Climate Action via Just Transitions Across the Island of Ireland: Labour, Land and the Low-Carbon Transition

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-268
Author(s):  
Sinéad Mercier ◽  
Patrick Bresnihan ◽  
Damian McIlroy ◽  
John Barry
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Stoll-Kleemann ◽  
Tim O’Riordan

This paper reassesses the scope for shifting high-carbon personal behaviors in the light of prevailing insufficient political and regulatory action. Our previous research has shown that citizens regard such behavioral shifts as extremely daunting and create a number of psychological denial mechanisms that draw attention to the inaction of others, including governments. Further theoretical insights and relevant new findings have been attained from a more recent survey of more than 1000 German residents. This reveals that direct denial of anthropogenic climate change is replaced by a denial of responsibility for individual climate action. Ways of moral disengagement play a more dominant role, such as the diffusion and displacement of responsibility, although a majority is aware of—and very much concerned about—the climate crisis. More attention needs to be given for further reinterpretation of the role of moral disengagement to single out adequate strategies for different individuals and groups of people, such as making role models more visible to encourage social learning that could accelerate further necessary moral and behavioral transformations.


Eos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy Showstack

HSH Prince Albert II cautioned that the world has to come to terms with the fact that we are facing severe challenges if we don’t move toward a low-carbon global economy.


Subject The reaction of Pacific island states to Paris climate agreement. Significance The Pacific islands were among the strongest advocates of a comprehensive climate agreement at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in December. After being portrayed as the moral face of the urgency of climate action in Paris, Pacific countries face the domestic challenge of building domestic institutional capacities to plan and implement their own low-carbon development pathways and ensure that these are harmonised with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Impacts The new Pacific Islands Development Forum will provide an institutional platform for climate advocacy. Speedy ratification of the Paris accord led by Pacific countries could help it come quickly into force. Forested countries, such as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, will seek to benefit from their support for countering deforestation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofía Viguri ◽  
Sandra López Tovar ◽  
Mariel Juárez Olvera ◽  
Gloria Visconti

In response to the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the IDB Group Board of Governors endorsed the target of increasing climate-related financing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) from 15% in 2015 to 30% of the IDB Groups combined total approvals by 2020. Currently, the IDB Group is on track to meet this commitment, as in 2018, it financed nearly US$5 billion in climate-change-related activities benefiting LAC, which accounted for 27% of total IDB Groups annual approvals. In 2019, the overall volume and proportion of climate finance in new IDBG approvals have increased to 29%. As the IDB continues to strive towards this goal by using its funds to ramp-up climate action, it also acknowledges that tackling climate change is an objective shared with the rest of the international community. For the past ten years, strategic partnerships have been forged with external sources of finance that are also looking to invest in low-carbon and climate-resilient development. Doing this has contributed to the Banks objective of mobilizing additional resources for climate action while also strengthening its position as a leading partner to accelerate climate innovation in many fields. From climate-smart technologies and resilient infrastructure to institutional reform and financial mechanisms, IDB's use of external sources of finance is helping countries in LAC advance toward meeting their international climate change commitments. This report collects a series of insights and lessons learned by the IDB in the preparation and implementation of projects with climate finance from four external sources: the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). It includes a systematic revision of their design and their progress on delivery, an assessment of broader impacts (scale-up, replication, and contributions to transformational change/paradigm shift), and a set of recommendations to optimize the access and use of these funds in future rounds of climate investment. The insights and lessons learned collected in this publication can inform the design of short and medium-term actions that support “green recovery” through the mobilization of investments that promote decarbonization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Vladimir Jelavić ◽  
◽  
Valentina Delija-Ružić

The paper will describe a multisectoral approach in development of long-term planning documents based on the example of developing background papers for low-carbon development strategy in the Republic of Croatia until 2030, with a view to the year 2050. As part of its obligations under the Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action (EU 2018/1999), the Republic of Croatia is obliged to develop an Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan and a Long-Term Decarbonisation Strategy. New strategic goals of the Green Plan for Europe, intended to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and raise global competitiveness of the European economy, set an ambitious goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Fulfilling that vision requires a multidisciplinary approach as it does not suffice to reduce emissions from energy, industry, general consumption and transport, but it is necessary to increase removals in agricultural and LULUCF sectors. The paper will describe the development process, the engagement of numerous stakeholders, the methodological approach and the main outcomes. The analyses include detailed modelling in energetics, by economic sectors and natural carbon storage of the LULUCF sector. There are comments on synergistic energy challenges and on maintaining a secure food supply, as well as on sustainable forest management, achieving clean air, use of space and more.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roz Price

Climate change and urbanisation are inextricably linked. With the acceleration of urbanisation in many developing countries, urban areas play a major role in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. This is true of Nepal, which has experienced rapid urbanisation in recent decades. However, no studies were identified that evaluate the efforts of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from low carbon cities in rapidly urbanising developing countries. Although, there is literature out there on this that focuses on developed countries and the Global North, this is outside the scope of this report. Given the rapid nature of this review and its limitations it was not possible to fully answer the question of whether investments in low-carbon cities reduce carbon emissions in rapidly urbanising contexts. The first section of this report looks at the theory of low carbon cities and touches on some of the methodologies for measuring carbon emissions from cities (and the complexities and difficulties with these). The second section looks at Nepal in more detail, highlighting previous literature which has attempted to quantify emissions from cities in Nepal (namely Kathmandu Valley) and the co-benefits of low carbon investment in Nepal. However, overall, literature was largely limited on these topics, and was often older being from 5 years or more ago. Of note is an emissions inventory for Nepal for 2016 by Sadavarte et al. (2019) – although other literature notes that data on emission characteristics are still limited (IMC Worldwide, 2020). ICLEI (2009) also produced city emissions profiles for 3 Nepalese cities, but these are quite outdated. There are several studies related to low carbon development pathways for major cities in developed countries or China, however such studies from the perspective of emerging cities from the developing world are limited. Research into other developing countries with similar characteristics to Nepal was briefly explored in this rapid review but there was not time to fully explore this literature base. Most of the literature explored is from academia, although some is from non-governmental organisations particularly those looking at engaging cities in climate action (such as C40). The literature explored does not look at gender issues or issues of people with disabilities.


Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Mailloux ◽  
Colleen P. Henegan ◽  
Dorothy Lsoto ◽  
Kristen P. Patterson ◽  
Paul C. West ◽  
...  

The climate crisis threatens to exacerbate numerous climate-sensitive health risks, including heatwave mortality, malnutrition from reduced crop yields, water- and vector-borne infectious diseases, and respiratory illness from smog, ozone, allergenic pollen, and wildfires. Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stress the urgent need for action to mitigate climate change, underscoring the need for more scientific assessment of the benefits of climate action for health and wellbeing. Project Drawdown has analyzed more than 80 solutions to address climate change, building on existing technologies and practices, that could be scaled to collectively limit warming to between 1.5° and 2 °C above preindustrial levels. The solutions span nine major sectors and are aggregated into three groups: reducing the sources of emissions, maintaining and enhancing carbon sinks, and addressing social inequities. Here we present an overview of how climate solutions in these three areas can benefit human health through improved air quality, increased physical activity, healthier diets, reduced risk of infectious disease, and improved sexual and reproductive health, and universal education. We find that the health benefits of a low-carbon society are more substantial and more numerous than previously realized and should be central to policies addressing climate change. Much of the existing literature focuses on health effects in high-income countries, however, and more research is needed on health and equity implications of climate solutions, especially in the Global South. We conclude that adding the myriad health benefits across multiple climate change solutions can likely add impetus to move climate policies faster and further.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Jorisch ◽  
Christina Mallin ◽  
Mauro Accurso ◽  
Antonio García Zaballos ◽  
Enrique Iglesias Rodríguez

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