Atmospheric and Earth System Modeling towards Coordinated Pollution Control and Climate Change Mitigation

Research on climate change has increased significantly since the 1970s. There has also been a particular focus on Africa, given its vulnerability to climate change impacts and its urbanization trends that may have massive implications for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Despite the wealth of publications on climate change in Africa, there is a lack of review studies that highlight the overall research landscape. If this status of climate research is clarified, African countries can better deal with climate change. Hence, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the status and trends of research on climate change adaptation and mitigation in Africa. Our review, straddling from 1990 to late 2021, recognizes the foundations that underpin climate change adaptation and mitigation literature. Based on keywords associated with Africa's climate change adaptation and mitigation, we undertook bibliometric research by collecting 3,316 related SCI/SSCI articles. In addition, we provided a thematic evolution over three decades, compartmentalized into four sub-periods (1990–2007; 2008–2014; 2015–2019; 2020–2021). Priority research topics and themes have been dynamic over time, with some core concepts receiving more attention (vulnerability, food, water, and energy security). Although the number of published articles exhibited a rapidly growing trend, their distribution is extremely uneven. Articles were mainly published by institutions from certain parts of the continent, with the University of Cape Town, making the highest contribution. About 72% of the existing studies focused on climate change adaptation, while climate change mitigation was less represented with 22%. The results also showed that researchers have examined not all African countries. South Africa, Ethiopia, and Ghana are hot spots, while most countries are largely neglected. Africa and African countries need to improve their future research ability on climate change mitigation. Assessing climate change risks and measures in African countries should be prioritized.

Climate Change (CC) paired with the rapidly growing world population call for new approaches to land management that are both sustainable and accommodate the complex interactions between social systems and environment. To this end, it is important not only to mitigate CC by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but also to adapt to the changing environmental conditions Agriculture, forestry and other land uses are responsible for almost a quarter (24%) of global anthropogenic GHG emissions (IPCC, 2014) and hence have a high potential for both CC mitigation and adaptation. Additionally agriculture and forests coexist in the same landscape and are deeply interlinked. Agriculture is central in CC discourses not only because it`s the largest driver of deforestation and forest degradation (Hosonuma, 2012) but also because it`s the sector that is highly impacted by CC, which most often results in a decline in agriculture yield. This highlights the need of innovation towards adaptive agriculture, entailing higher production with fewer inputs. Forests are important because they play a major role in CC mitigation, via carbon storage in their biomass, and in providing ecosystem services that are crucial for agriculture, such as water, pollination and control of pests and diseases. The recognition of interlinkages amongst forests, agriculture and other land uses led to a new line of thinking: the "Climate--Smart Landscape" (CSL) approach (Scherr et al., 2012; CSL is an integrated, landscape--level approach that widens the scope from the farm level to the landscape level, allowing analyses of landscape dynamics that lead to deforestation and assess the trades--off between land uses "Landscape" is defined here in broad conceptual terms: rather than being simply a physical space, it represents a complex system with mutually interacting social, biophysical, human ecological and economic dimensions Additionally, CSL emphasizes stakeholder involvement and simultaneous achievement of multiple objectives (Sunderland, 2012) including food security, Ecosystem conservation, rural livelihoods, CC mitigation and adaptation. The transition to CSL relies upon effective policies and the involvement of stakeholders in different layers of governance, such as policy makers, local farmers, researchers, NGOs and agribusiness companies. Additionally, effective CSL rely upon communication and social learning among these stakeholders. It`s based upon national policies that take into account drivers of deforestation and forest degradation (DD) and upon regional policies that take into account how local stakeholders make land use decisions: without such understanding policies are unlikely to be effective. Moreover, a shift towards CSL relies upon the organization aspect of innovation: CSA adoption, as any other innovation is not only based upon technical knowledge, but also social learning and social organization. Such learning also contributes to promote adaptive capacity, which is based upon continuous learning by doing and trial and error. Additionally CSL can be supported by collective action: a shift towards CSL cannot be achieved by a single individual but it relies upon collaboration among different stakeholders. Despite the interlinkages of forests and agriculture and their role in CC mitigation and adaptation, these sectors have been managed by different initiatives in the policy arena. In particular, two initiatives gained attention to enable CC adaptation and mitigation. The first one is the United Nations Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+). REDD+ is a potentially powerful vehicle for stimulating developing countries to practise mitigation by reducing GHG emissions and also to implement adaptation measures through sustainable forest management. REDD+ incorporates safeguards as well, such as requirements for transparency, participation, protection of biodiversity and the rights of local people (UNFCCC, 2011). The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) emphasizes that co--benefits should be promoted while implementing REDD+ and that 'the needs of local and indigenous communities should be addressed' (UNFCCC, 2007: 8). Although REDD+ is increasingly acknowledging the importance to address drivers of DD, its emphasis is mainly on CC mitigation and forest preservation rather than CC adaptation. The second one is Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) initiative, initiated by FAO with the aim of achieving the triple wins of CC mitigation, adaptation and food security. CSA involves the use of 'climate--smart' farming techniques to produce crops or livestock, which could help lowering deforestation for agricultural use as well as enhancing productivity, build resilience to CC and mitigate the GHG emissions (Meybeck, 2013). Although CSA represents a step forward towards greater integration of adaptation and mitigation, its emphasis in practice is mainly on agricultural goals and CC adaptation (Graham, 2012) rather than on CC mitigation goals.

Modular construction (MC) is a promising concept with the potential to revolutionize the construction industry (CI). The sustainability aspects of MC, among its other encouraging facets, have garnered escalated interest and acclaim among the research community, especially in the context of climate change (CC) mitigation efforts. Despite numerous scholarly studies contributing to the understanding of MC, a holistic review of the prevailing literature that systematically documents the impact of utilizing MC on CC mitigation remains scarce. The study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) of the pertinent literature retrieved from the Scopus repository to explore the relationship between MC and CC mitigation. Employing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, the SLR was conducted on 31 shortlisted articles published between 2010 and 2023. The findings of the study reveal that MC can mitigate the climate crisis by reducing GHG emissions, curtailing resource intensiveness by enabling a circular economy (CE), fomenting energy efficiency, and fostering resourceful land use and management in the CI. A conceptual framework based on the findings of the previous literature is proposed in this study, which outlines several strategies for CC mitigation that can be implemented by the adoption of MC in the CI. The current study is a humble effort to review various offerings of MC to help mitigate CC in the era of striving for global sustainability. For industry practitioners and policymakers, this study highlights the viability of leveraging MC for CC mitigation, aiming to inspire better decision making for sustainable development in the CI. Similarly, for researchers, it presents MC as a potential tool for CC mitigation that can be further explored in terms of its associated factors, and focused frameworks can be developed.


 East Kalimantan Province is very vulnerable to climate change, so it needs policies and strategies in managing climate change impacts through adaptation and mitigation actions. So it is necessary to stipulate local regulations on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Management of climate change in East Kalimantan is one of the local government's efforts in providing guarantees to the community to get a quality living environment. The purpose of this community service activity is to provide understanding to residents regarding East Kalimantan Regional Regulation No. 7 of 2019 concerning climate change adaptation and mitigation. The method of implementing this community service activity is in the form of counseling and discussion of East Kalimantan Regional Regulation No. 7 of 2019 concerning climate change adaptation and mitigation.
 
 Based on the results of community service activities related to the extension of East Kalimantan Regional Regulation No. 7 of 2019 regarding climate change adaptation and mitigation, it was concluded that many people still do not know about the regional regulation. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change are not only the responsibility of the Government, but also the responsibility of the DPR. The DPR's climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts can be carried out through the implementation of its three functions, namely the budget function, the supervisory function, and the legislative function. Every stakeholder, including the community, must mitigate and adapt to climate change, because adaptation and mitigation is the key to addressing climate change, which is the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon stocks to reduce the impact of climate change. The active role of the regional government in formulating policies related to climate change is a must, the policy is expected to be a direction for stakeholders in East Kalimantan.

Cutting through the noise on negative emissions

In education for sustainable development, widely regarded as a framework that offers us the opportunity to improve the ways in which we cope with climate change issues, the need for student teachers to express willingness to act in order to deal with numerous issues and challenges of sustainable development, especially climate change, is of particular importance. Therefore, the focus of this study is on the examination of predictors of student teachers’ willingness to act in a climate-change mitigation and adaptation context. For the purpose of this study, measurement instruments of willingness to act in climate change mitigation and adaptation context, attitudes towards climate change, perception of action possibilities in climate change mitigation and adaptation context, interest in climate change and concern for ecological problems were validated. A total of 201 student teachers from the University of Rijeka (Croatia) participated in the study. It was determined that (I) attitudes towards climate change, (II) perception of action possibilities in climate change mitigation and adaptation context and (III) interest in climate change represent significant predictors of willingness to act in climate-change direction and mitigation contexts. Based on the results of this study, recommendations for teacher education in the climate change context have been offered.

Climate change presents the international community with an environmental process that is both challenging to monitor and foresee and requires a complex legal and regulatory framework capable of promoting mitigation and adaptation. In the absence of comprehensive and targeted international climate change legislation, however, some mitigation and adaptation measures are being adopted and implemented through indirect policymaking and regulation. International environmental treaties and customary international environmental laws and principles not specifically focused on climate change may nonetheless indirectly or unintentionally contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts through administration or enforcement of the legal regime. The crucial role that the water cycle plays in climatic processes, however, makes international freshwater and ocean laws and policies a particularly rich source of indirect climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. This chapter analyzes the international legal regimes regulating freshwater resources and ocean and marine resources with an eye toward mechanisms that contribute to – or detract from – climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. I find that potential for regulation of climate change is greatest when treaties are focused on discrete environmental issues such as wetland conservation and pollution from ships, while comprehensive treaties like the Watercourses Convention and the Convention on the Law of the Sea make less tangible contributions to indirect climate change regulation by reinforcing principles of international law that require states to take collective action on international environmental challenges such as climate change.

Urban planning policy must do more to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation actions

Monocultures of crops have created problems and challenges, including damage to soil fertility, reduction of biodiversity, and impact on water resources and pollinators. Increased use of fertilisers and fossil fuels has enhanced climate change, leading to a reduction in farm income. Hence, areview of the literature was conducted to diagnose the significant horticultural and short forestry systems suitable for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The review highlighted that the short forestry systems are mostly practised in developing countries rather than developed countries. Silvi-Horti-pisciculture is a short forestry system where fish, wood, fruits, and annuals are cultivated synergistically. Silvi-Horti-pisciculture with beekeeping offers better ecosystem services such as control and prevention of pollution, food security and environmental sustainability, the protection of biodiversity, and adaptation to climate change in climate change scenarios. The order of significance is: carbon sequestration, nutrient recycling, biodiversity conservation, water conservation, and economies of the different components in the short forestry system, which include fruit trees, timber trees, bees, fish, medicinal plants, flowers, vegetables and crops. In the system of short forestry, the dominant component is fruit trees, where annual vegetables are intercropped. Hortoforestry can be a multifunctional tool for high food production, poverty population reduction, input reduction, water conservation, improved soil quality, biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation. Water bodies (both ground and surface water) have provided importance to hortoforestry, around the world, since the early twentieth century, with the rise of both the global population and society’s consumerism, agriculture has intensified, having a direct impact on the degradation of soils, water, air, natural landscapes and biodiversity. The study concluded that short forestry systems are a possible multifunctional solution for global food security, environmental protection, and mitigation and climate change and adaptation in the wasteland.

Soil degradation is a global threat. Developing countries are more severely affected by soil degradation than developed countries. Ethiopia, one of the developing countries in eastern Africa, is highly threatened by soil degradation problems. The soil degradation problem has had serious consequences in Ethiopia such as occurrence of persistent food insecurity, economic losses and various environmental hazards such as recurrent drought and increases vulnerability of people to the adverse effects of climate variability and change. To overcome these problems, integrated soil and water conservation has been implemented in the country. Thus many studies have been conducted with regards to soil and water conservation which influences soil physical and chemical properties and on climate change adaption and mitigation. Therefore, this review papers was aimed to assess role of soil and water conservation on soil physical and chemical properties and it’s implication to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Different studies showed that soil physical and chemical properties such as Soil texture (sand, silt, clay), Moisture volume (%), FC (%), PWP (%), AWC (%), OC, TN, pH, EC, CEC Ava_P, and Ava_ K, (EB: K + , Ca 2+ , and Mg 2+ ) were improved in different agro ecologies. In addition to this, soil treated with soil and water conservation stored more organic carbon as compared to non treated soil. Soil and water conservation also contributed to improve yield and yield component of crops in areas where serious soil erosion and also in moisture deficit areas. Thus, the studies have been showed that the people’s ability to adopted in climate change. Therefore soil and water conservation could improve soil physical and chemical properties, climate change mitigation and adaptation in the country. Keywords: Adaptation, Mitigation, Phyisco chemical properties, soil and water conservation DOI : 10.7176/JNSR/9-11-04 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

BackgroundRice is a major contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primarily methane, and at the same time will be negatively impacted by regional climate changes. Identifying rice management interventions to reduce methane emissions while improving productivity is, therefore, critical for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and food security. However, it can be challenging to conduct multivariate assessments of rice interventions in the field owing to the intensiveness of data collection and/or the challenges in testing long-term changes in meteorological and climate conditions. Process-based modeling, evaluated against site-based data, provides an entry point for evaluating the impacts of climate change on rice systems and assessing the impacts, co-benefits, and trade-offs of interventions under historical and future climate conditions.MethodsWe leverage existing site-based management data to model combined rice yields, methane emissions, and water productivity using a suite of process-based coupled crop-soil model experiments for 83 growing sites across the Red River Delta, Vietnam. We test three rice management interventions with our coupled crop-soil model, characterized by Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) water management and other principles representing the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Our simulations are forced with historical as well as future climate conditions, represented by five Earth System Models for a high-emission climate scenario centered on the year 2050. We evaluate the efficacy of these interventions for combined climate change mitigation and adaptation under historical and future climate change.ResultsTwo SRI interventions significantly increased yields (one by over 50%) under historical climate conditions while also reducing (or not increasing) methane emissions. These interventions also increase yields under future climate conditions relative to baseline management practices, although climate change decreases absolute yields across all management practices. Generally, where yield improved, so did crop water-use efficiency. However, impacts on methane emissions were mixed across the sites under future climate conditions. Two of the interventions resulted in increased methane emissions, depending on the baseline management point of comparison. Nevertheless, one intervention reduced (or did not significantly increase) methane under both historical and future climate conditions and relative to all baseline management systems, although there was considerable variation across five selected climate models.ConclusionsSRI management principles combined with high-yielding varieties, implemented for site-specific conditions, can serve climate change adaptation and mitigation goals, although the magnitude of future climate changes, particularly warming, may reduce the efficacy of these interventions with respect to methane reductions. Future work should better bracket important sensitivities of coupled crop-soil models and disentangle which management and climate factors drive the responses shown. Furthermore, future analyses that integrate these findings into socio-economic assessment can better inform if and how SRI/AWD can potentially benefit farmer livelihoods now and in the future, which will be critical to the adoption and scaling of these management principles.

Climate change impacts in Missouri State Parks: Perceptions from engaged park users

Canada is recognized as a global leader in sustainable forest management. Canadian forests and the forest sector remain vital pillars of the Canadian economy and home to many rural and remote communities. However, climate change is an existential threat to the sustainability of forests and forest-dependent communities. While both direct and indirect threats posed by climate change to Canada's forest sector are now well understood, our understanding of specific forest practices that have emerged from the body of science to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts is not well documented. Through a review of the scientific and grey literature, this study expands our knowledge and operational gaps associated with implementing climate change adaptation and mitigation practices in Canadian forests. The study found a dearth of literature specifically dedicated to reporting on the type of forest practices currently in use across Canada to address mitigation and adaptation. Most reports or studies were published in 2019 or later, with federal and provincial governments being the dominant actors in reporting and monitoring, research, and funding. Across the 15 terrestrial ecozones in Canada, forest practices linked to climate change were reported in 12 ecozones, with most practices reported in the Montane Cordillera located in western Canada. Common forest practices reported include fuel management, assisted migration, enhanced silvicultural activities, and carbon offset projects. We conclude that climate change adaptation/mitigation practices in Canada are in their early stages of implementation. Many practices remain in experimental stages (e.g., genetic trials) or are implemented at a relatively small scale in Canada (e.g., climate-based seed transfer and carbon reserves). The literature suggests that the most mainstream practices associated with climate change mitigation in Canada include tree planting for carbon sequestration and the designation of protected areas to enhance ecosystem resilience. We conclude that despite increasing reports linking climate change benefits with reported forest practices, the reporting in the scientific literature is scarce, poorly reported, and often not grounded in credible evidence.

What makes a city ‘smart’ in the Anthropocene? A critical review of smart cities under climate change

Climate change is expected to bring new challenges and opportunities for the livelihoods of rural communities in Uganda, where more than 80% of the population depends on rain-fed agriculture. The purpose of this review was to analyze national policies on climate change adaptation, agriculture, forests, management of forested and agroforested landscape ecosystems and their goods and services, and the roles of stakeholders in the national arena. Recognizing the role of forest cover in climate change mitigation and adaptation, this review is based on stakeholder engagement and analysis of published literature on the policy, institutional and socioeconomic drivers of forest cover change around Mount Elgon. The bulk of Uganda’s forests are on land under private ownership and deforestation has occurred mainly in such forests. Several national laws and international conventions ratified by Uganda offer a framework under which forests are managed. Management of protected forests is shared between central and local authorities. Several natural resource policies are likely to have significant unintended impacts that may enable or limit the adaptation of stakeholders and ecosystems to climate change. The current climate change policy, which is an overarching document that addresses climate change in Uganda, suggests that policy responses, either sector specific or crosscutting in nature, be harmonized in order to better address the challenges associated with climate change adaptation and mitigation. This document is an output of a CIFOR-led project, entitled: <b>"Adaptation of people to climate change in East Africa: Ecosystem services, risk reduction and human well-being". (AdaptEA)</b>. This project is being implemented in collaboration with <a href="http://mak.ac.ug/">Makerere University</a>, <a href="http://www.kefri.org/">the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI)</a> and <a href="http://www.worldagroforestry.org/">the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)</a>. Primary funding for this project was provided through a grant from <a href="http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/">the Rockefeller Foundation</a> (2011 CRD 306). Complementary funding was received from two CIFOR-led projects funded by <a href="http://www.ausaid.gov.au/">AusAID</a> (63560) and <a href="https://www.unitar.org/">UNITAR</a> (G.EGP.2011.03). Additional project information and publications are found on the project manager’s staff page, <a href="http://www.cifor.org/scientific-staff-detail/3258/aaron-j-m--russell/">Aaron J.M. Russell</a>.