scholarly journals Financing a sustainable ocean economy

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Rashid Sumaila ◽  
Melissa Walsh ◽  
Kelly Hoareau ◽  
Anthony Cox ◽  
Louise Teh ◽  
...  

AbstractThe ocean, which regulates climate and supports vital ecosystem services, is crucial to our Earth system and livelihoods. Yet, it is threatened by anthropogenic pressures and climate change. A healthy ocean that supports a sustainable ocean economy requires adequate financing vehicles that generate, invest, align, and account for financial capital to achieve sustained ocean health and governance. However, the current finance gap is large; we identify key barriers to financing a sustainable ocean economy and suggest how to mitigate them, to incentivize the kind of public and private investments needed for topnotch science and management in support of a sustainable ocean economy.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Gabriel Lopez Porras

Despite international efforts to stop dryland degradation and expansion, current dryland pathways are predicted to result in large-scale migration, growing poverty and famine, and increasing climate change, land degradation, conflicts and water scarcity. Earth system science has played a key role in analysing dryland problems, and has been even incorporated in global assessments such as the ones made by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. However, policies addressing dryland degradation, like the ‘Mexican programme for the promotion of sustainable land management’, do not embrace an Earth system perspective, so they do not consider the complexity and non-linearity that underlie dryland problems. By exploring how this Mexican programme could integrate the Earth system perspective, this paper discusses how ’Earth system’ policies could better address dryland degradation and expansion in the Anthropocene.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1114
Author(s):  
Lina Marcinkevičiūtė ◽  
Jolanta Vilkevičiūtė ◽  
Jan Žukovskis ◽  
Rasa Pranskūnienė

The capacity of ecosystems to provide ecosystem services (hereinafter referred to as ES) depends on the state of their structure, processes, and functions, which is determined by interactions with other systems. These interactions are complex and take place in different climatic areas, and have different impacts on ecosystems and the use of ES. As the most sensitive part of the Lithuanian shore zone to climate change is the seaside zone or the coastal zone, which includes the Curonian Lagoon and the sea coast, the said area was therefore chosen for research. The case study examined those ES that were specific to the study area, without attempting to account for absolutely all ES. With an emphasis on the representation of different perspectives (in the process of assessing and preserving the potential of ES), the empirical study involved representatives of different (public and private) sectors. The public sector was represented by elders and eldership employees, the private sector by farmers and businesspeople. Respondents were selected purposefully to reflect the entire existing totality of the existing area. The evaluation of the obtained theoretical and practical results of the research identified the potential of the existing area ecosystem services and perspectives for the implementation of services by assessing their use according to respondents’ opinions, regional climate change, and national scale in EU environmental policy.


2012 ◽  
Vol 163 (12) ◽  
pp. 481-492
Author(s):  
Andreas Rigling ◽  
Ché Elkin ◽  
Matthias Dobbertin ◽  
Britta Eilmann ◽  
Arnaud Giuggiola ◽  
...  

Forest and climate change in the inner-Alpine dry region of Visp Over the past decades, observed increases in temperature have been particularly pronounced in mountain regions. If this trend should continue in the 21st Century, frequency and intensity of droughts will increase, and will pose major challenges for forest management. Under current conditions drought-related tree mortality is already an important factor of forest ecosystems in dry inner-Alpine valleys. Here we assess the sensitivity of forest ecosystems to climate change and evaluate alternative forest management strategies in the Visp region. We integrate data from forest monitoring plots, field experiments and dynamic forests models to evaluate how the forest ecosystem services timber production, protection against natural hazards, carbon storage and biodiver-sity will be impacted. Our results suggest that at dry low elevation sites the drought tolerance of native tree species will be exceeded so that in the longer term a transition to more drought-adapted species should be considered. At medium elevations, drought and insect disturbances as by bark beetles are projected to be important for forest development, while at high elevations forests are projected to expand and grow better. All of the ecosystem services that we considered are projected to be impacted by changing forest conditions, with the specific impacts often being elevation-dependent. In the medium term, forest management that aims to increase the resilience of forests to drought can help maintain forest ecosystem services temporarily. However, our results suggest that relatively rigid management interventions are required to achieve significant effects. By using a combination of environmental monitoring, field experiments and modeling, we are able to gain insight into how forest ecosystem, and the services they provide, will respond to future changes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1235-1249 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Mentzafou ◽  
A. Conides ◽  
E. Dimitriou

Abstract Coastal ecosystems are linked to socio-economic development, but simultaneously, are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and sea level rise (SLR). Within this scope, detailed topographic data resources of Spercheios River and Maliakos Gulf coastal area in Greece, combined with information concerning the economic value of the most important sectors of the area (wetland services, land property, infrastructure, income) were employed, so as to examine the impacts of three SLR scenarios, compiled based on the most recent regional projections reviewed. Based on the results, in the case of 0.3 m, 0.6 m and 1.0 m SLR, the terrestrial zone to be lost was estimated to be 6.2 km2, 18.9 km2 and 31.1 km2, respectively. For each scenario examined, wetlands comprise 68%, 41% and 39% of the total area lost, respectively, reflecting their sensitivity to even small SLR. The total economic impact of SLR was estimated to be 75.4 × 106 €, 161.7 × 106 € and 510.7 × 106 € for each scenario, respectively (3.5%, 7.5% and 23.7% of the gross domestic product of the area), 19%, 17% and 8% of which can be attributed to wetland loss. The consequences of SLR to the ecosystem services provided are indisputable, while adaptation and mitigation planning is required.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 2014
Author(s):  
Celina Aznarez ◽  
Patricia Jimeno-Sáez ◽  
Adrián López-Ballesteros ◽  
Juan Pablo Pacheco ◽  
Javier Senent-Aparicio

Assessing how climate change will affect hydrological ecosystem services (HES) provision is necessary for long-term planning and requires local comprehensive climate information. In this study, we used SWAT to evaluate the impacts on four HES, natural hazard protection, erosion control regulation and water supply and flow regulation for the Laguna del Sauce catchment in Uruguay. We used downscaled CMIP-5 global climate models for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 projections. We calibrated and validated our SWAT model for the periods 2005–2009 and 2010–2013 based on remote sensed ET data. Monthly NSE and R2 values for calibration and validation were 0.74, 0.64 and 0.79, 0.84, respectively. Our results suggest that climate change will likely negatively affect the water resources of the Laguna del Sauce catchment, especially in the RCP 8.5 scenario. In all RCP scenarios, the catchment is likely to experience a wetting trend, higher temperatures, seasonality shifts and an increase in extreme precipitation events, particularly in frequency and magnitude. This will likely affect water quality provision through runoff and sediment yield inputs, reducing the erosion control HES and likely aggravating eutrophication. Although the amount of water will increase, changes to the hydrological cycle might jeopardize the stability of freshwater supplies and HES on which many people in the south-eastern region of Uruguay depend. Despite streamflow monitoring capacities need to be enhanced to reduce the uncertainty of model results, our findings provide valuable insights for water resources planning in the study area. Hence, water management and monitoring capacities need to be enhanced to reduce the potential negative climate change impacts on HES. The methodological approach presented here, based on satellite ET data can be replicated and adapted to any other place in the world since we employed open-access software and remote sensing data for all the phases of hydrological modelling and HES provision assessment.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 427
Author(s):  
Tianyang Zhou ◽  
Jiaxin Zhang ◽  
Yunzhi Qin ◽  
Mingxi Jiang ◽  
Xiujuan Qiao

From supporting wood production to mitigating climate change, forest ecosystem services are crucial to the well-being of humans. Understanding the mechanisms that drive forest dynamics can help us infer how to maintain forest ecosystem services and how to improve predictions of forest dynamics under climate change. Despite the growing number of studies exploring above ground biomass (AGB) dynamics, questions of dynamics in biodiversity and in number of individuals still remain unclear. Here, we first explored the patterns of community dynamics in different aspects (i.e., AGB, density and biodiversity) based on short-term (five years) data from a 25-ha permanent plot in a subtropical forest in central China. Second, we examined the relationships between community dynamics and biodiversity and functional traits. Third, we identified the key factors affecting different aspects of community dynamics and quantified their relative contributions. We found that in the short term (five years), net above ground biomass change (ΔAGB) and biodiversity increased, while the number of individuals decreased. Resource-conservation traits enhanced the ΔAGB and reduced the loss in individuals, while the resource-acquisition traits had the opposite effect. Furthermore, the community structure contributed the most to ΔAGB; topographic variables and soil nutrients contributed the most to the number of individuals; demographic process contributed the most to biodiversity. Our results indicate that biotic factors mostly affected the community dynamics of ΔAGB and biodiversity, while the number of individuals was mainly shaped by abiotic factors. Our work highlighted that the factors influencing different aspects of community dynamics vary. Therefore, forest management practices should be formulated according to a specific protective purpose.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1005
Author(s):  
Bernardo Duarte ◽  
Isabel Caçador

Research on biosaline agriculture has been increasing worldwide in recent years. In this respect, the Iberian halophyte diversity present a high-value ecological solution to be implemented for biosaline-based agroecosystems. The research on these halophytic species has been increasing worldwide and, in the recent years, especially in terms saline agriculture adaptation, osmophysiology and nutraceutical potential, highlighting the importance and potential of these species in terms of agrosolutions. The Mediterranean area has high biodiversity in terms of endemic halophytic vegetation (ca. 62 species), providing an alternative pool of potential new agricultural products to be cultivated in adverse conditions. Besides being highly diverse, most of these species are endemic and present a perennial life cycle with several applications in terms of food, forage, nutraceutical, feedstock and remediation. More specifically, the Iberian halophytic flora shows potential as resources of essential fatty acids, minerals and antioxidants—all very important for human and animal nutrition. Alongside the establishment of halophyte agroecological solutions is the provision of key ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and soil rehabilitation. Moreover, halophyte-based ecosystems provide additional recognized ecosystem services, beyond the final product production, by improving soil health, ecosystem biodiversity and storing large amounts of carbon, thereby increasing the ecosystem resilience to climate change and offering a green solution against climate change.


Author(s):  
Hyun Min Sung ◽  
Jisun Kim ◽  
Sungbo Shim ◽  
Jeong-byn Seo ◽  
Sang-Hoon Kwon ◽  
...  

AbstractThe National Institute of Meteorological Sciences-Korea Meteorological Administration (NIMS-KMA) has participated in the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP) and provided long-term simulations using the coupled climate model. The NIMS-KMA produces new future projections using the ensemble mean of KMA Advanced Community Earth system model (K-ACE) and UK Earth System Model version1 (UKESM1) simulations to provide scientific information of future climate changes. In this study, we analyze four experiments those conducted following the new shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) based scenarios to examine projected climate change in the twenty-first century. Present day (PD) simulations show high performance skill in both climate mean and variability, which provide a reliability of the climate models and reduces the uncertainty in response to future forcing. In future projections, global temperature increases from 1.92 °C to 5.20 °C relative to the PD level (1995–2014). Global mean precipitation increases from 5.1% to 10.1% and sea ice extent decreases from 19% to 62% in the Arctic and from 18% to 54% in the Antarctic. In addition, climate changes are accelerating toward the late twenty-first century. Our CMIP6 simulations are released to the public through the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) international data sharing portal and are used to support the establishment of the national adaptation plan for climate change in South Korea.


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