Global Environmental Change最新文献

Oil palm is the dominant global oil crop due to its high productivity and diversified usage in many sectors. Since the late 20^th century, oil palm cultivations proliferated in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Latin America. However, global market factors, different national and regional policies, and smallholder versus commercial planting regimes in different areas lead to significant differences in economic benefits and environmental problems from deforestation and loss of biodiversity. We investigated changes in global and national distributions against suitability and indices of tree age distribution change for industrial oil palm (IOP) and smallholder oil palm (SOP). Spatial and temporal change analyses show that: i) For most tree ages, the proportion of global oil palm planting in suitable areas was less than 50%, but the impact of temporal regimes, from possible market factors and local policies, on planting structure should not be neglected; ii) Central America, South America, and West Africa were less suitable for oil palm cultivation compared to Southeast Asia. While, as two dominant oil palm planting countries, Indonesia and Malaysia had relatively low planting suitability, with 39.23% of Indonesia’s IOP, 44.85% of Indonesia’s SOP, 30.90% of Malaysia’s IOP and 18.77% of Malaysia’s SOP in highly and most suitable intervals; iii) There exist clear differences between IOP and SOP in terms of suitability, planting structure and spatial expansion patterns; iv) Hysteresis effect exists between latecomers (countries in West Africa and Latin America) and forerunner (Indonesia and Malaysia) in terms of spatial expansion; v) The spatial expansion patterns of oil palm planting centers have obvious scale effects for both IOP and SOP, with clear inter-country and intra-country differences. This paper reinterprets the global distribution of tree age and spatial expansion pattern and recommends scientific strategies to guide site selection and planting structure that enable oil palm cultivation for sustainable development.

China increasingly engages in environmental diplomacy through South-South cooperation across the developing world. Since 2019, the rise of the discourse of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) within this cooperation has been exponential. Coined just over ten years ago, NbS refers to the underexplored potential of leveraging the natural world to address socio-environmental challenges. The concept finds particular resonance in China, where it demonstrates strong parallels with the domestically-pioneered concept of Ecological Civilization – the ruling paradigm when it comes to all realms of Chinese environmental governance. Building on the global discourse, NbS has been adapted to the Chinese context, creating what some call “Chinese-style” NbS that prioritizes large-scale interventions and ecological engineering over grassroots preservation. China’s NbS are not only being pursued domestically, but also increasingly abroad through the country’s Belt and Road Initiative. From Southeast and Central Asia to Africa and Latin America, this article surveys Chinese-led or financed projects that fall under the broad umbrella of NbS. We provide a comparative analysis of these interventions – or the conspicuous lack of such interventions – to show the current status and future prospects for China’s growing sphere of influence when it comes to advancing NbS in the Global South. We find that China’s embrace of this concept in environmental diplomacy is directly related to the potential for NbS to serve as a tool for helping the country’s vision of an Ecological Civilization “go global.” The consonance between the rhetoric of NbS and Ecological Civilization, combined with the global reach of NbS, provides a powerful platform for taking Chinese environmental discourse to the global level.

Protected Areas such as national parks are increasingly implemented to achieve the long-term conservation of nature and the provision of ecosystem services, hence preventing biodiversity loss. We study the environmental and socioeconomic impacts generated by eight Italian National Parks. We estimate the impacts i) on the short and medium term, ii) on the local population and on the neighboring areas (i.e., their spillovers), and iii) differentiating the analysis by the macro-geographical context in which National Parks are embedded (i.e., north, center, and south of Italy). The analysis is based on the combination of the Propensity Score Matching with the Doubly Robust Difference-in-Differences estimator. We find that the National Parks have a positive and increasing-over-time impact on the share of forested areas. Moreover, from the socioeconomic point of view, their impact has been positive on the number of local units, workers employed (especially in the tourism sector), and the number of incoming work commuters, but negative on the number of agricultural holdings. However, these results depend on the geographical contexts, i.e., most of the positive socioeconomic impacts are in the north. Finally, we find (positive) spillover in terms of forested areas, but non-significant socioeconomic ones.

Deforestation is a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions globally. Understanding the direct drivers of forest loss is essential for developing targeted forest conservation and management policies. However, this data is hard to collect at scale due to the complexity of forest loss drivers and expertise required for accurately identifying them. To address this challenge, we developed a deep learning model called ForestNet which uses publicly available satellite imagery to automatically classify the drivers of primary forest loss. We validated ForestNet on a test set of expert-annotated forest loss events and showed that ForestNet achieved high performance across four major driver classes. We used ForestNet to identify these drivers on over 2 million forest loss events in Indonesia between 2012 and 2019, with significant improvement in spatial and temporal resolution over previously available data. We found that plantations and smallholder agriculture were the primary direct drivers of deforestation in Indonesia during this period, accounting for 64 % of total forest loss. Deforestation has decreased steadily since 2012 after increasing steadily from 2001 to 2009 and peaking from 2009 to 2012, trends that we found are primarily due to changes in plantation-driven deforestation. Our approach can serve as a general framework for scalably attributing deforestation to specific drivers and can be extended to other regions of interest, providing a flexible and cost-effective way for countries to regularly monitor, understand, and address their unique and dynamic drivers of deforestation.

In terms of developing students’ action competence when it comes to sustainability, the research literature highlights the importance of sustainability action taking in education for sustainable development. However, few studies have statistically investigated the relation between sustainability action taking and students’ action competence. Recognising the importance of action taking in education for sustainable development, this study investigates school experiences in influencing society as one important aspect of sustainability teaching and learning that promotes students’ action competence. We surveyed 902 students across three upper secondary schools situated within the same county municipality in Norway. One instrument measured the students’ school experiences in influencing society, and another assessed the students’ self-perceived action competence defined as i) knowledge of action possibilities, ii) confidence in one’s own influence, and ii) willingness to act. A structural equation model showed that school experiences in influencing society have a positive relation with all the action competence factors, supporting previous research that highlights the importance of taking action with regard to sustainability as a part of education for sustainable development. The findings indicate that providing students with opportunities to influence society can foster their development of action competence for sustainability.

Advanced technologies are inherently dependent on critical minerals and their related metals. The mining extraction of these critical minerals leads to significant social and environmental impacts that extend beyond the regions where those advanced technologies are ultimately used. This study explores the global socio-environmental challenges arising from the European Climate Law's aim for net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050, focusing on the EU's consumption of critical minerals. Developing a novel methodology based on Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model, enriched with detailed mineral production data from specific ore-to-mineral ratios and socio-environmental information, this work assesses the impacts of the EU's mineral consumption within its energy transition framework. This innovative approach extends beyond ore extraction to encompass all stages of the supply chain. Key findings indicate that the continental Europe accounts for 60% of the EU's ore extraction footprint, yet only 35% of the mineral footprint for the 34 analyzed critical minerals. In contrast, Africa's and South America's shares are 12% and 29%, respectively, markedly higher than attributed in previous studies. The study highlights challenges in securing these minerals, including potential usage conflicts and increased mining in water-scarce basins within Australia, Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Chile, hence exacerbating environmental and community issues. Furthermore, the research suggests that achieving the EU's climate goals could expose between 15 and 89,000 African miners to increased modern slavery vulnerabilities by 2040. However, adherence to the EU Green Deal principles could mitigate these risks and recommendations are proposed, including diversifying mineral supply chains, establishing partnerships with countries that maintain high socio-environmental standards, and adopting circular economy paradigms and innovative solutions. This study advocates its new methodological development to build comprehensive strategies balancing climate goals with the global socio-environmental effects of critical mineral extraction, especially in developing countries.

This study assesses the potential for establishing a sustainable and climate-resilient African economy, post-COVID-19, focusing on Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. Utilising the United Nation's Climate-Positive Action Framework, document analysis, and a systematic literature review, it examines these nations' investment in climate action. Findings reveal a decrease in climate funding during the pandemic, with notable gaps in climate finance, including reallocations away from climate-related ministries and delays in project implementation. This decline in climate action poses risks to sustainability and climate resilience. To mitigate these risks, the study emphasizes the need for frameworks to mobilize external and domestic resources for climate action. Despite ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19, proactive measures are essential to maintain focus on climate action.

The unprecedented low-carbon energy transition has heightened concerns about the security of critical metals (CMs) supplies that are essential for clean energy technologies. As the world's largest consumer and importer, China’s CMs supply may face significant challenges due to geopolitical uncertainties, price volatility, and other dynamics. Here, we introduce a risk-modeling framework to holistically gauge the multifaceted supply risks for 30 CMs embedded in clean energy technology spanning from 2008 to 2020. Our analysis indicates that approximately one-third of CMs supplies grapple with elevated risk, and half of these CMs are associated with electric vehicle manufacturing. These risks stem mainly from significant disruption potential (e.g., lithium and palladium) and substantial import reliance (e.g., nickel and niobium). Although China's overall CMs supply risk has remained relatively stable, the nation has grown increasingly susceptible to disruptions, especially with the surge in clean energy initiatives and associated price hikes. Our detailed analysis of the risk comparison reveals that China's supply risk for nine metals (e.g., copper and chromium) exceeds that of other countries that consume large amounts of CMs. Therefore, by adopting focused strategies related to metals, both governments and industries could benefit from global partnerships, strategic stockpiling, early warning mechanisms and sustainable supply chain management, paving the way for a smooth low-carbon energy transition for China.

A recent “warming-and-wetting” trend over China’s drylands has raised widespread attention in the scientific community. Based on the observations and model projections of temperature and precipitation, this study shows that the warming and regional wetting trend in China’s drylands is becoming stronger. Over the past 60 years, the temperature in China's drylands has increased at a rate of 0.34 °C/10a, much higher than that in China (0.29 °C/10a) and globally (0.22 °C/10a). The wetting trend has been primarily apparent in the western part since the 1980s, particularly in the mountainous areas. In the northeast edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the wetting rate exceeded 30 mm/10a. The possible cause of the increase of precipitation in China's drylands may be the higher convective precipitation, also concentrating in the mountainous areas. Model projections show weak and strong warming in the future under the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. Precipitation will increase slightly in the mid-21st century and then decrease slowly until the end of the 21st century under the RCP2.6 scenario. In comparison, under the RCP8.5 scenario, it will increase by 15–25% at the end of the 21st century.