and benefits, could be an important factor in shaping public support for or opposition to new proteins. These findings have theoretical and broader implications for the development and adoption of sustainability technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate action-based assumptions and tradable characteristics underpinned the development of climate change futures contracts, which are related to carbon and climate markets. Therefore, this paper examines return and volatility spillover between climate change futures and carbon allowance futures using dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) and asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation (ADCC) models with daily and weekly frequency data. Considering the emergence of US market-based carbon futures and climate futures, this study explores bivariate optimal hedging strategies and optimal portfolio strategies. Using daily data, this study discovers unidirectional and positive return and volatility spillover from the carbon futures market to the climate change futures market, implying opportunities for diversification and hedging. The weekly analysis shows bidirectional and negative return spillover between the carbon futures market and the climate change futures market, implying opportunities for risk hedging. In addition, it also reveals unidirectional and positive volatility spillovers from the carbon futures market to the climate change futures market. The carbon market dominates the climate change futures market. The study also reveals that optimal portfolio strategies will be preferred over optimal hedging strategies. Therefore, this study offers practical implications for investors and portfolio managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is likely to have significant impacts on the forestry sector in New Zealand. However, an understanding of how forest growers are reducing their risks from climate change impacts is still in its infancy. This paper applies the protection motivation theory to identify socio-psychological factors influencing forest growers' adaptation to climate change. This study presents the survey results from 60 forest growers who have the combined responsibility for managing more than 70% of New Zealand's plantation forests. We investigated whether their perceived response efficacy, self-efficacy and their understanding of response costs are predictors of their protective or adaptive measures. Based on our survey, risk reduction and risk spreading are the two types of protective measure frequently reported by the respondents to deal with climate risks. Consistent with the protection motivation theory, our findings show that respondents who are more likely to implement protective or adaptive measures if they perceive the threat severity to be high have high self-efficacy and resource efficacy, and exhibit low maladaptive responses such as evading and postponing behaviours. Furthermore, our findings also suggest that there is a low self-efficacy belief with strong maladaptive behaviour among the respondents that negatively influence their motivation to implement adaptation measures. This result provides guidance to policy makers, researchers and forest companies on how to make climate change adaptation efforts effective by considering the forest growers motivation to adapt to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate security is a burgeoning focus of the multidisciplinary literatures investigating the impacts from climate change. This research theme has gained prominence due to the realisation that climatic changes will likely compromise human welfare and community stability, with significant implications for governments’ security agendas. The Indo-Pacific region is an important case study for understanding climate security given its ongoing environmental and developmental challenges and the cultural, political and economic tensions existing within and between neighbouring countries. This paper presents a systematic review and synthesis of academic and “grey” literatures that address climate adaptation, disaster management or regional security in the Indo-Pacific. From this review, we identify four key themes that arise prominently in discussion and analysis prepared by academic scholars, governments and non-government organisations alike. The ubiquity of these themes speaks to the interdependent nature of the adaptation, disaster management and security challenges. The literature is in agreement that maintaining and enhancing climate security in the Indo-Pacific will depend on the region’s capacity to strategically coordinate between the activities of governments, industry and communities; the willingness of governments to meaningfully cooperate with communities and each other despite existing tensions; governments’ ability to manage limited resources efficiently; and their capacity to identify and address climate-maladaptive path dependencies. We highlight the most popular prescriptions for addressing these concurrent challenges at the current time. We argue that these prescriptions warrant further research and will likely have broader applicability for addressing climate security challenges in other regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have seen an explosion of interest in extreme event attribution, the science of estimating the influence of human activities or other factors on the probability and other characteristics of an observed extreme weather or climate event. This is driven by public interest, but also has practical applications in decision-making after the event and for raising awareness of current and future climate change impacts. The World Weather Attribution (WWA) collaboration has over the last 5 years developed a methodology to answer these questions in a scientifically rigorous way in the immediate wake of the event when the information is most in demand. This methodology has been developed in the practice of investigating the role of climate change in two dozen extreme events world-wide. In this paper, we highlight the lessons learned through this experience. The methodology itself is documented in a more extensive companion paper. It covers all steps in the attribution process: the event choice and definition, collecting and assessing observations and estimating probability and trends from these, climate model evaluation, estimating modelled hazard trends and their significance, synthesis of the attribution of the hazard, assessment of trends in vulnerability and exposure, and communication. Here, we discuss how each of these steps entails choices that may affect the results, the common problems that can occur and how robust conclusions can (or cannot) be derived from the analysis. Some of these developments also apply to other attribution methodologies and indeed to other problems in climate science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate models, by accurately forecasting future weather events, can be a critical tool in developing countermeasures to reduce crop loss and decrease adverse effects on animal husbandry and fishing. In this paper, we investigate the efficacy of various regional versions of the climate models, RCMs, and the commonly available weather datasets in Kenya in predicting extreme weather patterns in northern and western Kenya. We identified two models that may be used to predict flood risks and potential drought events in these regions. The combination of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and weather station data was the most effective in predicting future drought occurrences in Turkana and Wajir with accuracies ranging from 78 to 90%. In the case of flood forecasting, isolation forests models using weather station data had the best overall performance. The above models and datasets may form the basis of an early warning system for use in Kenya’s agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is widely recognized as a major risk to societies and natural ecosystems but the high end of the risk, i.e., where risks become existential, is poorly framed, defined, and analyzed in the scientific literature. This gap is at odds with the fundamental relevance of existential risks for humanity, and it also limits the ability of scientific communities to engage with emerging debates and narratives about the existential dimension of climate change that have recently gained considerable traction. This paper intends to address this gap by scoping and defining existential risks related to climate change. We first review the context of existential risks and climate change, drawing on research in fields on global catastrophic risks, and on key risks and the so-called Reasons for Concern in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We also consider how existential risks are framed in the civil society climate movement as well as what can be learned in this respect from the COVID-19 crisis. To better frame existential risks in the context of climate change, we propose to define them as those risks that threaten the existence of a subject, where this subject can be an individual person, a community, or nation state or humanity. The threat to their existence is defined by two levels of severity: conditions that threaten (1) survival and (2) basic human needs. A third level, well-being, is commonly not part of the space of existential risks. Our definition covers a range of different scales, which leads us into further defining six analytical dimensions: physical and social processes involved, systems affected, magnitude, spatial scale, timing, and probability of occurrence. In conclusion, we suggest that a clearer and more precise definition and framing of existential risks of climate change such as we offer here facilitates scientific analysis as well societal and political discourse and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of vulnerability is well established in the climate change literature, underpinning significant research effort. The ability of vulnerability research to capture the complexities of climate-society dynamics has been increasingly questioned, however. In this paper, we identify, characterize, and evaluate concerns over the use of vulnerability approaches in the climate change field based on a review of peer-reviewed articles published since 1990 (n = 587). Seven concerns are identified: neglect of social drivers, promotion of a static understanding of human-environment interactions, vagueness about the concept of vulnerability, neglect of cross-scale interactions, passive and negative framing, limited influence on decision-making, and limited collaboration across disciplines. Examining each concern against trends in the literature, we find some of these concerns weakly justified, but others pose valid challenges to vulnerability research. Efforts to revitalize vulnerability research are needed, with priority areas including developing the next generation of empirical studies, catalyzing collaboration across disciplines to leverage and build on the strengths of divergent intellectual traditions involved in vulnerability research, and linking research to the practical realities of decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on using climate information has often focused on the interaction between users and producers and the technical fit of information for real decision-making. However, due to resource and capacity constraints within both user and producer communities, this approach will not always be feasible or indeed necessary depending on the decisions at hand. These contexts have been relatively under-explored by scholars, and this paper provides an original empirical contribution using three case studies of sub-national governments in India, Kenya and Uganda. In the paper, we analyse how social learning supports changing the usability of climate information and the role of intermediary organisations in these processes. Firstly, the paper shows that intermediaries often choose to build the commitment to project aims rather than using climate information as an entry point to working on climate change, and this allows them to instigate challenging learning processes. Secondly, there are barriers to iterative processes and critical reflection with government stakeholders but these processes can gain traction when built into institutional practices such as formal M&E processes. Lastly, social learning can broaden the framing of climate change from a single sector issue to a multi-sectoral one. We conclude by arguing that bringing together scholarship on social learning with that on the usability of climate information can deepen understanding of the dynamic context in which the information becomes usable. The evidence from the case studies shows that learning processes can alter this context across scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distinguishes between bridging and bonding social capital to assess their roles for individual farmers’ adaptation strategies taken through technology adoption. Based on primary data collected in Langcang River (LCR) basin area in southwestern China, the paper finds: (1) adaptation measures have been widely taken by surveyed households, but non-infrastructure-based measures are more prevalent than infrastructure-based measures and (2) surveyed households have strong social capital while having weak bridging social capital. Their bonding social capital has significantly positive relationship with their adaptation decisions, but bridging social capital does not have such statistically significant relationship. It recommends that the governments contemplate carefully how to help the poor to get a good combination of bonding and bridging social capital when designing policies to help the rural poor to improve their long-term adaptive capacity and achieve sustainable rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we extend the work of Goes, Tuana, and Keller (Climatic Change ; GTK) by reexamining the economic benefit, of aerosol geoengineering. GTK found that a complete substitution of geoengineering for CO abatement fails a cost-benefit test over a wide range of scenarios regarding (i) the probability that such a program would be aborted and (ii) the economic damages caused by geoengineering itself. In this paper, we reframe the conditions under which GTK assumed geoengineering would/could be used. In so doing, we demonstrate that geoengineering may pass a cost-benefit test over a wide range of scenarios originally considered by GTK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02948-3 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities in the USA and around the world have begun to take an active role in responding to climate change. A central requirement for effective urban climate strategies is the capacity to understand and measure how the climate is changing, the physical, environmental, and social impacts of the changes, and whether adaptation and resiliency policies and programs put in place in response are working. The objective of this paper is to review and assess how urban climate change and resiliency efforts can be measured and to define what might serve as meaningful indicator and monitoring protocols. The New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) is used as a case study along with a reviews of the emerging literature of urban climate change indicators to analyze the requirements and processes needed for a successful urban climate resiliency indicator and monitoring (I and M) system. In the paper, the basic requirements of a proposed Urban Climate Resilience Indicators and Monitoring System are presented. A specific illustration of an I and M system for tracking the urban heat island highlights challenges as well as potential solutions embedded within such systems. Discussions how these protocols can be translated to other locales and settings, as well as the relationship to the US National Climate Assessment indicator process, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment (IN CCIA) is a collaborative effort to provide professionals, decision makers, and the public with information about how climate change affects state and local interests throughout Indiana, USA. This assessment effort has three interrelated goals: (1) analyze and document the best available climate change impacts research, (2) develop and maintain a network of stakeholders and experts, and (3) start a dialog about climate change throughout Indiana. The project adopted a process that prioritized stakeholder engagement, re-envisioned traditional dissemination approaches, and that had limited state government involvement, setting the IN CCIA apart from most other state climate assessments (SCAs) in the USA. This overview describes the motivations, principles, and processes that guided the IN CCIA development, explores how Indiana's approach compares with those of other SCAs, and briefly summarizes the papers presented in this special issue. As interest in SCAs grows in non-coastal and politically conservative locations, the IN CCIA serves as one example of how a bottom-up assessment with limited funding can deliver credible climate science to diverse stakeholder groups in the absence of state-level mandates or direction and attract public attention over an extended period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relatively short atmospheric lifetimes of methane (CH4) and black carbon (BC) have focused attention on the potential for reducing anthropogenic climate change by reducing Short-Lived Climate Forcer (SLCF) emissions. This paper examines radiative forcing and global mean temperature results from the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF)-30 multi-model suite of scenarios addressing CH4 and BC mitigation, the two major short-lived climate forcers. Central estimates of temperature reductions in 2040 from an idealized scenario focused on reductions in methane and black carbon emissions ranged from 0.18–0.26 °C across the nine participating models. Reductions in methane emissions drive 60% or more of these temperature reductions by 2040, although the methane impact also depends on auxiliary reductions that depend on the economic structure of the model. Climate model parameter uncertainty has a large impact on results, with SLCF reductions resulting in as much as 0.3–0.7 °C by 2040. We find that the substantial overlap between a SLCF-focused policy and a stringent and comprehensive climate policy that reduces greenhouse gas emissions means that additional SLCF emission reductions result in, at most, a small additional benefit of ~ 0.1 °C in the 2030–2040 time frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical scholars on power relations and climate change adaptation have highlighted the lack of community participation as a consequence of unbalanced power operations. Evidence about how unequal power relations and subject formation constrain public participation, however, is under-studied. In this paper, we utilised the intersection between community participation and the subjectivities lens to examine how a hierarchical political structure systematically operates to influence community engagement in adaptation and how and why local communities are included or excluded from adaptation as a result of subject-making, using Vietnam as a case study. Using 66 semi-structured interviews and ten focus group discussions involving policymakers, practitioners, local authorities, and communities, we examined how the key respondents stereotyped local roles and capacity in agricultural adaptation activities. Applying content analysis, we found that the general population in Vietnam is often framed as lacking knowledge and capacity to respond to climate impacts. Reflected through a traditional government-led model in two agricultural adaptation projects, the study showed that subtle but pervasive subjectivities and subject-making processes constrain community participation by affecting perceptions and, subsequently, actions of key stakeholders, undermining local roles and capacity in undertaking adaptation. These perpetuate the power imbalance between local communities and government entities. The findings contribute to the prevailing scholarship of climate change adaptation that, under an authoritarian regime, local capacity is undermined not only by powerholders but also by community members as they consent to government decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does land security matter in climate change adaptation strategies choice? To provide answers to this, the paper used a survey data collected from a random sample of 341 agricultural households in 2020 in Benin. Descriptive statistics and multivariate probit model were used to analyze the data. The main adaptations strategies identified are adjustment in sowing time, tree planting, crop and livestock integration, use of irrigation, use of improved variety, and endogenous beliefs, while family land, own land and rented land are the types of land tenure arrangements. Results from a multivariate probit model show that the use of family land increases the likelihood of planting tree, crop and livestock integration, use of improved variety, and endogenous beliefs. Farmers using own land are more likely to adopt tree planting and endogenous beliefs as adaptation strategies, while they are less likely to adopt irrigation. The use of rented land increases the likelihood of adjusting the sowing time, crop and livestock integration, use of irrigation, use of improved variety, and use of endogenous beliefs. These findings suggest that the choice of adaptation strategies to cope with climate change depends on the type of land tenure arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of climate change adaptation strategies on maize productivity of farms focusing on gender differences. To do so, a selection model generalizing the Heckman (1979) approach and the Oaxaca and Blinder decomposition procedure are specified and estimated. The empirical analysis is based on intra-agricultural household data from the 2018 Harmonized Household Living Conditions Survey (EHCVM) of Togo with a total sample of 8622 maize plots disaggregated by seasonThe results reveal that the average maize productivity of men is about 23.5% higher than that of women. Similarly, the average maize productivity of married women is about 28.5% higher than that of unmarried women. This suggests that married men and women have greater adaptive capacity than their counterparts and are also more likely to improve their productivity. The factors that contribute to the performance of married men and women at the expense of their counterparts are secondary education, producer assets, and climate information. We also find that the use of improved seeds, off-season cropping, and a combination of both strategies are the types of coping strategies adopted by men and married women to increase their productivity. These results have implications for the direction of development policies. These development policies can be more targeted at unmarried women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider climate scepticism in the Russian context. We are interested in whether this has been discussed within the social scientific literature and ask first whether there is a discernible climate sceptical discourse in Russia. We find that there is very little literature directly on this topic in either English or Russian and we seek to synthesise related literature to fill the gap. Secondly, we consider whether Russian climate scepticism has been shaped by the same factors as in the USA, exploring how scientists, the media, public opinion, the government and business shaped climate scepticism in Russia. Climate scepticism in the USA is understood as a ‘conservative countermovement’ that seeks to react against the perceived gains of the progressive environmental movement, but we argue that this is not an appropriate framework for understanding Russian climate scepticism. Articulated within a less agonistic environment and situated within an authoritarian regime, Russian expressions of climate scepticism balance the environmental, political and economic needs of the regime under the constraints of a strong ‘carbon culture’ and closed public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the links between economic growth and the impacts of climate change. Inclusive, pro-poor growth is central to the development of low-income countries. There is also a broad consensus that growth and development are important to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Growth does not automatically reduce vulnerability, only the right kind of growth does. The paper aims to develop a better understanding of what the 'right kind of growth' may be. We find that many growth policies, such as investment in skills and access to finance, indeed reduce vulnerability to climate change. However, climate change calls for some adjustments in growth policy. In particular, investment in infrastructure and efforts to stimulate entrepreneurship and competitive markets must take more of a risk management perspective and recognise climate risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important interactions between humans and climate is in the demand and supply of water. Humans withdraw, use, and consume water and return waste water to the environment for a variety of socioeconomic purposes, including domestic, commercial, and industrial use, production of energy resources and cooling thermal-electric power plants, and growing food, fiber, and chemical feed stocks for human consumption. Uncertainties in the future human demand for water interact with future impacts of climatic change on water supplies to impinge on water management decisions at the international, national, regional, and local level, but until recently tools were not available to assess the uncertainties surrounding these decisions. This paper demonstrates the use of a multi-model framework in a structured sensitivity analysis to project and quantify the sensitivity of future deficits in surface water in the context of climate and socioeconomic change for all U.S. states and sub-basins. The framework treats all sources of water demand and supply consistently from the world to local level. The paper illustrates the capabilities of the framework with sample results for a river sub-basin in the U.S. state of Georgia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]