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Until recently, corporations have taken mostly reactive positions on climate change by applying mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to imminent political or actual physical risks to their businesses. Few corporations have taken a proactive, opportunity-seeking strategic approach to improve competitiveness over and above the mitigation and adaptation requirements set by policymakers, industry norms, or shifting consumer preferences. Considering that the climate change discussion no longer focuses on whether human activities have an impact on the changing climate, or how much impact they have, corporations should now focus on how to maximize competitiveness based on the actual and predicted climate change effects. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The complexity of climate information, particularly as related to climate scenarios, impacts, and action alternatives, poses significant challenges for science communication. This study presents a geographic visualization approach involving lay audiences to address these challenges. VisAdapt (TM) is a web-based visualization tool designed to improve Nordic homeowners understanding of climate change vulnerability and to support their adaptive actions. VisAdapt is structured to enable individual users to explore several climate change impact parameters, including temperature and precipitation, for their locations and to find information on specific adaptation measures for their house types and locations. The process of testing the tool included a focus group study with homeowners in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden to assess key challenges in geographic visualization, such as the level of interactivity and information. The paper concludes that geographic visualization tools can support homeowners climate adaptation processes, but that certain features, such as downscaled climate information are a key element expected by users. Although the assessment of interactivity and data varied both across countries and user experience, a general conclusion is that a geographic visualization tool, like VisAdapt, can make climate change effects and adaptation alternatives tangible and initiate discussions and collaborative reflections. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Funding Agencies|Norden Top-level Research Initiative sub-programme "Effect studies and adaptation to climate change"

Climate change determines the retreat of ice. This has created a huge access to petroleum, attracting strong interest by some states, especially energy hungry-countries and increasing competition between states, resulting in tension and threats, even military ones. Climate change has, therefore, to be perceived as a threat to international peace and security. However, recognition of the nexus between climate change, human security and conflicts in the prism of international law and politics is weak, leading to a difficulty institutions have for regulating and governing this nexus. Climate change can thus be considered as threat-multiplier, something that can exacerbate existing tensions, and the resolution of this threat will be the most difficult task to achieve where adaptation takes place in fragile and vulnerable areas, such as the Arctic, an area which is highly exposed to environmental risks and uncertainty. The region is populated by one of the most vulnerable groups, the indigenous people, such as the Inuit of the Arctic with low adaptive capacity compared to the pace of change. In the Arctic Environmental Ocean governance, access to natural resources, the potential of navigability, extension of maritime borders, and the desire of some states to extend their jurisdiction, all depict a situation of criss-crossing potential conflicts that could escalate and should, therefore, be perceived as “tinderboxes”. This article relatedly explores the existing legal framework in the case of the Arctic environmental ocean to provide effective and legitimate governance for a peaceful and “stable space” to prevent threats from both Arctic and non-Arctic states. It will be shown that Arctic Environmental Ocean activities need multi-level governance (global, regional, national and local) and that Arctic environmental security challenges cannot be addressed without a broader holistic vision. The article treat the United Nations regulatory level and how it could support many issues which have an impact on Arctic Environmental Ocean governance, and the Law on the Sea. Methodologically, the way to increase effectiveness to maintain and stabilize the Arctic environmental ocean governance entails that “stability” is achieved by integrating elements of climatology, international law, political science and agent based modelling to act in a preventative way to protect the Arctic environmental ocean and its societies and formulate effective policies. The conclusion led on how the current Arctic environmental ocean framework could be changed in order to increase effectiveness by incorporating risk analysis into a universal equation based model to redesign a new regulatory package at United Nations level and recommend changes at institutional level.

Climate change communication on anticipated impacts and adaptive responses is frequently presented as an effective means to facilitate implementation of adaptation to mitigate risks to residential buildings. However, it requires that communication is developed in a way that resonates with the context of the target audience, provides intelligible information and addresses perceived barriers to adaptation. In this paper we reflect upon criteria for useful climate change communication gained over a three year development process of a web-based tool – VisAdapt™ – aimed at increasing the adaptive capacity among Nordic homeowners. Based on the results from continuous user-testing and focus group interviews we outline lessons learned and key aspects to consider in the design of tools for communicating complex issues such as climate change effects and adaptive response measures. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article.

The impact of climate change in the Arctic Ocean such as ice melting and ice retreat facilitatesnatural resources extraction. Arctic fossil fuel becomes the drivers of geopolitical changes in theArctic Ocean. Climate change facilitates natural resource extractions and increases competitionbetween states and can result in tensions, even military ones. This article investigates through apolitical and legal analysis the role of China as an emerging regulatory sea power in the ArcticOcean given its assertive “energy hungry country behaviour” in the Arctic Ocean. The United NationsConvention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Arctic Council (AC) are taken into considerationunder climate change effects, to assess how global legal frameworks and institutionscan deal with China’s strategy in the Arctic Ocean. China’s is moving away from its role as “humblepower” to one of “informal imperialistic” resulting in substantial impact on the Arctic and Antarticdynamism. Due to ice-melting, an easy access to natural resources, China’s Arctic strategy in theArctic Ocean has reinforced its military martitime strategy and has profoundly changed its maritimemilitary doctrine shifting from regional to global in the context of UNCLOS. In particular, it iswondered, what China understands about the public order dimension of UNCLOS. The article concludesthat despite China’ assertive behaviour towards the Arctic environmental ocean and its rise as global sea power, for the time being, China cannot be considered as a variable for Arctic securityas there are no sufficient legal and policy objective elements to adduct that it constitutes athreat to Artic ocean security.

In a global context, the outlook for the Nordic region is relatively favourable, given its relatively stronger resiliency to climate change impacts in comparison to many other geo-political regions of the world. Overall, the projected climatic changes include increases in mean temperatures and in precipitation, although regional variations can be significant. The countries’ robust institutions and economies give them a strong capacity to adapt to these changes. Still, the need for adaptation to the changing climate has been and still is substantial, and in most of the region, there has been progress on the issue. This paper explores the potential for Nordic cooperation on adaptation; specifically, for the development of a regional adaptation strategy. In particular, it addresses two questions (1) What is the current state of adaptation in the Nordic countries? and (2) What are the potential benefits and weaknesses of a Nordic strategy for adaptation? In order to answer these two questions, this paper examines reviews the current national adaptation policies of each Nordic country and discusses the challenges facing a Nordic strategy and finally assesses the potential for common Nordic adaptation policy and further cooperation.

Collective actions of stakeholders are required for fulfilling the climate commitments of the Kyoto protocol. The insurance sector's global influence and societal impact is fairly well documented. The sector influences societies based on its interaction with stakeholders, on its products, business and political stance. As such, it is a critical actor in facilitating key climate change actions of mitigation and adaptation, and has already been recognized as a leading sector in terms of climate adaptation. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of non-life insurers in fulfilling the climate commitments of the Kyoto Protocol. This paper is based on a case study on Nordic non-life insurance companies. The study documents that Nordic insurers are responding to climate-related threats and opportunities in a strategic manner by reducing their own impacts, through their core activities, and by influencing others to act. Although Nordic insurers do not classify their actions into mitigation and adaptation, but classify them according to their core activities, they demonstrate through actions their role as potential allies for nations in fulfilling the Kyoto protocol climate commitments. The study also reveals that the commercial reality of the industry is not the same as the expected contribution to climate commitments, for instance as specified in international conventions and treaties and in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and industry reports.

This review paper focuses on an important new question: how can climate change affect maritime and other cities of Southeast Asia, and what challenges and possible responses can be identified based on historical and current regional policies and action, especially with regard to air pollution? This review was undertaken as part of the ISDP and ISEAS sponsored initiative: Regional Cooperation in Environmental Protection: Lessons from Two Regions (EU and ASEAN). We examined the cases of the EU and ASEAN policies for the protection of air quality from a scientific practitioner’s point of view. We seek to ascertain if ASEAN can respond to regional human-induced environmental problems given existing problems of national sovereignty and the interest-based character of ASEAN-type associations, since ASEAN’s goal, in contrast to that of the EU, has been regional cooperation rather than regional integration. Both regions are responding differently to climate change and the global economic and environmental realities resulting from, or arising in reaction to, their policies (or lack thereof ). While the EU and ASEAN can and should learn from one another and their relations have been the subject of studies (see for example), there are still challenges to be addressed to effectively drive improvement of critical regional (air) pollution issues that may ultimately impact health and productivity. Each regional organization has in its own manner made exemplary efforts towards resolving environmental degradation within its own region and taken efforts to make a positive international impact, but there is still the need for international treaties and more local efforts to empower the regional visions. Our aim is to highlight the status of the respective policy frameworks and exemplify areas in which we can learn from one another in the field of air pollution, given its global relevance for climate change. We conclude by suggesting a strategic summary framework for future action. This paper is not meant to be a history of either EU or ASEAN policy; for this, the reader is referred instead to appropriate literature, most notably the EU Environmental Policy Handbook, especially the air quality chapter (3) with excellent background information on European Atmospheric Environment Policy.