Climate Risk Management最新文献

Climate-induced extreme events are increasingly affecting farmers’ livelihoods through weather-related losses such as flash floods, hailstorms, and rising temperatures. In response to these challenges, the Central Government has introduced the voluntary Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) as an effective risk management strategy. Under this scheme, farmers are required to pay a premium of 5 percent of the total compensation to avail the benefits. Apple, a major commercial crop in the north-western Himalayas, contributes 70 percent of India’s total apple production, with a significant share attributed to the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory. This study aims to explore whether apple growers are willing to pay for RWBCIS and to identify the drivers influencing their decision to purchase such insurance products. Data were collected from 900 apple growers in the purposively selected districts of Baramulla and Budgam in Jammu and Kashmir. The findings indicate that while all farmers were willing to adopt the weather-based crop insurance scheme, the majority were unwilling to pay the current premium. The estimated mean willingness to pay (WTP) was Rs. 37.22 per tree without covariates and Rs. 17 with covariates, compared to the prevailing Rs. 53 in the neighboring state of Himachal Pradesh. Factors contributing to the low WTP included a lack of knowledge about the scheme’s modalities, basis risk, and distrust in both government and private insurance companies. The government should consider innovative methods to provide existing subsidies to achieve the targeted coverage of 25 percent of farmers under the scheme.

Expansive learning theory was deployed in this study to explore how climate scientists can learn from working in a transdisciplinary mode, particularly to co-produce knowledge and navigate complex climate risks with other actors. A qualitative case study methodology was used to investigate expansive learning for climate scientists involved in the Future Resilience of African CiTies and Lands (FRACTAL) project. Findings from the study show how several major tensions of the cultural and historical work environment of scientists limit their potential to effectively produce scientific climate change information to inform decision making in complex African cities. Novel learning aspects were introduced during transdisciplinarity, which helped the scientists grapple with these tensions. They spent much time in cities with different groups of actors learning about the complex and dynamic drivers of risks in African cities and how these might change into the future. They also learned about the diverse subjectivities, priorities and values that influence African urban decision making. The group of scientists took learning actions to change their approach for co-producing knowledge with other actors in contexts of such complexity. These learning actions demonstrate transformative agency of climate scientists to expand their activities to collaboratively navigate complex African urban climate change risks.

Drawing on the securitisation and riskification of climate change literature, this paper investigates local governments’ climate risk management following a comparative analysis of three cases in the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The comparative analysis reveals how unwanted consequences of climate change are translated into climate risks, identifying the actors involved in these translations. The analysis then determines the means through which the translations occur, following a risk logic that underpins a particular governmental response to climate change. The findings of this analysis have been contrasted in terms of effects and side effects of the risk logic, showing that the three local cases follow a similar pattern. This paper contributes to understanding the challenges of climate risk management in terms of fortifying existing risk practices, expert-led responses with limited citizen involvement, and long-term societal engineering.

Land conservation has been recognized as a multifunctional adaptive strategy to tackle climate change as it includes the ability to mitigate risk and enhance biodiversity. However, limited empirical studies focus on the climatic adaptive functions of land conservation. Employing various geospatial and statistical techniques, including remote sensing, logistic regression, and landscape metrics, we investigate the effects of land conservation’s spatial characteristics. These characteristics affect the functional efficacy of climate adaptation in urban coastal regions, influencing regional economic vitality in the United States and China. Empirical results indicate that regional economic vitality is positively affected by parks and grassland, patch growth patterns, higher urban density, and closer proximities to coastlines and major roads. In contrast, the core growth form of land conservation has a negative economic effect. Among the estimated variables, we find that the patch growth form of land conservation and closer proximity to higher urban density have the largest positive effects on economic vitality across the study sites. Our findings contribute to both land conservation policy and the climate change literature by uncovering the spatially explicit effects of land conservation related to climate change adaptation.