Contextualising Climate Change, Disasters, Sustainability Transition and Peace in the Anthropocene

Author(s):  
Hans Günter Brauch

Formidable challenges confront Australia and its human settlements: the mega-metro regions, major and provincial cities, coastal, rural and remote towns. The key drivers of change and major urban vulnerabilities have been identified and principal among them are resource-constraints, such as oil, water, food, skilled labour and materials, and carbon-constraints, linked to climate change and a need to transition to renewable energy, both of which will strongly shape urban development this century. Transitions identifies 21st century challenges to the resilience of Australia’s cities and regions that flow from a range of global and local influences, and offers a portfolio of solutions to these critical problems and vulnerabilities. The solutions will require fundamental transitions in many instances: to our urban infrastructures, to our institutions and how they plan for the future, and perhaps most of all to ourselves in terms of our lifestyles and consumption patterns. With contributions from 92 researchers - all leaders in their respective fields - this book offers the expertise to chart pathways for a sustainability transition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ema Gusheva ◽  
Vincent de Gooyert

As we speed through the development and distribution of a vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic, economies are suffering through the worst decline of the century while, at the same time, being pushed to comply with global agreements regarding climate change. Because of this, the economic downturn is also seen as an opportunity to speed up the sustainability transition or, in simple terms, to achieve a “green recovery”. What can we expect from a green recovery? We address this question by reviewing position documents in the debate between green recovery and its opponent, “quick rebound”, in the Netherlands. We apply systems thinking to model causal arguments regarding key concepts comprising green recovery and identify issues of consensus and dissensus. Our findings indicate that green recovery is promising for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing growing socioeconomic inequalities. However, the position of what green recovery means for economic growth, including the development of gross domestic product and employment, is still largely unclear and at times contradictory. While some see tradeoffs, others suggest that economic growth and sustainability goals can be achieved simultaneously. Thus, we conclude by reflecting on the question: Can we have our cake and eat it?


2022 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eerika Albrecht ◽  
Iikka Pietilä ◽  
Sanna-Riikka Saarela

This article examines the public perceptions on the drafting process of Finnish Climate Act amendment, which is a legislation on the climate policy that aims to mitigate climate change and secure adaptive capacity. In this paper we present results of a thematic analysis, which reveals citizens' perceptions of the procedural values, with respect to transparency, participation, and acceptance, and the objectives of the amendment, such as the climate neutrality target for 2035. The research data consisted of 2,458 answers to a citizen survey on the Finnish Climate Change Act amendment. Our results reveal that the opinions of citizens ranged from highlighting the urgency of political action to climate denials, with varying perceptions on process and proposed outcomes. While over half of citizens felt positively about the 2035 climate neutrality target created in the Climate Change Amendment Act, only a third believed that there was appropriate opportunity for public participation in the amendment process. Based on these findings, we suggest that participatory and transparent processes in legislative drafting are prerequisites for the sustainability transition and the implementation of international climate mitigation targets.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Martin Franz ◽  
Felix Bücken ◽  
Kim Philip Schumacher ◽  
Kai Michael Griese

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 723-729
Author(s):  
Roslyn Gleadow ◽  
Jim Hanan ◽  
Alan Dorin

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Millington ◽  
Peter M. Cox ◽  
Jonathan R. Moore ◽  
Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).


2001 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Moss ◽  
James Oswald ◽  
David Baines

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