Global Environmental Change最新文献

Lack of property rights is associated with lower investment, development, and welfare. In the Brazilian Amazon, insecure property rights have historically led to civil conflicts and deforestation, which would be expected to provide incentives for landowners to seek formal title. In this paper, we construct a novel database of land prices in Brazil to measure the market value of formal title to land and compliance with environmental regulation. Using online advertisements of land sale offers scraped from a widely used seller’s platform, we first estimate a hedonic model that regresses the last offer price on property attributes such as farm-level agricultural production, land characteristics, structure amenities, and capital equipment included in the offer, as well as spatial and temporal fixed effects. We use this hedonic model to examine how property rights and environmental compliance capitalize into land prices across the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Our main results imply low net benefits from property rights and low net benefits from compliance with the central Brazilian regulation that aims to maintain forest cover, the Forest Code. Finally, we estimate a duration model that follows the sequence of weekly offers for a specific property until it sells. Our findings show that parcels compliant with the Forest Code sell 46 % faster in the Amazon, while entitled properties in the Cerrado sell 9 % faster, unless they are compliant with the Forest Code, which requires a substantial portion of the property to be under native vegetation cover.

In 2016, negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity on access and benefit-sharing policies were shaken up by the emergence of digital sequence information (DSI) as policy issue. Open access to DSI on genetic resources in genetic databases is standard practice in data-driven biological research, but such access was argued to bypass access and benefit-sharing policies of the Convention. As Parties and observers had to take a position on governing DSI, this research investigated the influence of discourses on the negotiations through argumentative discourse analysis. Actors in international environmental negotiations mobilize ‘background’ discourses – both consciously and unconsciously – to define and ‘foreground’ issues, which in turn shape negotiation and decision-making processes. The analysis shows that existing discourses on access and benefit-sharing and biodiversity structured actors’ statements aimed at defining DSI, thus applying and redefining access and benefit-sharing principles in the context of DSI. Actors with similar and slightly varying interests formed discourse-coalitions on the basis of shared storylines. Developing countries formed a separate discourse-coalition to push for DSI regulation wherein ideas about sustainable development and environmental justice were integrated, and to a lesser extent about biopiracy (the notion that open access to DSI enables the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge). In response, developed countries adopted narratives put forward by industry and research, advocating that open access to DSI is essential for science, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. A third coalition, consisting of Indigenous peoples and local communities and civil society, also mobilized environmental justice and biopiracy discourses, but more prominently a unique holistic discourse on nature. Finally, holistic and biopiracy discourses were marginalized in official negotiation documents, while scientific and sustainable development discourses were adopted in official negotiation documents. The research provides a novel understanding of the DSI-negotiations as discursive politics, and highlights how different positionalities in discourses structure and are structured by statements in this political arena.

As emerging methods for carbon removal and controversial proposals around solar radiation modification are gaining traction in climate assessments and policy debates, a better understanding of how the public perceives these approaches is needed. Relying on qualitative data from 44 focus groups (n = 323 respondents), triangulated with a survey conducted in 22 countries (n = over 22 000 participants), we examine the role that climate change beliefs and attitudes towards climate action play in the formation of public perceptions of methods for carbon removal and solar radiation modification. We find that nationally varying degrees of perceived personal harm from climate change and climate worry predict support for these technologies. In addition to different perceptions of the problem, varying perceptions of the solution – i.e. the scope of climate action needed − shape publics’ assessment. Various tensions manifest themselves in publics’ reflections on the potential contribution of these climate technologies to climate action, including “buying time vs. delaying action”, “treating the symptoms vs. tackling the root causes”, and “urgency to act vs. effects only in the distant future”. We find that public perceptions are embedded in three broader narratives about transformation pathways, each reflecting varying notions of responsibility: (i) behavior change-centred pathways, (ii) top-down and industry-centred pathways, and (iii) technology-centred pathways. These results suggest that support for the deployment of the climate technologies studied hinges on them being tied to credible system-wide decarbonization efforts as well as their ability to effectively respond to a variety of perceived climate impacts.

Diverse disciplines are contributing to the growing body of evidence exploring the interaction between climate adaptation and justice and/or equity. As a result, the literature lacks consistency in how the terms equity and justice are applied and defined, challenging efforts to synthesize evidence and translate it into policy and practice. This scoping review aims to investigate the diversity of ways in which climate adaptation researchers conceptualize equity and justice and synthesize common frameworks to lend insight into emerging practices and future research needs. Our results synthesize 316 articles and highlight several gaps in the literature with respect to specific climate hazards and social identity groups. The results also indicate that very few scholars define and differentiate between equity and justice, but when they do, issues of scale, affected actors, pathways and normative principles are key components in such definitions. We expand on these themes, arguing that there is little utility in adaptation scholars and practitioners coming to complete consensus on best approaches for studying and evaluating equity and justice. Rather, research needs to address the plurality of approaches by being explicit in their definitions and conceptual grounding. We provide guidance for achieving such clarity in both the study and practice of climate adaptation. Finally, we compare common equity and justice frameworks according to their specific utility and most relevant contexts. We conclude by underscoring the importance of pluralism in how equity and justice are measured and defined as it parallels the diverse contexts in which climate adaptation occurs. The results of our review call for more nuanced investigation and communication of the ways in which equity and justice intersect with climate adaptation.

The urgent need for transformations to sustainability has been widely established, but the seeming lack of swift and comprehensive progress have led to well-founded doubts about meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and other related global agreements. Often vacuous and potentially misleading pointers to partial progress are not reassuring, while defeatist statements on blanket failure conceal important breakthroughs and advances. This paper resists the unhelpful extremes of this dichotomy and takes a closer look at the work done by activists, researchers and other supporters to mobilize for and foster transformative efforts even if they are often not easily visible. Based on an integrative synthesis of three international, multi-case research projects on transformations to sustainability, it introduces the concept of transformative labor – the work, inner and outer, that has the power to affect transformative change. Often hidden and largely underappreciated, transformative labor helps break through existing systems, and puts creativity, courage, persistence and other physical, social, cognitive and emotional qualities and skills along with physical and financial resources toward achieving system-transcending change. Seven overlapping and interacting categories of transformative labor are described: (1) Detecting & Naming Conditions (Symptoms); (2) Creating Transformative Spaces; (3) Fostering Agency & Empowerment; (4) Enacting Steps to Change Conditions; (5) Visioning & Moving toward Desired Outcomes (Purpose, Horizons); (6) Caring, Tending & Learning; and (7) Scaling Out, Up and Deep. Transformative labor is performed by advocates, researchers and other allies and is always political because it intends to advance a profound change in the status quo. The paper concludes with proposed future research directions to test and advance this novel concept.

Despite global recognition of the need to protect and preserve Indigenous knowledge and values in the context of land use change, the extent and significance of these values on Indigenous lands remains not well understood and poorly considered in environmental management and planning. Including Indigenous values in the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) may be one way to better ensure that Indigenous values are reflected in government environmental management and planning frameworks and that these frameworks are useful for Indigenous people. To do this, the SEEA must reflect the complex and interconnected values that underpin many Indigenous people’s relationships with land and sea. We use practical examples to illustrate how the SEEA may be adapted to better reflect the cultural values in an Indigenous living cultural landscape using an example from Yawuru Country, in northern Australia. We show how extending ecosystem asset accounts to reflect cultural knowledge and combining the SEEA Central Framework with the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting to develop a novel service to ecosystem account better represents the interconnected relationships between Yawuru People, culture, and Country. To consolidate the recognition of Indigenous values in the SEEA, we recommend establishing a working group under the auspices of the United Nations to share experiences and develop a guidebook “SEEA Indigenous values”. This would promote coordinated and corporative work and improve the relevance of the SEEA.

In many places around the world, the continuing expansion of agricultural land into forested areas is a context which urgently needs transformative change towards more sustainable pathways. Defining and implementing such transformations requires critical reflection to avoid reproducing business-as-usual practices. Transformative alternatives need to be capable of challenging detrimental power structures underlying social injustices and environmental degradation. Implementing such alternatives therefore needs a deeper and plural understanding of the historical processes underpinning the interrelation between social and environmental dynamics. In this paper we focus on the northeastern Nicaraguan agricultural frontier to analyze the historical emergence and consequences of a dominant cattle-based territorial pathway and to unveil local actors’ practices and perspectives on possible transformative change. We thereby aim to enrich the debates on Transformations to Sustainability and the identification of alternatives capable of challenging hegemonic dynamics. Our methodological contribution lies in adopting an original mixed-methods strategy based on the joint use of agrarian diagnoses and Q-method. First, our results provide an in-depth understanding of the historical evolution of agricultural practices and processes of social differentiation, and how these processes relate to techno-economic conditions influencing farmers' strategies. Second, we identify four perspectives within a specific network of actors regarding the processes of social-environmental change and analyze the perceived opportunities and limitations of actual and imagined alternatives. Based on these insights, we show that certain alignment of practices and motivations generally reinforces the dominant cattle-based territorial pathway. We also indicate that the most commonly promoted alternative strategies (often by external organizations) tend to reinforce the incumbent pathway rather than addressing the related social and environmental concerns. Yet, we also identified a subaltern niche of perspectives and practices from which a bottom-up actor coalition could emerge, addressing power imbalances and re-assembling ideas and practices towards transformative change.

The urgent need to address climate change requires widespread behavioural changes and structural reforms. However, the adoption of low-carbon practices is limited by individual, social and structural constraints. Carbon capability (CC) is an interdisciplinary, integrative framework which bridges the gap between individual-level behaviours and systemic change. This article develops a new theoretical framework for CC, with insights from the capability approach, social practice theory, and recent work in environmental psychology. Drawing on a nationally representative survey from the UK, CC is evaluated across six key domains of practice: energy, transport, food, shopping, influence, and citizenship. Our revised theory emphasises the diverse forms that CC can take, highlighting the multiple roles that individuals (and other actors) can play in driving climate action, as consumers, influencers, organisational members, and citizens. Results show that the UK population is becoming more carbon capable over time, with increasing knowledge about climate change and some adoption of low-carbon practices. However, transformative change is still lacking. The study highlights the importance of reorienting systems of provision to enable low-carbon practices and set capability ceilings to limit excessive consumption.

Activists, scholars, and policymakers worldwide have increasingly recognised the intrinsic linkages between energy transitions and justice issues. However, little research exists on how groups affected by renewable energy siting interpret and mobilise justice narratives to legitimise their actions and question development plans. Building on the notion of 'framing' in social movement theory, this study addresses this gap by examininig the discourses adopted by people resisting wind energy developments in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The study relies on 64 interviews and participant observation. The findings indicate that anti-wind activists used health and environmental concerns instrumentally: as a framing device to avoid social rejection and legitimise other, subtler distributive concerns about the uneven allocation of economic benefits such as tenancy payments. Although this framing was counterproductive and left their concerns unaddressed, activists adopted this strategy because of community norms and practises that stigmatise the explicit discussion of economic inequalities and their fear of challenging existing power structures. This paper therefore highlights the social mechanisms through which energy transitions reproduce economic inequalities. As a policy recommendation, it is critical to consider how inequalities are framed and the underlying reasons for these interpretive schemes to advance socially just net-zero scenarios.

Many people are highly exposed to climate change through tourism activities. However, conventional evaluations of tourism climate suitability have consistently relied on uniform indicators. In reality, the combination of meteorological factors that tourists are sensitive to and the threshold ranges for their comfort vary across different climate zones. This study, for the first time, utilizes a dataset of 2,326,954 tourist behaviors in hiking to validate the differences in sensitivity to meteorological conditions among tourists in different climate zones and to assess the historical and future tourism suitability in various climate zones. The findings reveal the following key results: (1) The sensitivity of hiking activities to meteorological factors varies among tourists in different climate zones. For instance, tourists in the mid-subtropics and south temperate zones show a lesser sensitivity to precipitation, while those in the southern subtropics are less affected by temperature fluctuations. Tourists in plateau climate zones appear to be insensitive to both precipitation and average relative humidity. (2) Significant differences exist in the climate comfort ranges for tourists from different climatic regions when engaging in hiking activities. Tourists in the mid-subtropics exhibit the highest tolerance for daily maximum temperatures during hiking, whereas those in arid and semiarid regions have a greater comfort threshold for average relative humidity compared to individuals in humid and subhumid regions. (3) Over the past decade, the southern subtropics experienced the highest number of days suitable for hiking among tourists, while the plateau climate zone recorded the fewest. The frequency of comfortable hiking days per year (CDY) increased for tourists in the north subtropics, mid-subtropics, southern subtropics, and plateau climate zones but declined for tourists in the mid-temperate and south temperate zones. (4) Looking ahead to the future, climate conditions conducive to hiking for tourists in different climate zones are generally trending towards deterioration. By the year 2080, both the mid-subtropics and south temperate zones are projected to have the fewest CDY. While the southern subtropics may still have the most CDY for tourists’ hiking, it is anticipated to experience the most rapid decrease.