China and Climate Change Governance: A Golden Opportunity

Climate change is a threat to all of humankind, yet there is still a leadership vacuum on climate governance. At the same time, the deepening climate crisis also presents a golden opportunity for Beijing to assume the role of a global leader. China has the capacity to do it in a way that the United States, Russia, India, and the European Union do not. Taking swift climate action is in Beijing’s interest. Greater contributions to climate governance will certainly help advance China’s long-term political interest in both raising its political status and demonstrating the claimed superiority of its system of government. Positive rhetoric and robust action by China are likely to have a disproportionate effect on the rest of the world. Policy adjustment and implementation by Beijing will bring benefits to the rest of the world. Climate policy options that Beijing may take in the future are not mutually exclusive. The policy shift on climate change could also be attached more firmly to the idea of sustainable development as a defining factor of China’s approach to tackling the climate change threat.

Toward a Taxonomy of Climate Emotions

There is a growing evidence that emotions shape people's reactions to the climate crisis in profound but complex ways. Climate emotions are related to resilience, climate action, and psychological well-being and health. However, there is currently a lack of research about the array of various climate emotions. There is also a need for more integration with general research about emotions. This article conducts a preliminary exploration of the taxonomy of climate emotions, based on literature reviews and philosophical discussion. The term emotion is used here in a broad sense, as is common in climate emotion research. Because of the urgency of the climate crisis and the lack of previous research, this kind of exploration is aimed to be helpful for both practical climate work and for future research which would include more systematic reviews of the topic. Research items which discuss at least five different climate emotions, based on empirical observations, are used as major sources and a table about them is provided. Climate emotions are discussed on the basis of interdisciplinary research. The article considers many aspects of the phenomena of climate anxiety and climate grief.

Climate Change Anxiety Focus Groups: Executive Summary

During the year 2020, we were considering the problem of climate change anxiety in the Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City metro areas. In September of 2020, we partnered to conduct focus groups with environmentally engaged participants to understand their experience of climate change anxiety. We conducted 14 semi-structured focus groups with 46 community members to understand their emotions, behaviors, and perceptions of community in light of the climate crisis. We asked participants, many of whom were local environmental activists, to engage in a group discussion via Zoom videoconference which lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. After the discussion, we sent participants a brief survey. This executive summary is a preliminary report of the findings of that investigation. We present charts detailing participants’ responses to the focus group questions, followed by select excerpts from the conversations and some statistical relationships of interest.

The Environmental Activism of a Filipino Catholic Faith Community: Re-Imagining Ecological Care for the Flourishing of All

Extensive open-pit mining activities in the Philippines since the 1970s up to the present confront the meaning of the “Church of the Poor”, a description that the Catholic Church in the Philippines uses to visualize its prophetic mission. Alongside mining, many more environmentally destructive industries are present in the poorest areas in the country, even though the Philippines is disaster-prone and one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the devastating effects of the climate crisis. The environmental degradation has prompted many Filipino Catholic organizations and communities to act together through various campaigns to address the problem. The article examines a case of a faith-based community that rose to the challenge to address various environmental issues their community was and continues to experience. The community’s environmental activism presents a viable model for a re-imagined ecological care towards the “flourishing of all” as a response to Pamela McCarroll’s call to action to continue conversations on the many ways practical theology can move beyond anthropocentrism while focusing on social justice.

How can a Climate-Neutral Building Look Like?

The climate crisis is urging us to act fast. Buildings are a key leverage point to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but the embodied emissions related with their construction remain often the hidden challenge of any ambitious policy. Considering that a complete material substitution is not possible, we explore in this paper a material GHG compensation where fast-growing bio-based insulation materials are used to compensate building elements that necessarily release GHG. Looking for analogies with other human activities, different material diets as well as different building typologies are modelled to assess the consequences in term of bio-based insulation requirement to reach climate-neutrality. The material diets are defined according to the gradual use of herbaceous materials, from the insulation up to the structural level: omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan. Our results show the relationship in terms of volume between the climate intensive materials and the climate-negative ones needed to neutralize the overall building GHG emissions. Moreover, they suggest how climate-neutral building can look like and that it is possible to have climate-neutral buildings with wall thickness within the range of current construction practices.

Quantifying Nature Positive

To become mainstream, Nature Positive development needs positive messaging, measures and metrics to guide, plan and assess urban outcomes. With accelerating climate crisis and negative messages getting the upper-hand, it is important to avoid paralysis by bad news. Whilst striving for a nature positive world, more effort should be on moving beyond zero to qualify and quantify benefits, gains and regenerative outcomes instead of around damage and loss sticking points. Life Cycle Benefit Assessment (LCBA) methods measure gains in accelerating regeneration and climate security that enables a good news focus. Its reach beyond negative quantifies and shows positive gain beyond zero loss outcomes. The aims are to clarify concepts, challenges and quantitative methods then review real-world 3rd party Certified nature positive case studies. Climate security, human wellness and resource viability gains inside safe operating space within planetary boundaries are quantified as positive benefits. contrary to conventional Life Impact Cycle Impact Assessment LCBA assigns damage losses as negatives debts and benefit gains as positive savings. It concludes that LCBA remains under development with more research needed to model economic outcomes.

Research Trends on Climate Change and Circular Economy from a Knowledge Mapping Perspective

The circular economy (CE) has been proposed as a potentially significant catalyst to enhance the current response to the global climate crisis. The objective of this study was to investigate the scientific literature of the research between climate change and CE adopting a knowledge mapping approach. Based on a total of 789 peer-reviewed publications extracted from Scopus, we found that research on climate change and CE is continually growing and interdisciplinary in nature. Europe notably leads scientific production. Keyword evolution shows that CE has been influenced by more lines of research than climate change. We also found that waste management is the CE approach most associated with climate change, mitigation is the climate action most impacted by CE, and food is the most reported greenhouse gas (GHG)-emitting material. However, there are knowledge gaps in the integration of the social dimension, the promotion of climate change adaptation, and the association of sustainable development goal (SDG) 13. Finally, we identified four potentially valuable directions for future studies: (i) CE practices, (ii) bioeconomy, (iii) climate and energy, and (iv) sustainability and natural resources, in which carbon recovery technologies, green materials, regional supply chains, circular agriculture models, and nature-based solutions are promising themes.

Disruptive Innovations for Well-Functioning Food Systems: The Data-Driven “Food and Nutrition Security Under Climate Evolution” Framework

The current climate crisis poses new uncertainties, risks, and vulnerabilities, and is leading to losses for millions of people depending on fragile food systems. Food systems are, however, vastly different across landscapes and communities, and their capacities to respond to climate impacts evolves and changes through time. Humanitarian and development organizations are struggling to keep pace with these changes. Monitoring a large number of diverse food systems during an evolving climate crisis can be expensive and time-consuming. This paper introduces a monitoring approach that uses a combination of open-source earth observations along with national data sources to produce highly contextualized metrics for monitoring Food And Nutrition Security under Climate Evolution (FANSCE). Entirely data-driven, the FANSCE approach has been designed to produce policy recommendations to help monitor, assess, and mitigate climatic impacts on food systems. We developed and tested this approach in Vietnam, where climate variability has become a growing threat to food systems. Our results show that predictors of food and nutrition security differ drastically with the intensity of climate variability. More specifically, our analyses suggest that in areas of high climate variability, levels of food and nutrition security can be significantly predicted based on economic activities, ethnicity, education, health of mothers, and the level of readiness and preparedness to climate impacts of villages and communities. On the other hand, in areas of low climate variability, food and nutrition security are mostly predictable based on the ability of households to access essential services (such as education, health) and communal resources (water, storage, etc.). To support the resilience of food systems, policymakers must regularly monitor how these dimensions react to the changing climate. Addition critical actions to increase food system sustainability in Vietnam include 1) enhanced coordination of institutional responses and capacities across governmental and non-governmental agencies, and 2) better integration of scientific knowledge into national and sub-national decision-making processes.