Ecosystem stewardship: A resilience framework for arctic conservation

Ecosystem stewardship is a framework for actively shaping trajectories of ecological and social change to foster a more sustainable future for species, ecosystems, and society. We apply this framework to conservation challenges and opportunities in the Arctic, where the rapid pace of human-induced changes and their interactions force us now to consider a new relationship between people and the rest of nature. Biodiversity, which has traditionally been the target of conservation efforts, is increasingly affected by human impacts such as energy demand and industrial development that are motivated more by short-term profits than by concerns for societal consequences of long-term arctic biodiversity change. We posit that effective approaches to conservation must (a) foster both ecosystem resilience and human wellbeing, (b) integrate ecological and social processes across scales, and (c) take actions that shape the future rather than seeking only to restore the past. To this end, we identify progress through actions that have been or could be taken at local, national, and international scales to promote arctic resilience and conservation. A stewardship approach to conservation aims to prevent undesirable changes and prepares for adaptation to rapid and uncertain changes that cannot be avoided and for transformation to avoid or escape undesirable states. The greatest opportunity for arctic stewardship at the local scale may lie in building upon culturally engrained (often indigenous) respect for nature and reliance on local environment, empowering it through knowledge and power sharing with national regulatory frameworks. This, in turn, allows connection of drivers with impacts across scales and raises awareness of the value of human–environment relationships. At national and international scales stewardship provides rules for coordinated action to reconcile local and regional conservation actions with those that are motivated by constraints at the global level, to foster ecosystem integrity and human wellbeing in the face of transformative changes in environment, landscapes, species, and society.     

Natural disasters and economic growth: A meta-analysis

Using more than 750 estimates, we perform a meta-regression analysis of studies examining the relationship between economic growth per capita and natural disasters. The studies considered are very different with respect to the type of disasters considered, the sample of countries and time periods covered, model specification, estimators used and publication outlet. After extensive testing of our results, we conclude that there exists a negative genuine effect of natural disasters on economic growth which is increasing over the period of our analysis. Still, the magnitude differs across disasters included and country sample used. In particular, it turns out that climatic disasters in developing countries have the most significant adverse impact on economic growth. However, we also find some evidence that a part of the negative impact of natural disasters found in these studies is caused by a publication bias.     

Social dominance as an ideological barrier to environmental engagement: Qualitative and quantitative insights

Climate change denial is motivated in part by ideology, with research showing that a greater tolerance of social inequality is consistently linked to lower pro-environmentalism. We report findings from two mixed-methods studies. In Study One, we provide insight into how individuals with varying levels of social dominance orientation discuss environmental issues by analyzing 59 interviews. These analyses revealed that many individuals were concerned about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to climate change; however, many were also armed with justifications excusing their and others’ inaction on the problem. To establish further how the ideas shared in the interviews related to social dominance, we reworked the ideas into statements for survey-based research in Study Two. Social dominance orientation and its composite dimensions related to most interview-based statements, with those scoring higher on dominance attitudes more opposed to top-down action on climate change, and those more tolerant of inequality more opposed to individual action. We discuss implications for climate change communication.     

Social capital,trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when designing interventions for climate adaptation.     

The norms associated with climate change: Understanding social norms through acts of interpersonal activism

A growing body of research points to the role social norms may play in both maintaining carbon intensive lifestyles and soliciting changes towards more sustainable ways of living. However, despite highlighting the importance of pro-environmental social norms, such literature has said far less about the processes by which such norms might develop. We present a new approach to conceptualising social norms that focuses on understanding their dynamics within social interaction, by positioning interpersonal confrontation as a potential mechanism of change. We examine the normative dynamics of environmentalism by comparing the costs of interpersonally confronting climate change disregard with those associated with confronting racism. In two experimental studies, we presented participants with scenarios describing a person confronting (versus not confronting) contentious comments in each domain. We identified social costs to interpersonal confrontation of climate change disregard but not racism, as indicated by reduced ratings of perceived warmth of and closeness to the confronter (Study 1), and this effect was mediated by the perceived morality of the issue in question (Study 2). Our findings highlight how wider social constructions of (im)morality around climate change impact upon social interactions in ways that have important implications for processes of social (and ultimately environmental) change.     

How you talk about climate change matters: A communication network perspective on epistemic skepticism and belief strength

A population’s attitudes toward climate change can strongly influence governmental policies as well as community and individual climate-related behaviors. These attitudes have been explained with a variety of factors, including cultural worldviews, environmental attitudes, political ideology, knowledge of climate change, severe weather exposure, and sociodemographic characteristics. These studies typically assume an individual forms attitudes on the basis of preexisting values or beliefs and do not account for dynamic social interaction as a source of influence. This study introduces a network perspective that accounts for the social embeddedness of individuals, using network variables to predict climate attitudes, including homophily, network strength, attitude diversity, centrality, network size, and network valence. An exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct attitudinal dimensions: climate change epistemic skepticism and belief strength. Using egocentric data from a nationally representative survey collected in 2011, this study found that network variables were significant in predicting both climate attitude dimensions; hierarchical regression analyses accounting for other known predictors found two different predictive models for epistemic skepticism and belief strength. Homophily, network strength, attitude diversity, and network valence predicted epistemic skepticism (R²_change = 4.8%), while centrality and network strength predicted belief strength (R²_change = 8.9%). The analyses also found support for cultural factors as significant predictors of climate attitudes, particularly Christianity and cultural worldviews. The results of this study suggest that interpersonal influence through communication networks is a promising avenue for continued research, and should be included in studies of climate attitude formation and change.     

Public policy and financial resource mobilization for wind energy in developing countries: A comparison of approaches and outcomes in China and India

We analyze and contrast how China and India mobilized financial resources to build domestic technological innovation systems in wind energy. To that end, we identify distinct stages of technology diffusion in the two countries in the period 1986–2012, and analyze the interplay between public policies and the development of the technological innovation system across the different stages. We show that the two countries’ distinct development strategies for wind energy – China developed wind energy largely through its state-owned enterprises, while India opened up wind energy investment to the private sector in the early 1990s – influenced system outcomes in terms of technology diffusion, domestic industry structure, competitiveness, and ownership. By unraveling the interplay between public policies, investment risks and returns, and actor characteristics, we explain the differences in system outcomes and identify important policy trade-offs between the two strategies. Our analysis provides novel insights about the process of financial resource mobilization in technological innovation systems, the dynamics of innovation-system growth, and the policy trade-offs that must be reconciled by countries that aim to promote the diffusion of a particular technology.     

How robust are global conservation priorities to climate change?

International conservation organisations have identified priority areas for biodiversity conservation. These global-scale prioritisations affect the distribution of funds for conservation interventions. As each organisation has a different focus, each prioritisation scheme is determined by different decision criteria and the resultant priority areas vary considerably. However, little is known about how the priority areas will respond to the impacts of climate change. In this paper, we examined the robustness of eight global-scale prioritisations to climate change under various climate predictions from seven global circulation models. We developed a novel metric of the climate stability for 803 ecoregions based on a recently introduced method to estimate the overlap of climate envelopes. The relationships between the decision criteria and the robustness of the global prioritisation schemes were statistically examined. We found that decision criteria related to level of endemism and landscape fragmentation were strongly correlated with areas predicted to be robust to a changing climate. Hence, policies that prioritise intact areas due to the likely cost efficiency, and assumptions related to the potential to mitigate the impacts of climate change, require further examination. Our findings will help determine where additional management is required to enable biodiversity to adapt to the impacts of climate change.     

Classifying knowledge on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in Europe for informing adaptation research and decision-making: A conceptual meta-analysis

Knowledge on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability is fragmented, because it is found in disparate case studies which use inconsistent terminology and focus on distinct aspects relevant to adaptation. While large-scale syntheses such as the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provide a high level overview and are useful for international decision-making, there is a need for systematic and flexible access to this research-based knowledge in order to aid future adaptation research and decision-making. Against this background, we present a ‘conceptual’ meta-analysis, a novel approach to meta-analyse studies on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in Europe. The meta-analysis results in a classification scheme for relating the diverse studies. This scheme consists of (i) a classification of studies according to the type of adaptation-relevant results they produce and (ii) a hierarchical classification of the regional and thematic context of studies. The implementation of this scheme, for example in the form of a database, overcomes some of the identified gaps of current adaptation knowledge representation. We furthermore present a quantitative analysis of the classified studies that exemplifies how the developed classification scheme can be applied to get a systematic and quantitative overview of the knowledge they contain. Thus, the conceptual meta-analysis and the classification scheme represent a first step towards a systematisation of knowledge on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability and may be seen as a useful complement to qualitative literature reviews.     

Linking multi-level governance to local common-pool resource theory using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis: Insights from twenty years of biodiversity conservation in Costa Rica

Understanding the relationship between multi-level institutional linkages and conditions influencing the likelihood of successful collective action has practical and theoretical relevance to sustainable local resource governance. This paper studies the relationship between multi-level linkages and local autonomy, a facilitating condition found to increase the likelihood of local successful collective action. A technique known as fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was applied to a longitudinal comparative data set. In the context of the decentralization of a protected area system in Costa Rica (1986–2006), it traced the emergence and endurance of autonomy among local institutions for biodiversity conservation. The technique illustrates which set of multi-level linkages combined in different ways, and at different points in time, to reach the same outcome (local autonomy). The findings show that a unique set of combinations of multi-level linkages led to the emergence of local autonomy among institutions for biodiversity conservation governance. In contrast, a more diverse set was associated with the endurance of local autonomy over time, suggesting that institutional diversity may play a more prominent role in the maintenance of institutional robustness than in processes of institutional emergence.     

Social cohesion and passive adaptation in relation to climate change and disease

Climate change affects biophysical processes related to the transmission of many infectious diseases, with potentially adverse consequences for the health of communities. While our knowledge of biophysical associations between meteorological factors and disease is steadily improving, our understanding of the social processes that shape adaptation to environmental perturbations lags behind. Using computational modeling methods, we explore the ways in which social cohesion can affect adaptation of disease prevention strategies when communities are exposed to different environmental scenarios that influence transmission pathways for diseases such as diarrhea. We developed an agent-based model in which household agents can choose between two behavioral strategies that offer different levels of protection against environmentally mediated disease transmission. One behavioral strategy is initially set as more protective, leading households to adopt it widely, but its efficacy is sensitive to variable weather conditions and stressors such as floods or droughts that modify the disease transmission system. The efficacy of the second strategy is initially moderate relative to the first and is insensitive to environmental changes. We examined how social cohesion (defined as average number of household social network connections) influences health outcomes when households attempt to identify an optimal strategy by copying the behaviors of socially connected neighbors who seem to have adapted successfully in the past. Our simulation experiments suggest that high-cohesion communities are able to rapidly disseminate the initially optimal behavioral strategy compared to low-cohesion communities. This rapid and pervasive change, however, decreases behavioral diversity; i.e., once a high cohesion community settles on a strategy, most or all households adopt that behavior. Following environmental changes that reduce the efficacy of the initially optimal strategy, rendering it suboptimal relative to the alternative strategy, high-cohesion communities can fail to adapt. As a result, despite faring better early in the course of computational experiments, high-cohesion communities may ultimately experience worse outcomes. In the face of uncertainty in predicting future environmental stressors due to climate change, strategies to improve effective adaptation to optimal disease prevention strategies should balance between intervention efforts that promote protective behaviors based on current scientific understanding and the need to guard against the crystallization of inflexible norms. Developing generalizable models allows us to integrate a wide range of theories and multiple datasets pertaining to the relationship between social mechanisms and adaptation, which can provide further understanding of future climate change impacts. Models such as the one we present can generate hypotheses about the mechanisms that underlie the dynamics of adaptation events and suggest specific points of measurement to assess the impact of these mechanisms. They can be incorporated as modules within predictive simulations for specific socio-ecological contexts.     

People as sensors: Mass media and local temperature influence climate change discussion on Twitter

This study examined whether people living in the US connect their sensory experiences with local temperature to climate change and whether mass media influences the process. We used the volume of Twitter messages containing words “climate change” and “global warming” as the indicator of attention that public pays to the issue. Specifically, the goals were: (1) to investigate whether people immediately notice substantial local weather anomalies such as deviations from long-term mean temperatures and connect them to climate change by contributing to climate change discourse on Twitter and (2) to examine the role of mass media in this process. Over 2 million tweets were collected for a two-year period (2012–2013) and were assigned to 157 urban areas in the continental US. The rate of tweeting on climate change was regressed on the time variables, number of climate change publications in the mass media, and a number of temperature variables. The analysis was conducted at the two levels of aggregation – national and local. The high significance of the mass media and temperature variables in the majority of regression models suggests that both the weather and mass media coverage control public interest to the topic. However, no convincing evidence was found that the media acts as a mediator in the relationship between local weather and climate change discourse. Overall, the findings confirmed that the public recognize extreme temperature anomalies and connect these anomalies to climate change.     

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes

Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific.First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.     

Priming critical thinking: Simple interventions limit the influence of fake news about climate change on Facebook

Fake news about climate change refers to fabricated information that mimics the appearance of legitimate reporting but is intended to mislead consumers. In light of concerns about fake news regarding climate change and other topics, researchers and media providers have been searching for ways to limit its spread and influence. This study tested the effect of two simple interventions, both of which primed critical thinking, on individuals’ evaluation of the credibility of real and fake news about climate change on Facebook. Through an online experiment (n = 2,750 participants), participants either read a series of guidelines for evaluating news online, or read and then rated the importance of each guideline; a control group was not exposed to guidelines of any type. We found that participants exposed to both types of guidelines reported a reduced likelihood to trust, like, and share fake news about climate change on Facebook. Importantly, exposure to these guidelines did not diminish individuals’ likelihood to trust, like, or share legitimate climate news. The effect sizes for both types of intervention were small. However, because of the scale and speed at which social media operates, even a small reduction in users’ likelihood to trust, like, and share fake news could be meaningful and impactful.     

Current approaches to MRV in South Africa: a scoping study

It is shown that there are MRV-related activities underway in South Africa, particularly focusing on measuring electricity consumption and monitoring GHG emissions. Yet currently many of these activities happen in parallel systems within multi-polar governance structures. A bottom-up perspective of MRV in South Africa, informed by interviews, workshops, desktop research, and stakeholder consultations, is provided and the systems, data, methodologies, and the institutional environment relevant to a South African MRV system are examined. The development of the local monitoring and evaluation system, and its relevance within the international MRV context, is also discussed. Some recommendations are made: most importantly, there is a need for a coherent approach to be developed, one that is coordinated by government and built on existing MRV systems.     

Using community led development approaches to address vulnerability after disaster: Caught in a sad romance

A reading of the social capital literature suggests that the networks and the social relationships which enable collective action can be used to address critical livelihood needs, even in disaster contexts. Yet even when such community-led approaches are combined with substantial resources, too often these interventions (re)produce vulnerabilities without recovering prior levels of development. Examining the outcomes of community-led approaches in post-tsunami Aceh after the gaze of the aid industry has moved elsewhere, this paper finds that in a few cases, interventions worked with social networks to revive livelihoods successfully, albeit in complex, contingent ways. Yet, given the nature of post-disaster contexts and the exigencies driving NGO and donors actions, the research concludes that the capacity for community based approaches to address the underlying drivers of vulnerability remains limited. The paper calls for a rewriting of intervention narratives and a reworking of intervention practices, to address the deeper determinants of disadvantage and vulnerability.     

The effect of industrialization and globalization on domestic land-use: A global resource footprint perspective

Land-use activities are increasingly globalized and industrialized. While this contributes to a reduction of pressure on domestic ecosystems in some regions, spillover effects from these processes represent potential obstacles for global sustainable land-use. This contribution scrutinizes the complex global resource nexus of national land-use intensity, international trade of biomass goods, and resource footprints in land-use systems. Via a systematic account of the global human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) and input–output modelling, we demonstrate that with growing income countries reduce their reliance on local renewable resources, while simultaneously consuming more biomass goods produced in other countries requiring higher energy and material inputs. The characteristic 'outsourcing' country appropriates 43% of its domestic net primary production, but net-imports a similar amount (64 gigajoules per capita and year) from other countries and requires energy (11 GJ/cap/yr) and material (~400 kg/cap/yr) inputs four to five times higher as the majority of the global population to sustain domestic land-use intensification. This growing societal disconnect from domestic ecological productivity enables a domestic conservation of ecosystems while satisfying growing demand. However, it does not imply a global decoupling of biomass consumption from resource and land requirements.     

Constructing legitimacy for climate change planning: A study of local government in Denmark

Existing research on climate change planning has tended to adopt an overly simplistic approach to analyzing how agency and structure mediate local governments’ responses to climate change. This research contributes to scientific capacity to predict and explain patterns of climate change planning by focusing on the concept of legitimacy and examining its influence upon the dialectic between structure and agency. A conceptual framework foregrounding legitimacy is developed based upon new institutional theory. An initiative to institutionalize climate change planning in Aarhus Municipality, Denmark, is used as a case study to validate four propositions derived from existing research but filtered through the conceptual framework. Validation of the propositions evidences a hierarchy in the salience of different forms of legitimacy, with moral and ethical arguments for undertaking climate change planning having limited social traction in Denmark in the absence of significant extreme climatic events. The analysis also generates thicker, more nuanced explanations for real-world patterns of climate change planning. The findings thereby provide a corrective to a number of assertions made in the literature, notably in relation to the role of agency in the institutionalization of climate change planning.     

Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

     

Improving the evidence base: A methodological review of the quantitative climate migration literature

The question whether and how climatic factors influence human migration has gained both academic and public interest in the past years. Based on two meta-analyses, this paper systematically reviews the quantitative empirical literature on climate-related migration from a methodological perspective. In total, information from 127 original micro- and macro-level studies is analyzed to assess how different concepts, research designs, and analytical methods shape our understanding of climate migration. We provide an overview of common methodological approaches and present evidence on their potential implications for the estimation of climatic impacts. We identify five key challenges, which relate to the i) measurement of migration and ii) climatic events, iii) the integration and aggregation of data, iv) the identification of causal relationships, and v) the exploration of contextual influences and mechanisms. Advances in research and modelling are discussed together with best practice cases to provide guidance to researchers studying the climate-migration nexus. We recommend for future empirical studies to employ approaches that are of relevance for and reflect local contexts, ensuring high levels of comparability and transparency.