Technology innovation and climate change mitigation: effects and transmission channels

Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy

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.

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.

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.

Climate-smart livestock production at landscape level in Kenya

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

In recent times, the need for concrete steps to be taken in the adaptation and mitigation of the effects of climate change has taken the centre stage in development discourse. However, there is a scarcity of empirical studies on the extent to which built environment professionals, especially in a developing country like Nigeria are aware of the various climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. This study examined the level of awareness of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies amongst built environment professionals in Lagos, Nigeria. The data were sourced through a cross-sectional survey of 71 respondents including, architects, builders, town planners, estate managers and quantity surveyors in the study area using an online questionnaire. The data were subjected to descriptive statistics and the result shows that the built environment professionals identified the main causes of climate change to include the use of fossil fuels in industrial production, automobiles, and generation of electricity. Also, the major effects of climate change were flooding and excessive heat, while the top three adaptation and mitigation strategies greening/planting trees, enforcement of building guidelines and the use of energy-efficient technologies. This study implies that the built environment professionals are very much aware of the existing climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies but there is an urgent need to internalize them in the production and management of the environment in Nigeria.

Cutting through the noise on negative emissions

The politics of enabling tipping points for sustainable development

Mapping Climate in the 21st Century

Mapping Climate Justice in the Twenty-first Century

Mapping Climate Justice

Climate justice accounts for the most challenging global governance goal. In the current climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, high and low-income households but also developed and developing countries as well as various overlapping generations are affected differently. This article maps international climate change mitigation and adaptation regimes in order to derive fair climate stability implementation strategies. Based on insights on the current endeavor to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation around the globe, a 3-dimensional climate justice approach will be introduced to share the burden of climate change fairly within society. First, climate justice within a country should pay tribute to the fact that low- and high-income households share the same burden proportional to their dispensable income, for instance enabled through a progressive carbon taxation. Those who caused climate change could be regulated to bear a higher cost through carbon tax in combination with retroactive billing through inheritance tax. Secondly, fair climate change burden sharing between countries comprises of argumentations that those countries benefiting more from a stable climate, hence those with a larger landscape or higher population, who have more access to climate than others, should also bear a higher burden of climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. Countries that reap benefit from a warming earth should be obliged to finance international aid for those who are impacted negatively by climate change, e.g., climate refugees. In addition, building on case and international law, those countries that have better means of protection or conservation of the common climate should also face a greater responsibility to protect the earth. Thirdly, climate justice over time is proposed in an innovative climate change burden sharing strategy. Innovative compensation schemes to share the burden of climate change with bonds help weight the burden of climate change more equally between today’s and tomorrow’s society. A climate tax-and-bonds mix could subsidize the current world industry for transitioning to green solutions and future generations, who will enjoy a less carbon intensive industry and more stable climate but should repay those bonds. Thereby the current generation is advised to mitigate climate change financed through bonds to remain financially as well off as without mitigation while improving environmental well-being of future generations. This respective intergenerational tax-and-transfer policy-mix could turn climate change mitigation into a Pareto-improving strategy. All these efforts should alleviate the contemporary global governance predicament that seems to pit today’s generation against future world inhabitants in a trade-off of economic growth versus sustainability. Deriving respective policy recommendations for the wider climate change community is aimed at ensuring to share the burden but also the benefits of climate change within society, between countries and over time in an equitable and fair way.