The study of Mexican coral reefs under the threat of climate change: Contributions from XII CMAC–III CPAC

This chapter examines the existing social and health science literature addressing the psychological impacts of the threat of climate change. The exercise reflects a convergent environmental, social, and health psychology perspective, informed by those interdisciplinary bodies of work relating to the social construction and representation of environmental threat; psychosocial environmental impact assessment and monitoring; public and mental health; risk communication and perception; and disaster preparedness and response. Attention is also paid to public understandings of the phenomenon and threat of global climate change, and popular culture discourse and reflections about the psychological and mental health responses to and impacts of ‘climate change’. The chapter indirectly addresses the unfolding physical environmental impacts of climate change and corresponding psychological, social, and societal consequences, but the principal focus is on public exposure and response to the phenomenon of climate change through multimedia representations of this phenomenon and limited direct experience. The larger context of this chapter and the present coverage is the post–Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] focus on climate change adaptation and mitigation, and the continuing neglect of the psychological, social, and cultural in research and policy considerations and initiatives addressing human and environmental quality, sustainability, and health. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of what psychology has contributed and can contribute in addressing psychological adaptation to the threat of climate change.

This chapter describes and discusses some of the initiatives and developments that make the world better prepared to respond to climate change in terms of plant genetic resources (PGRs). A broad overview is provided of important issues concerning conservation and use of PGRs, including conservation approaches, strategies and responses that become more relevant under the threat of climate change. An enormous amount of crop germplasm and wild relatives is conserved in genebanks around the world, as well as in situ. Although not all this conserved germplasm is equally characterized and evaluated, there is sufficient documented germplasm available to plant breeders that can be used to tackle the growing threat of global climate change.

The ongoing threat of climate change poses an increasing risk to biodiversity, especially for currently threatened species. Climate change can both directly impact species and interact with other pre‐existing threats, such as habitat loss, to further amplify species' risk of extinction. Recognizing the threat of climate change in extinction risk assessments and recovery planning for imperilled species is essential for tailoring and prioritizing recovery actions for climate‐threatened species. Using species legally listed in Canada we show that 44.1% of species' risk assessments identify the threat of climate change, nonetheless, 43.5% of assessments completely omit climate change. Species assessed more recently were more likely to be identified as climate‐threatened, however, the strength of this relationship varied across taxonomic groups. The likelihood that climate change was identified as a threat was also strongly affected by the use of a standardized threat assessment process. Of the climate‐threatened species, less than half (46.0%) of species' recovery plans specified actions aimed explicitly at minimizing climate impacts and only 3.8% of recovery plans recommended habitat or population management actions. Climate‐targeted recovery actions were more likely to be included in more recent plans, and were marginally more likely for species where climate change was considered a major threat. Our findings highlight the urgent need for consistent and standardized assessments of the threat of climate change, including the consideration of potential synergies between climate change and other existing threats. Performing species‐specific climate change vulnerability assessments may serve to complement existing assessment and recovery planning processes. We provide additional recommendations aimed at threatened species recovery planners for improving the integration of the threat of climate change into species extinction risk assessments and recovery planning processes for listed species.

How does climate change threat affect attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities and climate change refugees? We show that threatening climate change can have deep psychological effects even among social majority groups in relatively prosperous and peaceful societies. Using three survey experiments with self-identified White British participants ( N = 616, N = 587, and N = 535), we demonstrate that social majority members who are exposed to threatening information about climate change (vs. neutral information) and, at the same time, feel little national efficacy over climate change, evaluate more negatively certain ethnic and religious minorities, especially Muslims and Pakistanis. We found the same trend in the evaluation of climate refugees, although it reached statistical significance only in one of the experiments. We explain these reactions as pertaining to groups that are perceived as threatening the salient ingroup and its collective agency. Our research significantly contributes to the literature on the social and political implications of (climate change) threat, especially by focusing on boundary conditions, namely the perception of collective control in case of complex and large threats.

P6146Atmospheric front patterns and acute cardiovascular diseases, a new perspective in the cardiovascular threat of global climate change

BackgroundThere is overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities have changed and will continue to change the climate of the Earth. Eco-environmental health, which refers to the interdependencies between ecological systems and population health and well-being, is likely to be significantly influenced by climate change. The aim of this study was to examine perceptions from government stakeholders and other relevant specialists about the threat of climate change, their capacity to deal with it, and how to develop and implement a framework for assessing vulnerability of eco-environmental health to climate change.MethodsTwo focus groups were conducted in Brisbane, Australia with representatives from relevant government agencies, non-governmental organisations, and the industry sector (n = 15) involved in the discussions. The participants were specialists on climate change and public health from governmental agencies, industry, and non-governmental organisations in South-East Queensland.ResultsThe specialists perceived climate change to be a threat to eco-environmental health and had substantial knowledge about possible implications and impacts. A range of different methods for assessing vulnerability were suggested by the participants and the complexity of assessment when dealing with multiple hazards was acknowledged. Identified factors influencing vulnerability were perceived to be of a social, physical and/or economic nature. They included population growth, the ageing population with associated declines in general health and changes in the vulnerability of particular geographical areas due to for example, increased coastal development, and financial stress. Education, inter-sectoral collaboration, emergency management (e.g. development of early warning systems), and social networks were all emphasised as a basis for adapting to climate change. To develop a framework, different approaches were discussed for assessing eco-environmental health vulnerability, including literature reviews to examine the components of vulnerability such as natural hazard risk and exposure and to investigate already existing frameworks for assessing vulnerability.ConclusionThe study has addressed some important questions in regard to government stakeholders and other specialists' views on the threat of climate change and its potential impacts on eco-environmental health. These findings may have implications in climate change and public health decision-making.

The threat of climate change is associated with both profound health consequences and failures by many individuals to take preventive actions. Behavioral science research on health behavior engagement may serve as a lens through which to better understand attitudes associated with the threat of climate change. This study was designed to examine individual differences in attitudinal responses to climate change, understanding the degree to which these responses can be predicted by both political beliefs and more readily modified psychological factors commonly associated with health behavior engagement: locus of control, anxiety sensitivity, delay discounting, and intolerance of uncertainty. Participants (N = 234) were US adults (62% male; 57% Non-Hispanic White; 44% Democrat) who completed an online survey. Stepwise multiple linear regressions examined which variables provided non-redundant prediction in models of climate change beliefs and concerns. In addition to providing support for the role of political affiliation and related ideology in climate change views (9–23% variance), this study underscores the importance of a behavioral health frame in understanding climate change concerns and beliefs. Known risk factors for negative health behaviors – prominently, locus of control, anxiety sensitivity, and delay discounting – contributed strongly to the understanding of these views, accounting for 4–28% of variance. Our findings encourage greater attention to health behavior-related constructs for understanding attitudes relevant to climate change action.

Climate change has been increasingly defined as a threat to the security of a wide range of referent objects from individual to the planet and humanity as a whole. Climate change is often seen as the macro-driver of a wide range of other threats that are accelerated by the extent of which the climate continues to change. By adding pressure on the institutional capacities of states, decreasing the quality, quantity and access to vital natural resources, and by triggering large scale migratory movements, climate change is assumed to increasingly foment instability and conflicts, which in turn are seen to deteriorate global sustainable development that forms the very heart of mitigation and adaptation efforts. Regardless of this growing and often alarmist security framing of climate change, ambitious and effective climate policies are still lacking. Traditionally security is conceived as a matter of high politics that is associated with the core values and survival of the state and the legitimization of emergency measures. Military force or balance of power politics and containment have long been seen as the most crucial ways to control insecurity. The threat of climate change is characterized with a new kind of uncertainty and complexity that cannot be successfully secured against through military power and containment. Building on poststructuralist theories, this chapter theoretically analyses how the meaning of security is constructed through hegemonic struggle, and how the interpretations of climate change as a threat or a multiplier of threats affect the understanding of security.

Increased attention by policy makers to the threat of global climate change has brought with it considerable interest in the possibility of encouraging the expansion of forest area as a means of sequestering carbon dioxide. The marginal costs of carbon sequestration or, equivalently, the carbon sequestration supply function will determine the ultimate effects and desirability of policies aimed at enhancing carbon uptake. In particular, marginal sequestration costs are the critical statistic for identifying a cost-effective policy mix to mitigate net carbon dioxide emissions. We develop a framework for conducting an econometric analysis of land use for the forty-eight contiguous United States and employing it to estimate the carbon sequestration supply function. By estimating the opportunity costs of land on the basis of econometric evidence of landowners' actual behavior, we aim to circumvent many of the shortcomings of previous sequestration cost assessments. By conducting the first nationwide econometric estimation of sequestration costs, endogenizing prices for land-based commodities, and estimating land-use transition probabilities in a framework that explicitly considers the range of land-use alternatives, we hope to provide better estimates eventually of the true costs of large-scale carbon sequestration efforts. In this way, we seek to add to understanding of the costs and potential of this strategy for addressing the threat of global climate change.

Deeper and down

Plant bioregulators play an important role in managing oxidative stress tolerance in plants. Utilizing their ability in stress sensitive crops through genetic engineering will be a meaningful approach to manage food production under the threat of climate change. Exploitation of the plant defense system against oxidative stress to engineer tolerant plants in the climate change scenario is a sustainable and meaningful strategy. Plant bioregulators (PBRs), which are important biotic factors, are known to play a vital role not only in the development of plants, but also in inducing tolerance in plants against various environmental extremes. These bioregulators include auxins, gibberellins, cytokinins, abscisic acid, brassinosteroids, polyamines, strigolactones, and ascorbic acid and provide protection against the oxidative stress-associated reactive oxygen species through modulation or activation of a plant's antioxidant system. Therefore, exploitation of their functioning and accumulation is of considerable significance for the development of plants more tolerant of harsh environmental conditions in order to tackle the issue of food security under the threat of climate change. Therefore, this review summarizes a new line of evidence that how PBRs act as inducers of oxidative stress resistance in plants and how they could be modulated in transgenic crops via introgression of genes.Reactive oxygen species production during oxidative stress events and their neutralization through an efficient antioxidants system is comprehensively detailed. Further, the use of exogenously applied PBRs in the induction of oxidative stress resistance is discussed. Recent advances in engineering transgenic plants with modified PBR gene expression to exploit the plant defense system against oxidative stress are discussed from an agricultural perspective.

Seagrass meadows are natural carbon storage hotspots at risk from global change threats, and their loss can result in the remineralization of soil carbon stocks and CO2emissions fueling climate change. Here we used expert elicitation and empirical evidence to assess the risk of CO2emissions from seagrass soils caused by multiple human-induced, biological and climate change threats. Judgments from 41 experts were synthesized into a seagrass CO2 emission risk score based on vulnerability factors (i.e., spatial scale, frequency, magnitude, resistance and recovery) to seagrass soil organic carbon stocks. Experts perceived that climate change threats (e.g., gradual ocean warming and increased storminess) have the highest risk for CO2 emissions at global spatial scales, while direct threats (i.e., dredging and building of a marina or jetty)have the largest CO2emission risks at local spatial scales. A review of existing peer-reviewed literature showed a scarcity of studies assessing CO2 emissions following seagrass disturbance, but the limited empirical evidence partly confirmed the opinion of experts. The literature review indicated that direct and long-term disturbances have the greatest negative impact on soil carbon stocks per unit area, highlighting that immediate management actions after disturbances to recover the seagrass canopy can significantly reduce soil CO2 emissions. We conclude that further empirical evidence assessing global change threats on the seagrass carbon sink capacity is required to aid broader uptake of seagrass into blue carbon policy frameworks. The preliminary findings from this study can be used to estimate the potential risk of CO2 emissions from seagrass habitats under threat and guide nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation.

Introduction:Vector-borne diseases are infections caused by parasites, viruses and bacteria and transmitted by vectors, which are usually insects. A greater risk of diseases such as dengue, malaria, seasonal influenza, leptospirosis, chikungunya, enteric fever, etc co-exist in COVID-19 cases. This poses challenges in clinical and laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19, which may affect clinical management and patient outcomes. Methodology: Several databases, including PubMed, Scopus, DOAJ, and EMBASE, were reviewed using the keywords vector-borne infections in India amidst COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 23 articles and WHO and National website for vector-borne diseases was found. Review:For many decades, vector-borne diseases have been a major health burden for both underdeveloped and developing countries, including India. With better preparedness, the threat of climate change on vector-borne diseases may be negated. Rains during monsoon increase not only the risk of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya but also that of food- and water-borne diseases as well as other skin infections. A greater risk of diseases such as dengue, malaria, seasonal influenza, leptospirosis, chikungunya, enteric fever, etc co-exists in COVID-19 cases. This poses challenges in clinical and laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19, which may affect clinical management and patient outcomes (3). Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a sudden outbreak of Zika virus infection was reported at the beginning of July 2021 in the districts of Kerala, from where it started, spreading to the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, India. Conclusions:With better preparedness, the threat of climate change on vector-borne diseases may be negated. Designing and strengthening an intervention strategy for environmental sanitation, regular cleaning of living houses, and keeping personal hygiene shall be considered. Risk assessment is crucial to optimize surveillance, preventative measures (vector control), and resource allocation (medical supplies).

The consequences of climate change, apart from being serious challenges to humanity, are especially threatening to develop countries. Climate change endangers human health through its effects on the stability of ecosystems and acts as a catalyst to disease pandemics. Multilateral climate change treaties serve as vital mechanisms to foster state-level action against the threat of climate change - super-conventional warfare. International treaties and collective regional and/or global policy could spur domestic action to address the health hazards caused by climate change. However, developing countries face multi-dimensional challenges in implementing environmentally viable policies to address climate change. The efficacy of policies and laws indeveloping countries within the shifting global climate change paradigmgives rise to a number of legal and pragmatic questions. Developing countries, therefore, must move for reforms at the institutional level to promote conservation of environment and resources, and address the pressing questions regarding climate change. There have been efforts to reach a global consensus to address climate change, which has resulted in the industrialized North inimical to the developing South. The global North seems to emphasize on the shared responsibilities of allnations to reduce emissions while the global South waves the flag of differentiated responsibilities. The global North-South negotiations are derived from inequalityin the historical and current levels of emission of greenhouse gases, the emerging consequences of climate change in the face of the geopolitical landscapebetween modern nation-states. The basic tenets of 'Kenya Vision 2030' and the 'Constitution of Kenya 2010' are steady growth and sustainable development.The Constitution recognizes a clean and healthy environment as a basic human right and provides for sustainable exploitation, utilization, management and conservation of the environment and natural resources. Kenya affirms, cognizant of the challenges faced today, that it is committed to undertaking a transition to a green economy in line with the outcome of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) held in 2012. The outcome document of the Rio+20 summit; The Future We Want, (UNCSD, 2012) highlighted transition to a green economy as a means towards sustainable development. Transitioning could contribute to eradicating poverty, as well as sustained economic growth, increasing social inclusion, improving human welfare, and creating opportunities for employment and decent work for all, while maintaining the healthy functioning of the Earth's ecosystems. The Kenyan govt. is developing a green economy strategy to support development efforts towards addressing key challenges such as poverty, unemployment, inequality, environmental degradation, climate change and variability, infrastructure leakages and food insecurity. The Kenya Green Economy Assessment Report launched by the UNEP (2014) concluded that Kenya is already implementing various green economy approaches and policies and that the transition to a green economy reflects positive impacts in the medium and long term across sectors of the economy. By 2030, a green growth path will result in faster growth, a cleaner environment, and high productivity, relative to the 'business as usual' growth scenario. In the Medium Term Plan 2013-2017, the Government committed to developing a Green Economy Strategy. There is also a need to ensure that work designed to facilitate the transition to a green economy is consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisioned at Rio+20. The SDGs cover various aspects of sustainable development from ending poverty and hunger, to health, equality and inclusion, and access to energy. Green Economy provides an avenue for functional interaction between Economy and the SDGs. The SDGs, although pending adoption, provide a framework within which green growth targets can help reorient national economic development planning as well as guide the behavior of both the public and private sectors. Therefore, we seek to understand, through this paper the evolution and impact of various mechanisms of the Kenyan environmental policy as well as examine Kenya's transition to becoming 'Green economy.

We live in a world of states. But arguably the core (existential) challenge we currently face on earth—the threat of climate change—is one that looks particularly ill-suited for the state system. The problem is clearly a global one; unilateral action is insufficient to address the challenge; and any attempt to agree on a cooperative response is immediately beset by complex logistical, institutional, and ethical challenges. Yet we have seen international agreements on climate change, and states have found ways to promote strong action on climate change (from other states and from the broader international community) in a range of ways. This chapter examines the challenges of addressing climate change in a world of states before exploring the means through which states have attempted to promote (and in some cases undermine) action on climate change, in the process reflecting on the success of these strategies.