Lessons Learned About the Hindering Factors for Regional Cooperation Towards the Mitigation of Climate Change

Author(s):  
Pınar Gökçin Özuyar
2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-323
Author(s):  
Pavlina Zdraveva ◽  
Teodora Obradovic Grncarovska ◽  
Natasa Markovska ◽  
Elena Gavrilova ◽  
Emilija Poposka ◽  
...  

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the lessons learned and good practices regarding the greenhouse inventory system in the Republic of Macedonia. Design/methodology/approach – A comparative analysis for the preparation of the three national communications (NCs) to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Republic of Macedonia. Findings – The findings reveal the shift from a project approach, based on external consultants, towards a more process-oriented approach, where a multi-disciplinary national team has been established to prepare the inventory. Also, notable results include improvements in the technical capacity of the inventory team, communications with data sources and other stakeholders, quality assurance/quality control procedures, documenting and archiving, regional cooperation, as well as, the reliability of data series for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Practical implications – The study may serve well for countries with similar national circumstances and priorities for preparation of greenhouse inventory systems. Originality/value – Developing national database (inventory) of GHGs is an essential first step towards managing better climate change policy planning. A complete and transparent national greenhouse inventory is an essential tool for understanding emissions and trends, projecting future emissions and identifying sectors for cost-effective emission reduction opportunities. It is also a core element of national climate change reports to the UNFCCC (NCs). This case study shows the development of a sustainable system for preparation of GHG inventories and it describes the data collection and analysis procedures within that system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (12) ◽  
pp. 942-947
Author(s):  
Pol Mac Aonghusa ◽  
Susan Michie

Abstract Background Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the process of scientific research. AI, coupled with availability of large datasets and increasing computational power, is accelerating progress in areas such as genetics, climate change and astronomy [NeurIPS 2019 Workshop Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning, Vancouver, Canada; Hausen R, Robertson BE. Morpheus: A deep learning framework for the pixel-level analysis of astronomical image data. Astrophys J Suppl Ser. 2020;248:20; Dias R, Torkamani A. AI in clinical and genomic diagnostics. Genome Med. 2019;11:70.]. The application of AI in behavioral science is still in its infancy and realizing the promise of AI requires adapting current practices. Purposes By using AI to synthesize and interpret behavior change intervention evaluation report findings at a scale beyond human capability, the HBCP seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of research activities. We explore challenges facing AI adoption in behavioral science through the lens of lessons learned during the Human Behaviour-Change Project (HBCP). Methods The project used an iterative cycle of development and testing of AI algorithms. Using a corpus of published research reports of randomized controlled trials of behavioral interventions, behavioral science experts annotated occurrences of interventions and outcomes. AI algorithms were trained to recognize natural language patterns associated with interventions and outcomes from the expert human annotations. Once trained, the AI algorithms were used to predict outcomes for interventions that were checked by behavioral scientists. Results Intervention reports contain many items of information needing to be extracted and these are expressed in hugely variable and idiosyncratic language used in research reports to convey information makes developing algorithms to extract all the information with near perfect accuracy impractical. However, statistical matching algorithms combined with advanced machine learning approaches created reasonably accurate outcome predictions from incomplete data. Conclusions AI holds promise for achieving the goal of predicting outcomes of behavior change interventions, based on information that is automatically extracted from intervention evaluation reports. This information can be used to train knowledge systems using machine learning and reasoning algorithms.


Author(s):  
Walter Leal Filho ◽  
Abul Al-Amin ◽  
Gustavo Nagy ◽  
Ulisses Azeiteiro ◽  
Laura Wiesböck ◽  
...  

There are various climate risks that are caused or influenced by climate change. They are known to have a wide range of physical, economic, environmental and social impacts. Apart from damages to the physical environment, many climate risks (climate variability, extreme events and climate-related hazards) are associated with a variety of impacts on human well-being, health, and life-supporting systems. These vary from boosting the proliferation of vectors of diseases (e.g., mosquitos), to mental problems triggered by damage to properties and infrastructure. There is a great variety of literature about the strong links between climate change and health, while there is relatively less literature that specifically examines the health impacts of climate risks and extreme events. This paper is an attempt to address this knowledge gap, by compiling eight examples from a set of industrialised and developing countries, where such interactions are described. The policy implications of these phenomena and the lessons learned from the examples provided are summarised. Some suggestions as to how to avert the potential and real health impacts of climate risks are made, hence assisting efforts to adapt to a problem whose impacts affect millions of people around the world. All the examples studied show some degree of vulnerability to climate risks regardless of their socioeconomic status and need to increase resilience against extreme events.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Habib Zafarullah ◽  
Ahmed Shafiqul Huque

Purpose With climate change and environmental degradation being major issues in the world today, it is imperative for governments within a regional setting to collaborate on initiatives, harmonize their policies and develop strategies to counter threats. In South Asia, several attempts have been made to create a common framework for action in implementing synchronized policies. However, both political and technical deterrents have thwarted moves to accommodate priorities and interests of collaborating states. The purpose of this paper is to assess these issues and existing policies/strategies in selected South Asian countries and evaluate integrated plans of action based on collaborative partnerships. Design/methodology/approach Using a broad exploratory and interpretive approach, this paper evaluates how harmonization of environmental principles and synergies among countries can help reduce the effect of climate change and environmental hazards. Based on a review of ideas and concepts as well as both primary and secondary sources, including official records, legislation, inter-state and regional agreements, evaluation reports, impact studies (social, economic and ecological), and commentaries, it highlights several initiatives and processes geared to creating environmental protection standards and practices for the South Asian region. Findings Climate change has resulted in devastating impacts on people. It contributed to the proliferation of climate refugees and high incidence of poverty in South Asia. The region faces both political and technical obstacles in developing a sustainable approach to combat climate change. This is exacerbated by non-availability of information as well as reluctance to acknowledge the problem by key actors. The best strategy will be to integrate policies and regulations in the various countries of the region to develop strategic plans. The approach of prevention and protection should replace the existing emphasis on relief and rehabilitation. Originality/value The paper provides a critical overview of the climatic and environmental problems encountered in the South Asian region and provides pointers to resolving shared problems through the use of policy instruments for regulating the problems within the gamut of regional environmental governance. It attempts to identify solutions to offset regulatory and institutional barriers in achieving preferred results by emphasizing the need for redesigning regulatory structures and policy approaches for ecological well-being.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Tamayo ◽  
Ernesto Rodriguez-Camino ◽  
Sara Covaleda

<p>The intersectoral workshop held in December 2016 among the Ibero-American networks on water (CODIA), climate change (RIOCC) and meteorology (CIMHET) identified the need to dispose of downscaled climate change scenarios for Central America. Such scenarios would be developed by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) in the region, based on a common methodology, allowing the assessment of climate change impacts on water resources and extreme hydro-meteorological events.</p><p>One final outcome of the project has been a freely accessible web viewer, installed on the Centro Clima webpage (https://centroclima.org/escenarios-cambio-climatico/), managed by CRRH-SICA, where all information generated during the project is available for consultation and data downloading by the different sectors of users.</p><p>A key element in this project has been to integrate many downscaled projections based on different methods (dynamical and statistical), totalizing 45 different projections, and aiming at estimating the uncertainty coming from different sources in the best possible way.</p><p>Another essential element has been the strong involvement of the different user sectors through national workshops, first, at the beginning of the project for the identification and definition of viewer features the project, and then for the presentation of results and planning of its use by prioritized sectors.</p><p>In a second phase of the project, a regional working group made up of experts from the NMHSs will be in charge of viewer maintenance and upgrade, including new sectoral parameters, developed in collaboration with interested users, and computation and addition of new downscaled projections from CMIP 6 in collaboration with AEMET.</p><p>Finally, following the request of CIMHET, the possibility of replicating this project for other areas of Ibero-America is being evaluated.</p>


PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e12311
Author(s):  
Jingyun Guan ◽  
Moyan Li ◽  
Xifeng Ju ◽  
Jun Lin ◽  
Jianguo Wu ◽  
...  

Desert locusts are notorious for their widespread distribution and strong destructive power. Their influence extends from the vast arid and semiarid regions of western Africa to northwestern India. Large-scale locust outbreaks can have devastating consequences for food security, and their social impact may be long-lasting. Climate change has increased the uncertainty of desert locust outbreaks, and predicting suitable habitats for this species under climate change scenarios will help humans deal with the potential threat of locust outbreaks. By comprehensively considering climate, soil, and terrain variables, the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model was used to predict the potential habitats of solitary desert locusts in the 2050s and 2070s under the four shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585) in the CMIP6 model. The modeling results show that the average area under the curve (AUC) and true skill statistic (TSS) reached 0.908 ± 0.002 and 0.701, respectively, indicating that the MaxEnt model performed extremely well and provided outstanding prediction results. The prediction results indicate that climate change will have an impact on the distribution of the potential habitat of solitary desert locusts. With the increase in radiative forcing overtime, the suitable areas for desert locusts will continue to contract, especially in the 2070s under the SSP585 scenario, and the moderately and highly suitable areas will decrease by 0.88 × 106 km2 and 1.55 × 106 km2, respectively. Although the potentially suitable area for desert locusts is contracting, the future threat posed by the desert locust to agricultural production and food security cannot be underestimated, given the combination of maintained breeding areas, frequent extreme weather events, pressure from population growth, and volatile sociopolitical environments. In conclusion, methods such as monitoring and early warning, financial support, regional cooperation, and scientific prevention and control of desert locust plagues should be further implemented.


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