Should public institutions adopt plant-based diets? Climate duties and shared leadership

Solidarity is a concept increasingly employed in bioethics whose application merits further clarity and explanation. Given how vital cooperation and community-level care are to mitigating communicable disease transmission, we use lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to reveal how solidarity is a useful descriptive and analytical tool for public health scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. Drawing upon an influential framework of solidarity that highlights how solidarity arises from the ground up, we reveal how structural forces can impact the cultivation of solidarity from the top down, particularly through ensuring robust access to important social determinants of health. Public health institutions can support solidarity movements among individuals and communities by adopting a lens of social justice when considering public health priorities and, in turn, promote health equity.

Stabilizing GHG emissions in the agri-food sector is crucial for climate change mitigation. Tea is one of the most consumed drinks worldwide and such high levels of consumption necessitate for the carbon footprint (CF) assessment of its entire life cycle encompassing all six stages such as cultivation, processing, packaging, transportation, consumption and disposal to understand the environmental impact of tea industry at large. In this context, this study is a maiden attempt to quantify and compare CF for the entire life cycle of all three types of tea such as black, green and white tea in a single research paper by employing the life cycle assessment (LCA) method in significant tea growing areas of Tamil Nadu, India. The findings revealed that the consumption stage contributed the highest CO2 emissions, accounting for 45%-56% to overall CF. Black tea consumption contributed 45% (5.8 kg CO2-eq/kg of made tea) of the total CF, while green tea and white tea had higher CF (8.3 kg CO?-eq/kg of made tea), contributing 56% to the total CF. The processing stage was the second largest source, contributing 12-19% to overall CF, followed by packaging (15-17%) and cultivation (10-11%) stages. Overall, the total CF (cradle to grave) for black tea and white tea had a similar value of 12.9 kg CO2-eq/kg of made tea, whereas green tea registered a higher value of 14.79 kg CO2-eq/kg of made tea. Furthermore, this assessment identified hotspots of GHG emissions. It enabled the recommendation of CF reduction measures to promote carbon neutrality in tea sector while being a part of global climate change mitigation efforts.

The study delved into media framing of climate change narratives and mitigation efforts towards Africa. The study selected 30 newspaper articles published between June 2021 to December 2021. Content analysis was used to analyze the framing of climate change narratives against a framework of decolonizing media narratives on climate change. It further discussed climate justice and detailed how communities most impacted by climate change are the least contributors to climate change. The study was guided by the following questions: (a) Who are the humans in the “human activities” in the climate change media narratives? (b) What harms are caused by climate change, and how can those who have created the most harm be called to bear the cost of fixing or making significant amendments? (c) How can the media frame climate change mitigation efforts in a fair, just, and equitable approach?

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.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain the US society’s insignificant mitigation of climate change using Niklas Luhmann’s (1989) autopoietic social systems theory in ecological communication. Specifically, the author’s analysis falls within the context of Luhmann re-moralized while focusing on particular function systems’ binary codes and their repellence of substantive US climate change mitigation policy across systems.Design/methodology/approachThe author achieves this purpose by resituating Luhmann’s conception of evolution to forgo systems teleology and better contextualize the spatial-temporal scale of climate change; reinforcing complexity reduction and differentiation by integrating communication and media scholar John D. Peters’s (1999) “communication chasm” concept as one mechanism through which codes sustain over time; and applying these integrated concepts to prominent the US climate change mitigation attempts.FindingsThe author concludes that climate change mitigation efforts are the amalgamation of the systems’ moral communications. Mitigation efforts have relegated themselves to subsystems of the ten major systems given the polarizing nature of their predominant care/harm moral binary. Communication chasms persist because these moral communications cannot both adhere to the systems’ binary codes and communicate the climate crisis’s urgency. The more time that passes, the more codes force mitigation organizations, activist efforts and their moral communications to adapt and sacrifice their actions to align with the encircling systems’ code.Social implicationsIn addition to the conceptual contribution, the social implication is that by identifying how and why climate change mitigation efforts are subsumed by the larger systems and their codes, climate change activists and practitioners can better tool their tactics to change the codes at the heart of the systems if serious and substantive climate change mitigation is to prevail.Originality/valueTo the author’s knowledge, there has not been an integration of a historical communication concept into, and sociological application of, ecological communication in the context of climate change mitigation.

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

One of the efforts to prevent the effects of climate change was the introduction of the concept of carbon footprints from an early age to students. Science subjects in this school have included elements of environmental knowledge in their subject matter. However, mitigation and adaptation efforts to climate change were still lacking recognition. The purpose of this study was to introduce and measure the extent to which elementary students are able to recognize the concept of carbon footprints and can use a simple carbon footprint calculator application in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. The study was conducted at MIM Kupang Karangdowo Klaten, Central Java. The activity was carried out on February 19, 2020 with the method of lectures, interviews, and simulations, followed by 11 teachers and 21 grade VI students. The flow of activities was divided into 3, namely: (1) counseling/explanation of the carbon cycle, global warming, carbon footprint and carbon footprint calculator, (2) interviews about the student's daily and weekly lifestyle or carbon footprint pattern, (3) socialization of the footprint calculator application carbon and usability observations. The activity ended with a simulation of a carbon footprint calculator for several students. From the study conducted, it can be seen that students are interested in this carbon footprint concept and were technically assessed as being able to use a carbon calculator without significant obstacles.

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.

The relevance of researching on modern management approaches is today´s dynamic labor market’s demand for flexible leadership models, such as shared leadership, to attract talents in companies by meeting employee´s requirements of more participation in management tasks. This paper aims for the investigation of gender and education level related influences on attitudes toward shared leadership and employee satisfaction in a Chinese cultural context for a better understanding of possible limitations of shared leadership. Shared leadership is mainly explored with a focus on its origins in North America, the study of shared leadership in the Chinese culture is underrepresented. This quantitative research is conducted through an online survey, distributed by WeChat, involving 103 Chinese employees, with 39 women and 64 men, 34 years old on average, in a manufacturing work environment to approve the industry relevance. The convenience sampling ensures a high level of trust and data quality of the respondents regarding sensitive information about employee satisfaction and attitude toward shared leadership. Only existing, validated questionnaires were used. The survey regarding employee satisfaction is based on Spector (1985). The survey regarding attitude toward shared leadership is based on Small (2007). The results are evaluated by their means, standard deviations, correlation analysis and multiple correspondence analysis. Statistical analysis is performed by XLSTAT. The first hypothesis (H1), suggesting a clustering effect by gender and education level on shared leadership’s scope, is not significantly confirmed by the correlation analysis. The multiple correspondence analysis raises suspicions about men exhibiting higher employee satisfaction and a more negative attitude toward shared leadership than women. Individuals with a bachelor’s degree tend to display ambivalent attitudes toward shared leadership. The second hypothesis (H2), proposing a positive correlation between attitude toward shared leadership and employee satisfaction, is not confirmed by the correlation analysis. No significant correlation is found among the variables for the entire sample of Chinese respondents. The third hypothesis (H3), proposing an ambivalent attitude of Chinese employees toward shared leadership, is confirmed by the calculated mean score within the survey by Small (2007). There are potential reasons for this ambivalence, e.g. suggesting a conflict between traditional and modern values in China. This paper recommends a deeper understanding of ambivalent employee satisfaction at work to enhance the effectivity and efficiency of planned leadership changes. Tailored leadership training should be designed to align with the preferences of these specific target groups. Future research directions could focus on strategies for persuading team members to embrace a shared leadership approach. Additionally, exploring the reasons behind negative attitudes toward shared leadership paves the way for further research, such as examining potential connections with hierarchical power structures.

Climate change poses a severe threat to Indian agriculture, impacting monsoon patterns, increasing temperatures, and altering pest dynamics. This chapter explores the profound effects of climate change on Indian agriculture and investigates the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in mitigating these challenges. The changing monsoon patterns, rising temperatures, and evolving pest dynamics pose significant risks to crop yields and food production. The role of AI in climate change resilience is examined through strategies such as developing climate-resilient crop varieties, improving water management, adopting sustainable farming practices, and promoting technology adoption. Machine learning algorithms enhance climate models, satellite imagery analysis, and IoT-enabled data analytics for real-time monitoring of crop health and resource usage. Mitigation strategies include climate-resilient crop varieties, enhanced water management through smart irrigation, sustainable farming practices, technology adoption, and climate-adaptive policies. The chapter emphasizes the importance of research, innovation, and collaboration in developing tailored solutions for Indian agriculture's unique challenges. Challenges and opportunities are identified, including financial constraints for small farmers, the need for awareness and education, infrastructure development, and policy coherence. The chapter presents case studies showcasing successful climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives in Indian agriculture, illustrating the positive impact of community-based water management and climate-resilient crop adoption. In conclusion, while climate change poses a significant threat, it also provides an opportunity for transformative change in Indian agriculture. Implementing mitigation and adaptation measures, supported by research, innovation, and well-coordinated policies, can establish a climate-resilient agricultural sector, ensuring food security, preserving livelihoods, and contributing to global climate change mitigation efforts.


 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.

Purpose This study aims to explore how institutions can move beyond traditional leadership approaches to effectively engage their employees. Drawing upon social exchange theory, the research seeks to elucidate the mechanism linking shared leadership with employee work engagement, specifically focusing on the dimensions of vigor and dedication. The study further investigates the mediating relationship of knowledge sharing between shared leadership and work engagement along with the conditional variable of self-efficacy. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to gather data from 462 employees working in the public sector higher educational institutes at two different times. Further, structural equational modeling was used for data analysis. Findings The findings revealed a positive relationship between employees’ perception of shared leadership and their levels of vigor and dedication in work engagement. Moreover, the study identifies knowledge sharing as a mediator in the association between shared leadership and both dimensions of work engagement. However, the moderating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge sharing was found to be insignificant. Practical implications Discussion around improved employee work engagement through shared leadership practices can foster a more collaborative and productive environment in institutions. Originality/value This research breaks new ground by investigating the interplay between shared leadership and faculty work engagement, shedding light on unexplored mechanisms in developing countries.

Background: Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges, with significant consequences for ecosystems, economies, and human societies. International environmental law plays a critical role in shaping global efforts to mitigate climate change by establishing legal frameworks for cooperation and action. However, the effectiveness of international environmental law in addressing climate change remains a subject of debate, particularly concerning the implementation of mitigation strategies at the national and global levels. Objective: This study aims to analyze the role of international environmental law in climate change mitigation efforts, with a focus on the key legal instruments and agreements that shape global climate governance. The research seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of these legal frameworks in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainable environmental practices. Method: A qualitative research design was employed, using case studies, legal analysis, and interviews with environmental law experts, policymakers, and practitioners. The study examined major international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol to assess their impact on climate change mitigation efforts. Results: The findings indicate that while international environmental law has contributed to raising awareness and setting targets for climate change mitigation, the implementation of these efforts remains uneven, with many countries struggling to meet their commitments due to domestic challenges. Conclusion: The study concludes that international environmental law has been instrumental in global climate change efforts, but enhanced implementation mechanisms and greater international cooperation are necessary to achieve meaningful progress.

基于土地利用变化的四川省碳排放与碳足迹效应及时空格局

Climate change and population aging: The role of older adults in climate change mitigation