Climate Change Summit Research Articles

Analyzing the newspapers’ coverage of sustainable development goals in UAE

This study examines how United Arab Emirates (UAE) national newspapers reported on sustainable development goals (SDGs) following the country’s announcement that it would host COP28 climate change summit in 2023. We analyzed the content of a systematic random sample of news articles published in leading Arabic and English language newspapers over a one-year period. Results indicate that sustainable development issues, particularly related to the environment and economy, were covered widely and mostly positively, and were framed in the context of achievements rather than challenges. We also observed significant differences in SDG reporting between the two newspapers selected for our study. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Green horizons: Enabling the energy transition through climate change policies

In response to the goals set by the COP21 Summit, the challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, this study aims to develop an effective policy framework to support the transition to sustainable energy. This framework considers key elements such as managing energy risks, leveraging green finance, navigating carbon markets, and evaluating three climate change policy indicators: the impact of climate change summits (CCS), government climate programs (CCGP), and climate change taxation (CCT). Utilizing the Quantile Vector Autoregressive (QVAR) approach and analyzing monthly data from the United States from August 1, 2014, to August 30, 2022, our research examines the influential role of these climate policy indicators. The results show that climate summits, governmental initiatives, and climate taxes are significant influencers, affecting both renewable and conventional energy sectors, carbon market movements, and green finance. The study underscores the importance of government initiatives and climate policies in driving the transition to renewable energy and fostering environmentally sustainable financial activities. Focused on advancing Sustainable Development Goals 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and 13 (Climate Action), this research contributes to shaping effective policy frameworks and enriching policy debates on sustainable energy transition.

Climate change competencies from perspective of Finnish youth

ABSTRACT Climate change (CC) is causing distress and worry in today's young people, who are inheriting CC-related problems from previous generations. To equip young people with the necessary CC mitigation and adaptation skills, we need a detailed description of CC competencies. A framework of CC competencies describes sets of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required to tackle climate change. Young people are the next generation of leaders, and it is particularly important to listen to their hopes and demands. To create a CC competency framework from the perspective of Finnish young people, we surveyed 43 young respondents using an open-ended questionnaire. All respondents were participants in a climate change summit for young people. Based on the responses, we compiled a framework of six climate change competencies: CC systems thinking, CC science orientation, CC leadership, CC justice and collaboration, CC implementation and CC well-being. The results provide insight into the qualities that were emphasized by the young people, such as urgency of action, the need for solidarity and science-based knowledge. We conclude that this framework can serve as an opening for a discussion on climate change competencies, which can eventually be utilized as a basis for learning outcomes in CC education.

Social Inequalities of Climate Change With a Regional and Global Approach

Climate change is a slow and long-term change that is different from other types of crises, and its effects will eventually cause the paralysis of society and the world economy. Considering the last climate change summit in Glasgow and the previous summit, according to the authors of this text, preventing and dealing with climate change in the present era will not be possible except with the cooperation of all countries. In this regard, considering the discussion of social inequalities of climate change, we attend a series of ideas and suggestions that are further discussed.

DECOLONIZING NEWSMAKING ON YOUTUBE: THE CASE OF CLIMATE JOURNALISM DURING THE COP26 SUMMIT

This paper examines the role of newsmaking on the digital platform YouTube during the 2021 Climate Change Summit. Drawing on data collected with the software NodeXL Pro, we assess the connected communities, authorities, and popularity within a YouTube comment network. The data set of the investigation was assembled by the query ’COP26’. Drawing on the measures of influence in-degree, out-degree and PageRank, were ranked the YouTube channels of the researched network. In addition, the layout algorithm Force Atlas 2 was employed to detect network clusters in the software program Gephi. Finally, the study drew on Natural Language Processing to analyze the comment corpus. Our key findings suggest that YouTube channels of well-established, professional news corporations, such as BBC News, DWNews, and Sky News, reached high scores for the PageRank analysis. Based on the evidence collected, we argue that professional news corporations acted as influencers during the coverage of the 2021 Climate Summit on YouTube. This investigation contributes to understanding the role of digital platforms in the science communication on climate change and the negotiations of (post)colonial pasts. Its findings imply that claims for climate justice are increasingly played out within a diverse, global transmedia ecology. Climate justice is increasingly intertwined with decolonial voices.

Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on climate change summit negotiations from the climate governance perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruptions to the world since 2020, with over 647 million confirmed cases and 6.7 million reported deaths as of January 2023. Despite its far-reaching impact, the effects of COVID-19 on the progress of global climate change negotiations have yet to be thoroughly evaluated. This discussion paper conducts an examination of COVID-19's impact on climate change actions at global, national, and local levels through a comprehensive review of existing literature. This analysis reveals that the pandemic has resulted in delays in implementing climate policies and altered priorities from climate action to the pandemic response. Despite these setbacks, the pandemic has also presented opportunities for accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. The interplay between these outcomes and the different levels of governance will play a crucial role in determining the success or failure of future climate change negotiations.

Assessing residue and tillage management options for carbon sequestration in future climate change scenarios

Soil carbon depletion is a major concern for food security in drylands. The objective of this study is to test tillage with residue management under sequential and intercropping systems for carbon sequestration in semi-arid tropical drylands of India. We report the findings from a long-term field experiment (9 years) used to simulate the effect of residue and tillage management in Maize-chickpea sequential and Maize-Pigeonpea intercropping systems for the four possible future climate projections using APSIM model. These findings demonstrate a sustainable route with inclusive growth, as pledged at the UN climate change summit. A comparison of results under SSP 2.6 and 4.5 Wm−2 with SSP 8.5 shows that demand pressure from competitive marketplaces inhibits the establishment of soil carbon sinks and significantly reduces crop yields, likely due to indiscriminate chemical fertilizer use. We observed that a better decision in selecting cropping system might improve soil organic carbon content (SOC). SOC content ranging from 0.9 to 1.2% in Maize-pigeonpea intercropping and 0.85–1.1% in maize-chickpea sequential cropping systems, demonstrate good potential in the climate change mitigation exertions. Early SOC saturation (20 years) led to a decreased carbon stock in topsoil without residue addition practises. The addition of crop residues significantly increased SOC levels under both conventional and minimum tillage and created additional income for farmers. Simulation analysis showed impact of SOC changes on crop yield which remained nearly stable for 85 years. Therefore, hardy straw biomass of crops covering a large tract in dryland tropics, can be a scalable and sustainable solution to yield losses, while mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration.

Top Ten Resolutions for the Energy Industry in 2023—Addressing Major Issues Impacting the Energy Industry for the Coming Year and Decade Ahead

“We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last to be able to do anything about it,” Barack Obama stated during a 2014 speech at a climate change summit in New York. Almost a decade later, this sentiment still holds true as the country grapples with the effects of climate change. As 2022 comes to an end, let us all reflect on the economic and emotional tolls of record‐breaking heat waves, life and property losses, threatening fires, and destructive flooding, and other devastating climate events.

Climate change summit: testing the impact of role playing games on crossing the knowledge to action gap

Climate change decision-making happens at the intersection of knowledge, values, and experience, usually requiring action with incomplete information. Yet, climate change education prioritizes improving knowledge gaps, not communication and contextual understanding. Role-playing games highlight the interaction of evidence and values in decision-making; they have also been shown to help participants cope with uncertainty. Here, we used a role-playing activity in 8 undergraduate science class sections to explore how role-playing affected climate change decision-making. We found that students selected significantly different climate proposals based on differing affinities with their characters. Students’ articulation of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘concreteness’ in justifying their final choices were significantly related to their chosen proposals. Students’ understanding of circumstance and perspective in driving different priorities/decisions increased significantly. This activity is scalable and broadly applicable; by empowering participants to discuss data and values and make decisions with incomplete information, we might encourage confident participation in the global climate conversation.

Exogenous Shock in the GBE and The Effect of MNC International Diversification on Shareholder Value

This article examines the effect of international diversification on Multinational corporation (MNC) shareholder value creation in the face of an exogenous shock to the global business environment (GBE). We use the UN Climate Change Summit (COP26) as our research setting to investigate the extent to which MNC international diversification impacted shareholder value after last minute shifts in the COP26 agreement. Results from an event study analysis of 196 U.S. manufacturing MNCs indicate that international diversification is negatively related to shareholder value creation after COP26. However, MNCs with strategic orientations toward CSR and digitalization continue to create shareholder value despite high international diversification. These findings contribute novel insights to literature on GBE shocks and importance of firm strategic orientations in a turbulent environment.

Techno-Economic Assessment of Grid Connected Solar PV/Wind hybrid System

Wind and Solar PV energy as alternative energy supplies to the traditional fossil fuel have been a subject of study for researchers at various fora including climate change summits. However, the technical and economic feasibility of wind and solar projects involve a lot of complexity and depends mostly on geographical location and availability of resources. To address the constraints and factors affecting wind and solar PV systems, this paper aims to undertake a techno-economic feasibility assessment of a grid connected solar PV/Wind hybrid system capable of meeting a typical commercial load, located in Kumasi, Ghana. To achieve the purpose of this study an energy audit has been undertaken to establish the load demand of the facility. Again, RETSCREEN software was used to design and simulate the proposed hybrid system in order to analyse the technical, economic and environmental implications of the system. Findings show that, there is a high potential for providing commercial scale energy consumption in most months in the year, and there is extra energy available to be sold to the grid, generating considerable income. Though the system has a high levelized cost of energy (LCOE) as compared to the existing grid tariff, the study adds significantly to the national objective to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels while meeting local energy requirement.

“How dare you!” When an ecological crisis is impacted by an educational crisis: Temporal insights via Arendt

In this paper we take as our starting point Greta Thunberg’s message to an audience of adults at a recent climate change summit: ‘This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!’ We take Thunberg at her word and endeavour to investigate what is wrong and how it might be wrong. Through this investigation we consider how education may be implicated in the problem to which Thunberg alludes: a problem about both climate change and intergenerational change. We draw upon Hannah Arendt’s seminal work, ‘A Crisis in Education’, to consider how an ecological crisis coincides with an educational crisis symptomatic of an inversion of the traditional adult and child relationship in which education serves to introduce the young to the world – a public world, which is distinct from the ecological world. Arendt’s position on education, we argue, reveals concerns that movements like School Strike for Climate expose young people prematurely to the risks of indoctrination that attend adult, public life, and hinders their renewal of the world. Science too may add to these risks.

The Negative Bidirectional Interaction Between Climate Change and the Prevalence and Care of Liver Disease: A Joint BSG, BASL, EASL, and AASLD Commentary

The Negative Bidirectional Interaction Between Climate Change and the Prevalence and Care of Liver Disease: A Joint BSG, BASL, EASL, and AASLD Commentary

China actively promotes CO2 capture, utilization and storage research to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality

China actively promotes CO2 capture, utilization and storage research to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality

Waste Not, Want Not

With Glasgow hosting the UN climate change summit in November, Scottish companies are taking the lead on the circular economy

The Climate Change Alliance: botanic garden horticulturists as agents for change

In 2016, the publication of the pioneering Landscape Succession Strategy heralded a horticultural response by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria to climate change risks faced by their living collections. This initiative led to the botanical world’s first Climate Change Summit in 2018 and the subsequent establishment of the Climate Change Alliance for Botanic Gardens. This article describes some of the anticipated climatic changes facing the Melbourne Gardens site, the strategic management of collections when considering these challenges, and how other botanical organisations can benefit from this approach through collaboration and sharing of expertise.

Power, the Pacific Islands, and the Prestige Press: A Case Study of How Climate Reporting is Influenced by UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Summits

While studies have investigated UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings as drivers of climate change reporting as well as the geopolitical role of Pacific Islands in these international forums, little research examines the intersection: how media coverage of Pacific Islands and climate change (PICC) may be influenced by, or may influence, UNFCCC meetings. We analyze two decades of reporting on PICC in American, British, and Australian newspapers—looking at both volume and content of coverage—and expand the quantitative results with semi-structured interviews with journalists and Pacific stakeholders. Issue attention on PICC increases and the content changes significantly in the periods around UNFCCC meetings, with shifts from language about vulnerability outside of UNFCCC periods to language about agency and solutions. We explore the implications of these differences in coverage for both agenda setting and the amplification of emotional appeals in UNFCCC contexts.

Fiddling while the planet burns? COP25 in perspective

ABSTRACTWith fires, storms, social protests, and climate strikes sweeping the world, 2019 should have been a tipping point in how the world responds to global heating. This was the backdrop to the COP25 climate change summit which took place in Madrid in December 2019. This paper assesses the outcomes of the meeting and the path towards the critically important meeting in Glasgow at the end of 2020. It analyses and explains the key points of contention over levels of ambition, the rules which should govern global carbon markets and sensitive issues such as loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change. The analysis is situated within a broader geopolitical and economic context of right-wing populism, deepening forms of marketization and financialization of responses to climate change and against a background of a world increasingly feeling the effects of the climate crisis.

Comments: Environmental Headwinds

Editor's column Sustainability and environmental issues played a key part in the content at two of SPE’s recent major conferences. Offshore Europe was held in Aberdeen in September and the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) took place for the first time in Canada in late September-early•October. Days before the ATCE conference began, activists held rallies around the world, including in Canada, demanding action on climate change, and the issue has risen to the forefront of political campaigns in Europe and the US. Three presidential candidates in the US have promised to “ban” hydraulic fracturing for environmental reasons if elected, although not offering specifics. At the United Nation’s climate change summit in September, more than 100 international banks pledged to decrease investment in the oil and gas sector because of the issue. The bankers promised to support full implementation of the Paris climate agreement and increase investments in renewables in lieu of hydrocarbons. The oil and gas industry is paying attention, as government and financial scrutiny of it increases and as public momentum for environmental regulation grows. But the scrutiny comes at a time when global energy consumption also is increasing, particularly in developing counties. Even with increased support for renewable forms of energy, oil and gas will play a major role in meeting world demand for years to come. At the same time the climate summit was taking place, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI)—a CEO-led group representing international and national oil companies—met in New York and announced further plans to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and support the goals of the Paris agreement. The group outlined a proposal to encourage investment in carbon capture and storage, and reported progress toward its goal of reducing industry methane emissions. OGCI said its member companies met its “methane intensity target” by cutting intensity 9% in 2018. It is now working to reduce carbon intensity in upstream operations by 2025. Members of the OGCI include ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, Total, Equinor, Occidental, Eni, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and CNPC. Both individual companies and other organizations are also taking steps to reduce the industry’s environmental footprint. During the Offshore Europe conference, The Oil & Gas Technology Centre announced it will create with industry a Net Zero Solution Centre to accelerate the development and deployment of technologies to de carbonize offshore operations and develop the UK continental shelf as the first global net zero oil and gas basin. The center is backed by several companies, including BP, Shell, Total, and Equinor. Much of the industry’s response hangs on the viability of carbon capture, utilization, and storage. The International Energy Agency describes it as one of the only technology solutions that can significantly reduce emissions across key industries. An article beginning on page 24 of this issue outlines the industry’s progress in this initiative and the challenges to be met.

Education for Sustainable Development and Climate Change Education: The Potential of Social Network Analysis Based on Twitter Data

Education is considered an essential tool for achieving sustainability-related goals. In this regard, education for sustainable development (ESD) and climate change education (CCE) have become prominent concepts. The central characteristics of both concepts influence the non-hierarchical network governance structure that has formed around them: (1) their international origin, (2) the conceptual ambiguity that surrounds them, and (3) the limited implementing power of international organizations who developed these concepts. Hence, networks are essential to ESD and CCE, however, only few studies have used social network analysis (SNA) techniques to analyze their governance structure. The aim of this article is to illustrate how to use SNA, based on Twitter data, as an approach to examine the governance structure that has developed around ESD and CCE. We conduct an illustrative SNA, using Twitter data during three global climate change summits (2015-2017) to examine CCE-specific debates and identify actors exerting the most influence. We find that international organizations and international treaty secretariats are most influential across all years of the analysis and, moreover, are represented most often. These findings show that using SNA based on Twitter data offers promising possibilities to better understand the governance structure and processes around both concepts.