Don’t blame it on ethnicity: The role of group identities and climate risks in farmer–herder relations in Senegal

The influence of group categorization and common ingroup identity on malevolent creativity, benevolent creativity, and neutral creativity

How climate variations are reflected in root zone storage capacities

Climate change has become a household term in the North and South coastal region of Kenya. The ever increasing temperature conditions and erratic rains have raised concerns among local communities in the region. The changing climatic conditions has affected both man and animal in almost equal measure. Specifically, migration and disappearance of terrestrial animals have been observed. Climate change and biodiversity and specifically terrestrial animals are interrelated. Climate change affects water and pasture which are the lifeblood to terrestrial animals. These animals need water for transport of nutrients and other metabolic processes. They need pasture to acquire nutritional components and for growth and development. Any adverse change on climate therefore affects the animals directly. This paper presents an assessment of the impact of climate change on terrestrial animals. The specific objectives of the paper include: to assess the changing weather and climatic conditions; to document climate change impacts on terrestrial animals, and to explore the strategies put in place by stakeholders to address the problems. The study adopts a descriptive approach including the use of ten local community leaders and conservation agents as key informants to obtain thematic data on terrestrial animals in the selected areas. Four focus group discussions were organized each with ten local community members to give additional information on climate change and terrestrial animals. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented graphically in line with the emerging themes. The study generated knowledge and valuable information to global conservation agents, national governments, policy makers and the academia on climate change and biodiversity and specifically terrestrial animals.

This paper assessed the status of climate smart agriculture (CSA) among VADI farmers in North-central Nigeria using qualitative and quantitative methods in data collection. Two hundred and forty-seven farmers were randomly selected from the study area. Also, focus group discussions were conducted. Data collected were subjected to qualitative analysis and logit regression. The study identified five broad and important practices relevant to CSA in North-central Nigeria, which include: mobility and social networks, adjusting agricultural production systems, diversification on and beyond the farm, farm financial management, and knowledge management and regulations. The determinants of CSA in north-central Nigeria include: farming experience, education, extension, livestock ownership, income, land ownership, household size, credit, land area cultivated, distance to the market and water resources, leadership position, risk orientation, gender, and mass media exposure. Government policies need to support research and development that develops and diffuses the climate-smart technologies to help farmers respond to changes in climatic conditions.

This paper explored the status of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in southeast Nigeria using qualitative and quantitative methods in data collection. One hundred and sixty farmers were selected from the area. Also, focus group discussions were conducted. Data collected were subjected to qualitative analysis and logit regression. The study identified five broad and important practices relevant to CSA in southeast Nigeria, which include: adjusting agricultural production systems, mobility and social networks, farm financial management, diversification on and beyond the farm, and knowledge management and regulations. The determinants of CSA in southeast Nigeria include: education, income, credit, extension, livestock ownership, farming experience, land area cultivated, distance to the market and water resources, leadership position, risk orientation, gender, land ownership, household size, and mass media exposure. Government policies need to support research and development that develops and diffuses the climate-smart technologies to help farmers respond changes in climatic conditions.

Climate change has been occurring at a rapid rate and is being exacerbated by anthropogenic activities that increase global temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO2. This greatly impacts ecosystems worldwide, resulting in more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heat waves and drought. Understanding how ecosystems respond to elevated CO2 is critical for predicting the impacts of climate change on ecosystem processes, such as their ability to sequester carbon. Temperate ecosystems, in particular, are important in mitigating climate change, holding around 20% of the global plant biomass and approximately 10% of the global terrestrial carbon (Bonan, 2008). However, the capacity of these ecosystems to continue sequestering additional carbon dioxide in the future is uncertain when predicted using current terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs). To address this, improved mechanistic representations of ecosystem states and processes under changing climatic conditions are crucial, as well as the initialisation of the models using real-world observations. In this regard, ecosystem-scale experiments, such as Free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments, are extremely useful and powerful tools for improving model predictions and have frequently been used for model-data synthesis and ecosystem analysis (Walker et al, 2015).  In this study, we examined the responses of mature temperate forests to rising atmospheric CO2 and changing climatic conditions using the Ecosystem Demography model (ED2), which is a cohort-based terrestrial biosphere model (TBM). We parameterised the model with data collected from the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research, Free-air CO2 Enrichment (BIFoR FACE) experiment site. As the first study using a TBM at BIFoR, this study analysed the model’s capacity to simulate ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 (+150 ppm above ambient) and extreme weather events such as the European drought of 2022 (Gharun et al, 2024). We ran two simulations and compared model outputs against field measurements of key eco-physiological measurements such as maximum rate of carboxylation, soil moisture, and Net Primary Production (NPP). This study demonstrates the capability and the limitations of the TBM to simulate the responses of a mature temperate forest to elevated CO2 conditions under changing and extreme climatic conditions.  

The five essays of this dissertation combine topics from development and environmental economics. All essays treat the overall topic on how to influence and regulate the production of CO2 emissions. The green house gas CO2 is one of the biggest externalities from human development during the last century. The essays give insight on how changes in local climate conditions affect human wellbeing and what are the potential monetary loses from a rise in average temperature in Latin America. They further analyze the major drivers of CO2 emissions at the household as well as national level and assess how current international climate policy has contributed to reduce CO2 emissions. The last essay gives an overview on how unequal emissions are globally distributed and what will be the future distribution of CO2 emissions when taking different policy scenarios into account. The first essay analyzes how changes in local climatic conditions affect the level of welfare in Latin America. Self reported wellbeing levels are used as a proxy for individual welfare. Subjective wellbeing does not only account for changes in individual income but also for changes in other areas, which determine overall welfare, such as the access to health care or schooling. The study finds that a temperature up to 22 degrees Celsius and rainfall up to 247mm are beneficial for human wellbeing. Higher temperatures or rainfall go in line with welfare loses. A global average warming of 2 degrees Celsius would go in line with welfare loses in Latin America. The second essay analyzes household emissions from consumption, the so-called carbon footprint, in India. The study focuses on the effect of changes in income and the socio- economic composition of the household. A higher household income leads to higher consumption but at the same time the goods, which are consumed change towards lower carbon intensive goods. Still the change in the consumption pattern does not offset the higher carbon footprint due to overall higher consumption rates with rising income. The third essay evaluates how current international climate policy did influence CO2 emissions. Countries with obligations from the Kyoto Protocol did indeed emit on average 6.5% less CO2 than comparable countries with similar income and population growth but without any commitments from Kyoto Protocol. The fourth essay analyzes the main determinant of rising CO2 emissions, namely income. The focus is not on changes in income but on changes in the income distribution within a country and its effect on CO2 emissions. The relationship between carbon dioxide emissions per capita and income inequality is U-shaped: for countries characterized by high income inequality, reductions in income inequality are associated with lower per capita emissions. For less unequal societies, reductions in income inequality are associated with increases in carbon emissions per capita. The fifth essay studies the global distribution of per capita CO2 emissions. The focus is on the effect the energy mix and the sectoral composition have on emission inequality. The decline of heavy manufacturing in OECD countries and the rise of using coal in non- OECD countries led to a decline of global inequality in per capita CO2 emissions. In the long run there is the possibility that emission inequality will rise again. Each essay contributes to the literature in its specific field. They analyze how economic activities (mostly consumption) influence CO2 emissions, which are considered responsible for changes in climatic conditions. At the same time those changes in climatic conditions affect human wellbeing and go in line with monetary loses. National policies such as redistributive policies can have an influence on national CO2 emissions in both directions and have to be well planned. Policies to influence consumption habits towards less CO2 intensive goods could be efficient to regulate CO2 emissions but might only be feasible in richer countries. International climate policies have shown an impact on CO2 emissions among participating countries. International policies can help to get national policies to reduce CO2 emissions on the way.

This paper begins by recounting concerns, raised by various American psychologists regarding psychological consequences of US counterterrorism policies following the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11.) Predictions made by a task force created by the American Psychological Association to consider the likely social effects of US counterterrorism policies have proved accurate. These include not only fear, but widespread crippling panic resulting from vague warnings and lack of suggested actions; discrimination, resulting from increased emphasis on in-group vs. out-group identities; hate crimes against those perceived as members of out-groups, and lack of tolerance for antiwar perspectives. Recent, increasingly radical, changes in policy, such as widespread surveillance of US citizens’ actions and communications by various US agencies, have led to more dire consequences, with many now concerned that the US is at risk of becoming a police state. The combined and interactive effects of earlier and more recent changes in US counterterrorism policies have caused serious, sometimes terrible, consequences. This paper explains how these consequences have become part of a vicious circle: frightened, passive, and unable to collaborate in rational attempts to manage the threat of terrorism, citizens have not begun to consider how to prevent future instances of homegrown terrorism.

A comparative quantitative study on the impact of two of the most important factors threatening fresh water resources (urbanization and climate change) is presented. Using the Soil Conservation Service-Curve Number (SCS-CN) model, the individual impacts of the development of urban areas and the changes in the climatic conditions on several components of the urban hydrological cycle (runoff, initial abstraction with a focus on groundwater recharge from precipitations) are assessed with a daily time step at the scale of Algiers during the period 1987–2016. For the presented case study, it was found that the changes in the climatic conditions impacted all three components of the hydrological cycle with a higher magnitude than the development of the urban area. A strong correlation between groundwater recharge (and runoff) and the climatic conditions is observed. Moreover, it is estimated that potential natural groundwater recharge in constructed areas can be higher than that in non-constructed ones; an aspect that can shift with changes in the climatic conditions (particularly the changes in rainfall intensity and frequency).

Predicting species responses to climate change has become a dynamic field in global change research. A crucial question in this debate is whether-or-not species have been and will be able to respond quickly enough to keep up with changing climatic conditions. Focusing on fossil pollen records and paleoclimatic simulations, this work assesses the change in realized climatic niches (climatic temporal trajectories) of 20 plant taxa over the last 16000 yr, and whether this tracking has been the same for different climatic niche dimensions. Climatic factors showed a consistent trend toward warmer temperatures and higher precipitation. Although the response types varied across taxa, species' realized climatic niches lagged in response to changes in climatic conditions. Temperature niches responded to late Pleistocene (16000-11000 yr ago) climate change, but did so at slower rates than changes in climatic conditions during the same period. In contrast, precipitation niches were relatively stable from 16000 to 11000 yr ago, but still lagged behind changes in climatic conditions. Changes in temperature and precipitation niches eventually stabilized during the Holocene (11000-1000 yr ago). These results underscore how the climatic niche realized at any one moment represents a subset of the climate conditions in which a taxon can persist, particularly during times of fast climatic change. Variability in the rates of temporal trajectories across evaluated climatic variables showed taxa specific responses to changes in climatic conditions over time and emphasizes the need to incorporate variation, intensity, and duration of lag effects in assessments of the possible effects of climatic change.

Relevance of research. At both global and regional levels, climate change has become an indisputable fact, the presence of which has posed to humanity the challenge of solving a number of extremely important and complex tasks related to the development and implementation of a strategy for their practical continued existence. Data base on evaporation and water needs for agricultural crops in the different periods of their growing, depending on the climatic conditions, are the basis for the development of design and formation of operational regimes of water regulation carried out by justifying the necessary methods of water regulation, types, structures and modes of operation of hydro-reclamation systems and calculation of their parameters. Aim of the study is to estimate the changes in water needs during crop cultivation on the drained lands of the Western Polissya in Ukraine in the variable climatic, agricultural and ameliorative conditions for the substantiation of appropriate adaptive decisions to it. To achieve this goal, the authors evaluated the weather and climate conditions in the Western Polissya in Ukraine and calculated the evaporation in the studied conditions, planned and carried out a large-scale computer experiment, based on a complex of predictive-simulation models concerning the basic regimes and technological variables of the hydro-reclamation system parameters, climate conditions, water regime, water regulation technologies and the productivity of drained lands for the schematized natural, agricultural and ameliorative conditions. Research methods. The research methods were based on the application of system theory along with the systematic approach, system analysis and modeling oriented on widespread use of computers and related software in developing modern approaches to the substantiation of technical and technological solutions for water regulation on the drained lands in the conditions of climate change. The object of the study is the drainage system “Birky” in Rivne region, typical for the region in relation to the natural land reclamation conditions. Results of the study and the main conclusions. It was established the needs for additional irrigation of cultivated crops on the drained lands of the Western Polissya in Ukraine in the current weather and climatic conditions. Based on the long-term forecast the vegetative values of the total evaporation and the formation of water needs for the drained lands in the variable climatic, agricultural land reclamation conditions were determined. The technological efficiency of different technologies of the irrigation on the drained lands was evaluated. This approach to the estimation of changes in water needs during crop cultivation in the variable climatic, agricultural and ameliorative conditions allows determining the best technology of water regulation for growing a particular crop under the studied conditions in terms of the most rational use of water resources and the efficiency of system functioning. Prospects. The obtained results can be effectively used for justification of regime and technological decisions in the projects of construction and reconstruction of hydro-reclamation systems of the Western Polissya in Ukraine in the variable climate conditions and developing hydro-technical adaptive measures to the predicted climate change in the region.

Characterizing the role of socioeconomic pathways in shaping future urban heat-related challenges

This paper presents research outcomes from an investigation into climate change and urban impacts on climate development in urban regions of the Baltic Sea coast. The cities considered were Rostock and Stockholm, and their surrounding regions. The objectives were: 1) to determine whether significant changes in temperature and precipitation have occurred and, if so, to what extent; and 2) to establish whether there is a noticeable urban heat island effect in Stockholm and the medium-sized city of Rostock. Climatic trends were detected by linear regression and the MannKendall test. Different precipitation trends were detected over the whole period of observation. Average annual temperatures increased significantly in both case studies, particularly from the 1970s with highest trends in winter and lowest in autumn (Rostock) and summer (Stockholm). Although changes in temperature extremes were detected for both regions, no overall long-term trend for precipitation extremes was observed. The average temperature in the city of Rostock (Stockholm) was approximately 0.3˚C to 0.6˚C (1.2˚C) higher than in the surrounding rural areas had seasonal variations, with maxima in the warm season. The main outcomes were that significant changes in climatic conditions, particularly temperature patterns, have been occurring in the case study regions since the 1980s, and that there is a considerable urban heat island effect in both Stockholm and Rostock. This could encourage urban planners to consider specific climatic conditions and small-scale climatic influences also in relatively small coastal urban conglomerates in mid latitudes which can follow from land use changes.

Chapter 6 - Seed priming: state of the art and new perspectives in the era of climate change

Anthropogenic climate change, driven by elevated levels of greenhouse gases, is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, causing significant changes in climatic and biogeochemical conditions. The adverse effects of climate change include detrimental impacts on natural and managed ecosystems, as well as on socio-economic systems, human health, and welfare. Recognising the urgent need to address these challenges, the IRISCC (Integrated Research Infrastructure Services for Climate Change Risks) project aims to provide scientific and knowledge-based services to support societal adaptation to climate change. The project is funded by the European Union under grant agreement No 101131261 (HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions in Research Infrastructure Programme topic HORIZON- INFRA-2023-SERV-01-01) and has over 70 partners providing research services.For the researchers focusing on climate change risks, IRISCC will offer services, such as open data and access to research platforms via transnational access and virtual access programs. Here IRISCC employs an integrated approach to understanding climate change risks, encompassing hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, the project strives to support science enabling all users of IRISCC services to better predict, mitigate, and adapt to climate-related risks affecting human and natural systems. The project's overarching mission is to facilitate in-depth knowledge production on climate change risks and accelerate the translation of scientific knowledge into innovative solutions.The IRISCC consortium comprises expertise from several research infrastructures, covering domains such as Earth systems, health and environment, and social sciences, each bringing in their research service portfolios. Through inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, the project aims to provide transnational and virtual access to cutting-edge research, innovation, training, and digital services. In summary, the IRISCC project aligns with the session's focus on systems thinking approaches, presenting a comprehensive strategy supporting users to tackle the interconnected issues of climate-related hazards, risks, and impacts. The commitment of the project to provide integrated research infrastructure services positions it as a key player in advancing our ability to predict, mitigate, and adapt to the multifaceted challenges posed by climate change in European regions and cities.