IS SUPPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE ACTION CONDITIONAL ON PERCEPTIONS OF RECIPROCITY? EVIDENCE FROM SURVEY EXPERIMENTS IN CANADA, THE US, NORWAY, AND SWEDEN

The challenges of collective action are presented by leaders in many industrialized countries as a major obstacle to effective action on climate change. Notably, the argument goes, a fair international solution must appropriately constrain large greenhouse gas emitters like China. This paper asks whether citizen support for multilateral climate policies also depends on whether other countries are seen to reciprocate. We analyze results from population-based survey experiments in the US, Canada, Norway, and Sweden, asking subjects whether they think their country should commit internationally to emission reductions. Randomly assigned sub-samples were presented with statements suggesting that China may or may not choose to cooperate, or alternatively making no mention of China. We find that reciprocity is important to respondents in the smaller Scandinavian countries but not in North America. These findings suggest that country size is more important than national traditions of multilateral cooperation in predicting support for unilateral climate action.

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore Leads Study that Warns of Possible Flooding to Coastlines Across Southeast Asia Generating Climate Change Rainfall Scenarios for Singapore: A Tale of Scale

A PRELIMINARY CHARACTERISATION OFSYMBIODINIUMDIVERSITY IN SOME COMMON CORALS FROM SINGAPORE

The symbiosis between corals and Symbiodinium dinoflagellates is considered a major driver of the distribution and health of reefs worldwide. This study investigated the genetic identities and diversity of Symbiodinium in seven coral species (Porites lutea, Porites lobata, Acropora millepora, Merulina ampliata, Diploastrea heliopora, Pachyseris speciosa, Pocillopora acuta) from three shallow reefs around Singapore (Kusu Island, Pulau Tekukor, Pulau Satumu). Analyses of 31 colonies using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer region indicated the dominance of C and D Symbiodinium clades. The latter clade was the predominant symbiont in Pachyseris speciosa collected from Pulau Tekukor but those sampled from Pulau Satumu hosted C27, providing evidence for variable symbiosis in this species. The prevalence of the D clade – noted for their stress tolerance (e.g. to elevated temperatures and sedimentation) – in three of seven coral species examined could underlie the importance of this particular symbiotic relationship for the persistence of Singapore’s impacted reefs. Further characterisation of Symbiodinium communities may provide insights into corals’ response to stress and their bleaching patterns in the future.

ENERGY FLOWS AND BIODIVERSITY IN A MODEL ECOSYSTEM

Climate change has caught great attention. Ecological systems co-evolve with climate systems, thus, understanding the intrinsic dynamics of ecological systems is of paramount importance for exploring and predicting climate change. Food chains, as a systematic and simplistic model, have been a paradigm for investigating the long-term evolution of ecological systems in virtue of the dynamical analysis on the inter-play between the topology and the dynamical processes occurring in a food chain. We build a food chain model by considering energy exchanges among species, which is characterized by using population dynamical equations. We will compare our model with existing food chain models based on sufficiently empirical data. Our work is expected to be able to quantitatively capture and describe the interactions among species with respect to energy exchange, then deepen the understanding of ecological systems and their coevolution with climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND FISH AVAILABILITY

Human consumption of fish has been trending upwards in the past decades and this is projected to continue. The main sources of fish are from wild fisheries (marine and freshwater) and aquaculture. Climate change is anticipated to affect the availability of fish through its effect on these two sources as well as on supply chain processes such as storage, transport, processing and retail. Climate change is known to result in warmer and more acid oceans. Ocean acidification due to higher CO2 concentration levels at sea modifies the distribution of phytoplankton and zooplankton to affect wild, capture fisheries. Higher temperature causes warm-water coral reefs to respond with species replacement and bleaching, leading to coral cover loss and habitat loss. Global changes in climatic systems may also cause fish invasion, extinction and turnover. While this may be catastrophic for small scale fish farming in poor tropical communities, there are also potential effects on animal protein supply shifts at local and global scales with food security consequences. This paper discusses the potential impacts of climate change on fisheries and aquaculture in the Asian Pacific region, with special emphasis on Southeast Asia. The key question to be addressed is “What are the impacts of global climate change on global fish harvests and what does it mean to the availability of fish?”

AN OVERVIEW OF FOOD LOSS AND WASTE: WHY DOES IT MATTER?

This paper provides an overview of food waste in the context of food security, resources management and environment health. It compares approaches taken by various governments, community groups, civil societies and private sector organisations to reduce food waste in the developed and developing countries. What constitutes ‘food waste’ is not as simple as it may appear due to diverse food waste measurement protocols and different data documentation methods used worldwide. There is a need to improve food waste data collection methods and implementation of effective strategies, policies and actions to reduce food waste. Global initiatives are urgently needed to: enhance awareness of the value of food; encourage countries to develop policies that motivate community and businesses to reduce food waste; encourage and provide assistance to needy countries for improving markets, transport and storage infrastructure to minimise food waste across the value chain; and, develop incentives that encourage businesses to donate food. In some countries, particularly in Europe, initiatives on food waste management have started to gain momentum. Food waste is a global problem and it needs urgent attention and integrated actions of stakeholders across the food value chain to develop global solutions for the present and future generations.

RICE RESEARCH TO BREAK YIELD BARRIERS

The world’s population continues to expand and it is expected to cross 9 billion by 2050. This would significantly amplify the demand for food, which will pose serious threats to global food security. Additional challenges are being imposed due to a gradual decrease in the total arable land and global environmental changes. Hence, it is of utmost importance to review and revise the existing food production strategies by incorporating novel biotechnological approaches that can help to break the crop yield barriers in the near future. In this review, we highlight some of the concerns hampering crop yield enhancements. The review also focuses on modern breeding techniques based on genomics as well as proven biotechnological approaches that enable identification and utilization of candidate genes. Another aspect of discussion is the important area of research, namely hormonal regulation of plant development, which is likely to yield valuable regulatory genes for such crop improvement efforts in the future. These strategies can serve as potential tools for developing elite crop varieties for feeding the growing billions.

CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES TO ASIAN FOOD SECURITY

Food security is a complex phenomenon made up of multiple dimensions — food availability, physical access to food, economic access to food, food utilization — each of which has a stability dimension which underpins it. This review provides details on these dimensions and links them to two published indices which provide assessments of the state of food security in a country. The paper further provides analyses of the main supply and demand factors in the food security equation. Food security faces natural and anthropogenic threats such as loss of productive land and water, climate change and declining crop productivity, all of which are potentially amenable to solutions provided by science and technology. Demographic and accompanying diet changes further exacerbate the demands made on the natural resource base for food production. Finally, possible responses to the challenges confronting a secured food future are discussed from technological, policy and system level perspectives.