scholarly journals Creative, embodied practices, and the potentialities for sustainability transformations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Bentz ◽  
Letícia do Carmo ◽  
Nicole Schafenacker ◽  
Jörn Schirok ◽  
Sara Dal Corso
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis paper argues for an integrative approach to sustainability transformations, one that reconnects body and mind, that fuses art and science and that integrates diverse forms of knowledge in an open, collaborative and creative way. It responds to scholarship emphasizing the importance of connecting disparate ways of knowing, including scientific, artistic, embodied and local knowledges to better understand environmental change and to foster community resilience and engagement. This paper draws on the experience of an arts-based project in Lisbon, Portugal, and explores embodied and performative practices and their potential for climate change transformations. It puts forward and enlivens an example, where such forms of engaging communities can provide new insight into how equitable, just and sustainable transformations can come about. The process involved a series of interactive workshops with diverse arts-based methods and embodied practices to create performative material. From this process, a space emerged for the creation of meaning about climate change. Three key elements stood out in this process as being potentially important for the emergence of meaning-making and for understanding the impact of the project: the use of metaphors, embedding the project locally, and the use of creative, embodied practices. This furthers research, suggesting that the arts can play a critical role in engaging people with new perspectives on climate change and sustainability issues by offering opportunities for critical reflection and providing spaces for creative imagination and experimentation. Such processes may be important for contributing to the changes needed to realize transformations to sustainability.

scholarly journals Endemic Juniperus Montane Species Facing Extinction Risk under Climate Change in Southwest China: Integrative Approach for Conservation Assessment and Prioritization

Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Mohammed A. Dakhil ◽  
Marwa Waseem A. Halmy ◽  
Walaa A. Hassan ◽  
Ali El-Keblawy ◽  
Kaiwen Pan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Potential Distribution ◽  
Extinction Risk ◽  
In Situ Conservation ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Conservation Assessment ◽  
Distribution Models ◽  
Area Of Occupancy ◽  
Annual Range ◽  
The Impact

Climate change is an important driver of biodiversity loss and extinction of endemic montane species. In China, three endemic Juniperus spp. (Juniperuspingii var. pingii, J.tibetica, and J.komarovii) are threatened and subjected to the risk of extinction. This study aimed to predict the potential distribution of these three Juniperus species under climate change and dispersal scenarios, to identify critical drivers explaining their potential distributions, to assess the extinction risk by estimating the loss percentage in their area of occupancy (AOO), and to identify priority areas for their conservation in China. We used ensemble modeling to evaluate the impact of climate change and project AOO. Our results revealed that the projected AOOs followed a similar trend in the three Juniperus species, which predicted an entire loss of their suitable habitats under both climate and dispersal scenarios. Temperature annual range and isothermality were the most critical key variables explaining the potential distribution of these three Juniperus species; they contribute by 16–56.1% and 20.4–38.3%, respectively. Accounting for the use of different thresholds provides a balanced approach for species distribution models’ applications in conservation assessment when the goal is to assess potential climatic suitability in new geographical areas. Therefore, south Sichuan and north Yunnan could be considered important priority conservation areas for in situ conservation and search for unknown populations of these three Juniperus species.

scholarly journals Learning about climate change in, with and through art

2020 ◽  
Vol 162 (3) ◽  
pp. 1595-1612
Author(s):  
Julia Bentz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Climate Change Education ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Education Needs

Abstract Effective strategies to learn about and engage with climate change play an important role in addressing this challenge. There is a growing recognition that education needs to change in order to address climate change, yet the question remains “how?” How does one engage young people with a topic that is perceived as abstract, distant, and complex, and which at the same time is contributing to growing feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and anxiety among them? In this paper, I argue that although the important contributions that the arts and humanities can make to this challenge are widely discussed, they remain an untapped or underutilized potential. I then present a novel framework and demonstrate its use in schools. Findings from a high school in Portugal point to the central place that art can play in climate change education and engagement more general, with avenues for greater depth of learning and transformative potential. The paper provides guidance for involvement in, with, and through art and makes suggestions to create links between disciplines to support meaning-making, create new images, and metaphors and bring in a wider solution space for climate change. Going beyond the stereotypes of art as communication and mainstream climate change education, it offers teachers, facilitators, and researchers a wider portfolio for climate change engagement that makes use of the multiple potentials of the arts.

Biological evidence of past environments and climatic changes

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon R. Pilcher
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Pollen Analysis ◽  
Climatic Changes ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Peat Bogs ◽  
Glacial Period ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Biological Evidence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Insight Into

This paper will examine some of the types of biological evidence that allow us an insight into past environments and will consider some of the concepts that affect and limit our interpretations of past environments, and through them climatic changes.Scandinavia was the birthplace of palaeoenvironmental studies; basic to these being the concepts of speciation formulated in Uppsala by Linnaeus nearly 250 years ago. Sernander proposed his bog regeneration theories in 1910 and von Post gave his first two lectures on pollen analysis in 1916. Iversen demonstrated how the impact of human activities could be disentangled from climate change and later discussed the effects of lags in the vegetation at the start of the post glacial. These laid the framework for much that I will describe.At the turn of the century the two botanists Blytt and Sernander proposed a sub-division of the recent past (the post glacial period or Holocene as we now call it) on the basis of biological evidence preserved in bogs. They described wood layers in peat bogs and introduced the terms Boreal and Sub-Boreal for the time spanned by the wood layers, and the Atlantic and Sub-Atlantic for what they interpreted as the intervening wetter periods. These wood layers are as obvious now as they were in 1900 and the terms Boreal and Atlantic have gone in and out of fashion over the intervening years.

scholarly journals Population genomic, climatic and anthropogenic evidence suggest the role of human forces in endangerment of green peafowl ( Pavo muticus )

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1948) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Dong ◽  
Hao-Chih Kuo ◽  
Guo-Ling Chen ◽  
Fei Wu ◽  
Peng-Fei Shan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Disturbance ◽  
Anthropogenic Impacts ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Genomic Diversity ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Pavo Muticus ◽  
Green Peafowl

Both anthropogenic impacts and historical climate change could contribute to population decline and species extinction, but their relative importance is still unclear. Emerging approaches based on genomic, climatic and anthropogenic data provide a promising analytical framework to address this question. This study applied such an integrative approach to examine potential drivers for the endangerment of the green peafowl ( Pavo muticus ). Several demographic reconstructions based on population genomes congruently retrieved a drastic population declination since the mid-Holocene. Furthermore, a comparison between historical and modern genomes suggested genetic diversity decrease during the last 50 years. However, climate-based ecological niche models predicted stationary general range during these periods and imply the little impact of climate change. Further analyses suggested that human disturbance intensities were negatively correlated with the green peafowl's effective population sizes and significantly associated with its survival status (extirpation or persistence). Archaeological and historical records corroborate the critical role of humans, leaving the footprint of low genomic diversity and high inbreeding in the survival populations. This study sheds light on the potential deep-time effects of human disturbance on species endangerment and offers a multi-evidential approach in examining underlying forces for population declines.

scholarly journals Tropical Forest: A Potential Resource for Climate Change Mitigation in Ghana

2019 ◽  
pp. 435-442
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Amankwah
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Tropical Forest ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Anthropogenic Activities ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
The State ◽  
Potential Resource ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Change Mitigation

Climate variability and change has become a global phenomenon with many countries including Ghana working hard to mitigate the effect or develop strategies for adaptation.  However, tropical forest has been identified to have the capacity to mitigate the impact of climate change and improve the general environment. The forest plays a critical role in the climate system, hydrology and the carbon cycle, and provide livelihood for over 2.5 billion rural dwellers in developing countries. This article therefore highlights the importance of tropical forest as a potential resource for climate change mitigation and the need for policy makers, stakeholders and the general public to seriously adopt positive approach to the management of forest resources. The article was carried out through extensive review of literature, official reports and policy documents.  The paper outlines the threat of climate change, the state of Ghana’s forest and climate, and the role of the forest to mitigate climate change. It also highlights the socio-economic benefits of the forest in mitigating the changing climate. The documents reviewed showed that the state of Ghana’s forest has dwindled over the years through anthropogenic activities and the climate is also changing. It was also established that trees can remove substantial amount of CO2 from the atmosphere for storage. The paper concludes with recommendations for the preservation and regeneration of the tropical forest for the purpose of mitigating the effect of climate change in Ghana. 

The hidden signature of temperature-moisture couplings in the heat sensitivity of global crops

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Lesk ◽  
Ethan Coffel ◽  
Jonathan Winter ◽  
Deepak Ray ◽  
Jakob Zscheischler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Cropping Systems ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Heat Sensitivity ◽  
Local Strength ◽  
Dry Conditions ◽  
The Impact

<p><strong>Rising air temperatures are a leading risk to global crop production and food security under climate change</strong><strong>. Recent research has emphasized the critical role of moisture availability in regulating crop responses to heat</strong><strong> and the importance of temperature-moisture couplings in the genesis of concurrent hot and dry conditions</strong><strong>. Here, we demonstrate that the heat sensitivity of key global crops is dependent on the local strength of couplings between temperature and moisture in the climate system (namely, the interannual correlations of growing season temperature with evapotransipration and precipitation). Over 1970-2013, maize and soy yields declined more during hotter growing seasons where decreased precipitation and evapotranspiration more strongly accompanied higher temperatures. Based on this historical pattern and a suite of CMIP6 climate model projections, we show that changes in temperature-moisture couplings in response to warming could enhance the heat sensitivity of these crops as temperatures rise, worsening the impact of warming by ~5% on global average. However, these changes will benefit crops in some areas where couplings weaken, and are highly uncertain in others. Our results demonstrate that climate change will impact crops not only through warming, but also through changes in temperature-moisture couplings, which may alter the sensitivity of crop yields to heat as warming proceeds. Robust adaptation of cropping systems will need to consider this underappreciated risk to food production from climate change.</strong></p>

scholarly journals Effects of Climate Finance on Risk Appraisal: A Study in the Southwestern Coast of Bangladesh

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Firdaus Ara Hussain ◽  
Mokbul Morshed Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
National Level ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Climate Finance ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Risk Appraisal ◽  
The Impact

Utilising climate funds properly to reduce the impact of potential risks of climate change at the local level is essential for successful adaptation to climate change. Climate change has been disrupting the lives of millions of households along the coastal region of Bangladesh. The country has allocated support from its national funds and accessed international funds for the implementation of adaptation interventions. With the focus of the scientific community on climate finance mechanisms and governance at the global and the national level, there is a lacuna in empirical evidence of how climate finance affects risk appraisal and engagement in adaptation measures at the local level. This paper aims to examine how the support from climate finance affects risk appraisal in terms of the perceived probability and severity and the factors which influence risk appraisal. A field survey was conducted on 240 climate finance recipient households (CF HHs) and 120 nonclimate finance recipient households (non-CF HHs) in Galachipa Upazila of Patuakhali District in coastal Bangladesh. The results indicate that both CF and non-CF HHs experience a high probability of facing climatic events in the future; however, CF HHs anticipated a higher severity of impacts of climatic events on different dimensions of their households. With higher income and social capital, the overall risk appraisal decreases for CF HHs. CF HHs have higher engagement in adaptation measures and social groups and maintain alternative sources of income. Climate finance played a critical role in supporting households in understanding the risks that they were facing, assisting them in exploring as well as enhancing their engagement in adaptation options.

scholarly journals Ericaceous Vegetation of the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia Will Prevail in the Face of Climate Change.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yohannes O Kidane ◽  
Samuel Hoffmann ◽  
Anja Jaeschke ◽  
Mirela Beloiu ◽  
Carl Beierkuhnlein
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Ecosystem Structure ◽  
Environmental Predictors ◽  
Bioclimatic Variables ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Climate change impacts ecosystem structure, functioning, and spatial distribution. Among others, it will result in a shift in ecosystem boundaries, which will result in the contraction of some vulnerable ecosystems, such as the alpine zone of high mountains. The African tropical high mountain ecosystems, i.e., Afroalpine ecosystems, are spatially extremely isolated and highly vulnerable. The ecosystems dominated by ericaceous woody plants are vital components at the transition between forests and Afroalpine vegetation. Here, we modeled the impact of projected climate change on the current and future distribution of ericaceous vegetation in the Bale Mountains. We hypothesize climate change will result in modified suitability of sites for ericaceous vegetation, leading to the expansion of ericaceous vegetation to higher elevation and contraction in other altitudes. Consequently, the expansion and dominance of ericaceous vegetation could negatively impact Afroalpine ecosystems. We applied and compared four modeling algorithms based on bioclimatic variables as environmental predictors: Generalized Linear Models (GLMs), Bioclim, Domain, and Support Vector Machines (SVM) algorithms. After testing for collinearity, we selected ten historical (current) and future bioclimatic variables. We used two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) of IPPC5 climate projections, namely RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, for future climate projection. The 2050s and 2070s projections resulted in increased ericaceous vegetation cover towards the midaltitude of northwestern and northern parts of the massif and the Sanetti plateau. Close ericaceous vegetation stands at high altitudes are projected to increase while receding from the lower range of the current distribution range across the massif. Moreover, the current ericaceous vegetation distribution is positively related to the temperature and precipitation trends, which reaffirms the critical role of temperature in shaping species distributions along elevational gradients. The results indicate the high likelihood for considerable changes in this biodiversity hotspot in Eastern Africa.

scholarly journals Convection permitting regional climate change simulations for understanding future climate and informing decision making in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Catherine A Senior ◽  
John H Marsham ◽  
Sègoléne Berthou ◽  
Laura E Burgin ◽  
Sonja S Folwell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Rainfall Variability ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Moist Convection ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
The Impact

AbstractPan-Africa convection-permitting regional climate model simulations have been performed to study the impact of high resolution and the explicit representation of atmospheric moist convection on the present and future climate of Africa. These unique simulations have allowed European and African climate scientists to understand the critical role that the representation of convection plays in the ability of a contemporary climate model to capture climate and climate change, including many impact relevant aspects such as rainfall variability and extremes. There are significant improvements in not only the small-scale characteristics of rainfall such as its intensity and diurnal cycle, but also in the large-scale circulation. Similarly effects of explicit convection affect not only projected changes in rainfall extremes, dry-spells and high winds, but also continental-scale circulation and regional rainfall accumulations. The physics underlying such differences are in many cases expected to be relevant to all models that use parameterized convection. In some cases physical understanding of small-scale change mean that we can provide regional decision makers with new scales of information across a range of sectors. We demonstrate the potential value of these simulations both as scientific tools to increase climate process understanding and, when used with other models, for direct user applications. We describe how these ground-breaking simulations have been achieved under the UK Government’s Future Climate for Africa Programme. We anticipate a growing number of such simulations, which we advocate should become a routine component of climate projection, and encourage international co-ordination of such computationally, and human-resource expensive simulations as effectively as possible.

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