scholarly journals Key challenges for the fashion industry in tackling climate change

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Hibberd

The global rise in the earth’s surface temperature in coming decades will bring with it increased instances of flooding, drought and volatile weather patterns. One of the main industries affected is fashion, which is responsible for some 5% of current global carbon emissions (Bauck, 2017). There is common acknowledgement that every stage in the production of garments for the fashion world creates pollution and emission problems: from sourcing and use of scarce water resources in the production of cotton, to farming processes in the production of leather, from the use of industrial dyes and synthetic textile fibres to the need for ships, planes and lorries to transport the final product globally. This article explores the main challenges facing the fashion industry from climate change. The main argument of this essay is that fashion has grown to be a key exemplar industry of global capitalism, often being associated with the positive and negatives excesses of globalisation. It is also therefore seen as one of the key industries responsible for climate change causing much reflection within the industry as to how this key issue should be tackled. On the plus side, the fashion industry can capitalize on its modern high-profile status to bring real attention to climate change issues through publicity and media attention. The global scale of clothing manufacturing and distribution, and the pollution it helps to create, has led many in the industry to seek ways to promote climate change initiatives in the industry. This aspiration, though, is a most difficult one in an industry with complex global production and distribution chains and one which is so embedded in modern consumer culture, often blamed for the worsening environment degradation worldwide.

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chihiro Kayo ◽  
Gerald Kalt ◽  
Yuko Tsunetsugu ◽  
Seiji Hashimoto ◽  
Hirotaka Komata ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The stock dynamics of harvested wood products (HWPs) are a relevant component of anthropogenic carbon cycles. Generally, HWP stock increases are treated as carbon removals from the atmosphere, while stock decreases are considered emissions. Among the different approaches suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for accounting HWPs in national greenhouse gas inventories, the production approach has been established as the common approach under the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement. However, the 24th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change decided that alternative approaches can also be used. The IPCC has published guidelines for estimating HWP carbon stocks and default parameters for the various approaches in the 2006 Guidelines, 2013 Guidance, and 2019 Refinement. Although there are significant differences among the default methods in the three IPCC guidelines, no studies have systematically quantified or compared the results from the different guidelines on a global scale. This study quantifies the HWP stock dynamics and corresponding carbon removals/emissions under each approach based on the default methods presented in each guideline for 235 individual countries/regions. Results We identified relatively good consistency in carbon stocks/removals between the stock-change and the atmospheric flow approaches at a global level. Under both approaches, the methodological and parameter updates in the 2019 Refinement (e.g., considered HWPs, starting year for carbon stocks, and conversion factors) resulted in one-third reduction in carbon removals compared to the 2006 Guidelines. The production approach leads to a systematic underestimation of global carbon stocks and removals because it confines accounting to products derived from domestic harvests and uses the share of domestic feedstock for accounting. The 2013 Guidance and the 2019 Refinement reduce the estimated global carbon removals under the production approach by 15% and 45% (2018), respectively, compared to the 2006 Guidelines. Conclusions Gradual refinements in the IPCC default methods have a considerably higher impact on global estimates of HWP carbon stocks and removals than the differences in accounting approaches. The methodological improvements in the 2019 Refinement halve the global HWP carbon removals estimated in the former version, the 2006 Guidelines.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolu Tang ◽  
Shaohui Fan ◽  
Wenjie Zhang ◽  
Sicong Gao ◽  
Guo Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Belowground autotrophic respiration (RA) is one of the largest, but highly uncertain carbon flux components in terrestrial ecosystems. It has not been explored globally before and still acted as a “black box” in global carbon cycling. Such progress and uncertainty motivate a development of global RA dataset and understand its spatial and temporal pattern, causes and responses to future climate change. This study used Random Forest to study RA's spatial and temporal pattern at the global scale by linking the updated field observations from Global Soil Respiration Database (v4) with global grid temperature, precipitation and other environmental variables. Globally, mean RA was 43.8 ± 0.4 Pg C a−1 with a temporally increasing trend of 0.025 ± 0.006 Pg C a−1 over 1980–2012. Such increment trend was widely spread with 58 % global land areas. For each 1 °C increase in annual mean temperature, global RA increased by 0.85 ± 0.13 Pg C a−1, and it was 0.17 ± 0.03 Pg C a−1 for 10 mm increase in annual mean precipitation, indicating a positive feedback of RA to future climate change. At a global scale, precipitation was the main dominant climatic drivers of the spatial pattern of RA, accounting for 56 % of global land areas with widely spread globally, particularly in dry or semi-arid areas, followed by shortwave radiation (25 %) and temperature (19 %). Different temporal patterns for varying climate zones and biomes indicated uneven response of RA to future climate change, challenging the perspective that the parameters of global carbon stimulation independent on climate zones and biomes. The developed RA database, the missing carbon flux component that is not constrained and validated in terrestrial ecosystem models and earth system models, will provide insights into understanding mechanisms underlying the spatial and temporal variability of belowground carbon dynamics. RA database also has great potentials to serve as a benchmark for future data-model comparisons. The RA product is freely available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7636193.


Author(s):  
Jun’ya TAKAKURA ◽  
Shinichiro FUJIMORI ◽  
Kiyoshi TAKAHASHI ◽  
Qian ZHOU ◽  
Naota HANASAKI ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (27) ◽  
Author(s):  
N., Baluch ◽  
C. S., Abdullah ◽  
R., Abidin

The emergence of global scale competition is leading towards the development of new mechanisms to help countries to become more competitive and technology parks are the vehicle of choice to achieve that. Technology Parks offer modern infrastructure and integrated info-structure to promote research and technology development and commercialization for wealth creation and sustainable economic growth and Global Competitiveness. This paper discusses the position of technology parks in East Asia; elaborates on their role in today’s nation development, analytically examines three selected technology parks in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore using GCI Index 2015 and concludes that Technology parks have contributed to gross domestic product (GDP) growth, infrastructure development, knowledge community expansion, capacity building, and export production and distribution. However, optimum benefits of Technology Parks accrue when they are established and managed professionally in line with the best practices and all transactions are equitable, just, and transparent; the whole process must culminate trust nationally and internationally.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heikki S. Lehtonen ◽  
Jyrki Aakkula ◽  
Stefan Fronzek ◽  
Janne Helin ◽  
Mikael Hildén ◽  
...  

AbstractShared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), developed at global scale, comprise narrative descriptions and quantifications of future world developments that are intended for climate change scenario analysis. However, their extension to national and regional scales can be challenging. Here, we present SSP narratives co-developed with stakeholders for the agriculture and food sector in Finland. These are derived from intensive discussions at a workshop attended by approximately 39 participants offering a range of sectoral perspectives. Using general background descriptions of the SSPs for Europe, facilitated discussions were held in parallel for each of four SSPs reflecting very different contexts for the development of the sector up to 2050 and beyond. Discussions focused on five themes from the perspectives of consumers, producers and policy-makers, included a joint final session and allowed for post-workshop feedback. Results reflect careful sector-based, national-level interpretations of the global SSPs from which we have constructed consensus narratives. Our results also show important critical remarks and minority viewpoints. Interesting features of the Finnish narratives compared to the global SSP narratives include greater emphasis on environmental quality; significant land abandonment in SSPs with reduced livestock production and increased plant-based diets; continued need for some farm subsidies across all SSPs and opportunities for diversifying domestic production under scenarios of restricted trade. Our results can contribute to the development of more detailed national long-term scenarios for food and agriculture that are both relevant for local stakeholders and researchers as well as being consistent with global scenarios being applied internationally.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhao Feng ◽  
Haojie Su ◽  
Zhiyao Tang ◽  
Shaopeng Wang ◽  
Xia Zhao ◽  
...  

AbstractGlobal climate change likely alters the structure and function of vegetation and the stability of terrestrial ecosystems. It is therefore important to assess the factors controlling ecosystem resilience from local to global scales. Here we assess terrestrial vegetation resilience over the past 35 years using early warning indicators calculated from normalized difference vegetation index data. On a local scale we find that climate change reduced the resilience of ecosystems in 64.5% of the global terrestrial vegetated area. Temperature had a greater influence on vegetation resilience than precipitation, while climate mean state had a greater influence than climate variability. However, there is no evidence for decreased ecological resilience on larger scales. Instead, climate warming increased spatial asynchrony of vegetation which buffered the global-scale impacts on resilience. We suggest that the response of terrestrial ecosystem resilience to global climate change is scale-dependent and influenced by spatial asynchrony on the global scale.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7892
Author(s):  
Natalia Korcz ◽  
Jacek Koba ◽  
Agata Kobyłka ◽  
Emilia Janeczko ◽  
Joanna Gmitrowicz-Iwan

Climate change affects various aspects of the economy, agriculture, economics, and politics, including forestry. There is more and more talk about the real impact of the effects of climate change. This paper presents the results of a survey on the perceptions of two groups, foresters and recreational forest users, about climate change and its impacts on forested areas; 130 foresters and 146 recreational forest users participated in the survey (total n = 276). The survey was conducted from April to November 2019 and consisted of three parts. The first part included questions about the demographic characteristics of the respondents (gender, age, education, place of residence), the second part focused on the respondents’ views on climate change and its implications for forest ecosystems, and the third part focused on informal forest education and its relationship to climate change. The results of our study indicated that progressive climate change affecting forest ecosystems is clearly felt by the professional group related to forests such as foresters, and to a lesser extent by people using forests for tourism and recreation. According to foresters, the effects of climate change on forest areas include rapid changes in weather patterns and more frequent insect infestations. On the other hand, people resting in forests mainly observe the lack of snow cover and occurrence of drought. Informal forest education insufficiently covers the topic of climate change. Thus, our study can help guide informal education towards topics related to climate change and the need for sustainable forest use.


2019 ◽  
Vol 665 ◽  
pp. 620-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shilong Ren ◽  
Qiming Qin ◽  
Huazhong Ren
Keyword(s):  

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