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The idea that climate change may cause the loss of atoll countries is now taken for granted in much of climate change science, policy and media coverage. This normalisation of loss means atoll countries now face a future that is apparently finite, which is a grievous situation no other country has to contend with. This paper explains the dilemmas this presents to atoll countries. If there is a risk of forced migration, then strategic planning can minimise its social impacts. Yet, doing so may bring future dangers into the present by undermining efforts to facilitate adaptation to climate change, creating new identities and deterring investments in sustainable resource management. To overcome this dilemma, the paper argues for a more hopeful approach to the future of atoll countries, because for as long as the science of loss remains uncertain, and the limits to adaptation are unknown, forced migration cannot be taken as a matter of fact and could possibly be averted through emission reductions and a vastly improved and significantly more creative approach to adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive strategies are important for reducing the vulnerability of atoll communities to climate change and sea level rise in both the short and long term. This paper seeks to contribute to the emerging discourse on migration as a form of adaptation to climate change based on empirical studies in the two atoll communities, Reef Islands and Ontong Java, which are located in the periphery of Solomon Islands. The paper will outline current migration patterns in the two island groups and discuss how some of this migration may contribute to adaptation to climate change and other stresses. It shows that migration currently improves access to financial and social capital, reduces pressure on natural resources and makes island communities less vulnerable to extreme weather events and other shocks - all factors that contribute positively to adaptive capacity. It also shows that there are major barriers to migration that reduce the efficacy of positive outcomes to both migrants and their home communities, including high transport costs and problems in gaining access to housing, employment and government services in urban destination areas. If it is accepted that voluntary migration may play a positive role in adaptation to climate change in exposed atoll communities, addressing some of the barriers to migration seems logical. This may be done by efforts to stimulate migrant income opportunities, by improving migrant living conditions and by improving the transport services to the islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research is increasingly recognised as a generative and performative practice that contributes to shaping the world we come to live in. Thus part of the research 'process' involves being explicit about the worlds we want our research to contribute to and reflecting on how the concepts we use might help or inhibit this agenda. This paper is based on our commitment to strengthening the contributions that grassroots renewable energy initiatives might make to a climate changing world. However, to detect the potential of these initiatives, familiar concepts of scale and markets have to be recast. This paper uses insights from the academic literature and research into grassroots renewable energy initiatives to show how scale and markets can be rethought, thereby making it possible to detect some of the ways that grassroots renewable energy initiatives are helping transform ways of living and working, and building hope in a climate changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the suitability of the ECOSSE model to estimate soil heterotrophic respiration ( Rh) from arable land and short rotation coppices of poplar and willow. Between 2011 and 2013, we measured Rh with automatic closed dynamic chambers on root exclusion plots at one site in the UK (willow, mixed commercial genotypes of Salix spp.) and two sites in Italy (arable and poplar, Populus × Canadensis Moench, Oudemberg genotype), and compared these measured fluxes to simulated values of Rh with the ECOSSE model. Correlation coefficients ( r) between modelled and measured monthly Rh data were strong and significant, with a range between 0.81 and 0.96 for all three types of vegetation. There was no significant error and bias in the model for any site. The model was able to predict seasonal trends in Rh at all three sites even though it occasionally underestimated the flux values during warm weather in spring and summer. Because of the strong correlation between the measured and modelled values, it is unlikely that underestimation of the flux is the result of missing processes in the model. Therefore, further detailed monitoring of Rh is needed to modify the model. In this research, a limited set of input data was used to simulate Rh at the three sites. Nevertheless, overall results of the model evaluation suggest that the ECOSSE model simulates soil Rh adequately under all land uses tested and that continuous and direct measurements (such as automatic chambers installed on root-exclusion plots) are a useful tool to test model performance to simulate Rh at the site level. Highlights Model evaluation is crucial to predict soil carbon balance accurately., Modelled and measured heterotrophic respiration were compared for three land uses., The model performed well statistically for all three vegetation types., Modelled heterotrophic respiration should be evaluated by comparison to continuous measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability, and the related concept of climate change, is an emerging domain within nursing and nurse education. Climate change has been posited as a serious global health threat requiring action by health professionals and action at international level. Anaker & Elf undertook a concept analysis of sustainability in nursing based on Walker and Avant's framework. Their main conclusions seem to be that while defining attributes and cases can be established, there is not enough research into sustainability in the nursing literature. This paper seeks to develop their argument to argue that sustainability in nursing can be better understood by accessing non-nursing and grey literature and, for example, the literature in the developing web-based 'paraversity'. Without this understanding, and application in nursing scholarship, nurses will have a rather narrow understanding of sustainability and its suggested links with social and health inequalities and the dynamics underpinning unsustainable neoliberalist political economy. This understanding is based on the social and political determinants of health approach and the emerging domain of planetary health. However, this is a major challenge as it requires a critical reflection on what counts as nursing knowledge, a reflection which might reject sustainability and political economy as irrelevant to much of nursing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most significant positive approaches to the politics of climate change on the scale required by the problem is that of Giddens. This paper uncovers weaknesses in his argument and reveals motivational divergence for mitigation and energy security in both Canada and New Zealand, which is opposite to what occurred in Northern Europe that provided the basis for his analysis. This suggests that the response to climate change varies according to deeper cultural and geophysical structures. The paper also examines cost(risk)-benefit analysis versus the precautionary principle, the directionality of political-economic convergence with mitigation, and political partisanship concerning climate change. It documents the complexity of making near-term economic opportunities converge with mitigation of distant harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boulding's 1966 paper on the economics of spaceship Earth established the framework for ecological economics and an understanding of economic growth. In ecological economics, economies are conceptualized as open subsystems of the closed biosphere and are subject to biophysical laws and constraints. Economic growth measured as an increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) has generally been associated with increases in the use of energy and materials and the generation of wastes. Scale, composition, and technology are the proximate determinants of environmental impacts. They are often reduced to two: scale (GDP) and intensity (impact per unit GDP). New work described in this paper defines “green” growth as intensity that declines faster than scale increases. Similarly, “brown” growth occurs when intensity declines more slowly than increases in scale, and “black” growth happens when both scale and intensity increase. These concepts are then related to the environmental Kuznets curve, which can be understood as a transition from brown to green growth. Ecological economics provides a macroperspective on economic growth. It offers broad policy principles, and it challenges the primacy of economic growth as a policy objective, but many important questions remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of globalisation has gained tremendous momentum over recent decades, resulting in unprecedented human interconnectedness and awareness of global concerns. The current special issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology brings together 10 papers that address this development. This special issue showcases different perspectives on the psychological processes that underlie the cognitive and behavioural responses to the global challenges humankind has created and is now facing. In introducing these contributions, we identified three emerging topics for social psychological theorising and application vis-à-vis globalisation and global concerns: (i) supranational identification and attachment, (ii) political and ideological responses to globalisation and global concerns, and (iii) global protest and change. We integrate these topics by highlighting some future prospects of this emerging field of research and its significance for understanding social change in these tumultuous times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small island developing States ( SIDS) have narrow resource bases and are usually extremely reliant on fossil fuel based energy for transport and electricity generation. These island economies are thus particularly vulnerable to the impacts of peak oil and also to climate change, impacts which are likely to not only hamper economic development but also adversely affect the quality of life of local inhabitants. In order to reduce the vulnerability of SIDS to peak oil, an urgent transition to renewable sources of energy is necessary. This paper propounds that the reform of power sector that took place in Caribbean and Pacific SIDS (particularly between 1970 and 2000) should have been viewed as an opportunity to re-orient power producers away from the proclivity to utilise conventional fossil fuel uses. Reasons why reform measures did not result in a substantive transition are put forward. Moreover, recommendations towards facilitating a transition to renewable energy in the power sector through future reforms are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lichens are thought to be sensitive indicators of global warming, as the spread of several thermophilous epiphytes in north-western Central Europe has been attributed to late 20th century warming. In the present paper, the potential contribution of late 20th century warming to the decline of arctic-alpine and boreal-montane lichen species is analyzed. Relevant ecological groups of lichens include terricolous heathland species, saxicolous species of exposed rock outcrops and boulder fields as well as epiphytes of mountain forests. These three groups of lichens experienced significant declines before the onset of late 20th century warming in the 1970s. These declines can be attributed to the abandonment of traditional land use systems in the case of the heathland lichens, increased recreational use of the exposed summits usually inhabited by cold-tolerant saxicolous lichens, and to high atmospheric SO2 levels in the mid-20th century, but are probably not directly connected to global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Stern Review on the economics of climate change has been a huge international event. It also raised an ardent controversy on the use of economic methodology. Did the Stern team cook the book to reach desired catastrophic outcomes? This paper is focused on the specific debate on time discounting when the far distant future is at stake. Examining arguments of protagonists, it concludes that the Stern Review's foundations were consistent with the utilitarian philosophy without falling into empirically erring conclusions, while critics of the Review had to reveal the dubious set of assumptions on which their own views were based. But the standard translation of utilitarianism into cost-benefit analysis can be questioned. Various avenues of progress are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation monitoring in Australia has assumed increasing importance in recent years, as societal pressure to actively manage environmental problems has risen. More resources than ever before are being channelled to the task of documenting environmental change. Yet the field remains crippled by a pervasive lack of rigour in analysing, reporting and responding to the results of data collected. Millions of dollars are currently being wasted on monitoring programmes that have no realistic chance of detecting changes in the variables of interest. This is partly because detecting change in ecological systems is a genuinely difficult technical and logistical challenge. However, the failure to plan, fund and execute sophisticated analyses of monitoring data and then to use the results to improve monitoring methods, can also be attributed to the failure of professional ecologists, conservation practitioners and bureaucrats to work effectively together. In this paper, we offer constructive advice about how all parties involved can help to change this situation. We use three case studies of recent monitoring projects from our own experience to illustrate ways in which the disconnect between science and bureaucracy can be bridged and some obstacles to collecting and analysing ecologically meaningful data sets can be overcome. We urge a continuing discussion on this issue and hope to stimulate a change in the culture of conservation monitoring in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rapid changes made on U.S. climate change policies and regulations under the Trump administration for the past 22 months since his inauguration in January 2017. Policy changes are made on a wide range of climate‐related programs: Paris Agreement, Green Climate Fund, Clean Power Plan, CAFÉ automobile emission standards, arctic drilling, methane rule, and farm animal emissions. This paper discusses that Trump effects will soon be observed by several empirical indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has had a significant impact on rain-fed agricultural production in developing countries. Smallholder farmers are the most vulnerable, and currently must make production decisions in a high risk and uncertain environment with regard to rainfall and temperature. This paper uses climate and household survey data to analyse farmer perceptions regarding climate change, adaptation measures taken in response to these changes, and how well these perceptions correlate with meteorological data in Kenya. We find that a significant number of farmers perceive climate change as real, and that they are particularly concerned about changes in rainfall and temperature. Changing crop varieties is predominantly used as an adaptation measure since extension messages often encourage adoption of drought-resistant varieties. Major factors influencing farmer perceptions include age of the farmer, which is often associated with more farming experience and subsequent extension service. Except in low potential zones, farmers' perceptions of climatic variability are in line with climatic data records. Better education, access to extension messages, farm size and credit facilities are necessary for farmers to decide to adapt to climate change. The paper further assesses barriers to the adoption of various adaptation strategies, and lack of finances and knowledge have been found to inhibit adaptation response within the smallholder farming sector. Findings imply that effective adaptation to threats posed by climate variability and change requires a multi-dimensional collaborative approach, with different stakeholders playing key roles in providing support services in terms of education, extension, credit and meteorological information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change is perhaps the most serious problem the world faces. Despite its severity, mainstream economic approaches to addressing the problem fail to get to the root cause — the capitalist global economy — falling instead for ‘the Midas Effect’, the notion that ecological values can be converted into economic values. Here we highlight the severity of the global climate crisis, which requires that atmospheric carbon levels be reduced (to 350 ppm), and explain how capitalism is the primary driving force behind this crisis. We argue that to address this problem properly, nothing less than an ecological revolution is required, where we replace the current capitalist system with one based on meeting human needs in a sustainable way, not furthering capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]