Climate,conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?

Are violent conflict and socio-political stability associated with changes in climatological variables? We examine 50 rigorous quantitative studies on this question and find consistent support for a causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes, at spatial scales ranging from individual buildings to the entire globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium. Multiple mechanisms that could explain this association have been proposed and are sometimes supported by findings, but the literature is currently unable to decisively exclude any proposed pathway. Several mechanisms likely contribute to the outcomes that we observe.     

The future of the CDM: same same,but differentiated?

Policy-makers and scientists have raised concerns about the functioning of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in particular regarding its low contribution to sustainable development, unbalanced regional and sectoral distribution of projects, and its limited contribution to global emission reductions. Differentiation between countries or project types has been proposed as a possible way forward to address these problems. An overview is provided of the different ways in which CDM differentiation could be implemented. The implications for the actors involved in the CDM are analysed, along with a quantitative assessment of the impacts on the carbon market, using bottom-up marginal abatement cost curves. The discounting of CDM credits, quota systems, or differentiated eligibility of countries could help to address several of the concerns raised. Preferential treatment may also make a limited contribution to achieving the aims of CDM differentiation by increasing opportunities for under-represented host countries. The impact on the carbon market appears to be limited for most options.     

Striving for equivalency across the Alberta,British Columbia,Ontario and Québec carbon pricing systems: the Pan-Canadian carbon pricing benchmark

The Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change is designed to put Canada on track to meet its Paris commitments. A key pillar of the plan is the introduction of a pan-Canadian carbon price by the end of 2018. However, four Canadian provinces, nearly 85% of the Canadian economy and population, have already implemented carbon pricing systems. British Columbia (BC) has a carbon tax. Alberta is transitioning from an output-based allocation system for industrial emitters to a hybrid system combining a carbon levy and refined output-based system. Québec and Ontario have implemented cap-and-trade systems, linked to California. Recognizing these existing systems, rather than impose a single carbon pricing mechanism, the Pan-Canadian Approach to Carbon Pricing gives provinces and territories the flexibility to adopt a carbon tax, a hybrid system, or a cap-and-trade system. To address concerns relating to ‘fairness’ and equivalency of carbon price, a federal carbon pricing benchmark establishes criteria relating to minimum ‘common scope’ and ‘increases in stringency’ that provincial and territorial carbon pricing systems must meet. This article explores the design features of the existing Alberta, BC, Ontario and Québec carbon pricing systems, and considers how the benchmark affects stringency and addresses equivalency of carbon price across these different systems.

Key policy insights

• Canada is taking advantage of its federal structure of government to introduce a minimum pan-Canadian carbon price of $10/tCO₂e in 2018, rising by $10/year to $50/tCO₂e in 2022.

• Rather than imposing a uniform pricing mechanism, the Canadian federal government is recognizing existing subnational carbon pricing mechanisms with very different design features – BC’s carbon tax, Québec and Ontario’s cap-and-trade systems, and Alberta’s hybrid system – to deliver the pan-Canadian carbon price.

• In order to deliver a minimum level of increasing stringency and to address issues of equivalency of carbon price across sub-national jurisdictions, the federal government is in the early stages of implementing a federal carbon-pricing benchmark.

• The lessons learned from the Canadian experience will be relevant to harmonizing carbon pricing systems across both other federal jurisdictions and countries.

     

The discursive politics of ‘fracking’: Frames,storylines, and the anticipatory contestation of shale gas development in the United Kingdom

How contested sources of energy such as shale gas are perceived in frontier countries considering their development is incredibly important to national and international climate policies. The UK shale development case is of particular interest currently as the Government attempts to position the UK as a pioneer of European, safe, sustainable shale gas development. We conduct a mixed-methods analysis of the UK policy debate on shale gas development involving 30 stakeholder interviews and 1557 political documents. This empirical focus extends the existing literature by identifying the use of frames in and through the institutions and practices of formal UK politics. We identify nine key frames and their associated storylines, analyse their use over time, and compare these findings with other national case studies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given most UK Governments within our timeframe have supported shale development, pro-shale development frames dominate in the policy debate; however, we also find a high level of anti-shale development frame use, suggesting a deep and ongoing framing contest in national formal political sites. We find in particular a more prominent focus on land-use issues and impacts on the landscape than other UK studies or other national contexts. Conceptually, the study puts forward an integrative approach to the related concepts of frames and storylines, as well as arguments concerning the impotence of storylines in anticipatory political debate and the polyvalence of framing strategies. Questions about governance are raised by the general lack of consensus over the framing of shale development within formal political sites, let alone amongst the broader public; and by the lack of a coherent response from the Government to criticisms of its approach. Finally, we reflect on the apparent lack of evidence for Hajer’s ‘communicative miracle’ in our case, and speculate as to whether the lack of broad-based resonance of the ‘bridge’ storyline signals trouble for the positive-sum thinking of ecological modernisation.     

When the pendulum doesn’t find its center: Environmental narratives,strategies, and forest policy change in the US Pacific Northwest

Since the 1980s, the US Pacific Northwest has been shattered by a major environmental policy conflict related to the management of Federal forests. These “timber wars” were similar to forest environmental policy conflicts in several other countries, but were particularly polarized. They resulted in a significant change in Federal forest policy from timber production orientation to biodiversity conservation. The change occurred suddenly and had significant economic and social consequences within the region and beyond, but was embedded in long-term societal and institutional trends.In this paper, I adopt an interpretive approach in order to, first, understand contemporary interpretations of the 1993 policy change and, second, to reconstruct the contemporary discursive ‘landscape’ of the Pacific Northwest including the major resource management paradigms and narratives that guide policy making in this region today. Empirically, my interpretation is mostly built on 37 qualitative interviews with policy stakeholders that were conducted in the summer of 2011.Based on this evidence, the paper argues that there are four narratives circulating amongst policy stakeholders that represent different conceptualizations of the 1993 policy change. Yet, all narratives highlight the importance of environmental strategy making that mobilized the socio-institutional setting in order to prepare and finally achieve the change.Current forest policy in the region is characterized by a policy stalemate resulting from the confluence of diverse institutional, context-related factors and the inability of stakeholders to create enough contradictions or crisis by combining these factors in order to promote change-enabling narratives. Four resource management paradigms compete in the region and, within these, narratives and counter narratives on physical and social events are developed. Current forest policy is dominated by an ecosystem management paradigm, but forest management practices aim to reconcile demands arising from the different paradigms to a certain degree, for instance via the concept of “ecological restoration”. Yet, given that the material base that feeds such compromises is finite, a new crisis in Pacific Northwest forest policy in the future is likely.In conclusion, this paper offers an interpretation of Pacific Northwest forest policy (change) as a process in which social and physical events are ‘discursively mobilized’ by means of narratives that are produced against the background of major natural resources paradigms. This includes the art of ‘discourse agents’ in constructing problematizations and intervention logics to either defend the current policy state or to increase the likelihood of change.     

Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.     

Pursuing sustainable nitrogen management following the “5 Ps” principles: Production,People, Planet,Policy and Partnerships

Nitrogen (N) is an essential nutrient to support life, but if poorly managed, can adversely affect the environment, ecosystems and human health. The global challenge of achieving food security with minimal ecosystem degradation and human health impacts hinges on sustainable N management, which goes beyond farm level and requires concerted efforts from a range of stakeholders. While various metrics have been developed to inform N management, most of them focus on one or two stakeholders only. Few efforts have tried to integrate N metrics to derive a coherent set of actions for all stakeholders. Here we propose the “5 Ps” principles (Production, People, Planet, Policy and Partnerships) that shape guidelines for sustainable N management with multidimensional N metrics (i.e., N use efficiency, virtual N factor, N footprint, N neutrality, reactive N spatial intensity, N boundary, N price and N equity). The “5 Ps” principles address the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. These principles allow multidimensional evaluation of N management, highlight specific areas for improvement, direct future research, and support the design of effective policy and legislation. They facilitate collective actions of producers, consumers, researchers and policy makers towards sustainable N management regionally and globally.     

Animal thermal comfort index for the state of Paraíba,Brazil: trend,influencing factors,and mitigating measures

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - The present work had the objective to determine the tendency and the influence percentage of climatic variables on the Temperature and Humidity Index (THI) in...     

Radiation balance at the surface in the city of S?o Paulo, Brazil: diurnal and seasonal variations

The main goal of this work is to describe the diurnal and seasonal variations of the radiation balance components at the surface in the city of S?o Paulo based on observations carried out during 2004. Monthly average hourly values indicate that the amplitudes of the diurnal cycles of net radiation (Q*), downwelling and upwelling shortwave radiation (SW_DW, SW_UP), and longwave radiations (LW_DW, LW_UP) in February were, respectively, 37%, 14%, 19%, 11%, and 5% larger than they were in August. The monthly average daily values indicate a variation of 60% for Q*, with a minimum in June and a maximum in December; 45% for SW_DW, with a minimum in May and a maximum in September; 50% for SW_UP, with a minimum in June and a maximum in September; 13% for LW_DW, with a minimum in July and a maximum in January; and 9% for LW_UP, with a minimum in July and a maximum in February. It was verified that the atmospheric broadband transmissivity varied from 0.36 to 0.57; the effective albedo of the surface varied from 0.08 to 0.10; and the atmospheric effective emissivity varied from 0.79 to 0.92. The surface effective emissivity remained approximately constant and equal to 0.96. The albedo and surface effective emissivity for S?o Paulo agreed with those reported for urban areas in Europe and North America cities. This indicates that material and geometric effects on albedo and surface emissivity in S?o Paulo are similar to ones observed in typical middle latitudes cities. On the other hand, it was found that S?o Paulo city induces an urban heat island with daytime maximum intensity varying from 2.6°C in July (16:00 LT) to 5.5°C in September (15:00 LT). The analysis of the radiometric properties carried out here indicate that this daytime maximum is a primary response to the seasonal variation of daily values of net solar radiation at the surface.     

LULUCF in the post-2012 regime: fixing the problems of the past?

One of the reasons why the Kyoto Protocol has been environmentally ineffective is the flaws in the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) accounting rules, including voluntary accounting for Article 3.4 activities, the adoption of a definition of forest management that allowed parties to preferentially include and exclude forest lands, and allowing parties with net emissions from LULUCF in 1990 to include deforestation emissions in their 1990 emissions base year. Three proposed amendments to the LULUCF rules for the post-2012 regime are discussed and analysed: (1) a force majeure rule, (2) a baseline-and-credit system for forest management and (3) an ‘emissions-to-atmosphere’ approach for harvested wood products. Although these proposals have the potential to significantly improve the accounting framework, there are still significant problems such as the failure to account for the biophysical effects of forest activities, uncertainties associated with the application of the forest management baseline-and-credit system and continuing optional coverage of Article 3.4 activities.     

Tropical Cyclones and Polar Lows: Velocity, Size, and Energy Scales, and Relation to the 26℃ Cyclone Origin Criteria

The goal of this paper is to quantitatively formulate some necessary conditions for the development of intense atmospheric vortices. Specifically, these criteria are discussed for tropical cyclones (TC) and polar lows (PL) by using bulk formulas for fluxes of momentum, sensible heating, and latent heating between the ocean and the atmosphere. The velocity scale is used in two forms: (1) as expressed through the buoyancy flux b and the Coriolis parameter lc for rotating fluids convection, and (2) as expresse...     

In it for the money,the environment,or the community? Motives for being involved in community energy initiatives

Community energy initiatives can foster a sustainable energy transition by promoting sustainable energy behaviour in the communities in which they are embedded. This raises the question of what motivates people to become involved in these initiatives. We investigated the importance of financial, environmental, and communal motives for initiative involvement. We propose that communal motives (i.e., being involved in one’s local community) may be related to initiative involvement, as community energy initiatives not only aim to promote sustainable energy behaviour but also enable people to be involved in their community. Across three studies, respondents rated financial and environmental motives as more important than communal motives for their involvement in community energy initiatives. Yet, environmental and communal motives were uniquely related to initiative involvement, while financial motives were not. The discrepancy between which motives people rate as important and which motives actually relate to their initiative involvement suggests that financial motives are an overrated motive, while communal motives are an underrated motive for involvement in community energy initiatives. Our results suggest that targeting communal motives may be an additional way to enhance involvement in community energy initiatives and foster sustainable behaviour among people, who may not otherwise be interested in environmental protection.