Climate Change Action Research Articles

Research on the Impact of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism: Based on the GTAP Model

There is now widespread agreement that the world community must actively combat climate change and advance green and low-carbon development. In order to deal with the issue of carbon leakage caused by the rising cost of industrial production as a result of policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the EU intends to implement the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in its entirety starting in 2026, the pilot phase of which will begin in 2023. This shows the progressive emergence of a new international trade system driven by “climate change actions”, “carbon peaking”, and “carbon neutrality”, which will have a broad and far-reaching impact on China’s foreign trade industry. As more industries are being covered by the EU’s CBAM, it will exert a negative impact on the social welfare and export of China, the largest trading partner of the EU, even though the existing mechanism has only limited economic impact on China’s energy industry. This paper presents policy proposals to actively address the issues and effects of the EU’s “carbon tariff” by methodically analyzing the EU CBAM’s operation process and, via the development of models, determining the mechanism’s influence on social welfare, carbon emissions, and China’s exports.

Climate change inaction: Cognitive bias influencing managers' decision making on environmental sustainability choices. The role of empathy and morality with the need of an integrated and comprehensive perspective.

OPINION article Front. Psychol., 06 March 2023Sec. Cognitive Science Volume 14 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1130059

Literature Review on Incorporating Climate Change Adaptation Measures in the Design of New Ports and Other Maritime Projects

Due to their nature and location, ports and other maritime projects are particularly sensitive to climate change actions. Thus, when designing these types of projects, it is important to follow a methodology that incorporates climate change adaptation measures throughout the design process. This paper aims to identify the most relevant work developed in this field, along with the main knowledge gaps, through a systematic literature review process. Through a careful selection and analysis of relevant articles associated with “climate change adaptation”, “ports” and “design”, it was possible to conclude that these focused on existing infrastructures and specific case studies, on individual design aspects, on policies and economic or legal frameworks, on the perceptions around climate change or on stakeholder management. The literature review process described in this paper is part of a larger project, dedicated to the development of a practical and robust framework focused on the implementation of climate change mitigation measures in the design of new ports and other maritime projects.

The Contributions of Knowledge Management to the Sustainable Development Goals

Purpose: This study aims to analyze the contributions of knowledge management to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A systematic literature review was carried out using the keywords “Knowledge Management” in the title and “Sustainable Development Goals” throughout the text on the B-On database. Design/methodology/approach: A literature review was conducted in this study. In total, 31 articles were analyzed, most from developing countries. Just 11 of them were focused on only one goal. This was done by resorting to the PRISMA protocol and adapting the GRADE protocol. Findings: The results show little investigation on knowledge management for sustainable development goals. However, there is an agreement among authors that knowledge management is essential for the present 2030 Agenda. It is necessary to invest in knowledge management in developing countries for them to make progress toward the SDGs. Research limitations/implications: Only one database was used, Knowledge Management was identified as a global construct, and the resort to the expression “Sustainable Development Goals” can have a narrowing effect on the results. Future research may focus on the knowledge management processes or surveying each Sustainable Development Goal. Practical implications: In this study, the contributions of knowledge management for poverty eradication, quality of health, drinkable water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth, industry, infrastructure and innovation, and action for climate change are clear, which can be a starting point for future research and to intervene in this field. Originality/value: As for originality, it is the first systematic literature review on knowledge management's contributions to achieving sustainable development goals within the United Nations 2030 Agenda framework. As for the value, which also stems from its originality, emphasis is placed on the possibility of making decisions based on evidence, in theoretical and practical terms, considering the results obtained. Keywords: Knowledge Management, Sustainability, Sustainable Development Goals, 2030 Agenda, Systematic literature review.

Understanding Feasibility of Climate Change Goals and Actions

ABSTRACT Climate change goals and actions are often discussed with reference to their feasibility. However, in the climate change literature, there is no agreed upon understanding of what feasibility means. In this paper, insights from political philosophy are used to address this problem in a two-fold way. First, different uses of the term feasibility in the climate change context are critically analyzed, surfacing problematic uses that can have severe consequences for what goals or actions are considered. Second, the ‘conditional probability account of feasibility’ is presented as a positive account of how feasibility should be understood in the climate change context, and applied to the case of managed retreat as an approach for adaptation to sea level rise. Together, the critical analysis and the positive proposal furthers a necessary discussion on feasibility in the context of climate change.

Cross-Cultural Community Garden Learning That Supports Children’s Climate Change Action

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One World: 24 Hours on Planet Earth by Nicola Davies

Reviewed by: One World: 24 Hours on Planet Earth by Nicola Davies Kate Quealy-Gainer, Editor Davies, Nicola One World: 24 Hours on Planet Earth; illus. by Jenni Desmond. Candlewick, 2023 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536226133 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 6-10 yrs On April 21, at one minute to midnight in Greenwich, London, two siblings leap into the air to take a quick jaunt through Earth’s time zones. Jumping locations with a page flip, their first stop is the Arctic Circle, where a polar bear mother and baby cubs are hunting seals. Their next site is Zambia where a group of elephants welcome a newborn elephant, then on to a beach in India as baby sea turtles hatch and sprint toward the ocean. The siblings’ trip continues as midnight chimes, and they swim with whales, zip and zoom with hummingbirds and honeybees, and delight in the breadth of activity happening around the world at any given moment. The focus stays on Earth’s flora and fauna, and Davies points out the necessity of each ecosystem and the human impact on that environment, from the melting homes of polar bears, to the deforestation of gibbon habitats, to the danger of plastic in oceans. The combination of awe and wonder at nature’s beauty along with the various ways it is threatened is a poignant reminder of the caretaking role humans have mostly failed at. Mixed media art has varying textures and richness to match the settings: sweeping painterly strokes and deep jewel tones capture the drama of a breaching humpback whale, while softer dappling and cheerful hues evoke the gentle busyness of a springtime garden. This could make an engaging Earth Day storytime, especially when paired with Davies’ previous work, Emperor of the Ice (BCCB 2/23), or Fleming’s Polar Bear (BCCB 11/22). The book concludes with author and illustrator notes along with a brief note on climate change and potential action items. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

The New Climate War" by Michael E. Mann is a comprehensive and well-written examination of the ongoing battle to combat climate change. Mann, a leading climate scientist, provides a detailed look at the tactics used by those who deny the reality of climate change and the ways in which these tactics have hindered progress in addressing the issue. He also offers solutions for how we can overcome these obstacles and effectively combat climate change. Well-known climate scientist explains how the fossil fuel industry has spent the last thirty years avoiding blame and postponing climate change action, and offers a strategy to preserve the planet. Recycle. Fly less frequently. Avoid eating meat. These climate change indicators have been taught to us. However, a marketing strategy has successfully placed the whole burden of combating climate change on individuals, resulting in an overemphasis on human behaviour.

Engaging Young People in Climate Change Action: A Scoping Review of Sustainability Programs

Young people are stepping forward and engaging in or leading programs promoting climate action and sustainability. To optimize program outcomes, it is important to understand the nature of these programs, as well as their successes and enablers. Consequently, a scoping review was conducted across six databases, Taylor and Francis, Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Sage and Wiley, to examine existing programs that promote climate change action amongst young people aged 12 to 25 years. The review sought to determine what is known about these programs and their outcomes by documenting what elements contribute to successful behavior changes in young people. Forty-eight articles were included in the review, with almost half of the studies from the United States. Eight elements recurred throughout the reviewed journal articles including intersecting external and internal factors contributing to reported behavior change. External factors included the social environment, place, knowledge, leadership and goal setting development that fostered internal factors that included, self-efficacy, identity, agency and action competence, and systems thinking. Learning from these programs to improve design and ensure sustainable outcomes is key to improving the capabilities of young people to continue responding to the climate challenge.

Multi-Remote Sensing Data Analysis for Identifying the Impact of Human Activities on Water-Related Ecosystem Services in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

The ecosystem service (ES) is the basis for human lives, and is also one of the criteria for evaluating environmental conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how human activities would affect the ESs under the rapid urbanization and social-economic development phenomena. This study selected four vital important water-related ESs, including the water yield, soil retention, water purification, and net primary productivity (NPP), to detect how the structure and function of ecosystems had changed in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 1999–2018, by applying multi-remote sensing methods. The results show that: though the YREB has experienced rapid urbanization during the study period, the integrated ecosystem services value (ESV) did not present a significant change trend, and the average integrated (ESV) is 5.06 × 1012 yuan. The 20-year average water yield, soil retention, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and NPP of the YREB are 1.378 × 1012 m3; 6.35 × 1010 t, 2.92 × 105 t, 6.89 × 104 t, 1.55 × 1015 gC, respectively. Most provinces and cities present a weak negative correlation between human activities and the integrated ESV, while human activities show more than 50% attribution weights on ESV change, especially in three urban agglomeration areas. Moreover, the NPP has been found not to be mainly affected by human activities, which may stress the irreplaceable effects of climate change and other environmental protection actions. These findings emphasize that it is crucial to regulate human activities to guarantee ecosystem health and ESs in the future.

Political and Social Drivers of COVID-19 Prevention and Climate Change Behaviors and Attitudes

Attitudes and behaviors related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate change crisis might be driven by similar political beliefs and attitudes. The current study used a neo-Gramsci perspective to examine how political attitudes may be linked to COVID-19 prevention and climate change attitudes and behaviors. A longitudinal online survey in the US assessed climate change and COVID-19 attitudes and behaviors, and wave 7 (2021) data were used to predict outcomes at wave 8 (2022) among 572 respondents. There were significant correlations among the variables of political ideology, climate change concerns, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 skepticism, COVID-19 vaccine as a personal choice, COVID-19 conspiracy, political correctness, percent of Republican friends, and dislike of the Democratic Party. In the multivariate models, COVID-19 vaccination as a personal choice was significantly associated with the four outcomes: vaccination status, climate change actions, vaccine hesitancy, and climate change concerns. COVID-19 skepticism was significantly associated with vaccination status, vaccine hesitancy, and climate change concerns. These findings suggest that there are similar drivers of COVID-19 prevention and climate change attitudes and behaviors, and interventions need to be tailored to target individual-level and societal-level factors.

A Hybrid AHP Approach and GIS-Based Methods as Fundamental Tools in the SECAP’s Decision-Making Process

Adapting to climate change and mitigating its impacts are the main challenges for cities today. One objective that the European Commission has set in recent decades is reducing climate change inaction, and several political actions have been implemented. Among these actions, the Covenant of Mayors led to the development and adoption of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) by many cities worldwide. A challenge that local authorities must face during the development of a SECAP is the identification of the policies to be included in the plan. This paper presents a case study to show the validity of using a hybrid analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach and various geographic information system (GIS)-based methods to support local authorities in the decision-making process during the development of SECAPs. These methods can improve participation among the community and stakeholders, at the same time making it possible to choose the best actions to reduce emissions and energy consumption and optimally allocate financial resources.

Collective responsibility for climate change

AbstractClimate change can be construed as a question of collective responsibility from two different viewpoints: climate change being inherently a collective problem, or collective entities bearing responsibility for climate change. When discussing collective responsibility for climate change, “collective” can thus refer to the problem of climate change itself, or to the entity causing the harm and/or bearing responsibility for it. The first viewpoint focuses on how climate change is a harm that has been caused collectively.Collective action problemrefers to an aggregation of individual actions which together produce an outcome that is not intended at the level of an individual action. It cannot be solved by any one agent acting unilaterally. Instead, climate change action must be enacted and supported by numerous agents. The second way to conceptualize climate change as a question of collective responsibility focuses on the collective entities that bear responsibility for climate change. As a global problem, climate change is linked to the realm of international politics, where states, governments, and intergovernmental organizations are the main collective entities. Other important agential collectives in terms of climate responsibility are corporations, including carbon majors who have produced the bulk of emissions. Climate change has also been theorized as astructural injustice, which combines elements from both the viewpoints on what is collective about responsibility for climate change.This article is categorized under:Climate, Nature, and Ethics &gt; Ethics and Climate ChangeClimate, Nature, and Ethics &gt; Climate Change and Global Justice

Long-term succession characteristics and driving factors of zooplankton communities in a typical subtropical shallow lake, central China.

Zooplankton community could be affected by aquatic environment, land use patterns, and climate factors. However, few studies have evaluated the relative importance of these factors to the zooplankton community succession on a long-term scale. In this study, long-term data were used to analyze the succession characteristics and drivers of zooplankton communities in Honghu Lake, a large-scale shallow lake in central China. Results showed that zooplankton community structure changed greatly in 1959-2021. In general, the species number decreased, abundance and biomass increased, and the number and proportion of pollution tolerant species among dominant species increased during the past ~ 60years. For the driving factors of zooplankton from 1992 to 2021, redundancy analysis showed that nutrients, wind speed, and aquaculture enclosure and pond were the main drivers of Protozoa and Rotifera, while phytoplankton abundance, wind speed, dissolved oxygen, and farmland were the main drivers of Cladocera and Copepoda. Generalized additive model showed that the aquatic environment had the highest direct explanation (mean is 60.2%) to zooplankton variation, followed by land use (mean is 35.6%) and climate factors (mean is 33.1%). Variance partitioning analysis showed that the effects of human activities (32.9-43.1%) associated with land use, water quality, and phytoplankton on the zooplankton succession are stronger than that of climate factors (19.9-29.2%). Additionally, lake eutrophication is an important factor for the decline in the richness index (p = 0.0017, r = - 0.8411) and Shannon index (p = 0.0301, r = - 0.8020) of zooplankton from 2019 to 2021. Our results highlighted that anthropogenic activity has stronger driving effects on zooplankton succession in the long term than climate changes in the lake. These findings can provide insights into zooplankton conservation in response to global climate change and complex anthropogenic actions.

The calm before the storm? Child rights climate change litigation in Africa

Children, especially children in Africa, are disproportionately affected and their rights violated, as a result of the physical impacts of climate change. UNICEF has reported that 32 of the 45 countries identified globally in the Children's Climate Risk Index as the worst affected by climate change are in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change threatens not only the immediate survival of children, but also their growth and development, as well as their ability to learn, play, and reach adulthood. Furthermore, the majority of Africa's children live in families and communities with little resilience to adapt to both climate-induced emergencies and slow-onset events. This as a backdrop, litigation is one important tool used, often as a measure of last resort, to address and expedite climate change action. The topic is of increasing interest regionally, and this article looks specifically at the convergence of child rights and climate change litigation in Africa. It is an attempt to respond to the question "what are the opportunities as well as challenges for current and future child rights-based climate change litigation in Africa"?

Trait anxiety predicts pro-environmental values and climate change action

Individuals vary greatly with respect to how much value they place on the environment. These differences, in turn, are associated with a host of pro-environmental behaviors, including the willingness to engage in actions intended to mitigate the impacts of climate change. One factor that may associate with differences in pro-environmental behaviors and attitudes is personality; however, the literature is decidedly mixed. Thus, the primary purpose of the current exploratory study was to examine whether personality, as assessed by the HEXACO-PI, is associated with variations in pro-environmental values and climate change actions. Participants completed an online questionnaire that assessed a) personality (as measure by the HEXACO-PI), b) environmental values (as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm; NEP), and c) whether they had changed their actions due to climate change considerations and the degree to which climate change had impacted their actions. Gender, political affiliation, and the anxiety sub-facet of emotionality emerged as the strongest predictors of pro-environmental attitudes. In addition, the strongest predictors of climate change action were the anxiety sub-facet of emotionality, inquisitiveness, and sociability. Interestingly, trait anxiety moderated the relationship between environmental values and climate action, such that individuals higher in both environmental values and the anxiety sub-facet of emotionality were more likely to engage in climate actions.

Words of Weather: A Glossary

Words of Weather: A Glossary

The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now by Henry Shue

<i>The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now</i> by Henry Shue

What they say, what they do and how they do it: An evaluation of the energy transition and GHG emissions of electricity companies

The electricity sector is a critical player in combating climate change through the energy transition. Therefore, companies in the sector should align their policies and actions with the world's major environmental movements, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement. This paper assesses the energy transition and GHG emissions mitigation by the electricity sector using Paris Agreement targets and evaluates the impact of SDGs and science-based targets adoption on their decarbonization. From 2017 to 2019, we evaluated 39 global electricity companies using their sustainability reports and the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) based on Paris Agreement global warming scenarios of 1.5 °C and well-below 2 °C (WB2°C). We discovered that all companies prioritize climate change actions, with 87% linking these actions to at least one SDG. When analyzing whether GHG emission reductions were in line with either Paris Agreement scenario, this figure dropped to 51%. Companies with SBTi met the 1.5 °C and WB2°C targets at a rate of 92% compared to 32% of companies without SBTi. We concluded that SDG adoption had no effect on mitigation results and that companies with SBTi performed significantly better in terms of emissions reduction and transition to renewables, although there was no proof of causality. These findings can help with the adoption of more effective policies for the implementation of SDGs and their prioritization in the sector, as well as encourage emission targets based on consolidated methodologies to guide companies' actions.

Urban Heritage Rehabilitation: Institutional Stakeholders’ Contributions to Improve Implementation of Urban and Building Regulations

Climate change, natural hazards, and human actions are threatening cultural heritage in urban areas. More than ever, building regulations’ procedures and criteria are essential to guarantee the protection and safeguarding of urban areas and their buildings. These procedures and criteria are crucial to assist stakeholders in decision-making, especially when facing rapid transitions and transformative changes in urban heritage areas. Several institutional stakeholders in charge of urban heritage protection strengthen the need for a better implementation of building regulations through flexible criteria to support intervention procedures in buildings with different features and in different contexts. Under this topic, the present study uses a twofold method. Firstly, the authors analyze and compare the urban and building regulations of three Southern European countries, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, concerning procedures and criteria directed to the built heritage; secondly, they highlight and compare the views of different institutional stakeholders from the same three countries, at different levels (national, regional, and municipal), to understand the impact of the implementation of the regulations on the ground. The findings show the relevance of the institutional stakeholders’ views to improve the regulations and their practice. They highlight the need to promote inventory and cataloging procedures, as well as flexible criteria when dealing with urban heritage buildings.