Global Environmental Change最新文献

There is a growing literature on the cultural capacities influencing communities’ adaptation to environmental and social change, including the temporal frameworks they draw on for timely action. This paper focuses on seasonal cultures, and how they enable communities on the Coromandel Peninsula to interpret and adapt practical timings to disrupted patterns of seasonal rhythms. The paper develops and applies a conceptual framework of seasonal cultures as perceived rhythmic patterns practiced by communities as cultural repertoires for action, emphasising the ways cultures evolve as patterns are contested and change. This concept steered critical, mixed-method ethnographic study with communities on the peninsula over two years. The research found that Coromandel communities’ cultures make seasonal change visible as long-term shifts and asynchrony between rhythmic patterns, which they linked to climatic change, environmental degradation, colonisation and globalisation, and shifting relations between society and the environment. As seasonal patterns fail to hold, communities deploy a combination of strategies for re-configuring seasonal rhythms through their practices: (i) maintaining established, institutionalised schemas of activity while coping with seasonal variability; (ii) season-proofing activities from environmental rhythms; or (iii) re-learning and recalibrating cultures to mutable configurations of rhythms in a highly modified environment.

While the ocean has long been portrayed as a victim of climate change, threatened by ocean warming and acidification, it is now increasingly framed as a key solution to the climate crisis. In particular, the promising carbon sequestration potential of the ocean is being emphasised. In this paper, we seek to historicise the practices, discourses and actors that have constructed the ocean as a climate change solution space. We conceptualise the debate about the mitigation potential of the ocean as a contested site of governance, where varying actors form alliances and different sociotechnical narratives about climate action play out. Using an innovative quali-quantitative methodology which combines scientometrics with document analysis, observational fieldwork, and interviews, we outline three historical phases in the history of ocean carbon sequestration that follow recurring cycles of hype, controversy and disappointment. We argue that the most recent hype around ocean carbon sequestration was not triggered by a technological breakthrough or a reduction in scientific uncertainty, but by new socio-technical configurations and coalitions. We conclude by showing that how climate change solutions are put on the agenda and become legitimised is both a scientific and political process, linked to how science frames the climate crisis, and ultimately, its governance.

Transboundary water decision-making takes place in a power-loaded environment. Apart from conflicts or cooperation-based outcomes, partial or complete status quo is also possible outcome in transboundary water interactions. Literature in the last two decades has primarily focused on conflicts and/or cooperation only, with a limited understanding of the status quo and its various forms. Drawing from the work of Bacharach and Baratz and other power scholars from sociology, international relations, and public policy, this article presents tactics for non-decision making and non-action, leading to a status quo. Specifically, we address the question: how can non-decision making and non-action shape the status quo in transboundary waters? Conceptually, based on various strands of literature, we develop a typology of status quo comprised of (1) renunciation; (2) abstention; (3) non-participation; and (4) non-action and showing that the status quo is a significant intermediary (at times temporally extended) outcome in transboundary water interaction. Like conflicts and cooperation, we posit that the status quo is often purposefully maintained due to the political, social, cultural, economic, and biophysical aspects of the river basins. We illustrate this by the example of three transboundary river basins: Brahmaputra, Maritsa, and Euphrates-Tigris. Our empirical analysis also identified an additional type of status quo, ‘non-significant deliberation’ in a multi-track diplomacy setting. This tactic refers to not purposefully allowing informal negotiations to transform or influence the highest level of political deliberation (i.e., track-1 diplomacy).

While research on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) expands apace, significant unknowns persist regarding the risks and benefits of individual mCDR options. This paper analyses the assumptions and expectations that animate expert understandings of mCDR, with a focus on issues that are central to the responsible governance of this emerging field of climate action. Drawing upon interviews with experts involved in mCDR research projects both academic and entrepreneurial, we highlight four thematic tensions that orient their thinking but are often unstated or left implicit in scientific and technical assessments: (1) the relevance of ‘naturalness’ as a criterion of evaluation for mCDR approaches; (2) the perceived need to accelerate research and development activities via alternative paradigms of evidence-building; (3) a framing of mCDR as a form of waste management that will, in turn, generate new (and currently poorly understood) forms of environmental pollutants; and (4) a commitment to inclusive governance mixed with difficulty in identifying specific stakeholders or constituencies in mCDR interventions. Although expert consensus on these four issues is unlikely, we suggest ways of ensuring that consideration of these themes enriches debate on the responsible development of novel mCDR capabilities.

“Vulnerable populations” are experiencing a (re)emphasis in climate change adaptation research and practice even though the concept has long been contested. Adaptation planning is increasingly expected to restore past inequalities and address systemic injustices. Yet, we know little about the role local environmental agencies, bureaucrats, and policy practitioners (can) play in addressing “vulnerable populations”. Drawing from qualitative empirical research in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, and Jinhua, Zhejiang in China, the local problem recognition about “vulnerable populations” and adaptation decision-making was examined. The findings reveal severe limitations in the way “vulnerable populations” are approached, with certain groups being politically contested and being considered difficult to be prioritized. In both cases, accidental forms of adaptation stand out, which mainly focus on blue-green infrastructure interventions and neighborhood revitalization programs, some of which recreated “vulnerable populations”. The findings hint to vulnerability being more deeply rooted in external conditions to the individual, which requires different policy interventions. The article presents a novel understanding by conceptualizing “vulnerable populations” as an instance of vulnerable political institutions. There’s a need to explore the nature of our political systems, how much inequality we allow and which redistribution mechanisms the state has for addressing interdependent dimensions of inequality. To make “vulnerable populations” finally a front and center concern begs us to radically engage the outside of the conventional adaptation box. Inequality studies offers synergies with adaptation justice discourses and different policy instruments that address the root causes of vulnerability.

This paper analyses the European Union’s (EU’s) democratising agenda within the frame of the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) in Laos. In particular, it focuses on the requirement for the participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the VPA and the Lao state actors’ responses to this requirement. I frame the VPA’s democratising agenda and its conditionality of civil society participation as acts of governmentality exercised by the EU in Laos. This EU governmentality is exercised through the EU and EU member states’ funded development partner in the frame of their project supporting the FLEGT VPA process in Laos. The Lao government responses and strategies to the EU governmentality resulted on the one hand in the Lao state’s governmentality towards domestic CSOs, and in counter-conduct (i.e. a subtle and sly resistance to some aspects of the VPA) on the other. First, by tracing the establishment of the Lao FLEGT Civil Society Organisations Network (FLEGT CSO Network), I highlight the trend of depoliticisation and rendering technical, where the EU-funded development partner, with full support and backing from the Lao state, trained the CSOs in various VPA and timber legality issues. In the training, the CSOs were given specific roles and tasks, building up their fields of expertise, and were integrated in the formal VPA organisational structures, which allowed for their scrutiny and tight survelience by the state. Second, I analyse the counter-conduct by the Lao government against a civil society that is independent from the state, which the government manifested through further disempowerment of CSOs and tightening of the CSO regulation shortly after the FLEGT CSO Network was established, while at the same time simulating democratisation by welcoming CSOs’ participation in the VPA. Summoning CSOs as compliant actors and unpaid service providers working for and alongside the state was in part enabled by the VPA’s own rendering technical approach. Hence, the EU’s VPA governmentality and the Lao state counter-conduct mutually reinforced one another, even if their initial agendas around democratisation and CSO engagement in forest governance and the VPA diverged.

Despite extensive research on the detrimental effects of air pollution on health, limited focus has been directed toward the impact of air pollution on child growth. Utilizing comprehensive data spanning 2759 Chinese counties from 2000 to 2018, this study pioneers an empirical investigation of the causal link between air pollution and child growth. The findings reveal a significant correlation between air pollution and child growth; as air pollution worsens, child growth suffers, evident in stunting, underweight, wasting, and severe wasting. More specifically, the effects of PM_2.5 on stunting, underweight, and severe wasting can persist for up to six years, while its impact on wasting endures for three years. Vulnerable groups include older children, girls, and less-developed geographical regions. Environmental regulations like “Low-Carbon Cities” and “Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan” have yielded positive growth outcomes. Mechanistically, PM_2.5 impairs child growth via metabolic disruption and financial constraints. Collectively, this study offers empirical evidence of the adverse impacts of air pollution on child growth while proposing suggests strategies for addressing this challenge in developing countries.

Natural resource extraction has a lasting and dramatic impact on the natural environment as well as far-reaching social effects. As such, public policy and governmental regulation are crucial for a transition to sustainability. However, on their own, these have shown to be insufficient to achieve such transformation. Changing commitment and conduct of the extractives too is important to transit. Firms in the extractives are large and highly international, and their owners are decisive for businesses’ conduct. Therefore, it is relevant to determine whom and how to influence to transit towards sustainability. To this extent, we study dominant firms and their owners in the top-10 international extractive industries. We establish that both natural resource markets and ownership of keystone agents are highly concentrated: the three largest companies earn 70% of the revenues in the ten industries studied, and the three largest shareholders in these companies on average have 22% of the shares of the keystone firms. This helps explain why regulation has been rather ineffective so far. We discuss several options to influence keystone agents. We conclude that advancing sustainability in extractives requires leveraging a limited number of keystone agents.

As the world faces multiple crises, lessons from humanity’s past can potentially suggest ways to decrease disruptions and increase societal resilience. From 1200 to 1100 BCE, several advanced societies in the Eastern Mediterranean suffered dramatic collapse. Though the causes of the Late Bronze Age Collapse are still debated, contributing factors may include a “perfect storm” of multiple stressors: social and economic upheaval, earthquake clusters, climate change, and others. We examined how collapse might have propagated through the societies’ connections by modeling the Eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze Age trade and socio-political networks. Our model shows that the Late Bronze Age societies made a robust network, where any single node’s collapse was insufficient to catalyze the regional collapse that historically transpired. However, modeled scenarios indicate that some paired node disruptions could cause cascading failure within the network. Subsequently, a holistic understanding of the region’s network incentive structures and feedback loops can help societies anticipate compounding risk conditions that might lead to widespread collapse and allow them to take appropriate actions to mitigate or adapt societal dependencies. Such network analyses may be able to provide insight as to how we can prevent a collapse of socio-political, economic and trade networks similar to what occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Though such data-intensive analytics were unavailable to these Bronze Age regions, modern society may be able to leverage historical lessons in order to foster improved robustness and resilience to compounding threats. Our work shows that civilization collapses are preventable; we are not necessarily destined to collapse.

Although much research recognises the importance of visions as key ingredients of transformations to sustainability, it remains unclear how and why some visions become collectively binding. This paper uses the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, i.e., collectively shared, institutionally stabilised, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, to analyse the so-called Agrarwende (agricultural transformation), a sustainability-oriented reform of German agriculture based on a vision of transformative change towards organic farming. Methodologically, the investigation draws on published historical and contemporary data sources for an in-depth case study of the Agrarwende using content analysis. It shows how a particular sociotechnical imaginary has shaped German agriculture for many decades and explores how three of its constitutive elements - its policy style, expertise, and risk framing – conflict with the vanguard vision of the Agrarwende. The findings suggest that these elements have reinforced one another in shaping the trajectory of the agricultural system, thus co-producing a strong socio-political order in favour of industrial agriculture at the expense of an alternative set of policies, expertise, and risk framing that supports organic agriculture. Taken together, the findings highlight how knowledge and politics shape debates and controversies about what is deemed a desirable future, what is at stake, and for whom.