The role of the judiciary in environmental securitisation. Urgenda Foundation v. The State of the Netherlands

Since climate change is broadly recognised as a threat multiplier, the environmental problems are considered in the sense of security. Academic articles are focused on analysing states, international non-governmental organisations, as well as regional entities such as the European Union as securitising actors. Limited attention has been given to the judiciary. This article fills the existing gap. The aim of the research is to analyse how do the Dutch Courts securitise the climate in adjudicating the case Urgenda Foundation v. The State of the Netherlands’, through the lens of the securitisation theory. The implementation of discourse analysis as a research methodology has proved that the Dutch courts have contributed to environmental securitisation by ruling on the legal obligation of the Dutch government to prevent dangerous climate change in order to protect its citizens

5. Climate change impacts

‘Climate change impacts’ assesses the potential impacts of climate change and how these alter in scale and intensity with increasing warming by breaking down the potential impacts into sectors: extreme heat and droughts, storms and floods, agriculture, ocean acidification, biodiversity, and human health. Policy-makers should identify what dangerous climate change is. We need a realistic target concerning the degree of climate change with which we can cope. Fortunately, the societal coping range is flexible and can change with the shifting baseline and the more frequent extreme events—as long as there is strong climate science to provide clear guidance on what sort of changes are going to occur.

Enhancing natural cycles in agro-ecosystems to boost plant carbon capture and soil storage

One of society’s greatest challenges is sequestering vast amounts of carbon to avoid dangerous climate change without driving competition for land and resources. Here we assess the potential of an integrated approach based on enhancement of natural biogeochemical cycles in agro-ecosystems that stimulate carbon capture and storage while increasing resilience and long-term productivity. The method integrates plant photosynthesis in the form of (cover) crops and agroforestry which drives carbon capture. Belowground plant-carbon is efficiently stored as stable soil organic carbon (SOC). Aboveground crop and tree residues are pyrolyzed into biochar, which is applied to the soil reducing carbon release through decomposition. Enhanced weathering of basalt powder worked into the soil further captures and stores carbon, while releasing nutrients and alkalinity. The integrated system is regenerative, through enhanced virtuous cycles that lead to improved plant capture, biomass storage and crop yield, the prerequisites for large-scale carbon sequestration along with food security.

Implementing Rapid Climate Action: Learning from the ‘Practical Wisdom’ of Local Decision-Makers

A global goal to limit dangerous climate change has been agreed through the 2015 Paris Accords. The scientific case for action has been accepted by nearly all governments, at national and local or state level. Yet in all legislatures, there is a gap between the stated climate ambitions and the implementation of the measures necessary to achieve them. This paper examines this gap by analysing the experience of the following three UK cities: Belfast, Edinburgh, and Leeds. Researchers worked with city officials and elected representatives, using interviews and deliberative workshops to develop their shared understandings. The study finds that local actors employ different strategies to respond to the stated climate emergency, based on their innate understanding, or ‘phronetic knowledge’, of what works. It concludes that rapid climate action depends not just on the structures and mechanisms of governance, but at a deeper level, the assumptions, motivations and applied knowledge of decision-makers.

Global mitigation efforts should prioritize support to the emerging emitters

International efforts to avoid dangerous climate change have historically focused on reducing energy-related CO2 emissions from countries with either the largest economies (e.g., the EU and the U.S.) and/or the largest populations (e.g., China and India). However, in recent years, emissions have surged among a different, much less-examined group of countries, raising concerns that a next generation of high-emitting economies will obviate current mitigation targets. Compounding the limited analyses of these emerging emitters, the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic activity and energy systems remain unclear. Here, we analyze the trends and drivers of emissions in each of the 59 countries where emissions 2010-2018 grew faster than the global average (excluding China and India), and then project their emissions under a range of pandemic recovery and longer-term energy scenarios. Although future emissions diverge considerably depending on responses to COVID and subsequent pathways, we find that emissions from these countries combined nonetheless reach 5.4 to 6.6 Gt CO2 by 2040 in all our scenarios—substantially in excess of emissions from these regions in published scenarios that successfully limit global warming to 2°C. Our results highlight the critical importance of ramping up mitigation efforts in countries that to this point have been largely ignored. Given the accompanying challenge of economic development and poverty reduction, this will require support from historically high-emitting countries to decelerate emissions growth, including through considerable economic support and appropriate transfer of technologies that are required for transition to low carbon growth.

Closed-loop and congestion control of the global carbon-climate system

The global carbon-climate system is a complex dynamical system with multiple feedbacks among components, and to steer this system away from dangerous climate change, it may not be enough to prescribe action according to long-term scenarios of fossil fuel emissions. We introduce here concepts from control theory, a branch of applied mathematics that is effective at steering complex dynamical systems to desired states, and distinguish between open- and closed-loop control. We attempt (1) to show that current scientific work on carbon-climate feedbacks and climate policy more closely resembles the conceptual model of open- than closed-loop control, (2) to introduce a mathematical generalization of the carbon-climate system as a compartmental dynamical system that can facilitate the formal treatment of the closed-loop control problem, and (3) to formulate carbon-climate control as a congestion control problem, discussing important concepts such as observability and controllability. We also show that most previous discussions on climate change mitigation and policy development have relied on an implicit assumption of open-loop control that does not consider frequent corrections due to deviations of goals from observations. Using a reduced complexity model, we illustrate that the problem of managing the global carbon cycle can be abstracted as a network congestion problem, accounting for nonlinear behavior and feedback from a global carbon monitoring system. As opposed to scenarios, the goal of closed-loop control is to develop rules for continuously steering the global carbon-climate system away from dangerous climate change.

Implications of COVID-19 on progress in the UN Conventions on biodiversity and climate change

2020 was to be a landmark year for setting targets to stop biodiversity loss and prevent dangerous climate change. However, COVID-19 has caused delays to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the 26th COP of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Negotiations on the Global Biodiversity Framework and the second submission of Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement were due to take place at these COPs. There is uncertainty as to how the COVID-19 disruption will affect the negotiations, whether parties will pursue more ambitious actions or take a weaker stance on issues. Our policy analysis shows there are broad opportunities for climate and biodiversity frameworks to better respond to COVID-19, by viewing future pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change as interconnected problems. Importantly, there needs to be greater focus on agriculture and food systems in discussions, establishing safeguards for carbon markets, and implementing nature-based solutions in meeting the Paris Agreement goals. We can no longer delay action to address the biodiversity and climate emergencies, and accelerating sustainable recovery plans through virtual spaces may help keep discussions and momentum before the resumption of in-person negotiations. Non-technical summary: High ambition needed at UN biodiversity and climate conferences to address pandemics, biodiversity, climate change, and health.

The Irony of Michael Novak

The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought. The present article offers a Niebuhrian irony–focused response to Novak’s democratic capitalism in view of climate change as probably the greatest threat facing humanity. Novak quite successfully extended Niebuhrian ideas into a theology-based vision of democratic capitalism as the only political-economic system effective in widely lifting people out of poverty. Yet he failed to acknowledge human-induced climate change as beyond reasonable doubt and rooted in the predominantly American invention of a fossil energy–based capitalist political economy. This article’s thesis is that Novak’s democratic capitalism entails Niebuhrian irony: the virtue it displays about resources becomes a vice due to Novak’s irresponsible post–Spirit of Democratic Capitalism attempt to represent democratic capitalism as innocent of any dangerous climate-change implications.

Enhancing Natural Cycles in Agro-Ecosystems to Boost Plant Carbon Capture and Soil Storage

One of society’s greatest challenges is sequestering vast amounts of carbon to avoid dangerous climate change without driving competition for land and resources. Here we assess the potential of an integrated approach based on enhancement of natural biogeochemical cycles in agro-ecosystems that stimulate carbon capture and storage while increasing resilience and long-term productivity. The method integrates plant photosynthesis in the form of (cover) crops and agroforestry which drives carbon capture. Belowground plant-carbon is efficiently stored as stable soil organic carbon (SOC). Aboveground crop and tree residues are pyrolyzed into biochar, which is applied to the soil reducing carbon release through decomposition. Enhanced weathering of basalt powder worked into the soil further captures and stores carbon, while releasing nutrients and alkalinity. The integrated system is regenerative, through enhanced virtuous cycles that lead to improved plant capture, biomass storage and crop yield, the prerequisites for large-scale carbon sequestration along with food security.

The Ethical Desirability of Geoengineering: Challenges to Justice

Geoengineering or climate engineering is defined as a deliberate and intentional intervention into the earth system to combat dangerous climate change. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) are two dominant approaches in geoengineering. From an ethical point of view, both these approaches pose serious challenges to justice from the intergenerational, distributive and procedural point of view. Intergenerational equity and the risk-transfer to future generations suggest major challenges to justice in geoengineering. Abdicating our responsibility is a form of injustice to future generations. Unequal distribution of cost and benefits and benefits and harms is a major challenge to distributive justice in SRM. Paying compensation to those harmed by SRM is presented as a way out of ethical deliberations. But there are serious challenges with regard to compensation for SRM, such as, who ought to pay the compensation, who are the beneficiaries and how much to pay. Participation across vulnerable sections alongside indigenous people and their central involvement remains a concern of procedural justice. Food justice is at stake as the adverse impact of SRM on agriculture and food production is considered to be a major challenge.