scholarly journals Communicating climate change findings from IPCC reports: insights from outreach events in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 168 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minal Pathak ◽  
Joyashree Roy ◽  
Shaurya Patel ◽  
Shreya Some ◽  
Purvi Vyas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
Diverse Audience ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation ◽  
Local Languages ◽  
Background Prior

AbstractIn recent years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been collaborating with Indian institutions to organise outreach events. This essay draws on the perspective of participants, speakers and organisers of 17 in-person outreach events conducted across India in 2018 and 2020, to share insights and recommendations for future IPCC events in India and other developing country contexts. The formats analysed in this essay range from panel events with very large public audiences to more focused workshops, meetings and seminars. Target audiences covered both academic and non-academic audiences and included researchers, teachers, students, industry and NGOs. The events, while achieving their main objective of communicating the findings of IPCC reports, also provided a platform for open discussion of localised climate impacts and good practices in adaptation and mitigation. There are, however, notable challenges to public outreach in India, specifically in terms of attracting an adequate number of participants, experts’ availability, communicating to a diverse audience and translation into local languages. The biggest challenge faced by speakers was a lack of knowledge about the number of attendees and the composition of the audience prior to an event. It is our recommendation that future outreach events in India are designed to be interactive, tailored to the regional context and complemented by simplified communication materials. Speakers should be provided with audience information and background prior to the event, and greater reach into rural areas, including school children, could be achieved with material in local languages. Additionally, event organisers often require logistical and operational support to host outreach events.

Nature-Based Solutions to face climate change adaptation and mitigation in Mediterranean watersheds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itxaso Ruiz ◽  
María José Sanz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Water Cycle ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Watershed Scale ◽  
Sustainable Rural Development ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

<p>Rural areas of the Mediterranean watersheds face great environmental challenges, where climate change impacts the water cycle, the soil, and biodiversity, which are often priority issues for adaptation. These, have been aggravated by historical land management practices trends. In this context, we propose Nature Based Solutions (NBS) in the form of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) actions at the watershed scale to achieve climate change adaptation and mitigation while promoting other ecosystem services.</p><p>SLM actions are local adaptation practices that promote sustainable rural development. Thus, we seek the combination of several actions to achieve regional (watershed scale) more integrated approaches. With this study, we aim at proving that NBS, and thus SLM, is a successful tool for alleviating climate change impacts (i.e. water scarcity, enhanced erosion, biodiversity decline) while promoting the role of land in mitigation and enhancing biodiversity in the rural Mediterranean areas.</p><p>For this, we propose a novel conceptualization of SLM actions that moves from their local application and evaluation to the regional more systemic approaches through their combination. Results show synergies in the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere, allow for the upscaling of SLM through systemic approaches and point at direct contributions to several Sustainable Development Goals.</p>

scholarly journals Contributions of Nature-Based Solutions to Reduce Peoples’ Vulnerabilities to Climate Change across the Rural Global South

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Woroniecki ◽  
Femke Anna Spiegelenberg ◽  
Alexandre Chausson ◽  
Beth Turner ◽  
Isabel Key ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Global South ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Systematic Map ◽  
Vulnerability Reduction ◽  
Ecosystem Sensitivity

Nature-based solutions (NbS) —i.e. working with and enhancing nature to address societal challenges— feature with increasing prominence in responses to climate change, including in the adaptation plans of the most vulnerable nations. Although evidence for the effectiveness of NbS for adaptation is growing, there is less evidence on whether and how NbS reduce vulnerability to climate change in the Global South, despite this region being home to most of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people. To address this, we analysed the vulnerability-reduction outcomes of 85 nature-based interventions in rural areas across the Global South, and factors mediating their effectiveness, based on a systematic map of peer-reviewed studies encompassing a wide diversity of ecosystems, climate impacts, intervention types and institutions. We applied an analytical framework based on social-ecological systems and climate change vulnerability, coding studies with respect to six pathways of vulnerability reduction: social and ecological exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. We find widespread effectiveness of NbS in the dataset with 95% providing positive outcomes for climate change adaptation. Overall, nature-based interventions reduced vulnerability primarily by lowering ecosystem sensitivity to climate impacts (73% of interventions), followed by reducing social sensitivity (43%), reducing ecological exposure (37%), and/or increasing social adaptive capacity (34%), ecological adaptive capacity (18%) and reducing social exposure (12%). With an analysis of mediating factors, we show that vulnerability-reduction effectiveness was affected as much by social and political factors as by technical considerations. Indeed configurations of existing and introduced formal and informal institutions appear central to the efficacy and distributive effects of the studied interventions. We conclude that attention to the distinct pathways through which vulnerability is reduced can help maximise the benefits of NbS and that to be successful, careful consideration is required on their applicability to particular circumstances as well as their social dimensions.

scholarly journals Treatment of International Economic Trade in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 155-165
Author(s):  
Jackie Dawson ◽  
Jean Holloway ◽  
Nathan Debortoli ◽  
Elisabeth Gilmore
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Cascading Effects ◽  
Trade Offs

Abstract Purpose of the Review Climate change presents significant risks to the international trade and supply chain systems with potentially profound and cascading effects for the global economy. A robust international trade system may also be central to managing future climate risks. Here, we assess the treatment (or lack thereof) of trade in a selection of recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment and special reports using a quantitative text analysis. IPCC reports are considered the preeminent source of relevant climate change information and underpin international climate change negotiations. Study Findings Results show that international trade has not had substantial coverage in recent IPCC assessments. Relevant keywords associated with trade appear in very limited ways, generally in relation to the words “product” and “transport.” These keywords are often referring to emissions associated with transportation and the movement of food and global food systems. The influence of trade is given larger consideration with respect to the costs and trade-offs of climate mitigation policies, especially the interactions with food availability, that appear in Working Group III reports compared with the risks to trade from climate change impacts in Working Group II. Trade in relation to other economic sectors is largely absent as well as risks from potential climate-related trade disruption. There is almost no treatment of the potential impacts, risks, and adaptation strategies to manage the climate related-implications for international trade. Recommendations Given the importance of trade to economic growth, we recommend that additional attention be paid to trade and related economic issues in future IPCC assessment and special reports, specifically on the interactions of climate impacts and risks on trade and the potential for trade to moderate these risks. To achieve this, there must be efforts to increase the base of scientific literature focused on climate change and international trade as well as increased effort made among IPCC lead authors to review trade literature that may lie outside conventional climate change scholarship.

scholarly journals Consistency in Vulnerability Assessments of Wheat to Climate Change—A District-Level Analysis in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 8256
Author(s):  
Vanshika Dhamija ◽  
Roopam Shukla ◽  
Christoph Gornott ◽  
PK Joshi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Central India ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Wheat Crop ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Weighting Methods

In India, a reduction in wheat crop yield would lead to a widespread impact on food security. In particular, the most vulnerable people are severely exposed to food insecurity. This study estimates the climate change vulnerability of wheat crops with respect to heterogeneities in time, space, and weighting methods. The study uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) framework of vulnerability while using composite indices of 27 indicators to explain exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. We used climate projections under current (1975–2005) conditions and two future (2021–2050) Representation Concentration Pathways (RCPs), 4.5 and 8.5, to estimate exposure to climatic risks. Consistency across three weighting methods (Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Equal Weights (EWs)) was evaluated. Results of the vulnerability profile suggest high vulnerability of the wheat crop in northern and central India. In particular, the districts Unnao, Sirsa, Hardoi, and Bathinda show high vulnerability and high consistency across current and future climate scenarios. In total, 84% of the districts show more than 75% consistency in the current climate, and 83% and 68% of the districts show more than 75% consistency for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 climate scenario for the three weighting methods, respectively. By using different weighting methods, it was possible to quantify “method uncertainty” in vulnerability assessment and enhance robustness in identifying most vulnerable regions. Finally, we emphasize the importance of communicating uncertainties, both in data and methods in vulnerability research, to effectively guide adaptation planning. The results of this study would serve as the basis for designing climate impacts adjusted adaptation measures for policy interventions.

scholarly journals Inclusion of climate change strategies in municipal Integrated Development Plans: A case from seven municipalities in Limpopo Province, South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mankolo X. Lethoko
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Integrated Development ◽  
Greenhouse Gasses ◽  
Local Municipalities ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it clear that anthropogenic greenhouse gasses are the main cause of observed global warming that leads to climate change. Climate change is now a global reality. In the South African political set-up, local municipalities are the structures that are in direct contact with communities and they draw up Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), which are reviewed and upgraded annually. The article seeks to investigate the extent to which climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies are embedded IDPs in seven vulnerable municipalities in the Limpopo Province. The article conducted an in-depth content analysis of the IDPs of the seven municipalities and the results have revealed that these municipalities have not included adaptation and mitigation strategies adequately in their IDPs despite being the most vulnerable municipalities in the province. The article concludes that these municipalities have not as yet institutionalised climate change in their daily operations, planning and decision making. To this end, the paper recommends that local municipalities should include climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in their IDPs.Keywords: Climate change; adaptation; mitigation; Integrated Development Plan; vulnerable municipalities

scholarly journals Rural Drinking Water Safety under Climate Change: The Importance of Addressing Physical, Social, and Environmental Dimensions

Resources ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Jeremy Kohlitz ◽  
Joanne Chong ◽  
Juliet Willetts
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Water Access ◽  
Water Safety ◽  
Case Study Methodology ◽  
Drinking Water Safety ◽  
Causal Pathways ◽  
Infrastructure Design

This paper explores the physical, social, and environmental dimensions of how climate change impacts affect drinking water safety in a rural context in developing countries. Climate impacts, such as contamination or the reduced availability of preferred drinking water sources due to climate-related hazards, threaten water safety in rural areas and these impacts will likely worsen as climate change accelerates. We qualitatively examined these impacts in a community in rural Vanuatu using three approaches side-by-side: adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience. We employed a mixed methods case study methodology that combined semi-structured interviews, technological and environmental surveys, and observations. We demonstrate the influence of physical infrastructure design, social structures mediating water access, and the availability of multiple sustainable water resources on water safety with respect to climate impacts. We also show how the initial problematization of how climate affects water safety can influence subsequent actions to address, or overlook, issues of infrastructure design and maintenance, social equity, and natural resource management for water access. Improvements to rural drinking water safety management in the context of climate change should take a pluralistic approach, informed by different conceptualizations of climate impacts, to account for the varied causal pathways of reduced water safety for different members of a community.

The impact of climate change on road and building infrastructure: a four-country study

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Chinowsky ◽  
Amy Schweikert ◽  
Gordon Hughes ◽  
Carolyn S. Hayles ◽  
Niko Strzepek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the potential impact of climate change on the built environment in four Northern Asian countries. The impact on roads and buildings infrastructure in China, Japan, South Korea and Mongolia were considered during the decades 2030, 2050 and 2090. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a stressor-response approach, where using the analysis of 17 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) approved Global Circulation Model (GCM) scenarios, projections for impacts from flooding events, precipitation amounts and temperature were determined. The cost of the impacts, based on both maintenance and new construction considerations, were then determined. “Adapt” and “No Adapt” scenarios were incorporated to predict potential costs in each era. Findings – Mongolia is vulnerable under the majority of scenarios and faces the greatest opportunity cost in terms of potential loss to enhancing the road stock. China is also vulnerable, but the extent of this vulnerability varies widely based on the climate scenarios. Japan is primarily vulnerable to road stock impacts, although some scenarios indicate buildings vulnerability. South Korea appears to have the least vulnerability but could still face $1 billion annual costs from climate change impacts. Practical implications – Results indicate the need for proactive policy planning to avoid costly impacts later in the century. Originality/value – The study illustrates the diverse affects that may occur under climate change scenarios and the potential benefit gained from understanding and planning for the projected climate impacts on the built environment.

scholarly journals Communicating climate change findings from IPCC reports: Lessons from outreach events in India

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minal Pathak ◽  
Joyashree Roy ◽  
Shaurya Patel ◽  
Shreya Some ◽  
Purvi Vyas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Research Collaborations ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Open Discussion

Abstract India has been collaboratively hosting public dissemination events to communicate climate change science and knowledge using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports since 2007. All three special reports from Sixth Assessment cycle have been presented in multiple outreach events in various states of India. The primary aim has been to satisfy the growing appetite among various social groups for reliable scientific understanding of climate change and the solution space. The study includes insights from 18 physical outreach events conducted in India. The format ranged from very large public events with mixed stakeholder presence in the audience with presence of national/subnational policy makers; workshops, meetings and seminars with implementing sectors and investors, financial institutions, NGOs and a third category with knowledge generators, researchers, teachers and students. The follow up mass media and social media coverage have been a positive spin off. The events provided platform for open discussion on bottom-up local good practices, very localised impacts and connection to climate systems and reasons for concern and action. Feedback received is rich and rewarding. Face to face outreach events have enormous co benefits and trust building scope as side talks, coffee time talks, small side meetings, casual clarifications all help in providing space to participants for dispelling doubts, build long term research collaborations and they become ambassadors and adopters of IPCC science. Overall, the events were hugely successful, however many more such events, especially in local languages are needed to ensure messages of the IPCC reach the wider stakeholders.

scholarly journals Climate-economy feedbacks, temperature variability, and the social cost of carbon

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarmo Kikstra ◽  
Paul Waidelich ◽  
James Rising ◽  
Dmitry Yumashev ◽  
Chris Hope ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Cost ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Social Cost Of Carbon ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Country Level ◽  
The Social

<p>A key statistic describing climate change impacts is the “social cost of carbon” (SCC), the total market and non-market costs to society incurred by releasing a ton of CO<sub>2</sub>. Estimates of the SCC have risen in recent years, with improved understanding of the risk of climate change to various sectors, including agriculture [1], mortality [2], and economic growth [3].</p><p>The total risks of climate impacts also depend on the representation of human-climate feedbacks such as the effect of climate impacts on GDP growth and extremes (rather than a focus only on means), but this relationship has not been extensively studied [4-7]. In this paper, we update the widely used PAGE IAM to investigate how SCC distributions change with the inclusion of climate-economy feedbacks and temperature variability. The PAGE model has recently been improved with representations of permafrost thawing and surface albedo feedback, CMIP6 scenarios, and empirical market damage estimates [8]. We study how changes from PAGE09 to PAGE-ICE affected the SCC, increasing it up to 75%, with a SCC distribution with a mean around $300 for the central SSP2-4.5 scenario. Then we model the effects of different levels of the persistence of damages, for which the persistence parameter is shown to have enormous effects. Adding stochastic interannual regional temperature variations based on an analysis of observational temperature data [9] can increase the hazard rate of economic catastrophes changes the form of the distribution of SCC values. Both the effects of temperature variability and climate-economy feedbacks are region-dependent. Our results highlight the importance of feedbacks and extremes for the understanding of the expected value, distribution, and heterogeneity of climate impacts.</p><p> </p><p>[1] Moore, F. C., Baldos, U., Hertel, T., & Diaz, D. (2017). New science of climate change impacts on agriculture implies higher social cost of carbon. Nature communications, 8(1), 1607.</p><p>[2] Carleton, et al. (2018). Valuing the global mortality consequences of climate change accounting for adaptation costs and benefits.</p><p>[3] Ricke, K., Drouet, L., Caldeira, K., & Tavoni, M. (2018). Country-level social cost of carbon. Nature Climate Change, 8(10), 895.</p><p>[4] Burke, M., et al. (2016). Opportunities for advances in climate change economics. Science, 352(6283), 292–293. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad9634</p><p>[5] National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine. (2017). Valuing climate damages: updating estimation of the social cost of carbon dioxide. National Academies Press.</p><p>[6] Stiglitz, J. E., et al.. (2017). Report of the high-level commission on carbon prices.</p><p>[7] Field, C. B., Barros, V., Stocker, T. F., & Dahe, Q. (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation: Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Vol. 9781107025). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139177245.009</p><p>[8] Yumashev, D., et al. (2019). Climate policy implications of nonlinear decline of Arctic land permafrost and other cryosphere elements. Nature Communications, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09863-x</p><p>[9] Brierley, C. M., Koch, A., Ilyas, M., Wennyk, N., & Kikstra, J. S. (2019, March 12). Half the world's population already experiences years 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial. https://doi.org/10.31223/osf.io/sbc3f</p>

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