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The current challenges that society faces call for actions fostering climate change adaptation and long-term sustainability grounded in effective policies. Consequently, to raise environmental resilience and sustain human wellbeing, we need to overhaul the policy-making process towards a ‘holistic approach’. The nexus approach has proven a valuable tool for identifying gaps and incoherencies in current policies, for understanding major interlinkages across sectors and scales, and for promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, a ‘silo approach’ to decision making currently prevails, thus achieving cross-sectoral and cross-scale harmonization still remains a challenge in policy-making. In response to this challenge, the next step in the science–policy–practice interface is to integrate the nexus approach in the ‘climate services’ arena, in order to support integrated policies. Climate services embody a bridge between researchers and stakeholders, and by supporting integrated policies they will ensure synergies between sectors and scales, reduce potential trade-offs, and enable co-benefits.

Reducing the electricity consumption of buildings is an important lever in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, for privacy and other reasons, there is a lack of data on building electricity consumption. As a consequence, data-driven tools that support decision-makers in this area are scarce. To address this problem, we present an innovative approach to modeling building electricity consumption that relies exclusively on publicly available aerial and street view images. We evaluate our approach in a case study based on real world data from Gainesville, Florida. The results show that our model can predict electricity consumption about as well as conventional models, which are trained on commonly used features that are typically not publicly available at a large scale. Furthermore, our model achieves 68% of the potential accuracy improvements of a model that relies on an extensive set of fine-grained tabular features. Spatially aggregating the predictions from the level of buildings to areas of up to 1km 2 further improves the results.

The 2015 Paris Agreement is falling short of its aspirations, as signatory countries are struggling to implement the policies required to meet the targets. The global scenario framework formed by the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) places little emphasis on the dynamics of climate policy implementation. Social science approaches to understanding these dynamics are not well-integrated into climate scenario research. We apply an implementation research approach to analyse the transition to clean energy in the US and China, as well as two examples from Europe–Germany and Spain–which have shown markedly diverging implementation trajectories. We propose four implementation scenarios (ISs) for clean energy worldwide which relate to different configurations of actors in the policy system. These are: (1) Civil Society Takes Control (IS1)–where ideologically opposed governments are marginalised by citizens and forward-thinking investors; (2) Strong-arm Transition (IS2)–where a single party state drives the transition without the involvement of civil society; (3) Systemic Limits (IS3)–which highlights the need to focus on the whole energy system, not just renewables; and (4) Renewable Austerity (IS4)–where an economic downturn offers powerful anti-transition actors the opportunity to advocate removal of support for climate mitigation, as they did after the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This scenario could be repeated as countries seek to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Our study offers a framework for structured analysis of real-world constraints faced by implementing actors, which we argue is urgently needed to help national and international policy makers achieve climate goals. Key policy insights The world is struggling to implement the Paris Agreement, partly because the complex dynamics of climate policy implementation are poorly understood. Social science approaches to understanding these dynamics are not well-integrated into climate scenario research. Implementation research focussing on the actors and context provides a useful framework for analysis of implementation efforts from major global carbon emitters. The approach offers new and distinctive scenario narratives that go beyond Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). These new scenarios can help policy makers evaluate likely outcomes of climate policy implementation based on information about actors and context. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In recent decades, rapid economic growth and urbanization have driven significant livelihood transitions in rural China, which raised diverse climate and environmental impacts. This study investigated the impacts of such livelihood transitions on rural households’ carbon footprint at the Three Gorges Reservoir area in West China during the period of 1978–2016. By random sampling surveys, a total of 422 households were interviewed in September 2016 and March 2017. Our results show that: 1) The vast majority of households shifted their livelihood strategies from pure agriculture to industry and/or commerce. 2) Household incomes generally became more diverse and were increasingly generated from non-agricultural sectors. 3) Changes of the carbon footprint of the surveyed households indicated a significant transformation from net carbon emission (1494.789 tons) in 1978 to net carbon sequestration (2631.85 tons) in 2016, which was contributed mainly by general shifts of rural livelihood styles and government policies (e.g. the Grain for Green policy). Accordingly, to promote a low-carbon rural development at the study area and possibly beyond, we suggest political strategies to encourage voluntary and flexible farmland utilization, promote capital investments in agriculture mechanization, improve rural infrastructures, upscaling agricultural technical training, and continue and specialize the “Grain for Green” policy at suitable locations.

South-east Spain is a drought prone area, characterized by climate variability and water scarcity. The Jucar River Basin, located in Eastern Spain, has suffered many historical droughts with significant socio-economic impacts. For nearly a hundred years, the institutional and non-institutional strategies to cope with droughts have been successful through the development of institutions and partnerships for drought management including multiple actors. In this paper, we show how the creation and institutionalisation of Multi-Sector Partnerships (MSPs) has supported the development of an efficient drought management. Furthermore, we analyze the performance of one of the suggested instruments by the partnership related to drought management in the basin. Two methodologies are used for these purposes. On one hand, the Capital Approach Framework to analyze the effectiveness of the governance processes in a particular partnership (Permanent Drought Commission), which aims to highlight the governance strength and weakness of the MSP for enhancing drought management in the Jucar River Basin. Through a dynamic analysis of the changes that the partnership has undergone over time to successfully deal with droughts, its effectiveness on drought management is demonstrated. On the other hand, an econometric approach is used to analyze the economic efficiency of the emergency drought wells as one of the key drought mitigation measures suggested by the Permanent Drought Commission and implemented. The results demonstrate the potential and efficiency of applying drought wells as mitigation measures (significant reduction of economic losses, around 50 M€ during the drought period, 2005–2008).

To design smart cities or communities, it is important to realize good practices and integrated concepts related to smart buildings, mobility, and their interactions. Emerging information technologies, as well as those already implemented in cities, are driving significant change on people, communities, and living environments. In this chapter, we illustrate various existing ambitious projects on smart buildings (Vancouver, Canada), smart mobility (Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Vienna, Austria), climate-smart city design (Riga, Latvia), and building and mobility integrated spatiotemporally detail urban carbon mapping (Tokyo, Japan).

The water-energy-land nexus requires long-sighted approaches that help avoid maladaptive pathways to ensure its promise to deliver insights and tools that improve policy-making. Climate services can form the foundation to avoid myopia in nexus studies by providing information about how climate change will alter the balance of nexus resources and the nature of their interactions. Nexus studies can help climate services by providing information about the implications of climate-informed decisions for other economic sectors across nexus resources. First-of-its-kind guidance is provided to combine nexus studies and climate services. The guidance consists of ten principles and a visual guide, which are discussed together with questions to compare diverse case studies and with examples to support the application of the principles.

Citizen-driven Renewable Energy (RE) projects of various kinds, known collectively as community energy (CE), have an important part to play in the worldwide transition to cleaner energy systems. On the basis of evidence from 8 European countries, we investigate CE, over approximately the last 50 years (c.1970–2018), through the lens of Social Innovation (SI). We carry out a detailed review of literature around the social dimension of renewable energy; we collect, describe and map CE initiatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK; and we unpack the SI concept into 4 operational criteria which we suggest are essential to recognizing SI in CE. These are: (1) Crises and opportunities; (2) the agency of civil society; (3) reconfiguration of social practices, institutions and networks; (4) new ways of working. We identify three main phases of SI in CE. The environmental movements of the 1960s and the “oil shocks” of the 1970s provided the catalyst for a series of innovative societal responses around energy and self-sufficiency. A second wave of SI relates to the mainstreaming of RE and associated government support mechanisms. In this phase, with some important exceptions, successful CE initiatives were mainly confined to those countries where they were already embedded as innovators in the previous phase. The third phase of CE innovation relates to the societal response to the Great Recession that began in 2008 and lasted most of the subsequent decade. CE initiatives formed around this time were also strongly focused around democratization of energy and citizen empowerment in the context of rising energy prices, a weak economy, and a production and supply system dominated by excessively powerful multinational energy firms. CE initiatives today are more diverse than at any time previously, and are likely to continue to act as incubators for pioneering initiatives addressing virtually all aspects of energy. However, large multinational energy firms remain the dominant vehicle for delivery of the energy transition, and the apparent excitement in European policy circles for “community energy” does not extend to democratization of energy or genuine empowerment of citizens.

© 2015, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Understanding how the vulnerability of agricultural production to climate change can differ spatially has practical significance to sustainable management of agricultural systems worldwide. Accordingly, this study developed a conceptual framework to assess the agricultural vulnerability of 243 rural counties on the Chinese Loess Plateau. Indicators representing the climate/agriculture interface were selected to describe exposure and sensitivity, while stocks of certain capitals were used to describe adaptive capacity. A vulnerability index for each county was calculated and the spatial distribution was mapped. Results showed that exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity occur independently, with most contributing indicator values concentrated in a narrow range after normalization. Within the 49 most vulnerable counties, which together encompass 81 % of the vulnerability index range, 42 were characterized by high exposure and sensitivity but low adaptive capacity. The most vulnerable area was found to be located in the central northeast–southwest belt of Loess Plateau. Adaptation measures for both ecological restoration and economic development are needed and potential adaptation options need further investigation.

International audience; Assessing the dynamics of resilience could help insurers and governments reduce the costs of climate-risk insurance schemes and secure future insurability in the face of an increase in extreme hydro-meteorological events related to climate change.

Significance Achieving a rapid global decarbonization to stabilize the climate critically depends on activating contagious and fast-spreading processes of social and technological change within the next few years. Drawing on expert elicitation, an expert workshop, and a review of literature, which provides a comprehensive analysis on this topic, we propose concrete interventions to induce positive social tipping dynamics and a rapid global transformation to carbon-neutral societies. These social tipping interventions comprise removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivizing decentralized energy generation, building carbon-neutral cities, divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels, revealing the moral implications of fossil fuels, strengthening climate education and engagement, and disclosing greenhouse gas emissions information., Safely achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement requires a worldwide transformation to carbon-neutral societies within the next 30 y. Accelerated technological progress and policy implementations are required to deliver emissions reductions at rates sufficiently fast to avoid crossing dangerous tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. Here, we discuss and evaluate the potential of social tipping interventions (STIs) that can activate contagious processes of rapidly spreading technologies, behaviors, social norms, and structural reorganization within their functional domains that we refer to as social tipping elements (STEs). STEs are subdomains of the planetary socioeconomic system where the required disruptive change may take place and lead to a sufficiently fast reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The results are based on online expert elicitation, a subsequent expert workshop, and a literature review. The STIs that could trigger the tipping of STE subsystems include 1) removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivizing decentralized energy generation (STE1, energy production and storage systems), 2) building carbon-neutral cities (STE2, human settlements), 3) divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels (STE3, financial markets), 4) revealing the moral implications of fossil fuels (STE4, norms and value systems), 5) strengthening climate education and engagement (STE5, education system), and 6) disclosing information on greenhouse gas emissions (STE6, information feedbacks). Our research reveals important areas of focus for larger-scale empirical and modeling efforts to better understand the potentials of harnessing social tipping dynamics for climate change mitigation.

There are strong interdependencies between water use in agriculture and energy consumption as water saving technologies can require increased pumping and pressurizing. The Chinese Government includes water efficiency improvement and carbon intensity reduction targets in the 12th Five-Year Plan (5YP. 2011–2015), yet the links between energy use and irrigation modernization are not always addressed in policy targets. Here we build an original model of the energy embedded in water pumping for irrigated agriculture and its related processes. The model is based on the physical processes of irrigation schemes and the implication of technological developments, comprising all processes from extraction and conveyance of water to its application in the field. The model uses data from government sources to assess policy targets for deployment of irrigation technologies, which aim to reduce water application and contribute to adaptation of Chinese agriculture to climate change. The consequences of policy targets involve co-beneficial outcomes that achieve water and energy savings, or trade-offs in which reduced water application leads to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We analyze irrigation efficiency and energy use in four significant provinces and nationally, using scenarios based on the targets of the 12th 5YP. At the national scale, we find that expansion of sprinklers and micro-irrigation as outlined in the 5YP would increase GHG emissions from agricultural water use, however, emissions decrease in those provinces with predominant groundwater use and planned expansion of low-pressure pipes. We show that the most costly technologies relate to trade-offs, while co-benefits are generally achieved with less expensive technologies. The investment cost per area of irrigation technology expansion does not greatly affect the outcome in terms of water, but in terms of energy the most expensive technologies are more energy-intensive and produce more emissions. The results show that water supply configuration (proportion of surface to groundwater) largely determines the potential energy savings from reductions in water application. The paper examines the importance of fertigation and highlights briefly some policy implications.

The challenges China faces in terms of water availability in the agricultural sector are exacerbated by the sector's low irrigation efficiency. To increase irrigation efficiency, promoting modern irrigation technology has been emphasized by policy makers in the country. The overall goal of this paper is to understand the effect of governmental support and economic incentives on the adoption of modern irrigation technology in China, with a focus on household-based irrigation technology and community-based irrigation technology. Based on a unique data set collected at household and village levels from seven provinces, the results indicated that household-based irrigation technology has become noticeable in almost every Chinese village. In contrast, only about half of Chinese villages have adopted community-based irrigation technology. Despite the relatively high adoption level of household-based irrigation technology at the village level, its actual adoption in crop sown areas was not high, even lower for community-based irrigation technology. The econometric analysis results revealed that governmental support instruments like subsidies and extension services policies have played an important role in promoting the adoption of modern irrigation technology. Strikingly, the present irrigation pricing policy has played a significant but contradictory role in promoting the adoption of different types of modern irrigation technology. Irrigation pricing showed a positive impact on household-based irrigation technology, and a negative impact on community-based irrigation technology, possibly related to the substitution effect that is, the higher rate of adoption of household-based irrigation technology leads to lower incentives for investment in community-based irrigation technology. The paper finally concludes and discusses some policy implications.