Obtaining public support for North-South climate funding: Evidence from conjoint experiments in donor countries

The adoption of the Warsaw mechanism on loss and damage has again highlighted the North-South divide in those parts of UNFCCC negotiations dealing with international climate finance. Current estimates put required funding from rich countries at 50–100 billion Euros per year to induce non-Annex I countries to take on greenhouse gas limitation commitments and to assist highly vulnerable countries. Results from survey-embedded conjoint experiments can help policy-makers anticipate opportunities and pitfalls in designing large-scale climate funding schemes. We implemented such experiments in the United States and Germany to better understand what institutional design characteristics are likely to garner more public support for climate funding among citizens in key developed countries. We find that climate funding receives more public support if it flows to efficient governments, funding decisions are made jointly by donor and recipient countries, funding is used both for mitigation and adaptation, and other donor countries contribute a large share. Contrary to what one might expect, climate change damage levels, income, and emissions in/of potential recipient countries have no significant effect on public support. These findings suggest that finance mechanisms that focus purely on compensating developing countries, without contributing to the global public good of mitigation, will find it hard to garner public support.     

Remotely sensed surface temperature variation of an inland saline lake over the central Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

Research on surface water temperature (SWT) variations in large lakes over the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) has been limited by lack of in situ measurements. By taking advantage of the increased availability of remotely sensed observations, this study investigated SWT variation of Siling Co in central QTP by processing complete MODIS Land surface temperature (LST) images over the lake covering from 2001 to 2013. The temporal (diurnal, intra-annul and inter-annul) variations of Siling Co SWT as well as the spatial patterns were analyzed. The results show that on average from late December to mid-April the lake is in a mixing state of water and ice and drastic diurnal temperature differences occur, especially along the shallow shoreline areas. The extent of spatial variations in monthly SWT ranges from 1.25 °C to 3.5 °C, and particularly large at nighttime and in winter months. The spatial patterns of annual average SWT were likely impacted by the cooling effect of river inflow from the west and east side of the lake. The annual cycle of spatial pattern of SWT is characterized by seasonal reversions between the shallow littoral regions and deep parts due to different heat capacity. Compared to the deep regions, the littoral shallow shoreline areas warms up quickly in spring and summer, and cool down drastically in autumn and winter, showing large diurnal and seasonal variation amplitudes of SWT. Two cold belt zones in the western and eastern side of the lake and warm patches along the southwestern and northeastern shorelines are shaped by the combined effects of the lakebed topography and river runoff. Overall, the lake-averaged SWT increased at a rate of 0.26 °C/decade during 2001–2013. Faster increase of temperature was found at nighttime (0.34 °C/decade) and in winter and spring, consistent with the asymmetric warming pattern over land areas reported in prior studies. The rate of temperature increase over Siling Co is remarkably lower than that over Bangoin station, which is probably attributable to the large heat capacity of water and partly reflects the sensitive of alpine saltwater lake to climate change.     

Climate volatility and poverty vulnerability in Tanzania

Climate volatility could change in the future, with important implications for agricultural productivity. For Tanzania, where food production and prices are sensitive to climate, changes in climate volatility could have severe implications for poverty. This study uses climate model projections, statistical crop models, and general equilibrium economic simulations to determine how the vulnerability of Tanzania's population to impoverishment by climate variability could change between the late 20th Century and the early 21st Century. Under current climate volatility, there is potential for a range of possible poverty outcomes, although in the most extreme of circumstances, poverty could increase by as many as 650,000 people due to an extreme interannual decline in grain yield. However, scenarios of future climate from multiple climate models indicate no consensus on future changes in temperature or rainfall volatility, so that either an increase or decrease is plausible. Scenarios with the largest increases in climate volatility are projected to render Tanzanians increasingly vulnerable to poverty through impacts on staple grains production in agriculture, with as many as 90,000 additional people entering poverty on average. Under the scenario where precipitation volatility decreases, poverty vulnerability decreases, highlighting the possibility of climate changes that oppose the ensemble mean, leading to poverty impacts of opposite sign. The results suggest that evaluating potential changes in volatility and not just the mean climate state may be important for analyzing the poverty implications of climate change.     

What determines perceived value of seasonal climate forecasts? A theoretical analysis

Seasonal forecasts have potential value as tools for the management of risks due to inter-annual climate variability and iterative adaptation to climate change. Despite their potential, forecasts are not widely used, in part due to poor performance and lack of relevance to specific users’ decision problems, and in part due to a variety of economic and behavioural factors. In this paper a theoretical model of perceived forecast value is proposed and applied to a stylized portfolio-type decision problem with wide applicability to actual forecast users, with a view to obtaining a more complete picture of the determinants of perceived value. The effects of user wealth, risk aversion, and perceived forecast trustworthiness, and presentational parameters, such as the position of forecast parameter categories, and the size of probability categories, on perceived value is investigated. Analysis of the model provides several strong qualitative predictions of how perceived forecast value depends on these factors. These predictions may be used to generate empirical hypotheses which offer the chance of evaluating the model's assumptions, and suggest several means of improving understanding of perceived value based on qualitative features of the results.     

‘Energy security’ and ‘climate change’: Constructing UK energy discursive realities

Recently, in the United Kingdom, two issues have dominated the energy policy agenda: effective climate change mitigation and energy security. Whilst evolving government policy has led to government support for new build nuclear power as part of the nation's future energy mix, limited attention has been devoted to examining how arguments were constructed to lead ‘naturally’ to nuclear new build as an option for addressing these two issues. Using Critical Discourse Analysis this paper analyses the struggles within the climate change mitigation and energy security discourses in generating and/or replacing meanings. In particular, it examines how construction of the dominant (hegemonic) discourses led ‘naturally’ to the necessity of new build nuclear power. This paper draws upon 24 stakeholder interviews to examine the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses. It outlines how climate change and energy security were perceived as motivators for energy policy; it shows how the combination of the dominant construction of climate change as an environmental issue and the construction of energy security as a ‘gas gap’ lent weight to the argument for nuclear new build. Struggling against these discourses is a counter-hegemonic discourse centred around climate change as a symptom of unsustainability and energy security as a lack of energy diversity. The latter, rather than ‘naturally’ proposing an urgent need for nuclear new build, lead to the argument for readdressing the focus of, and use of resources by, society - reducing energy demand and increasing energy supply diversity.     

Competing discourses of energy development: The implications of the Medupi coal-fired power plant in South Africa

This study explores the discursive dynamics behind the controversy to build the US$17.8 billion 4800 MW Medupi coal-fired power plant in South Africa, the seventh largest in the world. It begins by viewing climate change and energy security not as objective fact driven concepts, but constantly negotiated discourses. Based on a sampling of project documents, reports, testimony, and popular articles, the study then maps the discursive justifications behind the project as well as those against it. More specifically, it isolates themes of economic development, environmental sustainability, and energy security that converge into a discursive ensemble of inevitability supporting complete electrification for all of South Africa. The study also documents themes at the heart of the campaign against Medupi: maldevelopment and secrecy, local and global environmental degradation, and energy poverty which coalesce into a grand narrative of democracy. Tracing the intricacies of the Medupi controversy provides rich insight into energy policy and planning in South Africa. It also emphasizes how struggles to expand access to energy services can exacerbate degradation of the environment, and shows how climate and environmental discourses can become institutionalized.     

The political economy of technology support: Making decisions about carbon capture and storage and low carbon energy technologies

This article reviews the political economy of government choice around technology support for the development and deployment of low carbon emission energy technologies, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). It is concerned with how governments should allocate limited economic resources across abatement alternatives. In particular, it explores two inter-related questions. First, should government support focus on a narrow range of options or be distributed across many potential alternatives? Second, what criteria should be considered when determining which specific technologies to support? It presents a simple economic model with experience curves for CCS and renewable energy technologies to explore the lowest cost alternatives for meeting an emission abatement objective. It then explores a variety of economic and political factors that must be considered when governments make decisions about technology support.     

Creating usable science: Opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy

In the past several decades, decision makers in the United States have increasingly called upon publicly funded science to provide “usable” information for policy making, whether in the case of acid rain, famine prevention or climate change policy. As demands for usability become more prevalent for publicly accountable scientific programs, there is a need to better understand opportunities and constraints to science use in order to inform policy design and implementation. Motivated by recent critique of the decision support function of the US Global Change Research Program, this paper seeks to address this issue by specifically examining the production and use of climate science. It reviews empirical evidence from the rich scholarship focused on climate science use, particularly seasonal climate forecasts, to identify factors that constrain or foster usability. It finds, first, that climate science usability is a function both of the context of potential use and of the process of scientific knowledge production itself. Second, nearly every case of successful use of climate knowledge involved some kind of iteration between knowledge producers and users. The paper argues that, rather than an automatic outcome of the call for the production of usable science, iterativity is the result of the action of specific actors and organizations who ‘own’ the task of building the conditions and mechanisms fostering its creation. Several different types of institutional arrangements can accomplish this task, depending on the needs and resources available. While not all of the factors that enhance usability of science for decision making are within the realm of the scientific enterprise itself, many do offer opportunities for improvement. Science policy mechanisms such as the level of flexibility afforded to research projects and the metrics used to evaluate the outcomes of research investment can be critical to providing the necessary foundation for iterativity and production of usable science to occur.     

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.     

Mental preparation for climate adaptation: The role of cognition and culture in enhancing adaptive capacity of water management in Kiribati

In many Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), such as in Kiribati, formal national adaptation programmes are currently being operationalised or are in the pipeline. A key focus is on motivating householders to adapt in anticipation of climate change through pilot community projects. In this paper, we argue that the water sector must pay equal attention to how communities cognitively perceive the process of adaptation if interventions are to be effective. Adopting a cognitive model to gain such insights we conclude that individual's belief in their own abilities to manage water stress play a crucial role in driving intentions to adapt and therefore greater attention needs to be placed on understanding the underling drivers shaping such beliefs.