Context matters: The drivers of environmental concern in European regions

Environmental concern is crucial as bottom-up support for policies that aim to tackle the multiple ecological crises. This paper investigates which characteristics of 206 European regions are robust drivers of generalized environmental concern. To this end, 25 Eurobarometer survey waves between 2009 and 2019 were combined with measures of the regional economy, population, geography, environmental quality, and meteorological events. Bayesian model averaging is used to systematically account for model uncertainty in the estimation of partial correlations. The results indicate that environmental concern increases with income level, a more equal distribution of income and wealth, and a less greenhouse gas-intensive industrial sector. Furthermore, regions with younger and better educated populations exhibit higher levels of environmental concern. In terms of environmental characteristics, both geographical vulnerability to natural hazards and meteorological events affect environmental concern. The results highlight the importance of the socio-economic and environmental context of opinion formation and have implications for designing and communicating environmental policies.     

Public environmental concern in China: Determinants and variations

How much are Chinese people and various citizen groups concerned about the environment relative to other major public problems? What are the key factors and to what extent do these factors shape individual Chinese environmental concern? Based on a micro-macro model and a county fixed model proposed in this study, we employ nationwide representative public opinion survey data and provincial statistics to examine the determinants and variations of public environmental concern in China. The data shows that environmental concern is not among the top-ranked issue concerns in China overall, but in the urban areas and in the east-coastal region environmental protection features as a rather important issue. Our regression analyses further demonstrate that the Chinese environmental concern is significantly affected by both micro-level socio-demographic variables and macro-level regional economic conditions and environmental risks. In the east-coastal region, such individuals as urbanites with high income are most environmentally concerned. There is a lack of concern over environmental issues among the public in the west region, where little association between individual sociodemographics and their environmental concern is detected. In the central-northeast region, education effect is evident in the rural area. Location contextual factors such as economic development and environmental risk account for most of the observed variations in public environment concern.     

Interaction effects between economic development and forest cover determine deforestation rates

Recent work on global patterns of deforestation has shown that countries with high per capita GDP or low remaining forest cover are more likely to be experiencing afforestation than deforestation. Here, I show that the relationship is more complex than previously described, because the effect of one variable is dependent upon the value of the other. As a result, high-income nations exhibit the opposite response to disappearing forest cover than low-income nations. In an analysis of 103 countries, I found that high-income countries with low forest cover have the highest rates of afforestation, typically through the establishment of new plantations. In contrast, low-income countries with little forest are more likely to consume that remaining portion at a faster proportional rate than do low-income countries with more forest. Nations with large amounts of forest have approximately equal deforestation rates, regardless of national wealth. These results highlight for the first time that there is a strong interaction between forest cover and economic development that determines rates of forest change among nations.     

National-level factors affecting planned,public adaptation to health impacts of climate change

Our understanding of whether adaptive capacity on a national level is being translated into adaptation policies, programs, and projects is limited. Focusing on health adaptation in Annex I Parties to the UNFCCC, we examine whether statistically significant relationships exist between regulatory, institutional, financial, and normative aspects of national-level adaptive capacity and systematically measured adaptation. Specifically, we (i) quantify adaptation actions in Annex I nations, (ii) identify potential factors that might impact progress on adaptation and select measures for these factors, and (iii) calculate statistical relationships between factors and adaptation actions across countries. Statistically significant relationships are found between progress on adaptation and engagement in international environmental governance, national environmental governance, perception of corruption in the public sector, population size, and national wealth, as well as between responsiveness to health vulnerabilities, population size and national wealth. This analysis contributes two key early empirical findings to the growing literature concerning factors facilitating or constraining adaptation. While country size and wealth are necessary for driving higher levels of adaptation, they may be insufficient in the absence of policy commitments to environmental governance. Furthermore, governance and/or incentive frameworks for environmental governance at the national level may be an important indicator of the strength of national commitments to addressing health impacts of climate change.     

Economic and political drivers of environmental impact shifting between countries

There is mounting evidence that major improvements in environmental quality in high-income countries over the past decades may have been achieved to a large degree through relocation of environmental impacts of consumption to other, usually poorer countries. While political and academic debates on appropriate policy interventions to address this challenge are gaining ground, we still know rather little about the drivers of international environmental impact shifting, other than international trade flows per se. We address this issue by focusing on the effects of economic inequality and political factors. We argue that income inequality between and within countries as well as variation in political institutions, environmental clauses in preferential trade agreements (PTAs), and participation in international environmental treaties could be important drivers or mitigators of environmental impact shifting between countries. We use novel panel data on five types of environmental impact flows between country dyads (187 countries, 1990–2015) to assess these arguments. We find that richer countries and countries with higher domestic economic equality tend to be the “outsourcers”, and poorer, domestically more unequal countries the “insourcers” of environmental impacts. Discrepancies in democracy levels aggravate the outsourcing from more equal to more unequal societies. In turn, environmental clauses in PTAs have a mitigating effect on environmental impact shifting, but participation in international environmental agreements has no such effect. Our findings highlight the need for green economy policies that reduce environmental footprints of consumption not only within high-income democracies, but also make their global supply chains more sustainable.     

隐形碳关税:概念辨析与国际治理

碳关税是各国高度关注的贸易问题,因涉及各国经贸利益,南北国家在碳关税问题上分歧很大。任何有关碳关税的政策措施,都会引起发展中国家的强烈反对。因此,部分发达国家试图另辟蹊径,在国际贸易中通过增加生产标准、碳标签等技术要求,以比较隐蔽的方式实现执行碳关税的目的。文中将这些隐蔽的但能起到碳关税执行效果的政策措施归纳为隐形碳关税,并定义隐形碳关税是指那些虽然没有在边境环节征收碳关税,但与征收碳关税起到相同贸易壁垒作用的,对发展中国家出口产品和服务构成限制的政策和措施。隐形碳关税比较典型的表现形式包括生产标准、碳标签等措施。这些措施本身是政策中性的,并不构成隐形碳关税,但如果叠加了转移应对气候变化成本、限制发展中国家产业发展等目的,这些措施的性质便不再中性,而成为现实中的贸易壁垒。隐形碳关税的治理应该是国际气候治理进程的一个部分,《联合国气候变化框架公约》则应是隐形碳关税治理的主要国际平台。无论是在气候公约内还是气候公约外的治理机制,隐形碳关税的国际治理都应遵循气候公约的相关原则,尤其是共同但有区别责任原则,区别对待发达和发展中国家的责任和义务,充分发挥生产标准、碳标签等措施的积极环境效用,同时约束其不当使用,建立公平、互信、务实的国际合作模式,实现气候治理与经济发展的协同。     

Trade in ‘virtual carbon’: Empirical results and implications for policy

The fact that developing countries do not have carbon emission caps under the Kyoto Protocol has led to the current interest in high income countries in border taxes on the ‘virtual’ carbon content of imports. We use GTAP data and input-output analysis to estimate the flows of virtual carbon implicit in domestic production technologies and the pattern of international trade. The results present striking evidence on the wide variation in the carbon-intensiveness of trade across countries, with major developing countries being large net exporters of virtual carbon. Our analysis suggests that a tax on virtual carbon could lead to very substantial effective tariff rates on the exports of the most carbon-intensive developing nations. As an illustration, we find that average tariff rates of 10%, 8% and 12% would be faced by imports from China, India and South Africa if carbon is taxed at $50/ton CO₂. Moreover, there is wide variation in intensiveness across sectors within countries with implications for the disparate effective tariff burdens on particulars parts of the economies of these countries. Such empirical findings, we argue, are useful for framing on-going discussions about the principles and practice of border taxes on virtual carbon.     

Empirical evidence of declining global vulnerability to climate-related hazards

Death tolls and economic losses from natural hazards continue to rise in many parts of the world. With the aim to reduce future impacts from natural disasters it is crucial to understand the variability in space and time of the vulnerability of people and economic assets. In this paper we quantified the temporal dynamics of socio-economic vulnerability, expressed as fatalities over exposed population and losses over exposed GDP, to climate-related hazards between 1980 and 2016. Using a global, spatially explicit framework that integrates population and economic dynamics with one of the most complete natural disaster loss databases we quantified mortality and loss rates across income levels and analyzed their relationship with wealth. Results show a clear decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability, with global average mortality and economic loss rates that have dropped by 6.5 and nearly 5 times, respectively, from 1980–1989 to 2007–2016. We further show a clear negative relation between vulnerability and wealth, which is strongest at the lowest income levels. This has led to a convergence in vulnerability between higher and lower income countries. Yet, there is still a considerable climate hazard vulnerability gap between poorer and richer countries.     

How does the World Bank shape global environmental governance agendas for coasts? 50 years of small-scale fisheries aid reveals paradigm shifts over time

Small-scale fisheries are becoming a global social and environmental concern. The contribution of marine small-scale fisheries to global food security and coastal livelihoods, coupled with the significant challenges they face, has attracted increasing attention and aid from environmental organizations, philanthropies, and multilateral agencies over recent decades. Our study attends to the understudied role of the World Bank, the largest individual funder shaping present and future sustainability of coastal marine regions, as a key actor shaping global environmental governance paradigms. We asked how funding to the sector has changed over the last 50 years and why, outlining distinct patterns in the flow of small-scale fisheries aid and the underlying intervention models. We contextualize our quantitative analysis of aid patterns over time with qualitative interview data with bank staff, identifying underlying paradigm shifts driven by internal and external factors. More than $2.48 billion was allocated by the World Bank to marine fisheries over the last 50 years, approximately 47% (~$1.17 billion) of which was targeted to marine small-scale fisheries. Three distinct funding periods are identified: rising support to SSF from the 1970s to mid-1980s; a sharp decline in funding in the mid-to-late 1980s and low levels of funding throughout the 1990s; and a steady return to funding SSF in the mid-2000s up to the present. Over time, Bank-funded interventions shifted from pure economic development in the earlier era, to an emphasis on governance and multi-dimensional environmental goals in the recent period. To understand why, we used key-informant interviews to unpack major internal drivers: internal staff changes and presence of key individuals, the decentralization and recentralization of decision-making, and the organization’s shifting emphasis from traditional economic growth to multi-dimensional objectives of poverty reduction, among others. External drivers behind funding and paradigm shifts included pressure from the environmental movement, the rise of sustainable development discourses, key global environmental summits in the 1990s, and rising levels of interest in the fisheries sector by the governments of both donor and recipient countries. Processes of ‘paradigm shifts’ were not swift or singular, rather they were affected by multiple, convergent factors over time. Our findings contribute to the literature on multi-lateral institutions as key actors in environmental governance shaping global development thinking, illustrating the arc of the last half-century of fisheries aid at the Bank while highlighting present dilemmas and future challenges that actors interested in working towards sustainable marine small-scale fisheries face.     

Multipolarity and the new world (dis)order: US hegemonic decline and the fragmentation of the global climate regime

The international climate change negotiations leading to and including the Copenhagen and Cancun Conferences of the Parties in 2009 and 2010 have shown a very different balance of power from those of the 1997 Kyoto round. This “New World dis(Order)” is characterized by insecurity of the United States in the face of economic and political decline vis-à-vis China; fragmentation of the Group of 77 developing nations negotiating bloc; and weakening of the European Union, which was cut out entirely from the group negotiating the Copenhagen Accord. In addition to old alignments of developing countries based on solidarity, negotiating blocs have fractured along lines of responsibility for climate change, capability to address it, and national vulnerability to climate risks. This paper assesses whether, over the past two decades, negotiations have come closer to meeting basic criteria of international climate justice, and chronicles how environmental negotiations have come to reflect a different and shifting balance of power. Drawing insights from Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver's analyses of US hegemonic decline and the rise of China, the article argues that the roots of the worst stubbornness by the US in recent climate talks lie in growing insecurity about its ability to provide jobs for its workers in a future where all sorts of work is moving to China and India.     

The role of working-class communities and the slow violence of toxic pollution in environmental health conflicts: A global perspective

Analysing a sample of 3,033 environmental conflicts around the globe, we compared conflicts reporting no human health impacts to those reporting health impacts linked to toxic pollution. Our study suggests four main findings. First, health impacts are a key concern for working-class communities. Second, the long-term effects of toxic pollution undermine communities' ability to act preventively. Third, industrial activities, waste management and nuclear energy conflicts are more likely to report health impacts than other economic activities. Last, mobilising groups are reluctant to consider the closure of a polluting project a successful outcome because of the persistence of toxic pollution across time. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of what we have termed ‘environmental health conflicts’ (EHCs).     

Predicting climate change effects on agriculture from ecological niche modeling: who profits, who loses?

The susceptibility of agriculture to changing environmental conditions is arguably the most dangerous short-term consequence of climate change, and predictions on the geography of changes will be useful for implementing mitigation strategies. Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is a technique used to relate presence records of species to environmental variables. By extrapolation, ENM maps the suitability of a landscape for the species in question. Recently, ENM was successfully applied to predict the geographic distribution of agriculture. Using climate and soil conditions as predictor variables, agricultural suitability was mapped across the Old World. Here, I present analogous ENM-based maps of the suitability for agriculture under climate change scenarios for the year 2050. Deviations of predicted scenarios from a current conditions model were analyzed by (1) comparing relative average change across regions, and (2) by relating country-wide changes to the data indicative of the wealth of nations. The findings indicate that different regions vary considerably in whether they win or lose in agricultural suitability, even if average change across the entire study region is small. A positive relationship between the wealth of nations and change in agriculture conditions was found, but variability around this trend was high. Parts of Africa, Europe and southern and eastern Asia were predicted to be particularly negatively affected, while north-eastern Europe, among other regions, can expect more favorable conditions for agriculture. The results are presented as an independent “second opinion” to previously published, more complex forecasts on agricultural productivity and food supply variability due to climatic change, which were based on fitting environmental variables to yield statistics.     

Materials embodied in international trade – Global material extraction and consumption between 1995 and 2005

Production and consumption activities in industrialized countries are increasingly dependent on material and energy resources from other world regions and imply significant economic and environmental consequences in other regions around the world. The substitution of domestic material extraction and processing through imports is also shifting environmental burden abroad and thus extends the responsibility for environmental impacts as well as social consequences from the national to the global level. Based on the results of the Global Resource Accounting Model, this paper presents the first trade balances and consumption indicators for embodied materials in a time series from 1995 to 2005. The model includes 53 countries and two world regions. It is based on the 2009 edition of the input–output tables and bilateral trade data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and is extended by physical data on global material extraction. The results quantify the global shift of embodied material resources from developing and emerging countries to the industrialized world. In addition to the level of industrialization and wealth, population density is identified as an important factor for the formation of physical trade patterns. Exports of embodied materials of less densely populated countries tend to surpass their imports, and vice versa. We also provide a quantitative comparison between conventionally applied indicators on material consumption based on direct material flows and indicators including embodied material flows. We show that the difference between those two indicators can be as much as 200%, calling for an adjustment of conventional national material flow indicators. Multi-regional input–output models prove to be a useful methodological approach to derive globally consistent and comprehensive data on material embodiments of trade and consumption.     

数据驱动下的环境变迁与区域经济成长关联分析

由于经济发展的复杂性,本文旨在探索由环境变迁引发这一动态、复杂而又相互作用的过程,通过引入环境变迁与经济成长两方面因素分析其中的潜在关联性,并将区域稳定性作为环境变迁与经济成长相互作用后的衡量指标,来评估该过程.1）通过使用衡量国家经济健康程度的健康性与复杂性（Fitness and Complexity）算法,获得了新的评估国家经济成长的国家经济健康性系数,该系数能在竞争激烈的动态国际贸易环境下有更好预测GDP的表现.随后建立机器学习模型,成功预测了不同国家的稳定性类别,且预测精度都在90％左右.2）实现了基于数据的环境变迁和区域经济成长的关联性可视化分析,通过分析能够得到潜在关联性结论：一些发展中国家经济稳定性与水资源和二氧化碳排放呈强关联,而发达国家则与人均耕地面积有关联.3）设立评估国家稳定性的新指标,与世界主流指标相比,构建的新指标更注重原始数据的量化,减少了概念抽象的指标对预测性能的影响,且在评估区域经济成长时能更符合当前国际的实际经济情况.本文提出的评估区域稳定性的新排名是完全基于量化指标的,因此更容易实现,说服力更强.通过实际的预测效果分析,该新排名在衡量区域稳定性时弥补了世界主流排名由抽象指标带来的预测失真缺陷,能够满足基本的区域稳定性预测功能,并且能够对预测结果造成影响的主要因素进行解释.     

世界排放大国CO2排放和GDP的格兰杰因果分析及其对国际气候治理的影响和意义

基于1990—2015年世界前20个排放大国碳排放量和国内生产总值（GDP）的时间序列数据,采用协整分析、格兰杰因果检验,对主要排放大国碳排放与经济增长之间的关系进行了实证分析。通过协整分析得出大多数国家的碳排放量与经济增长之间存在长期均衡关系;碳排放量和GDP的格兰杰检验结果显示,大多数世界排放大国碳排放与经济增长之间存在单向因果关系。发达国家主要表现为经济增长是碳排放的格兰杰原因,发展中国家则主要表现为碳排放是经济增长的格兰杰原因。研究结果反映了发达国家和发展中国家在碳减排问题上的阶段性特征,碳减排对发展中国家经济发展的负面影响明显大于发达国家。基于格兰杰因果分析结果,国际气候治理进程中关于要求发展中国家现阶段提出大幅减排目标的诉求不符合发展中国家发展阶段特征,可能影响发展中国家经济发展的正常秩序和规律。发达国家基于历史排放责任、发展阶段和能力,都应该带头开展减排行动,并帮助发展中国家实现转型、升级发展,降低经济发展对碳排放的依赖。国际气候治理需要根据并考虑不同国家的发展需求和特征,形成国际合作制度安排,实现社会经济发展与全球气候治理的协同。     

Could working less reduce pressures on the environment? A cross-national panel analysis of OECD countries, 1970–2007

Many scholars and activists are now advocating a program of economic degrowth for developed countries in order to mitigate demands on the global environment. An increasingly prominent idea is that developed countries could achieve slower or zero economic growth in a socially sustainable way by reducing working hours. Research suggests that reduced working hours could contribute to sustainability by decreasing the scale of economic output and the environmental intensity of consumption patterns. Here, we investigate the effect of working hours on three environmental indicators: ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions. Using data for 1970–2007, our panel analysis of 29 high-income OECD countries indicates that working hours are significantly associated with greater environmental pressures and thus may be an attractive target for policies promoting environmental sustainability.     

Public concern over global warming correlates negatively with national wealth

It has been shown previously that the awareness and concern of the general public about global warming is not only a function of scientific information. Both psychological and sociological factors affect the willingness of laypeople to acknowledge the reality of global warming, and to support climate policies of their home countries. In this paper, I analyse a cross-national dataset of public concern about global warming, utilising data from 46 countries. Based on earlier results at the national and regional level, I expect concern to be negatively correlated to national measures of wealth and carbon dioxide emissions. I find that gross domestic product is indeed negatively correlated to the proportion of a population that regards global warming as a serious problem. There is also a marginally significant tendency that nations’ per capita carbon dioxide emissions are negatively correlated to public concern. These findings suggest that the willingness of a nation to contribute to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions decreases with its share of these emissions. This is in accordance with psychological findings, but poses a problem for political decision-makers. When communicating with the public, scientists ought to be aware of their responsibility to use a language that is understood by laypeople.     

How does carbon dioxide emission change with the economic development? Statistical experiences from 132 countries

Issues concerning what measures should be adopted to achieve a sustainable world with less carbon dioxide emission and in what magnitude should we reduce our emission have been on agenda in both international negotiations and countries’ policy making aimed at coping with potential global climate change. These issues cannot be easily addressed unless comprehensive understanding about the countries’ status quo as well as historical relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emission are gained. In this paper, we examine the historical relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emission; the ex ante restrictions on function forms and the poorly handled robustness issues rife in economics literature are synthetically addressed. Evidence from recent four decades indicates that per capita carbon dioxide emission first significantly and monotonously increase at low income level and flattens after per capita income reaches at about 22,000 $ (2005 constant price). We perform various robustness checks by employing different data sources, different model specifications and different econometric estimates. The captured development–emission relationship is robust. Our empirical results indicate factors such as urbanization, population density, trade, energy mix and economic environment impact the absolute level of carbon dioxide emission not the overall income elasticity structure of carbon dioxide emission.     

Personal experience with climate change predicts intentions to act

The public's willingness to engage in mitigation actions has not received as much attention as the level of belief in Global Warming (GW), especially on the international stage. Research in Western nations indicates that people systematically misunderstand GW and the actions required for mitigation. Important factors that influence judgments about mitigation actions include personal experiences, beliefs, knowledge, values, and worldviews. We present results of an international survey (25 samples from 24 countries) measuring general intentions to act and willingness to engage in specific actions. Our analysis reveals that endorsement of specific actions is (a) lower than general endorsement of mitigation, (b) accompanied by higher intra-individual variance, and (c) more strongly related to personal experiences with GW. This pattern can be attributed to the compatibility between the proximal construal of specific actions and the nature of the personal experience. Lastly we provide recommendations on how these findings can be used to encourage mitigation action.     

Changing environment and development institutions to enable payments for ecosystem services: The role of institutional work

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are increasingly promoted as nature-based solutions to climate, environmental, and business challenges. While participation in PES schemes is mandated in countries such as China, Costa Rica, and Vietnam, it remains unclear how PES schemes emerge in countries devoid of national mandates. This article investigates how actors have attempted institutional change to enable PES, by reinterpreting or adapting national laws, policies, and plans. We present an analytical framework theorising how geographical variations in (1) institutional frameworks, and (2) actor capabilities, dictate which institutions actors attempt to change. We then apply this framework to multi-scalar actors and institutions in Thailand and the Philippines. Our empirics reveal the types of institutional work that actors perform such as advocacy, education, mimicry, and networking, and demonstrate how this creates legal and discursive support, and improves stakeholder awareness and acceptance of PES as an environmental management strategy. Eight formal institutions are shown to have undergone change to enable PES across these countries, including those related to indigenous people, energy production, protected areas, pollution control, carbon offsetting, and decentralised governance. We show institutional change to be a geographical and contextual process that requires actors to match the right types of institutional work, with the right mechanism of institutional change, and a suitable target institution if they are to be successful in effecting change. Yet, we also report failed attempts, and explain how informal cultural norms act as challenges to formal institutional change. Through our comparative analysis of multiple institutions, actors, and national settings, we identify trends and make recommendations with global relevance to PES scholars and practitioners, and that can aid other initiatives that seek to address climate change and promote environmental sustainability.