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climate change ethics

Climate change ethics is a field of study that explores the moral aspects of climate change. Climate change is often studied and addressed by scientists, economists, and policymakers in value neutral ways. However, philosophers such as Stephen M. Gardiner and the scientific authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), argue that decisions related to climate change are moral issues and involve value judgment. Climate change involves difficult moral questions relating to global inequality and human development, who bears responsibility for past emissions, as well as the role of future generations, personal responsibility and many more. The two main ethical implications of climate change are related to its effects. The causes and effects of climate change are unrelated in time and space. Anthropogenic climate change is caused mainly by humans burning fossil fuels. The primary beneficiaries of fossil fuel burning are developed countries whereas the majority of climate impacts will be felt by the developing world. Further, climate change occurs on timescales much greater than a single generation of the human population, causing conflict between economic and political interests which are products of society and the interests of future people—an ethical and moral concept. Beginnings Climate change has become a concern for a number of disciplines due to its potentially catastrophic impacts on environmental systems, wildlife, nature, and humans. Climate change poses a serious threat to the global economy as economic development, especially in the West, has been largely dependent on the extraction and burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. Burning fossil fuels increases the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which is the primary driver of current global anthropogenic climate change. This notion has led to the study of the economics of climate change. Climate change is also a deeply political issue as there are disagreements among actors on whether and to what extent society should act on climate change. Economics is insufficient to guide policymaking alone, however, as it is only capable making predictions regarding how different policy decisions will affect the economy and how to proceed along those different pathways; it cannot tell us which pathway to choose, that is determined by which values we act on as a society. Because of this, some philosophers have argued that climate change is “fundamentally an ethical issue” which raises questions about "how we ought to live, what kinds of societies we want, and how we should relate to nature and other forms of life.” Global justice Climate change can be considered a global justice issue because the actors with the largest contribution to climate change are not the ones suffering from the most severe impacts. Historically, wealthy, developed nations have been emitting, and currently emit, disproportionally large amounts of greenhouse gases compared to poorer developing nations. For example, Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The country's per capita emissions are 1/20th of the global average and 1/100th of the per capita emissions in the United States, but its low-lying topography makes it extremely vulnerable to sea level rise and cyclones—which are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. Thus climate change can be seen as a global justice issue because the perpetrators of climate change impacts (developed nations) and the victims of those impacts (developing nations) are distinct actors.In addition to climate change being a global justice issue due to the disparities between the roles of developed and developing nations, the global justice issue can also be framed in terms of wealth. "Half the world’s carbon is emitted by the world’s richest 500 million people" meaning that regardless of where one lives, the higher their income, the higher their emissions. Although the United States has one of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, there are lower-income people in the U.S. with relatively lower emissions. Further, poorer people, regardless of where they live, are more likely to experience the effects of climate change because they have a reduced means to adapt compared to rich people. Intergenerational ethics The intergenerational ethics of climate change addresses the responsibility of current generations to be environmentally conscious to and ensure the sustainable use of environmental resources can continue for future generations. Moral responsibility is a crucial consideration in intergenerational climate change ethics. This responsibility extends to various interests, including humans, animals, future people, and nature. The interests of the current generation must be weighed against those of future generations, balancing current needs against future aspirations.The effects of climate change are dispersed temporally and spatially. Ethical implications due to spatial dispersion are those discussed in the previous section on global justice: those causing the problem are not in the same physical space as those experiencing the worst of its effects. Temporal ethical implications mainly relate to the fact that current greenhouse gas emissions will affect future generations more than they will affect current people. This notion of pushing climate change impacts on future people poses epistemic difficulties, making it hard to grasp cause and effect, which could undermine motivation to respond. Institutional inadequacy further complicates the issue. Democratic political institutions have relatively short time horizons which are at odds with the timescale of global climate change. Politicians are concerned about voter support for the next election, on a scale of a few years, whereas climate change operates on much longer timescales of hundreds to thousands of years. Therefore, climate change gets put on the back burner of political agendas because it won’t help politicians win the next election cycle. Economics Economists propose prioritizing adaptation over mitigation due to high costs associated with mitigation; however, conventional economic analyses have philosophical limitations. Such analyses discount future generations and prioritize human interests, failing to consider all relevant costs and benefits of climate change mitigation. Henry Shrue argues that the "No Harm Principle" gives us reason for acting on climate change, despite the uncertainty of future impacts. Temporal discounting The concept of temporal discounting in economics is relevant to climate change ethics due to the temporal dispersion of its effects. Economists use discount rates to determine the value of future goods because it is assumed that the global economy will continue to grow and future people will have more goods than current people. The more goods you have, the less valuable any one good is, hence, it is discounted. Using different discount rates, economists can arrive at very different conclusions regarding how much of the global budget should be dedicated to climate change mitigation, adaptation, or other things. Prioritarianism offers one ethical justification for imploring a high discount rate is that because future people will be better off than we are today, benefiting people today is more valuable than benefiting future people. Utilitarianism on the other hand, favors a lower discount rate (or none) under the idea that benefits to future people are equally valuable as benefits to current people. Human rights Climate change is a pressing issue that threatens the basic human rights of individuals and communities around the world. Climate change violates several human rights, including the right to life, health, food, water, and shelter. Climate change exacerbates existing inequalities and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, such as low-income communities, indigenous peoples, and small island developing states. Adopting a rights-based approach to climate change that recognizes the link between climate change and human rights would provide significant improvements. A moral threshold approach to climate change that identifies the minimum standards to protect human rights. This approach involves identifying a set of moral principles that establish the minimum standards of protection required to ensure that human rights are not violated by climate change. The moral threshold approach also involves identifying the duties and responsibilities of different actors in addressing climate change, including states, corporations, and individuals. States can take action to address climate change, as they are the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions. States can take measures to reduce their emissions and contribute to the global effort to limit the increase in global temperatures. Additionally, corporations have a responsibility to reduce their emissions and contribute to sustainable development. Individuals can play a role by adopting sustainable lifestyles and advocating for policies that address climate change. It is also an open moral question whether or not acts of civil disobedience by individuals or groups aimed at raising awareness of the climate crisis can be justified. Climate change is a human rights issue that requires action. There is a high need for a rights-based approach to climate change and proposes a moral threshold framework for addressing this issue. By recognizing the link between climate change and human rights, people can work towards a more just and equitable future for all. It is the responsibility of all actors, including states, corporations, and individuals, to take action to address climate change and protect human rights. == References ==

climate apocalypse

A climate apocalypse (or similar terms for the same concept) is a term used to denote a predicted scenario involving the global collapse of human civilization due to climate change. Such collapse is hypothesized to arrive through a set of interrelated concurrent factors such as famine, extreme weather, war and conflict, and disease.Some researchers have speculated that society cannot comprehend an accurate end of the world prediction, and instead, more governments would be willing to respond productively to prevent catastrophe if reports framed the matter as a smaller problem than it actually is.There are many terms in use that are similar to climate apocalypse, such as climate dystopia and a climate-induced collapse, climate endgame, climate catastrophe and so forth. Meaning of the term A "climate apocalypse" is hypothesized to arrive through a set of interrelated concurrent factors such as famine (crop loss, drought), extreme weather (hurricanes, floods), war (caused by the scarce resources) and conflict, systemic risk (relating to migration, famine, or conflict), and disease. Scientific consensus regarding likelihood Origin Rhetoric and belief centered on apocalypticism has deep roots in religious contexts, and similar rhetorical approaches undergird secular apocalyptic interpretations of climate. Historical interpretations fall into two visions of apocalypse: the tragic and the comic. Tragic apocalypticism frames a clearly divided good and evil, with preordained events. In contrast, comic framing emphasizes flawed human agency, and it tends to be characterized by an open-ended, episodic, and ongoing timeline. Some of the most significant books in environmentalism make use of either the tragic or comic apocalyptic framing: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Paul and Anne Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1972), and Al Gore's Earth in the Balance (1992).There is a Western world tradition of describing a climate apocalypse with images and descriptions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and other features of the apocalypse of the Christian faith. Usage In political conversations and media Political conversations about climate apocalypse (or similar terms) tend to describe how preventing it in the future would bring zero value for today, therefore the value of doing something today is zero. The lack of response to climate change despite it being an existential risk may be an indication that human society lacks an ability to understand a threat of this magnitude without some radical change in perspective.A 2013 report described how incorporating the concept of preventing catastrophe into public policy seems unprecedented and challenging to accomplish.Climate scientists may also downplay potentially disastrous scenarios in favor of more restrained predictions that are less likely to be rejected as alarmist or fatalist. Discussions of "tail-end" risks of temperatures rising beyond 3°C (5.4°F) are also often neglected in research more generally. In fiction Reception Some researchers have speculated that society cannot comprehend an accurate end of the world prediction, and instead, more governments would be willing to respond productively to prevent catastrophe if reports framed the matter as a smaller problem than it actually is. Talking about potential disaster can have a broad impact upon society by making many people feel that if the situation were truly horrible, then there must be good plans to prevent it so no further action is needed.The media presents many imagined apocalypse scenarios in a way that conflates them all. Related terminology There are many terms in use that are similar to climate apocalypse, such as climate dystopia and a climate-induced collapse, climate endgame, climate catastrophe and so forth. Climate endgame is a term used to refer to the risk of societal collapse and potential human extinction due to the effects of climate change. The usage of the term seeks to improve risk management by putting a higher priority on worst-case scenarios, to "galvanise action, improve resilience, and inform policy". The term endgame has been used in relation to climate change by other authors in the past, like in The Extinction Curve book by John van der Velden and Rob White, published in 2021. See also == References ==

climate change and gender

Climate change affects men and women differently. Climate change and gender examines how men and women access and use resources that are impacted by climate change and how they experience the resulting impacts. It examines how gender roles and cultural norms influence the ability of men and women to respond to climate change, and how women's and men's roles can be better integrated into climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. It also considers how climate change intersects with other gender-related challenges, such as poverty, access to resources, and unequal power dynamics. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to ensure that climate change policies and initiatives are equitable, and that both women and men benefit from them. Climate change increases gender inequality, reduces women's ability to be financially independent, and has an overall negative impact on the social and political rights of women, especially in economies that are heavily based on agriculture. In many cases, gender inequality means that women are more vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change. This is due to gender roles, particularly in the developing world, which means that women are often dependent on the natural environment for subsistence and income. By further limiting women's already constrained access to physical, social, political, and fiscal resources, climate change often burdens women more than men and can magnify existing gender inequality.Gender-based differences have also been identified in relation to awareness, causation and response to climate change, and many countries have developed and implemented gender-based climate change strategies and action plans. For example, the government of Mozambique adopted a Gender, Environment and Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan in early 2010, being the first government in the world to do so.Analysis of gender in climate change, however, is not limited to women. It also means not only applying a binary male/female system of analysis on sets of quantitative data, but also scrutinizing discursive constructions that shapes power relations connected to climate change, and considering how gender, as a social factor that influences responses to climate change, intersects with other variables such as age, caste, marital status, and ethnicity. This binary also excludes individuals who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and those who are non-binary and do not fit into gender norms. Public opinion and actions A study of young people in Finland shows that concern over climate change has a higher impact on climate friendly consumption in women compared to men. A study done in the Czech Republic showcases this phenomenon as well. This may be incidental to differences in perception of climate change. Women tend to agree with the scientific opinion that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are mainly responsible for climate change (m: 56%, f: 64%) and are more concerned about its effects: 29% of men and 35% of women in the US "worry about global warming a great deal".Another study was conducted in 2016 using men and women from Brazil and Sweden to measure and inspect the effects of gender and political orientation on perceptions of climate change. Data was collected via online questionnaires from 367 participants from Brazil consisting of 151 men and 216 women, and 221 participants from Sweden with 75 men and 146 women. The results of the study showed a strong positive correlation between conservative men and denial of climate change in both groups (rSweden = .22, rBrazil = .19) indicating that men (typically with conservative political orientation) are more likely to deny the existence of climate change. Women in both groups mostly showed the opposite results, indicating that women are more likely to believe in the existence of climate change.A study published in 2020 found that there are also differences in the coping strategies. The study, conducted among rice farmers in Mazandaran Province in Iran, found that men tend to believe that better techniques for conservation management of land is a good way to manage climate risk, while women believed that education is the most important way to adapt, since they could find out what are the better techniques and technologies to face climate risk.A key enabler to climate change adaptation is access to useful climate information, however in Sub-Saharan Africa access to information has been found to be gendered with women having poorer access to climate information. In a study published in 2020 of smallholder sugarcane farmers in Malawi, it was found that more women than men do not access forecast information to guide adaptation decisions. Gendered access and preferences of climate information may be tied to varying marital status and well as education and literacy levels among women and men.Contribution to climate change – through emissions of greenhouse gases – is correlated to gender. A study on car use in Sweden, for example, found that men are likely to use the car more, for longer distances and alone compared to women, thereby emitting more CO2 (a greenhouse gas).In a survey conducted by the European Investment Bank on climate, men were found to be more sceptical about the impact of females in climate action leadership. 50% of women surveyed thought that having more females leaders would make a difference, while only 45% of men thought so. The study indicated the biggest discrepancy in the UK, where 38% of men and 61% of women agreed that women leaders would effectively combat climate change. The European Investment Fund also discovered that businesses run by women had better ESG ratings than other businesses, spend more in renewable energy sources, and invest less in polluting businesses.Various research shows that nations with higher proportions of women in parliament are more likely to ratify environmental agreements and implement climate change policy, thus female leaders are more likely to favor climate action and sustainability. Vulnerability Disasters Disasters are unpredictable events that cause harm to people and damage to property, infrastructure, and the environment. They can be natural, such as floods, wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or tsunamis, or they can be man-made, such as oil spills, industrial accidents, and terrorist attacks. Disasters can cause physical, psychological, and economic damage. They can also disrupt social networks, weaken economic systems, and cause a range of physical and mental health impacts. People affected by disasters may face displacement, loss of livelihoods, and disruption of education, among other impacts. In the wake of a disaster, governments, international organizations, and aid agencies may provide relief and assistance to those affected. Death rates A study by the London School of Economics found that, in natural disasters in 141 countries, gender differences in deaths correlated to women's economic and social rights in those countries. Due to their social standing, women in developing countries are not generally taught survival skills like swimming or climbing, meaning they are more likely to die in a natural disaster. When women have fewer rights and less power in society, more of them die due to climate change, but when there are equal rights for all groups, death rates are more equally matched.Women working in areas exposed to climate change effects, like agriculture, water or forestry, are also more likely to be affected by extreme weather, resulting in an increase of deaths. Countries have also reported rising violence against women and girls after natural disasters. Sexual abuse and disease transmission Sexual abuse is any form of unwanted sexual contact, ranging from verbal to physical. It can range from sexual harassment or inappropriate touching to rape or attempted rape. It can occur between two people of any gender, but is most commonly perpetrated by males against females. It can occur in any setting, but is most often within a relationship or family. Disease transmission is the spread of disease-causing organisms from one person to another. This can happen through direct contact with an infected person, or through indirect contact with items such as clothing, bedding or toys that have been contaminated with the infectious agents. Sexual contact is one of the most common ways for disease to be spread, and includes unprotected sex, sexual assault, and intimate contact between partners. The most common diseases that are spread through sexual contact include HIV, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and genital herpes. HIV and syphilis can be spread through any form of sexual contact, while chlamydia, gonorrhea, and herpes are mainly spread through unprotected vaginal or anal intercourse. Other sexually transmitted infections, such as hepatitis B, can also be spread through sexual contact.Natural disasters disrupt daily routines and complicate gender and family roles, which can cause victims of natural disasters to feel powerless and frustrated. These feelings often result in aggression against less powerful groups. Women and children in developed and developing countries are at higher risk of sexual abuse during and after natural disasters than before. Cases of child marriage and sex trafficking have risen in some areas of the Indian Sundarban delta after the devastating effects of Cyclone Amphan and ongoing stress caused by COVID-19, impacting the lives of young girls. Condom use during disasters is also lower than at other times, because of decreased access to condoms. Combined with the accelerated spread of diseases and infections in developing countries, the breakdown of the social order and the malnourishment that sometimes accompanies climate change have led to higher rates of dengue fever, malaria, HIV, and STI transmission, especially for women. Elderly women are also particularly at risk during natural disasters and times of crisis because they are more susceptible to climatically induced health risks like disease and because they are often isolated from social support to which men and some younger women have access. Agriculture Agriculture is the science, art, and practice of cultivating plants and livestock. It includes the preparation of soil for growing crops, planting, harvesting, and storing food, and the breeding and raising of livestock. Agriculture also involves the production of commodities such as milk, eggs, and meat, as well as the production of fibers such as cotton and wool. Agriculture is an important part of the global economy and is essential for providing food, feed, and fiber. It is also an important part of rural life and culture, providing employment and a source of income for many people in rural areas. In addition to providing food, feed, and fiber, agriculture also plays an important role in environmental conservation, providing habitat for wildlife and helping to maintain biodiversity.The poor and impoverished are dependent on the environment and its natural resources for subsistence and income; poverty research reveals that many of the poor are women because, as a group, they have less social power. Many women in developing countries are farmers, but women as a group have trouble obtaining education, income, land, livestock, and technology, meaning climate change may negatively impact female farmers more than male farmers by further limiting their resources. In 2009, women produced between 60 and 80 percent of all food in the developing world, yet they owned ten percent of all agricultural land and approximately two percent of land rights. As the planet warms and access to water changes, the crop yields tend to decrease. These effects are not uniform, and they have the largest impact on areas of the world where the economy depends on agriculture and the climate is sensitive to change. In developing countries, women are often in charge of obtaining water, firewood, and other resources for their families, but these resources are directly impacted by climate change, meaning women must travel further and work longer to access them during crisis. Climate change increases burdens placed on women by society and further limits their access to education and employment. A changing climate has adverse impacts on agricultural production and in India's Mahanadi delta, this has forced the male farmers to migrate, leaving behind the responsibility of cultivating the small land-holdings to the women under "increasingly uncertain climatic conditions".Strong gender norms around roles and access to resources in semi-arid regions often confine women-led businesses to climate-exposed sectors, particularly agriculture, but also limit the options women have to build resilience within their businesses. Despite these limitations and the need to addressing inequalities, women entrepreneurs can harness significant adaptive capacity and take advantage of new opportunities. According to research involving the private sector, businesses that have more women on their boards are more likely to increase energy efficiency, lessen their total environmental effect, and invest in renewable energy sources.In fact, a UN Food Agriculture Organization report shows that women farmers will be more affected by food insecurity due to climate change. Even though they represent 43% of farmers in developing countries, female farmers find it hard to compete with men farmers. This is due to their responsibility to be more present at home, and their limitations to market credit access. In addition to that, women don't usually invest more money in sectors that might increase agriculture productivity. An FAO dossier on Women and Agriculture reported in 2011 confirms that "The obstacles that confront women farmers mean that they achieve lower yields than their male counterparts... Yet women are as good at farming as men. Solid empirical evidence shows that if women farmers used the same level of resources as men on the land they farm, they would achieve the same yield levels." Increased inequalities Climate change and gender-based inequality go hand in hand. Climate change is a major global problem with far-reaching implications for the world's population, particularly women and girls living in impoverished countries. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate change because they are often more dependent on natural resources and lack access to the same services and resources that men do. Climate change can lead to water shortages, food insecurity, and displacement, which can all increase the gender-based inequalities already present in many countries. For example, women are typically responsible for collecting water and firewood and managing the household, so an increase in extreme weather events or a decrease in resources can make these tasks more difficult and time-consuming. This can decrease the amount of time women have to pursue other activities, such as education or employment. Climate change can also increase the risk of violence and exploitation for women in vulnerable situations. Natural disasters can leave women and girls homeless and without access to safety resources, increasing their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. Overall, climate change has the potential to significantly worsen gender-based inequalities in many parts of the world. It is essential that governments and organizations recognize the effect climate change has on gender equality and take steps to protect and empower women and girls. This may include providing access to resources, education, and support services, as well as developing gender-sensitive policies and programs to address the effects of climate change.The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report concludes that there is 'robust evidence' for an increase of gender inequalities as a result of weather events as well as for the perpetuation of differential vulnerabilities. The increase of inequalities due to climate change can have several reasons. For example, girls often face more serious risks than boys due to unequal distribution of scarce resources within the household. This effect is amplified by climate change induced resource scarcity. Furthermore, climate change often results in an increase of out-migration of men. This leaves women with an increased work-load at home, resulting in a feminization of responsibilities. Climate change is predicted to increase frequency and magnitude of natural hazards such as extreme heat. During and after these hazards especially women are burdened with increased care work for children, the sick and old, adding furthermore to already significant amount of household duties. Women also tend to donate their food in times of food scarcity, leaving them more vulnerable to health, social and psychological damages. Girls are also pulled out of school to help their families deal with natural disasters. Energy poverty Scientific field Climate change and gender are intertwined in multiple ways. First, environmental changes resulting from climate change can disproportionately impact women, depending on their socio-economic status, ethnicity, and geographic location. For example, women in developing countries are more likely to be dependent on natural resources for food security, access to clean water, and fuel for cooking and heating. As climate change causes more extreme weather events and shifts in precipitation patterns, these resources become scarcer, leading to greater food insecurity and poverty among women. Second, women are often underrepresented in the scientific field, making it difficult to take into account the gender-specific impacts of climate change. This is because women are less likely to have access to education, resources, and research opportunities in the sciences, so their perspectives and expertise are not as well represented in the field. Research that does not consider gender-specific impacts of climate change can lead to an inadequate understanding of how climate change affects different populations and can lead to unequal access to resources and services to address climate change impacts. Finally, women are often responsible for caring for household members and managing resources in communities, so they are well-positioned to lead changes to mitigate climate change. However, women are often excluded from decision-making processes that shape climate change policy, so their perspectives and knowledge are not considered in the policy-making process. This can lead to policies that are not tailored to the gender-specific needs of different populations, resulting in unequal access to resources and services to address climate change impacts. Overall, climate change and gender are interconnected in multiple ways, and it is important to recognize the importance of considering the gender-specific impacts of climate change in research and policy-making.According to a survey conducted IPCC WGI Co-Chairs and Technical Support Unit (TSU) on 25 April 2014, many of the polled authors stated that they saw the need for a better gender balance. This is reflected in the gender balance of contributors to the fifth IPCC assessment report. Only 27% of contributors to Working Group II, concerned with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and 18,5% of contributors of Working Group I, concerned with the physical science basis, are female. This also applies to other organisation, as for example only 7% of leadership positions in the offices of National Weather Services are women. On a similar note, a study conducted by the University of Oxford in cooperation with the Nielsen Company found that 18 of the 22 'most influential spokespeople on climate change' are male. Female spokespeople were neither politicians nor scientists and their direct connection to climate change is therefore doubtful. Policies Mitigation policy attempts to moderate the intensity of global warming's effects through measures like reducing greenhouse gases and enhancing sinks. According to research, men and women use their knowledge of their environments to mitigate disasters, transferring this knowledge through informal education. Some of this knowledge includes food preservation processes, methods of construction, and understanding of natural resources in the area. Examples of mitigation efforts include carbon emissions trading. Mitigation efforts largely ignore gender.Adaptive policy involves spontaneous or planned efforts to tolerate the negative effects of climate change and take advantage of the beneficial effects. Men and women respond differently to climate change and subsequently also to adaptation measures, which can affect men and women unequally, when the gender perspective is ignored in the policy. For example, the IPCC report AR5 points out that adaptation measures in agriculture can in some cases lead to increased gender inequalities. Most effective approaches for gender-sensitive policies Some scholars recommend incorporating gender dimensions into research and using human-rights approaches like the Millennium Development Goals and CEDAW as frameworks for climate change responses. Several organizations believe that linking mitigation and adaptation approaches, equally funding both types of efforts, and integrating gender into mitigative and adaptive policies will better address the consequences of climate change. The UNDP mandates gender mainstreaming in all adaptation measures, meaning adaptive responses to climate change must consider gender and gender equality from their inception and cannot incorporate a gender component late in their development or only in certain areas. Others believe that imposing mainstreaming agendas on communities can make gender-sensitive policy less effective and may even be counter-productive, emphasizing gender differences and isolating gender issues from other areas affected by climate change. Gender-blind mitigation policy In 2009, a forest-protection mechanism called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) was agreed upon by attendees of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Many development organizations praise the REDD mechanism, but others criticize its function as a market-based instrument and its impact on local communities.Over the past 13 years, they have partnered with 65 countries to meet their forest goals. Some examples of this include: UN-REDD partnered countries have submitted 700 million tCO2 of forest emission reductions, and 25 UN-REDD countries have integrated REDD+ policies at the ministerial or cabinet level, meaning these countries have now seen reductions in deforestation. Their 2020 Executive Summary notes that Myanmar and Peru created strategic policies for the reduction of emissions in the forest and land-use sector.The UN-REDD program has created a plan for 2021–2025 to reduce forest emissions and enhance carbon stocks. The first priority is to have forest solutions realized, in which they focus on reducing CO2 emissions. The second priority is to reward these forest solutions, and they have allocated $5 billion from Results-based Payment schemes, carbon markets, and private-sector carbon investments. Additionally, transactions under the 6th Article of the Paris Agreement are included in this. The third priority of this plan is to have at least 15 countries alter their Nationally Determined Contributions by 2025 to include more about forests, particularly with the goal of lowering emissions. The fourth goal involves REDD+ leading a Nature-based Solutions movement to speed up changes around climate action. Gender-blind adaptation policy Some scholars believe that climate change policy that does not address gender is not effective. Much of the climate change policy created before the 21st century focused on economic rather than social effects of climatic change and global warming. Climate change research and policy began to look at gender in the 21st century. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Millennium Development Goals, and the Beijing Platform for Action are all gender-aware initiatives that may affect climate change policy. Some of the international responses to climate change that do not address gender or employ gender-sensitive approaches include Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, the Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Action Plan.The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have incorporated gender dimensions, the latter through a Gender Action Plan. Roehr notes that, while the United Nations officially committed to gender mainstreaming, in practice gender equality is not reached in the context of climate change. Little data and research results in insufficient gender awareness in enacted gender policies.Indian state of Odisha's Climate Change Action Plan for 2018–2023 has an entire chapter dedicated to gender and climate change, which outlines a gender-sensitive approach of "empowering women as agents of change and not victims". This is a refreshing change from the earlier Climate Change Action Plan 2010–2015 where gender in the context of climate change has not been fully explored and is thus not included in the government's own Progress Report on the Implementation of the Climate Change Action Plan. This indicates "an exclusion of women's voices from decision-making and financial processes" and further removing them from the policies which have direct impact on their lives.The five priority areas of the Gender Action Plan include: capacity building, knowledge management and communication, gender balance, participation in women's leadership, coherence, gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation, and monitoring and reporting. Capacity building, knowledge management and communication requires gender consideration to play a larger role when creating policy and action plans. The goal of this is to not only make sure the genders are considered equally, but to increase outreach and awareness to do so. The second part, gender balance, participation and women's leadership, explains a goal of having more women participate in UNFCCC process. The next, which is coherence, emphasizes the need for gender-related mandates. Gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation is ensuring the importance of having women mentioned in legislation such as the Paris Agreement. And finally, the monitoring and reporting would monitor these changes under the Lima work program to see whether or not the gender action plan is being implemented properly. Including women in policy-making processes Gender inequalities do not only emerge in context of climate change as a physical reality, but also within discourses of and negotiations over climate change. This is reflected in the fact that men are dominant in all levels of climate change debate – from the science to policy, from the local to the global level. This has an effect on climate change policies. Women can be important players in climate change policy because they have gendered knowledge about things like managing water resources. While women in rural areas depend on the environment heavily, they are not usually represented in climate change decision-making processes. CARE's research shows that, when women are in control of the family income, it is more likely to be spent on human development. Women are also generally more risk averse than men and make safer decisions. Yet, in 2008, the EU Commission and Council on adaptation policy did not address gender at all. Furthermore, gender roles and subsequent institutional and social pressures can pose constraints to adaptive capacities. Most scholars and organizations working to address climate change agree that policy-makers must work with both women and men and take them into consideration at all levels.Research supports the role women play in leading climate action: nations with more female parliamentary representation are more likely to ratify environmental accords and pass laws that deal with the implications of climate change. Patriarchy and climate change science and policy Some feminist scholars hold that the debate on climate change is not only dominated by men but also primarily shaped in 'masculine' principles, which limits discussions about climate change to a perspective that focuses on technical solutions, and accounts for the inability to adapt to and mitigate climate change points out the impact of spatial practices that manifest power relations and marginalise women. The often-hidden subjectivity and power relations that actually condition climate change policy and science, lead to a phenomenon which Tuana terms 'epistemic injustice'.Similarly, MacGregor criticizes the scientific discourse from a less quantitative perspective but focusses on discursive aspects. She attests that by framing climate change as an issue of 'hard' natural scientific conduct and natural security, it is kept within the traditional domains of hegemonic masculinity. Seager maintains that the 2 °C aim, which is a reoccurring topic in the climate change debate, is not, as often assumed, a safe goal for all people on the planet. Rather it will ensure the stability of a patriarchal capitalism and subsequently the continuity of power for those who are powerful today. Individual action by women Women can play a role in climate change response and can often help at the local level, which can inform specific aspects of climate change policy. Women contribute their local knowledge of leadership, sustainable resource management, and how to incorporate sustainability into both the household and community. This also demonstrates how women play a vital role in natural resource management.Additionally, evidence demonstrates communities are better prepared for natural disasters when women play a pivotal role in the early warning systems and reconstructions. A 2000 study in South Asia demonstrated that women were crucial in hazard preparation and rebuilding/managing communities after a disaster, as well as ensuring food security and safety for specific groups of people. Gender inclusivity Sexual and gender minorities Many marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis the world is experiencing, and this includes both gender and sexual minorities. Following a disaster, same sex couples risk not receiving relief support if they are not recognized as a legitimate couple by the government. Additionally, non-binary individuals lack access to gender-specific services that target men or women. Initiatives to reduce this risk and danger include MapBeks to map LGBTQ+ safe spaces, HIV testing facilities, and access through roads and buildings for disaster management. US policy and strategy In recent years, initiatives toward gender equality in relation to climate change have been created. One of these initiatives is the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, which was proposed by the Biden-Harris administration. This is a strategy that aims to have full participation of all people, which includes women, in the United States. In this Strategy, they recognize that there is gender-based discrimination and exclusion in the development of climate policy. These policies, which are exclusionary, make it difficult to make effective policy about issues such as climate change if groups of people are being left out. The goal of this strategy is to promote gender equity in relation to climate change policy and mitigation, as well as address how climate change might affect public health differently based on gender.This goal of promoting gender equity in mitigating and responding to climate change involves multiple steps. The first is to pursue this gender parity in both negotiations and science that center around climate change. To promote the education of women, the administration hopes to create a focus on climate science in education and ensure their inclusion in the environmental protection plans and climate action plans. The next priority is to create more leadership trainings for women to create better participation in clean energy economy. Another goal is to utilize the Justice40 Initiative to deliver 40% of benefits from investments for climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities. Additionally, they plan to create a Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.Other legislation, such as the Women and Climate Change Act of 2019. hopes to highlight initiatives led by women to not only combat climate change itself, but the gender inequality that exists within this area. They hope to establish the Federal Interagency Working Group on Women and Climate Change, and to create a more comprehensive strategy on how to involve women in climate policy in the future. Case studies Bangladesh Madagascar 80% of species of plants and animals found in Madagascar are not available anywhere else on Earth. Due to this exceptional uniqueness of the species, deforestation in Madagascar will have serious impact on the global biodiversity, and this arguably makes the country the highest priority for world's biodiversity conservation. Climate change effects in Madagascar, a country with a predominantly rural and vulnerable population, is expected to exacerbate the occurrences of powerful cyclones, flooding, droughts, and unpredictability in climate patterns, which will further threaten food security, infrastructures, and the ecosystem of the country. The Policy Research Brief published by International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) titled "Greening the Economy and Increasing Economic Equity for Women Farmers in Madagascar" identifies that the lived realities of climate change in Madagascar are distinctly gender-differentiated. The relevant national policies and strategies such as Madagascar's National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA) related to climate change have not been gender focused, hence, resulting to vital gender related policy gap that tends to further reinforce women marginalization in policy processes relating to climate adaptation, funding and mitigation. The report recommended organization of women's cooperatives and improved inclusion of women in leadership role to improve social inclusivity in the green economy. Mozambique The government of Mozambique adopted a Gender, Environment and Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan in early 2010, being the first government in the world to do so. In its phase II action plan, Alcinda António de Abreu, Mozambique's then Minister of Environment, comments that "climate change adaptation and mitigation [rely] upon the sustainable use and equitable control of, as well as benefits derived from, natural resources – and all citizens, regardless of their social status or their gender, in all spheres of economic and political life, have a role to play in this critical effort". Sustainable use and management of natural resources training have been provided to over 12,000 women. Similarly, thirty-six communities have learned and gained knowledge about more effective methods for prevention and control of fires, plantation of drought resistant crops, and production and usage of improved stoves. South Africa In 2010, South Africa was the region with the largest economy in Africa, yet more than half of the population lived in poverty and many were unemployed. Impoverished populations of South Africa depend heavily on agriculture and natural resources to live. Coal and metal ore mining were also significant contributing sectors of the economy, but are decreasing in the 21st century due to climate change and globalization. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that Africa would warm due to climate change 1.5 times more than the rest of the world and that South Africa, specifically, would be 3 – 4 °C warmer by 2100. Water, agriculture, mining, and forestry would all be affected by these changes in temperature and weather. The Human Sciences Research Council found in 2004 that 57% of South Africa's poor were at risk for negative climate change effects because they depended on rain-fed agriculture and climate change in Africa was expected to cause longer and more intense periods of drought over time. Many of the rural poor in South Africa are women who have only limited access to property, income, credit, resources, and social power.In South Africa, men traditionally look after the livestock while women look over the garden, but in extended periods of drought, many households lose their livestock. In response to this loss and to increasing unemployment, men are turning to alcohol to deal with the psychological stress. Some are also increasing their number of sexual partners, increasing their risk of contracting or spreading HIV. In response to these changes, more women are entering the workforce, either formally or informally. Some are now working in traditionally male occupations like mining and construction. Others are making and selling goods locally. Social grants from the South African government further support households affected by the changing climate. These grants include pensions, disability payments, and child support. In some cases, when men are responsible for the distribution of social grants in the household instead of women, they use the money to purchase alcohol. In response, the government tends to give grant money to women, which can cause domestic disputes within households.Understanding of climate change in South Africa is based mainly on experience and local knowledge, which is communicated orally. Women tend to hold more of this knowledge than men do because of their experience with farming and gardening. In response to drought, some women plant crops near wetlands or other water sources. They also preserve food for periods of drought or crop failure. Despite their knowledge of climate change, many responses in South Africa (like the South African Country Study on Climate Change Vulnerability & Adaptation Assessment) do not address gender. While women in South Africa are represented in the government at national and provincial level, there are not many women in government at a municipal level. India To understand gendered vulnerabilities one needs to understand it in conjunction with caste, class, and ethnicity. In India's Mahanadi Delta, women from Scheduled Castes exhibited high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem in spite of facing deprivation. While women from higher castes are bound by "stronger patriarchal control and restricted mobility", women from Scheduled Castes "often without even realizing it" are capable of doing away with patriarchal limitations and "acquire mobility with greater ease".The perception of women as being "only vulnerable and marginalized in the context of climate change" is incorrect. Women's agency to cultivate vegetables in water logged fields of Totashi village of Odisha has turned the disadvantages caused by water logging on its head by providing them with additional income to support their families and nutritional requirement. Women of Odisha's Jeypore village volunteer twice a month to clear out water hyacinth from the water bodies by forming a chain to "pull floating sections of water hyacinth prior to uprooting them". This has not only improved the water quality of the ponds and enabled villagers to engage in duck farming and fishing but also checked the reduction of soil fertility and spread of diseases, snakes, and poisonous insects.A study conducted between 2014 and 2018 in five districts of the Mahanadi delta of Odisha show that female-headed households experienced "more monetary losses due to failure of crop, livestock and equipment damages as well as loss of life" as compared to the male headed households during extreme events. The female headed households had the existing responsibilities of looking after the family, and coupled with lower incomes, lower resilience or adaptive capacity, they were worse off than male headed households during extreme events. The inequalities were further compounded by the women's age, marital status, lack of education, and income where a proportion of women had no income, many had low income, and a significant proportion were widows of mature age with no education. Not only were these women living under vulnerable physical conditions in the delta owing to a changing climate but were also socio-economically more vulnerable than the male-headed households. Controversies regarding gender and climate change "Women as vulnerable" vs "Women as virtuous" There are two concurring themes that emerge when examining climate change and gender: "Women as vulnerable or virtuous in relation to the environment." This means that women living in countries in the global South are more likely to be affected by climate change than men in those countries and that men in the global North are more likely to contribute to climate change than women. These assumptions about women's vulnerability and virtuousness reinforce global north–south biases, which is that women in the global South are poor and helpless and women in the global North are well-educated and pro-environmentalists. The "women as virtuous" narrative frames women as important drivers in building equal and sustainable responses to climate change. The UNFPA report State of World Population 2009 – Facing a Changing world: Women, Population and Climate identifies women as important actors in mobilizing against climate change. Specifically, Carolyn Sachs discusses the struggles women face on a global scale against environmental factors such as gender arrangements in agricultural development. Often women become oppressed by their corporate counterparts as a more focused point of reference in women's vulnerability. Women labor is exploited as a way to keep them from fighting back in turn, during the mid year season change they face vast struggles of extreme climate change and availability to natural resources. See also Climate change adaptation Climate change and poverty Climate justice Feminization of poverty Women in climate change References Sources MacGregor, Sherilyn. "A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on Climate Change." The Sociological Review 57 (2010): 124–140. Web. 25 October 2014. Nussbaum, Martha C. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Olsson, Lennart et al. "Livelihoods and Poverty." Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ed. C. B. Field et al. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 793–832. Schneider, Stephen H., Armin Rosencranz, Michael D. Mastrandrea, and Kristin Kuntz-Duriseti. Climate Change Science and Policy. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010. Tuana, Nancy. "Gendering Climate Knowledge for Justice: Catalyzing a New Research Agenda." Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change. Ed. Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenbury. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013. 17–31. External links Contributions of WGII in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Reports Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Global Gender and Climate Alliance Millennium Development Goals Archived 1 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine

economic inequality

Economic inequality is an umbrella term for a) income inequality or distribution of income (how the total sum of money paid to people is distributed among them), b) wealth inequality or distribution of wealth (how the total sum of wealth owned by people is distributed among the owners), and c) consumption inequality (how the total sum of money spent by people is distributed among the spenders). Each of these can be measured between two or more nations, within a single nation, or between and within sub-populations (such as within a low-income group, within a high-income group and between them, within an age group and between inter-generational groups, within a gender group and between them etc, either from one or from multiple nations).Income inequality metrics are used for measuring income inequality, the Gini coefficient being a widely used one. Another type of measurement is the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, which is a statistic composite index that takes inequality into account. Important concepts of equality include equity, equality of outcome, and equality of opportunity. Whereas globalization has reduced the inequality between nations, it has increased the inequality within the population in most nations. Income inequality between nations peaked in the 1970s, when world income was distributed bimodally into "rich" and "poor" countries. Since then, income levels across countries have been converging, with most people now living in middle-income countries. However, inequality within the population in most has risen significantly in the last 30 years, particularly among advanced countries. In this period, approximately 90 percent of advanced nations increased their income inequality with over 70% nations recording their Gini coefficient increase, exceeding two points.Research has generally linked economic inequality to political and social instability, including revolution, democratic breakdown and civil conflict. Research suggests that greater inequality hinders economic growth and macroeconomic stability, and that land and human capital inequality reduce growth more than inequality of income. Inequality is at the center stage of economic policy debate across the globe, as government tax and spending policies have significant effects on income distribution. In advanced economies, taxes and transfers decrease income inequality by one-third, with most of this being achieved via public social spending (such as pensions and family benefits). While the "optimum" amount of economic inequality is widely debated, there is a near-universal belief that complete economic equality (Gini of zero) would be undesirable and unachieveable.: 1 Measurements In 1820, the ratio between the income of the top and bottom 20 percent of the world's population was three to one. By 1991, it was eighty-six to one. A 2011 study titled "Divided we Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising" by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) sought to explain the causes for this rising inequality by investigating economic inequality in OECD countries; it concluded that the following factors played a role: Changes in the structure of households can play an important role. Single-headed households in OECD countries have risen from an average of 15% in the late 1980s to 20% in the mid-2000s, resulting in higher inequality. Assortative mating refers to the phenomenon of people marrying people with similar background, for example doctors marrying other doctors rather than nurses. OECD found out that 40% of couples where both partners work belonged to the same or neighbouring earnings deciles compared with 33% some 20 years before. In the bottom percentiles, number of hours worked has decreased. The main reason for increasing inequality seems to be the difference between the demand for and supply of skills.The study made the following conclusions about the level of economic inequality: Income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century. The ratio between the bottom 10% and the top 10% has increased from 1:7 to 1:9 in 25 years. There are tentative signs of a possible convergence of inequality levels towards a common and higher average level across OECD countries. With very few exceptions (France, Japan, and Spain), the wages of the 10% best-paid workers have risen relative to those of the 10% lowest paid.A 2011 OECD study investigated economic inequality in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa. It concluded that key sources of inequality in these countries include "a large, persistent informal sector, widespread regional divides (e.g., urban-rural), gaps in access to education, and barriers to employment and career progression for women." A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reported that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000. The three richest people in the world possess more financial assets than the lowest 48 nations combined. The combined wealth of the "10 million dollar millionaires" grew to nearly $41 trillion in 2008.Oxfam's 2021 report on global inequality said that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased economic inequality substantially; the wealthiest people across the globe were impacted the least by the pandemic and their fortunes recovered quickest, with billionaires seeing their wealth increase by $3.9 trillion, while at the same time the number of people living on less than $5.50 a day likely increased by 500 million. The 2022 Oxfam report said that growing economic inequality has been a factor in increased mortality rates during the pandemic, contributing to the deaths of 21,000 people on a daily basis, while the wealth of the world's 10 richest billionaires doubled. The 2023 report stated that roughly two thirds of all new wealth went to the top 1% at the same time that extreme poverty has been increasing globally. According to economist Joseph Stiglitz, the pandemic's "most significant outcome" will be rising economic inequality in the United States and between the developed and developing world. According to PolitiFact, the top 400 richest Americans "have more wealth than half of all Americans combined." According to The New York Times on July 22, 2014, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent". Inherited wealth may help explain why many Americans who have become rich may have had a "substantial head start". A 2017 report by the IPS said that three individuals, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population, or 160 million people, and that the growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor has created a "moral crisis", noting that "we have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and power since the first gilded age a century ago." In 2016, the world's billionaires increased their combined global wealth to a record $6 trillion. In 2017, they increased their collective wealth to 8.9 trillion. In 2018, U.S. income inequality reached the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau.The existing data and estimates suggest a large increase in international (and more generally inter-macroregional) components between 1820 and 1960. It might have slightly decreased since that time at the expense of increasing inequality within countries. The United Nations Development Programme in 2014 asserted that greater investments in social security, jobs, and laws that protect vulnerable populations are necessary to prevent widening income inequality.There is a significant difference in the measured wealth distribution and the public's understanding of wealth distribution. Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of the Department of Psychology at Duke University found this to be true in their research conducted in 2011. The actual wealth going to the top quintile in 2011 was around 84%, whereas the average amount of wealth that the general public estimated to go to the top quintile was around 58%.According to a 2020 study, global earnings inequality has decreased substantially since 1970. During the 2000s and 2010s, the share of earnings by the world's poorest half doubled. Two researchers claim that global income inequality is decreasing due to strong economic growth in developing countries. According to a January 2020 report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, economic inequality between states had declined, but intrastate inequality has increased for 70% of the world population over the period 1990–2015. In 2015, the OECD reported in 2015 that income inequality is higher than it has ever been within OECD member nations and is at increased levels in many emerging economies. According to a June 2015 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF): Widening income inequality is the defining challenge of our time. In advanced economies, the gap between the rich and poor is at its highest level in decades. Inequality trends have been more mixed in emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs), with some countries experiencing declining inequality, but pervasive inequities in access to education, health care, and finance remain. In October 2017, the IMF warned that inequality within nations, in spite of global inequality falling in recent decades, has risen so sharply that it threatens economic growth and could result in further political polarization. The Fund's Fiscal Monitor report said that "progressive taxation and transfers are key components of efficient fiscal redistribution." In October 2018 Oxfam published a Reducing Inequality Index which measured social spending, tax and workers' rights to show which countries were best at closing the gap between the rich and the poor.The 2022 World Inequality Report, a four-year research project organized by the economists Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, shows that "the world is marked by a very high level of income inequality and an extreme level of wealth inequality" and that these inequalities "seem to be about as great today as they were at the peak of western imperialism in the early 20th century." According to the report, the bottom half of the population owns 2% of global wealth, while the top 10% owns 76% of it. The top 1% owns 38%. Wealth distribution within individual countries The wealth is calculated by various factors, for instance: liabilities, debts, exchange rates and their expected development, real estate prices, human resources, natural resources and technical advancements, etc. Income distribution within individual countries Income inequality is measured by Gini coefficient (expressed in percent %) that is a number between 0 and 1. Here 0 expresses perfect equality, meaning that everyone has the same income, whereas 1 represents perfect inequality, meaning that one person has all the income and others have none. A Gini index value above 50% is considered high; countries including Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Botswana, and Honduras can be found in this category. A Gini index value of 30% or above is considered medium; countries including Vietnam, Mexico, Poland, the United States, Argentina, Russia and Uruguay can be found in this category. A Gini index value lower than 30% is considered low; countries including Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, and Ukraine can be found in this category. In the low-income inequality category (below 30%) is a wide representation of countries previously being part of Soviet Union or its satellites, like Slovakia, Czech Republic, Ukraine and Hungary. In 2012 the Gini index for income inequality for whole European Union was only 30.6%. Income distribution can differ from wealth distribution within each country. The wealth inequality is also measured in Gini index. There the higher Gini index signify greater inequality within the wealth distribution in country, 0 means total wealth equality and 1 represents situation, where everyone has no wealth, except an individual that has everything. For instance, countries like Denmark, Norway and Netherlands, all belonging to the last category (below 30%, low-income inequality) also have very high Gini index in wealth distribution, ranging from 70% up to 90%. Consumption distribution within individual countries In economics, the consumption distribution or consumption inequality is an alternative to the income distribution or wealth distribution for judging economic inequality, comparing levels of consumption rather than income or wealth. This is an important measure of inequality as the basic utility of the wealth or income is the expenditure. People experience the inequality directly in consumption, rather than income or wealth. Factors proposed to affect economic inequality There are various reasons for economic inequality within societies, including both global market functions (such as trade, development, and regulation) as well as social factors (including gender, race, and education). Recent growth in overall income inequality, at least within the OECD countries, has been driven mostly by increasing inequality in wages and salaries.Economist Thomas Piketty argues that widening economic disparity is an inevitable phenomenon of free market capitalism when the rate of return of capital (r) is greater than the rate of growth of the economy (g). According to an IMF report in 2016, after reviewing four decades of neoliberalism, it had warned that certain neoliberal policies including privatization, public spending cuts, and deregulation, have resulted in "increased inequality" and are stunting economic growth globally. Labour market In modern market economies, if competition is imperfect; information unevenly distributed; opportunities to acquire education and skills unequal; market failure results. Many such imperfect conditions exist in virtually every market. According to Joseph Stiglitz this means that there is an enormous potential role for government to correct such market failures.In the United States, real wages are flat over the past 40 years for occupations across income and education levels, e.g., auto mechanics, cashiers, doctors, and software engineers. However, stock ownership favors higher income and education levels, thereby resulting in disparate investment income. Taxes Another cause is the rate at which income is taxed coupled with the progressivity of the tax system. A progressive tax is a tax by which the tax rate increases as the taxable base amount increases. In a progressive tax system, the level of the top tax rate will often have a direct impact on the level of inequality within a society, either increasing it or decreasing it, provided that income does not change as a result of the change in tax regime. Additionally, steeper tax progressivity applied to social spending can result in a more equal distribution of income across the board. Tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit in the US can also decrease income inequality. The difference between the Gini index for an income distribution before taxation and the Gini index after taxation is an indicator for the effects of such taxation. Education An important factor in the creation of inequality is variation in individuals' access to education. Education, especially in an area where there is a high demand for workers, creates high wages for those with this education. However, increases in education first increase and then decrease growth as well as income inequality. As a result, those who are unable to afford an education, or choose not to pursue optional education, generally receive much lower wages. The justification for this is that a lack of education leads directly to lower incomes, and thus lower aggregate saving and investment. Conversely, quality education raises incomes and promotes growth because it helps to unleash the productive potential of the poor.Access to education was in turn influenced by land inequalities. In the less industrialized parts of 19th century Europe, for example, landowners still held more political power than industrialists. These landowners did not benefit from educating their workers as much as industrialists did, since "educated workers have more incentives to migrate to urban, industrial areas than their less educated counterparts." Consequently, lower incentives to promote education in regions where land inequality was high led to lower levels of numeracy in these regions. Economic liberalism, deregulation and decline of unions John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR point to economic liberalism and the reduction of business regulation along with the decline of union membership as one of the causes of economic inequality. In an analysis of the effects of intensive Anglo-American liberal policies in comparison to continental European liberalism, where unions have remained strong, they concluded "The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of income inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. At the same time, the available evidence provides little support for the view that U.S.-style labor market flexibility dramatically improves labor-market outcomes. Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic mobility than all the continental European countries for which data is available."More recently, the International Monetary Fund has published studies which found that the decline of unionization in many advanced economies and the establishment of neoliberal economics have fueled rising income inequality.Contrary to the proponents of neoliberalism, trickle-down economics have been proven to not be effective in resolving economic inequalities but have instead worsened it. Technology The growth in importance of information technology has been credited with increasing income inequality. Technology has been called "the main driver of the recent increases in inequality" by Erik Brynjolfsson, of MIT. In arguing against this explanation, Jonathan Rothwell notes that if technological advancement is measured by high rates of invention, there is a negative correlation between it and inequality. Countries with high invention rates — "as measured by patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty" — exhibit lower inequality than those with less. In one country, the United States, "salaries of engineers and software developers rarely reach" above $390,000/year (the lower limit for the top 1% earners).Some researchers, such as Juliet B. Schor, highlight the role of for-profit online sharing economy platforms as an accelerator of income inequality and calls into question their supposed contribution in empowering outsiders of the labour market.Taking the example of TaskRabbit, a labour service platform, she shows that a large proportion of providers already have a stable full-time job and participate part-time in the platform as an opportunity to increase their income by diversifying their activities outside employment, which tends to restrict the volume of work remaining for the minority of platform workers. In addition, there is an important phenomenon of labour substitution as manual tasks traditionally performed by workers without a degree (or just a college degree) integrated into the labour market in the traditional economy sectors are now performed by workers with a high level of education (in 2013, 70% of TaskRabbit's workforce held a bachelor's degree, 20% a master's degree and 5% a PhD). The development of platforms, which are increasingly capturing demand for these manual services at the expense of non-platform companies, may therefore benefit mainly skilled workers who are offered more earning opportunities that can be used as supplemental or transitional work during periods of unemployment. It has also been proposed that information technologies contribute to "winner take most" market concentration, reducing the need for labor across competing suppliers. Market concentration drives down labor's share of the GDP, increasing the wealth of capital and thereby exacerbating inequality. Automation Economists have linked automation to increases in economic inequality, as automation raises the returns to wealth and contributes to stagnating wages at the lower end of the wage distribution. Several economists have suggested that automation has increased income inequality by causing low skill jobs to be replaced with machines operated by technologically skilled workers, thereby reducing the demand for unskilled labor while increasing the demand for skilled labor.: 1 Globalization Trade liberalization may shift economic inequality from a global to a domestic scale. When rich countries trade with poor countries, the low-skilled workers in the rich countries may see reduced wages as a result of the competition, while low-skilled workers in the poor countries may see increased wages. Trade economist Paul Krugman estimates that trade liberalisation has had a measurable effect on the rising inequality in the United States. He attributes this trend to increased trade with poor countries and the fragmentation of the means of production, resulting in low skilled jobs becoming more tradeable.Anthropologist Jason Hickel contends that globalization and "structural adjustment" set off the "race to the bottom", a significant driver of surging global inequality. Another driver Hickel mentions is the debt system which advanced the need for structural adjustment in the first place. Gender In many countries, there is a gender pay gap in favor of males in the labor market. Several factors other than discrimination contribute to this gap. On average, women are more likely than men to consider factors other than pay when looking for work and may be less willing to travel or relocate. Thomas Sowell, in his book Knowledge and Decisions, claims that this difference is due to women not taking jobs due to marriage or pregnancy. A U.S. Census's report stated that in US once other factors are accounted for there is still a difference in earnings between women and men. A study done on three post-soviet countries Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan reveals that gender is one of the driving forces of income inequality, and being female has a significant negative effect on income when other factors are held equal. The results show more than 50% gender pay gap in all three countries. These findings are because usually employers tend to avoid hiring women because of possible maternity leave. Other reason for this can be occupational segregation, which implies that women are usually accumulated in lower-paid positions and sectors, such as social services and education. Race There is also a globally recognized disparity in the wealth, income, and economic welfare of people of different races. In many nations, data exists to suggest that members of certain racial demographics experience lower wages, fewer opportunities for career and educational advancement, and intergenerational wealth gaps. Studies have uncovered the emergence of what is called "ethnic capital", by which people belonging to a race that has experienced discrimination are born into a disadvantaged family from the beginning and therefore have less resources and opportunities at their disposal. The universal lack of education, technical and cognitive skills, and inheritable wealth within a particular race is often passed down between generations, compounding in effect to make escaping these racialized cycles of poverty increasingly difficult. Additionally, ethnic groups that experience significant disparities are often also minorities, at least in representation though often in number as well, in the nations where they experience the harshest disadvantage. As a result, they are often segregated either by government policy or social stratification, leading to ethnic communities that experience widespread gaps in wealth and aid.As a general rule, races which have been historically and systematically colonized (typically indigenous ethnicities) continue to experience lower levels of financial stability in the present day. The global South is considered to be particularly victimized by this phenomenon, though the exact socioeconomic manifestations change across different regions. Westernized Nations While the progression of civil rights movements and justice reform has improved access to education and other economic opportunities in politically advanced nations, racial income and wealth disparity still exists. In the United States for example, a survey of African American populations show that they are more likely to drop out of high school and college, are typically employed for fewer hours at lower wages, have lower than average intergenerational wealth, and are more likely to use welfare as young adults than their white counterparts.Mexican-Americans, while suffering less debilitating socioeconomic factors than black Americans, experience deficiencies in the same areas when compared to whites and have not assimilated financially to the level of stability experienced by white Americans as a whole. These experiences are the effects of the measured disparity due to race in countries like the US, where studies show that in comparison to whites, blacks suffer from drastically lower levels of upward mobility, higher levels of downward mobility, and poverty that is more easily transmitted to offspring as a result of the disadvantage stemming from the era of slavery and post-slavery racism that has been passed through racial generations to the present. These are lasting financial inequalities that apply in varying magnitudes to most non-white populations in nations such as the US, the UK, France, Spain, Australia, etc. Latin America In the countries of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, many ethnicities continue to deal with the effects of European colonization, and in general nonwhites tend to be noticeably poorer than whites in this region. In many countries with significant populations of indigenous races and those of Afro-descent (such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile, etc.) income levels can be roughly half as high as those experiences by white demographics, and this inequity is accompanied by systematically unequal access to education, career opportunities, and poverty relief. This region of the world, apart from urbanizing areas like Brazil and Costa Rica, continues to be understudied and often the racial disparity is denied by Latin Americans who consider themselves to be living in post-racial and post-colonial societies far removed from intense social and economic stratification despite the evidence to the contrary. Africa African countries, too, continue to deal with the effects of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which set back economic development as a whole for blacks of African citizenship more than any other region. The degree to which colonizers stratified their holdings on the continent on the basis of race has had a direct correlation in the magnitude of disparity experienced by nonwhites in the nations that eventually rose from their colonial status. Former French colonies, for example, see much higher rates of income inequality between whites and nonwhites as a result of the rigid hierarchy imposed by the French who lived in Africa at the time. Another example is found in South Africa, which, still reeling from the socioeconomic impacts of Apartheid, experiences some of the highest racial income and wealth inequality in all of Africa. In these and other countries like Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone, movements of civil reform have initially led to improved access to financial advancement opportunities, but data shows that for nonwhites this progress is either stalling or erasing itself in the newest generation of blacks that seek education and improved transgenerational wealth. The economic status of one's parents continues to define and predict the financial futures of African and minority ethnic groups. Asia Asian regions and countries such as China, the Middle East, and Central Asia have been vastly understudied in terms of racial disparity, but even here the effects of Western colonization provide similar results to those found in other parts of the globe. Additionally, cultural and historical practices such as the caste system in India leave their marks as well. While the disparity is greatly improving in the case of India, there still exists social stratification between peoples of lighter and darker skin tones that cumulatively result in income and wealth inequality, manifesting in many of the same poverty traps seen elsewhere. Economic development Economist Simon Kuznets argued that levels of economic inequality are in large part the result of stages of development. According to Kuznets, countries with low levels of development have relatively equal distributions of wealth. As a country develops, it acquires more capital, which leads to the owners of this capital having more wealth and income and introducing inequality. Eventually, through various possible redistribution mechanisms such as social welfare programs, more developed countries move back to lower levels of inequality. Wealth concentration Wealth concentration is the process by which, under certain conditions, newly created wealth concentrates in the possession of already-wealthy individuals or entities. Accordingly, those who already hold wealth have the means to invest in new sources of creating wealth or to otherwise leverage the accumulation of wealth, and thus they are the beneficiaries of the new wealth. Over time, wealth concentration can significantly contribute to the persistence of inequality within society. Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century argues that the fundamental force for divergence is the usually greater return of capital (r) than economic growth (g), and that larger fortunes generate higher returns. Rent seeking Economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that rather than explaining concentrations of wealth and income, market forces should serve as a brake on such concentration, which may better be explained by the non-market force known as "rent-seeking". While the market will bid up compensation for rare and desired skills to reward wealth creation, greater productivity, etc., it will also prevent successful entrepreneurs from earning excess profits by fostering competition to cut prices, profits and large compensation. A better explainer of growing inequality, according to Stiglitz, is the use of political power generated by wealth by certain groups to shape government policies financially beneficial to them. This process, known to economists as rent-seeking, brings income not from creation of wealth but from "grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would otherwise have been produced without their effort". Finance industry Jamie Galbraith argues that countries with larger financial sectors have greater inequality, and the link is not an accident. Global warming and climate change A 2019 study published in PNAS found that global warming plays a role in increasing economic inequality between countries, boosting economic growth in developed countries while hampering such growth in developing nations of the Global South. The study says that 25% of gap between the developed world and the developing world can be attributed to global warming.A 2020 report by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute says that the wealthiest 10% of the global population were responsible for more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 to 2015, which increased by 60%. According to a 2020 report by the UNEP, overconsumption by the rich is a significant driver of the climate crisis, and the wealthiest 1% of the world's population are responsible for more than double the greenhouse gas emissions of the poorest 50% combined. Inger Andersen, in the foreword to the report, said "this elite will need to reduce their footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line with the Paris Agreement targets." A 2022 report by Oxfam found that the business investments of the wealthiest 125 billionaires emit 393 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually.In July 2023, a letter sent to the United Nations secretary general António Guterres and World Bank president Ajay Banga by a group of over 200 economists from 67 countries, including Jayati Ghosh, Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty, warned that if the sharp increase in economic inequality is not reversed, it will "entrench poverty and increase the risk of climate breakdown." Politics Joseph Stiglitz argues in The Price of Inequality (2012) that the economic inequality is inevitable and permanent, because it is caused by the great amount of political power the richest have. He wrote, "While there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest." Cognitive biases Research has shown that biased decision-making does not alone explain a significant proportion of inequality, therefore inequality cannot be explained by cognitive biases of a specific sub-population, such as temporal discounting (i.e., not preferring immediate funds over larger future gains), overestimation (i.e. thinking you are better than you are at making decisions), over-placement (i.e. thinking you are better than the average person at making decisions), and extremeness aversion (i.e. taking the 'middle option' simply because it seems safer than the highest or lowest). Mitigating factors Countries with a left-leaning legislature generally have lower levels of inequality. Many factors constrain economic inequality – they may be divided into two classes: market driven, and government sponsored. The relative merits and effectiveness of each approach is a subject of debate: Market forces outside of government intervention that can reduce economic inequality include: propensity to spend: with rising wealth & income, a person may spend more. In an extreme example, if one person owned everything, they would immediately need to hire people to maintain their properties, thus reducing the wealth concentration. On the other hand, high-income persons have higher propensity to save. Robin Maialeh then shows that increasing economic wealth decreases propensity to spend and increases propensity to invest which consequently leads to even greater growth rate of already rich agents.Typical government initiatives intended to reduce economic inequality include: Public education: increasing the supply of skilled labor and reducing income inequality due to education differentials. Progressive taxation: the rich are taxed proportionally more than the poor, reducing the amount of income inequality in society if the change in taxation does not cause changes in income.Research shows that since 1300, the only periods with significant declines in wealth inequality in Europe were the Black Death and the two World Wars. Historian Walter Scheidel posits that, since the Stone Age, only extreme violence, catastrophes and upheaval in the form of total war, Communist revolutions, the French Revolution, pestilence and state collapse have significantly reduced inequality. He has stated that "only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources" and that "peaceful policy reform may well prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead." However, Scheidel also stated that "There is certainly room for incremental change, that's what the example of Latin America shows in the past 15 years or so." Policy responses intended to mitigate A 2011 OECD study makes a number of suggestions to its member countries, including: Well-targeted income-support policies. Facilitation and encouragement of access to employment. Better job-related training and education for the low-skilled (on-the-job training) would help to boost their productivity potential and future earnings. Better access to formal education.Progressive taxation reduces absolute income inequality when the higher rates on higher-income individuals are paid and not evaded, and transfer payments and social safety nets result in progressive government spending. Wage ratio legislation has also been proposed as a means of reducing income inequality. The OECD asserts that public spending is vital in reducing the ever-expanding wealth gap.Deferred investment programs that increase stock ownership amongst lower income levels can supplement income to compensate wage stagnation.The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty recommend much higher top marginal tax rates on the wealthy, up to 50 percent, 70 percent or even 90 percent. Ralph Nader, Jeffrey Sachs, the United Front Against Austerity, among others, call for a financial transaction tax (also known as the Robin Hood tax) to bolster the social safety net and the public sector.The Economist wrote in December 2013: "A minimum wage, providing it is not set too high, could thus boost pay with no ill effects on jobs....America's federal minimum wage, at 38% of median income, is one of the rich world's lowest. Some studies find no harm to employment from federal or state minimum wages, others see a small one, but none finds any serious damage."General limitations on and taxation of rent-seeking are popular across the political spectrum.Public policy responses addressing causes and effects of income inequality in the US include: progressive tax incidence adjustments, strengthening social safety net provisions such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, welfare, the food stamp program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, organizing community interest groups, increasing and reforming higher education subsidies, increasing infrastructure spending, and placing limits on and taxing rent-seeking.A 2017 study in the Journal of Political Economy by Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson and Thierry Verdier argues that American "cutthroat" capitalism and inequality gives rise to technology and innovation that more "cuddly" forms of capitalism cannot. As a result, "the diversity of institutions we observe among relatively advanced countries, ranging from greater inequality and risk-taking in the United States to the more egalitarian societies supported by a strong safety net in Scandinavia, rather than reflecting differences in fundamentals between the citizens of these societies, may emerge as a mutually self-reinforcing world equilibrium. If so, in this equilibrium, 'we cannot all be like the Scandinavians,' because Scandinavian capitalism depends in part on the knowledge spillovers created by the more cutthroat American capitalism." A 2012 working paper by the same authors, making similar arguments, was challenged by Lane Kenworthy, who posited that, among other things, the Nordic countries are consistently ranked as some of the world's most innovative countries by the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index, with Sweden ranking as the most innovative nation, followed by Finland, for 2012–2013; the U.S. ranked sixth.There are however global initiative like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 which aims to garner international efforts in reducing economic inequality considerably by 2030. Effects A lot of research has been done about the effects of economic inequality on different aspects in society: Health: For long time the higher material living standards lead to longer life, as those people were able to get enough food, water and access to warmth. British researchers Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have found higher rates of health and social problems (obesity, mental illness, homicides, teenage births, incarceration, child conflict, drug use) in countries and states with higher inequality. Their research included 24 developed countries, including most U.S. states, and found that in the more developed countries, such as Finland and Japan, the heath issues are much lower than in states with rather higher inequality rates, such as Utah and New Hampshire. Some studies link a surge in "deaths of despair", suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol related deaths, to widening income inequality. Conversely, other research did not find these effects or concluded that research suffered from issues of confounding variables. Social goods: British researchers Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have found lower rates of social goods (life expectancy by country, educational performance, trust among strangers, women's status, social mobility, even numbers of patents issued) in countries and states with higher inequality. Social cohesion: Research has shown an inverse link between income inequality and social cohesion. In more equal societies, people are much more likely to trust each other, measures of social capital (the benefits of goodwill, fellowship, mutual sympathy and social connectedness among groups who make up a social units) suggest greater community involvement. Happiness: According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, increasing socioeconomic inequality, along with rising healthcare costs, surging addiction rates, and an unhealthy work–life balance, are causes of unhappiness around the world. Crime: The cross national research shows that in societies with less economic inequality the homicide rates are consistently lower. A 2016 study finds that interregional inequality increases terrorism. Other research has argued inequality has little effect on crime rates. Welfare: Studies have found evidence that in societies where inequality is lower, population-wide satisfaction and happiness tend to be higher. Poverty: Study made by Jared Bernstein and Elise Gould suggest, that the poverty in the United States could have been reduced by the lowering of economic inequality for the past few decades. Debt: Income inequality has been the driving factor in the growing household debt, as high earners bid up the price of real estate and middle income earners go deeper into debt trying to maintain what once was a middle class lifestyle. Economic growth: A 2016 meta-analysis found that "the effect of inequality on growth is negative and more pronounced in less developed countries than in rich countries", though the average impact on growth was not significant. The study also found that wealth inequality is more pernicious to growth than income inequality. Civic participation: Higher income inequality led to less of all forms of social, cultural, and civic participation among the less wealthy. Political instability: Studies indicate that economic inequality leads to greater political instability, including an increased risk of democratic breakdown and civil conflict. A significant impact of inequality on civil war probability has been found through anthropometric methods. Political party responses: One study finds that economic inequality prompts attempts by left-leaning politicians to pursue redistributive policies while right-leaning politicians seek to repress the redistributive policies. Perspectives Fairness vs. equality According to Christina Starmans et al. (Nature Hum. Beh., 2017), the research literature contains no evidence on people having an aversion to inequality. In all studies analyzed, the subjects preferred fair distributions (inequity aversion) to equal distributions, in both laboratory and real-world situations. In public, researchers may loosely speak of equality instead of fairness, when referring to studies where fairness happens to coincide with equality, but in many studies fairness is carefully separated from equality and the results are univocal. Very young children seem to prefer fairness over equality.When people were asked, what would be the wealth of each quintile in their ideal society, they gave a 50-fold sum to the richest quintile than to the poorest quintile. The preference for inequality increases in adolescence, and so do the capabilities to favor fortune, effort and ability in the distribution.Preference for unequal distribution has been developed to the human race possibly because it allows for better co-operation and allows a person to work with a more productive person so that both parties benefit from the co-operation. Inequality is also said to be able to solve the problems of free-riders, cheaters and ill-behaving people, although this is heavily debated. Researches demonstrate that people usually underestimate the level of actual inequality, which is also much higher than their desired level of inequality.In many societies, such as the USSR, the distribution led to protests from wealthier landowners. In the current U.S., many feel that the distribution is unfair in being too unequal. In both cases, the cause is unfairness, not inequality, the researchers conclude. Socialist perspectives Socialists attribute the vast disparities in wealth to the private ownership of the means of production by a class of owners, creating a situation where a small portion of the population lives off unearned property income by virtue of ownership titles in capital equipment, financial assets and corporate stock. By contrast, the vast majority of the population is dependent on income in the form of a wage or salary. In order to rectify this situation, socialists argue that the means of production should be socially owned so that income differentials would be reflective of individual contributions to the social product.Marxian economics attributes rising inequality to job automation and capital deepening within capitalism. The process of job automation conflicts with the capitalist property form and its attendant system of wage labor. In this analysis, capitalist firms increasingly substitute capital equipment for labor inputs (workers) under competitive pressure to reduce costs and maximize profits. Over the long term, this trend increases the organic composition of capital, meaning that less workers are required in proportion to capital inputs, increasing unemployment (the "reserve army of labour"). This process exerts a downward pressure on wages. The substitution of capital equipment for labor (mechanization and automation) raises the productivity of each worker, resulting in a situation of relatively stagnant wages for the working class amidst rising levels of property income for the capitalist class.Marxist socialists ultimately predict the emergence of a communist society based on the common ownership of the means of production, where each individual citizen would have free access to the articles of consumption (From each according to his ability, to each according to his need). According to Marxist philosophy, equality in the sense of free access is essential for freeing individuals from dependent relationships, thereby allowing them to transcend alienation. Meritocracy Meritocracy favors an eventual society where an individual's success is a direct function of his merit, or contribution. Economic inequality would be a natural consequence of the wide range in individual skill, talent and effort in human population. David Landes stated that the progression of Western economic development that led to the Industrial Revolution was facilitated by men advancing through their own merit rather than because of family or political connections. Liberal perspectives Most modern social liberals, including centrist or left-of-center political groups, believe that the capitalist economic system should be fundamentally preserved, but the status quo regarding the income gap must be reformed. Social liberals favor a capitalist system with active Keynesian macroeconomic policies and progressive taxation (to even out differences in income inequality). Research indicates that people who hold liberal beliefs tend to see greater income inequality as morally wrong.However, contemporary classical liberals and libertarians generally do not take a stance on wealth inequality, but believe in equality under the law regardless of whether it leads to unequal wealth distribution. In 1966 Ludwig von Mises, a prominent figure in the Austrian School of economic thought, explains: The liberal champions of equality under the law were fully aware of the fact that men are born unequal and that it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization. Equality under the law was in their opinion not designed to correct the inexorable facts of the universe and to make natural inequality disappear. It was, on the contrary, the device to secure for the whole of mankind the maximum of benefits it can derive from it. Henceforth no man-made institutions should prevent a man from attaining that station in which he can best serve his fellow citizens. Robert Nozick argued that government redistributes wealth by force (usually in the form of taxation), and that the ideal moral society would be one where all individuals are free from force. However, Nozick recognized that some modern economic inequalities were the result of forceful taking of property, and a certain amount of redistribution would be justified to compensate for this force but not because of the inequalities themselves. John Rawls argued in A Theory of Justice that inequalities in the distribution of wealth are only justified when they improve society as a whole, including the poorest members. Rawls does not discuss the full implications of his theory of justice. Some see Rawls's argument as a justification for capitalism since even the poorest members of society theoretically benefit from increased innovations under capitalism; others believe only a strong welfare state can satisfy Rawls's theory of justice.Classical liberal Milton Friedman believed that if government action is taken in pursuit of economic equality then political freedom would suffer. In a famous quote, he said: A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. Economist Tyler Cowen has argued that though income inequality has increased within nations, globally it has fallen over the 20 years leading up to 2014. He argues that though income inequality may make individual nations worse off, overall, the world has improved as global inequality has been reduced. Social justice arguments Patrick Diamond and Anthony Giddens (professors of Economics and Sociology, respectively) hold that 'pure meritocracy is incoherent because, without redistribution, one generation's successful individuals would become the next generation's embedded caste, hoarding the wealth they had accumulated'.They also state that social justice requires redistribution of high incomes and large concentrations of wealth in a way that spreads it more widely, in order to "recognize the contribution made by all sections of the community to building the nation's wealth." (Patrick Diamond and Anthony Giddens, June 27, 2005, New Statesman)Pope Francis stated in his Evangelii gaudium, that "as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems." He later declared that "inequality is the root of social evil."When income inequality is low, aggregate demand will be relatively high, because more people who want ordinary consumer goods and services will be able to afford them, while the labor force will not be as relatively monopolized by the wealthy. Effects on social welfare In most western democracies, the desire to eliminate or reduce economic inequality is generally associated with the political left. One practical argument in favor of reduction is the idea that economic inequality reduces social cohesion and increases social unrest, thereby weakening the society. There is evidence that this is true (see inequity aversion) and it is intuitive, at least for small face-to-face groups of people. Alberto Alesina, Rafael Di Tella, and Robert MacCulloch find that inequality negatively affects happiness in Europe but not in the United States.It has also been argued that economic inequality invariably translates to political inequality, which further aggravates the problem. Even in cases where an increase in economic inequality makes nobody economically poorer, an increased inequality of resources is disadvantageous, as increased economic inequality can lead to a power shift due to an increased inequality in the ability to participate in democratic processes. Capabilities approach The capabilities approach – sometimes called the human development approach – looks at income inequality and poverty as form of "capability deprivation". Unlike neoliberalism, which "defines well-being as utility maximization", economic growth and income are considered a means to an end rather than the end itself. Its goal is to "wid[en] people's choices and the level of their achieved well-being" through increasing functioning (the things a person values doing), capabilities (the freedom to enjoy functionings) and agency (the ability to pursue valued goals).When a person's capabilities are lowered, they are in some way deprived of earning as much income as they would otherwise. An old, ill man cannot earn as much as a healthy young man; gender roles and customs may prevent a woman from receiving an education or working outside the home. There may be an epidemic that causes widespread panic, or there could be rampant violence in the area that prevents people from going to work for fear of their lives. As a result, income inequality increases, and it becomes more difficult to reduce the gap without additional aid. Societal acceptance A 2022 study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that in countries where neoliberal institutions have significant influence over policies, the psychology of those population are shaped to have both a higher tolerance of large levels of income inequality, and prefer it over more egalitarian outcomes. Arguments that economic inequality is not a problem The majority of researchers who analyze economic inequality argue that today's levels are problematic and deserve some mitigation. There are however, some who disagree, and feel that current levels of inequality are necessary because it encourages individuals to gain useful skills and take risks, thereby encouraging growth and innovation, which are necessary for progress. Some have also argued that economic inequality is a natural and fair outcome in market economies, in which the rewards are distributed based on different economic contributions because individuals have different attitudes and talents. Many who feel that economic inequality is not a significant issue are associated with conservative or libertarian think tanks funded by corporations and the wealthy like The Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute or the American Enterprise Institute, who may also feel that policies which would reduce inequality are direct attacks on their favored version of capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism.: 1  In addition, some feel that economic inequality has not actually increased significantly. See also References Further reading BooksAtkinson, Anthony B.; Bourguignon, François (2000). Handbook of income distribution. Amsterdam & New York: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0444816313. Atkinson, Anthony B. (2015). Inequality: What Can Be Done? 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Stewart, Alexander J.; McCarty, Nolan; Bryson, Joanna J. (2020). "Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline". Science Advances. 6 (50): eabd4201. arXiv:1807.11477. Bibcode:2020SciA....6.4201S. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd4201. PMC 7732181. PMID 33310855. S2CID 216144890. Svizzero, Serge; Tisdell, Clem (2003). "Income inequality between skilled individuals" (PDF). International Journal of Social Economics. 30 (11): 1118–30. doi:10.1108/03068290310497486. S2CID 153963662. Vicencio, Eduardo Rivera (2019). "Inequality, Precariousness and Social Costs of Capitalism. In the Era of Corporate Governmentality". International Journal of Critical Accounting. 11 (1): 40–70. doi:10.1504/IJCA.2019.10025189. S2CID 211435244. Historical Alfani, Guido, and Matteo Di Tullio. The Lion's Share: Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019. The Lion's Share: Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe Crayen, Dorothee, and Joerg Baten. "New evidence and new methods to measure human capital inequality before and during the industrial revolution: France and the US in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries." Economic History Review 63.2 (2010): 452–478.online Hickel, Jason (2018). The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393651362. Hoffman, Philip T., et al. "Real inequality in Europe since 1500." Journal of Economic History 62.2 (2002): 322–355. online Morrisson, Christian, and Wayne Snyder. "The income inequality of France in historical perspective." European Review of Economic History 4.1 (2000): 59–83. online Lindert, Peter H., and Steven Nafziger. "Russian inequality on the eve of revolution." Journal of Economic History 74.3 (2014): 767-798. online Nicolini, Esteban A.; Ramos Palencia, Fernando (2016). "Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre-industrial economy: Old Castile (Spain) in the middle of the eighteenth century". Economic History Review. 69 (3): 747–772. doi:10.1111/ehr.12122. S2CID 154988112. Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. "The evolution of top incomes: a historical and international perspective." American economic review 96.2 (2006): 200–205. online Archived December 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. "Income inequality in the United States, 1913–1998." Quarterly journal of economics 118.1 (2003): 1-41. online Saito, Osamu. "Growth and inequality in the great and little divergence debate: a Japanese perspective." Economic History Review 68.2 (2015): 399–419. Covers 1600–1868 with comparison to Stuart England and Mughal India. Scheidel, Walter (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691165028. 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climate fiction

Climate fiction (sometimes shortened as cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change. Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. The genre typically focuses on anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society. The term "cli-fi" is generally credited to freelance news reporter and climate activist Dan Bloom in 2007 or 2008. "Climate fiction" has only been attested since the early 2010s, and the term has been retroactively applied to a number of works. Pioneering 20th century authors include J. G. Ballard and Octavia E. Butler, while dystopian fiction from Margaret Atwood is often cited as an immediate precursor to the genre's emergence. Since 2010, prominent cli-fi authors include Kim Stanley Robinson, Richard Powers, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Barbara Kingsolver. The publication of Robinson's The Ministry for the Future in 2020 helped cement the genre's emergence; the work generated presidential and United Nations mentions and an invitation for Robinson to meet planners at the Pentagon.University courses on literature and environmental issues may include climate change fiction in their syllabi. This body of literature has been discussed by a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Dissent magazine, among other international media outlets. Academics and critics study the potential impact of fiction on the broader field of climate change communication. Terminology Bloom had used the term to describe his novella Polar City Red, a post-apocalyptic story about climate refugees in Alaska set in 2075, which was not commercially successful. It later came into mainstream media use in April 2013, when Christian Science Monitor and NPR ran stories about a new literary movement of novels and films that dealt with human-induced climate change. Bloom had been critical of the lack of mention of his role in coining the term in these features. Scott Thill wrote in HuffPost in 2014 that he had popularised the term in 2009, inspired by the mixture of science and fiction in Franny Armstrong's film The Age of Stupid. History Jules Verne's 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole imagines climate change due to tilting of Earth's axis. In his posthumous Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1883 and set during the 1960s, the eponymous city experiences a sudden drop in temperature, which lasts for three years.Laurence Manning's 1933 serialized novel The Man Who Awoke has been described as an exemplary work of ecological science fiction from the golden age. It tells the story a man who awakes from suspended animation in various future eras and learns about the destruction to the Earth's climate, caused by overuse of fossil fuels, global warming, and deforestation. People of the future refer to 20th century humans as "the wasters". They have abandoned over-industrialization and consumerism to live in small self-sufficient villages based around genetically engineered trees that provide all their necessities. Isaac Asimov credited The Man Who Awoke for bringing the "energy crisis" to his attention 40 years before it became common knowledge in the 1970s.Several well-known dystopian works by British author J. G. Ballard deal with climate-related natural disasters. In The Wind from Nowhere (1961), civilization is devastated by persistent hurricane-force winds, and The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels caused by solar radiation. In The Burning World (1964, later retitled The Drought) his climate catastrophe is human-made, a drought due to disruption of the precipitation cycle by industrial pollution.Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune, set on a fictional desert planet, has been proposed as a pioneer of climate fiction for its themes of ecology and environmentalism.Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) imagines a near-future for the United States where climate change, wealth inequality, and corporate greed cause apocalyptic chaos. Here, and in sequel Parable of the Talents (1998), Butler dissects how instability and political demagoguery exacerbate society's underlying cruelty (especially with regards to racism and sexism) and also explores themes of survival and resilience. Butler wrote the novel "thinking about the future, thinking about the things that we're doing now and the kind of future we're buying for ourselves, if we're not careful." As scientific knowledge of the effects of fossil fuel consumption and resulting increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations entered the public and political arena as "global warming", human-caused climate change entered works of fiction. Susan M. Gaines's Carbon Dreams (2000) was an early example of a literary novel that "tells a story about the devastatingly serious issue of human-induced climate change", set in the 1980s and published before the term "cli-fi" was coined. Michael Crichton's State of Fear (2004), a techno-thriller, was a bestseller upon its release but was criticised by scientists for portraying climate change as "a vast pseudo-scientific hoax" and rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change. Sigbjørn Skåden's novel Fugl (2019) is a Sámi novel written in Norwegian that weaves together environmental collapse with an allegory of colonialismMargaret Atwood explored the subject in her dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). In Oryx and Crake, Atwood presents a world where "social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event". The novel's protagonist, Jimmy, lives in a "world split between corporate compounds", gated communities that have grown into city-states and pleeblands, which are "unsafe, populous and polluted" urban areas where the working classes live.In 2016, Indian writer Amitav Ghosh expressed concern that climate change had "a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion". In The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Ghosh said "if certain literary forms are unable to negotiate these waters, then they will have failed – and their failures will have to be counted as an aspect of the broader imaginative and cultural failure that lies at the heart of the climate crisis."By the 2010s, climate fiction had attracted greater prominence and media attention. Cultural critic Josephine Livingston at The New Republic wrote in 2020 that "the last decade has seen such a steep rise in sophisticated 'cli-fi' that some literary publications now devote whole verticals to it. With such various and fertile imaginations at work on the same topic, whether in fiction or nonfiction, the challenge facing the environmental writer now is standing out from the crowd (not to mention the headlines)." She highlighted Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation to Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow as examples.In african literature, climate informed novels and short stories have been recently receiving attention as field of contemporary african literature. Books such as Eclipse our sins, by Tlotlo Tsamaase; It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way, by Alistair Mackay and Noor, by Nnedi Okorafor, have been highlighted as remarkable publications in the topic. Prominent examples The popular science-fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson has been writing on the theme for several decades, including his Science in the Capital trilogy, which is set in the near future and includes Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007). Robert K. J. Killheffer in his review for Fantasy & Science Fiction said "Forty Signs of Rain is a fascinating depiction of the workings of science and politics, and an urgent call to readers to confront the threat of climate change." Robinson's climate-themed novel, titled New York 2140, was published in March 2017. It gives a complex portrait of a coastal city that is partly underwater and yet has successfully adapted to climate change in its culture and ecology. Robinson's novel The Ministry for the Future, is set in the near future, and follows a subsidiary body, whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's. British author J. G. Ballard used the setting of apocalyptic climate change in his early science fiction novels. In The Wind from Nowhere (1961), civilisation is reduced by persistent hurricane-force winds. The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels, caused by solar radiation, creating a landscape mirroring the collective unconscious desires of the main characters. In The Burning World (1964) a surrealistic psychological landscape is formed by drought due to industrial pollution disrupting the precipitation cycle. Similarly, The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy is set after an unspecified apocalypse or environmental catastrophe. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. Although it does not explicitly mention climate change, it has been listed by The Guardian as one of the best climate change novels, and environmentalist George Monbiot has described it as "the most important environmental book ever written" for depicting a world without a biosphere.The novel State of Fear by Michael Crichton, published in December 2004, describes a conspiracy by scientists and others to create public panic about global warming. Crichton has publicly advocated "skepticism" of global warming. His novel describes a group of eco-terrorists attempting to create natural disasters to convince the public of the dangers of global warming. It is based upon the idea that there is a deliberately alarmist conspiracy behind climate change activism. The book is critical of the scientific consensus on climate change. A critique in the BBC News pointed out that "Crichton's trade is to bring pleasurable terror to millions by spinning tales of science gone amok" and "To make sure you get his point, Crichton adds a 32-page footnote documenting his own conviction that global warming is an unscientific scare."Ian McEwan's Solar (2010) follows the story of a physicist who discovers a way to fight climate change after managing to derive power from artificial photosynthesis. The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson is set on the fictional planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources and suffering from the severe effects of climate change. Inhabitants of Orbus hope to take advantage of possibilities offered by a newly discovered planet, Planet Blue, which appears perfect for human life.Other authors who have used this subject matter include: Fallen Angels (1991) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. Set in North America in the "near future", a radical technophobic green movement dramatically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, only to find that manmade global warming was staving off a new ice age. Mother of Storms (1994) by John Barnes describes a catastrophic, rapid climate and weather change brought on by a nuclear explosion releasing clathrate compounds from the ocean floor, based on the clathrate gun hypothesis. The Swarm (2004) by Frank Schätzing. The book follows an ensemble of protagonists who are investigating what at first appear to be freak events related to the world's oceans. Seemingly unrelated events like the destabilization of the continental shelf resulting in a megatsunami, whales attacking a commercial freighter, and an outbreak of an epidemic caused by contaminated lobsters are revealed to be caused by an unknown submarine species trying to defend the oceans against human influence. Far North (2009) by Marcel Theroux, in which the world is largely uninhabitable due to climate change. However, the novel implies that scientists got it wrong and that it was our actions combating global warming that irrevocably altered the climate. Arctic Drift (2008) by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler. A thriller involving attempts to reverse global warming, a possible war between the United States and Canada, and "a mysterious silvery mineral traced to a long-ago expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage." Devolution of a Species by M.E. Ellington focuses on the Gaia hypothesis, and describes the Earth as a single living organism fighting back against humankind. The Carbon Diaries: 2015 (2009) by Saci Lloyd is set in a future where power is scarce and the UK has just begun carbon rationing. The story is told in diary form by Laura Brown, a teenager living in London in the aftermath of the Great Storm. Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Flight Behavior (2012), employs environmental themes and highlights the potential effects of global warming on the monarch butterfly. Norwegian author Maja Lunde has released a "Climate Quartet" of novels, beginning with Bienes histore (The History of Bees) in 2015, which examines pollinator decline through a number of human storylines throughout history, followed by The End of the Ocean (2017), Przewalski's Horse (2019) and an upcoming fourth instalment. The Overstory (2018) by Richard Powers, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel revolves around nine disparate characters with close associations to individual trees, that come together to address deforestation. The New Wilderness (2020) by Diane Cook is set in North America where climate change has affected the natural environment. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. It was also longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. It was selected by Oprah Winfrey as part of Oprah's Book Club on 28 September 2021. Description of apocalyptic scenarios "Climate apocalypse scenarios" are explored in multiple science fiction works. For example, in The Wind from Nowhere (1961), civilization is devastated by persistent hurricane-force winds, and The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels caused by solar radiation. In The Burning World (1964, later retitled The Drought) his climate catastrophe is human-made, a drought due to disruption of the precipitation cycle by industrial pollution.Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) imagines a near-future for the United States where climate change, wealth inequality, and corporate greed cause apocalyptic chaos. Here, and in sequel Parable of the Talents (1998), Butler dissects how instability and political demagoguery exacerbate society's underlying cruelty (especially with regards to racism and sexism) and also explores themes of survival and resilience. Butler wrote the novel "thinking about the future, thinking about the things that we're doing now and the kind of future we're buying for ourselves, if we're not careful."Margaret Atwood explored the subject in her dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). In Oryx and Crake, Atwood presents a world where "social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event". Other examples Heat (1977), by Arthur Herzog, US The Sea and Summer [Drowning Towers] (1987), by George Turner, Australia The Crystal World (1988), by J. G. Ballard, UK The Ice People (1998) and The Flood (2004), Magee Gee, US Earth (1990), David Brin, US A Friend of the Earth (2000), T.C. Boyle, US Floodland (2001) and Aurora (2011), Marcus Sedgwick, US Exodus (2002) and sequels, Julie Bertagna, US Flood (2008) and Ark (2009), Stephen Baxter, US The Windup Girl (2009), Ship Breaker (2010), The Drowned Cities (2012), The Water Knife (2015) and Tool of War (2017), Paolo Bacigalupi, US Empire Builders (2011), Ben Bova, US 2312 (2012), Kim Stanley Robinson, US Odds Against Tomorrow (2013), Nathaniel Rich, US The Bone Clocks (2014), David Mitchell, UK The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Columbia University Press, US Memory of Water (2015), Emmi Itäranta, Finland Gold Fame Citrus (2015), Claire Vaye Watkins, US American War (2017), Omar El Akkad, US The Water Cure (2018), Sophie Mackintosh, UK The Last Children of Tokyo (The Emissary) (2018), Yoko Tawada, Germany/Japan The City in the Middle of the Night (2019), by Charlie Jane Anders Gun Island (2019) by Amitav Ghosh The Wall (2019), by John Lanchester The Ministry for the Future (2020), by Kim Stanley Robinson A Children's Bible (2020) by Lydia Millet Migrations (2020) by Charlotte McConaghy Diatomea (2022), by Núria Perpinyà Depart, Depart (2020) by Sim Kern 470 (2020) by Linda Woodrow Anthologies and collections Welcome to the Greenhouse (2011) US edited by Gordon Van Gelder Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015) US edited by John Joseph Adams Drowned Worlds (2016) UK edited by Jonathan Strahan Possible Solutions (2017) US by Helen Phillips – Many of the short stories concern climate change. Author and editor Bruce Meyer and creative writing professor at Georgian College edited a 2017 anthology of stories about "changing ocean conditions, the widening disappearance of species, genetically modified organisms, increasing food shortages, mass migrations of refugees, and the hubris behind our provoking Mother Earth herself", which he labels as "cli-fi". The anthology includes works by George McWhirter, Richard Van Camp, Holly Schofield, Linda Rogers, Sean Virgo, Rati Mehrotra, Geoffrey W. Cole, Phil Dwyer, Kate Story, Leslie Goodreid, Nina Munteanu, Halli Villegas, John Oughton, Frank Westcott, Wendy Bone, Peter Timmerman, and Lynn Hutchinson-Lee. Meteotopia - Futures of Climate (In)Justice (2022) Collection of short stories on climate and environment by authors of the Global South. Influence Many journalists, literary critics, and scholars have speculated about the potential influence of climate fiction on the beliefs of its readers. To date, three empirical studies have examined this question. A controlled experiment found that reading climate fiction short stories "had small but significant positive effects on several important beliefs and attitudes about global warming – observed immediately after participants read the stories", though "these effects diminished to statistical nonsignificance after a one-month interval". However, the authors note that "the effects of a single exposure in an artificial setting may represent a lower bound of the real-world effects. Reading climate fiction in the real world often involves multiple exposures and longer narratives", such as novels, "which may result in larger and longer-lasting impacts".A survey of readers found that readers of climate fiction "are younger, more liberal, and more concerned about climate change than nonreaders", and that climate fiction "reminds concerned readers of the severity of climate change while impelling them to imagine environmental futures and consider the impact of climate change on human and nonhuman life. However, the actions that resulted from readers' heightened consciousness reveal that awareness is only as valuable as the cultural messages about possible actions to take that are in circulation. Moreover, the responses of some readers suggest that works of climate fiction might lead some people to associate climate change with intensely negative emotions, which could prove counterproductive to efforts at environmental engagement or persuasion."Finally, an empirical study focused on the popular novel The Water Knife found that cautionary climate fiction set in a dystopic future can be effective at educating readers about climate injustice and leading readers to empathize with the victims of climate change, including environmental migrants. However, its results suggest that dystopic climate narratives might lead to support for reactionary responses to climate change. Based on this result, it cautioned that "not all climate fiction is progressive", despite the hopes of many authors, critics, and readers. See also Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction Climate apocalypse Ecofiction Climate change in popular culture Media coverage of climate change Mundane science fiction Petrofiction Public opinion on climate change Solarpunk Utopian and dystopian fiction References Further reading Canavan, Gerry; Robinson, Kim Stanley (2014). Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-7428-2. Milner, Andrew; Burgmann, J.R. (2020). Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-78962-752-7. Mehnert, Antonia (2016). Climate Change Fictions: Representations of Global Warming in American Literature. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-40337-3. Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew (2017). "Climate Change Fiction". In Greenwald Smith, Rachel (ed.). American Literature in Transition, 2000–2010. Cambridge University Press. pp. 309–321. ISBN 978-1-108-54865-6. Trexler, Adam (2015). Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3693-2. Ghosh, Amitav (2016). The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-32317-6. Streeby, Shelley (2018). Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making Through Science Fiction and Activism. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-29444-8. California, CLI-FI, and Climate Crisis: Special Issue of Western American Literature Vol. 56, nos. 3-4, Fall-Winter 2021. University of Nebraska Press. External links Cli-Fi in American Studies: A Research Bibliography Climate Fiction in English: Oxford Research Encyclopedia Burning Worlds Column in the Chicago Review of Books Stories to save the world: the new wave of climate fiction, essay by Claire Armitstead for The Guardian Climate Change Dystopia, discusses current popularity of climate change dystopia.

climate justice

Climate justice is a term that recognises "although global warming is a global crisis, its effects are not felt evenly around the world". Climate justice is a faction of Environmental justice and focuses on the equitable distribution of the burdens of climate change and the efforts to mitigate them. It has been described as encompassing "a set of rights and obligations, which corporations, individuals and governments have towards those vulnerable people who will be in a way significantly disproportionately affected by climate change."Climate justice examines concepts such as equality, human rights, collective rights, and the historical responsibilities for climate change. This is done by relating the causes and effects of climate change to concepts of justice, particularly environmental justice and social justice. Climate justice actions can include the growing global body of legal action on climate change issues. In 2017, a report of the United Nations Environment Programme identified 894 ongoing legal actions worldwide. Climate justice is an aspect of SDG 13 under UN Agenda 2030. Conceptions of climate justice can be grouped along the lines of procedural justice, which emphasises fair, transparent and inclusive decision making, and distributive justice, which places the emphasis on who bears the costs of both climate change and the actions taken to address it.A main factor in the increased popularity and consideration of climate justice was the rise of grassroots movements – such as Fridays for Future, Ende Gelände, and Extinction Rebellion. A special focus is placed on the role of Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA), i.e., groups overall disproportionately vulnerable to or affected by climate change, such as women, racial minorities, young, older and poorer people.Historically marginalised communities, such as low-income, indigenous communities and communities of colour often face the worst consequences of climate change: the least responsible for climate change broadly suffer its gravest consequences. They might also be further disadvantaged by responses to climate change which might reproduce or exacerbate existing inequalities, which has been labeled the 'triple injustices' of climate change.Some climate justice approaches promote transformative justice where advocates focus on how vulnerability to climate change reflects various structural injustices in society, such as the exclusion of marginalised groups from climate resilient livelihoods, and that climate action must explicitly address these structural power imbalances. For these advocates, priority is placed on ensuring that responses to climate change do not repeat or reinforce existing injustices, which has both distributive justice and procedural justice dimensions. Other conceptions frame climate justice in terms of the need to curb climate change within certain limits, like the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 °C, as otherwise the impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems will be so severe as to preclude the possibility of justice for many generations and populations. Other activists argue that failure to address social implications of climate change mitigation transitions could result in profound economic and social tensions and delay necessary changes while ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way – called a 'just transition' – are possible, preferable, in better agreement with contemporary human rights, fairer, more ethical as well as possibly more effective. Definition and objectives Use and popularity of climate justice language has increased dramatically in recent years, yet climate justice is understood in many ways, and the different meanings are sometimes contested. At its simplest, conceptions of climate justice can be grouped along the following two lines: procedural justice, which emphasizes fair, transparent and inclusive decision making, and distributive justice, which places the emphasis on who bears the costs of both climate change and the actions taken to address it.The objectives of climate justice can be described as follows: "to encompasses a set of rights and obligations, which corporations, individuals and governments have towards those vulnerable people who will be in a way significantly disproportionately affected by climate change."Climate justice examines concepts such as equality, human rights, collective rights, and the historical responsibilities for climate change. Climate justice is mainly concerned with the procedural and distributive ethical dimensions of and for climate change mitigation. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report underlines another principle of climate justice which is the “recognition which entails basic respect and robust engagement with and fair consideration of diverse cultures and perspectives”. Alternatively, recognition and respect can be understood as the underlying basis for distributive and procedural justice. Related fields are environmental justice and social justice. Causes of injustice Existing economic systems as a root cause One contentious issue in debates about climate justice is whether fundamental differences in economic systems, such as capitalism versus socialism, are the, or a, root cause of climate injustice. In this context, fundamental disagreements arise between, on the one hand, liberal and conservative environmental groups and, on the other, leftist and radical organizations. While the former often tend to blame the excesses of neoliberalism for climate change and argue in favor of market-based reform within capitalism, the latter view capitalism with its exploitative traits as the underlying central issue. Other possible causal explanations include hierarchies based on the group differences and the nature of the fossil fuel regime itself. Systemic causes It has been argued that the unwarranted rate of climate change, along with its inequality of burdens, is a structural injustice. There is political responsibility for the maintenance and support of historically constituted structural processes. This is despite assumed viable potential alternative models based on novel technologies and means. As a criterion for determining responsibility for climate change, individual causal contribution or capacity does not matter as much as the responsibility for the perpetuation of effectively carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions. These structures constitute the global politico-economic system, rather than enabling structural changes towards a system that does not naturally facilitate unsustainable exploitation of people and nature.For others, climate justice could be pursued through existing economic frameworks, global organizations and policy mechanisms. Therefore, for them the root-causes could be found in the causes that so far inhibited global implementation of measures like emissions trading schemes, specifically of forms that deliver the assumed mitigation results. Disproportionality between causality and burden The responsibility for anthropogenic climate change differs substantially among individuals and groups. Studies find that the most affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts, and robust action by them is necessary for prospects of moving towards safer environmental conditions.According to a 2020 report by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute, the richest 1% of the global population have caused twice as much carbon emissions as the poorest 50% over the 25 years from 1990 to 2015. This was, respectively, during that period, 15% of cumulative emissions compared to 7%. The bottom half of the population is directly-responsible for less than 20% of energy footprints and consume less than the top 5% in terms of trade-corrected energy. High-income individuals usually have higher energy footprints as they disproportionally use their larger financial resources – which they can usually spend freely in their entirety for any purpose as long as the end user purchase is legal – for energy-intensive goods. In particular, the largest disproportionality was identified to be in the domain of transport, where e.g. the top 10% consume 56% of vehicle fuel and conduct 70% of vehicle purchases.Many of the people and nations most affected by climate change are among the least responsible for it.A 2023 review article found that if there were a 2oC temperature rise by 2100, roughly 1 billion primarily poor people would die as a result of primarily wealthy people's greenhouse gas emissions. Intergenerational equity The current nation states and world population need to make changes, including sacrifices (like uncomfortable lifestyle-changes, alterations to public spending and changes to choice of work), today to enable climate justice for future generations.Preventable severe effects are projected to likely occur during the lifetime of the present adult population. Under current climate policy pledges, children born in 2020 (e.g. "Generation Alpha") will experience over their lifetimes, 2–7 times as many heat waves, as well as more of other extreme weather events compared to people born in 1960. This, along with other projections, raises issues of intergenerational equity as it was these generations (specific groups and individuals and their collective governance and perpetuated economics) who have been mainly responsible for the burden of climate change.This illustrates the general fact that emissions produced by any given generation can lock-in damage for one or more future generations, making climate change progressively more threatening for the generations affected than for the generation responsible for the threats. Crucially, the climate system contains tipping points, such as the amount of deforestation of the Amazon that will launch the forest’s irreversible decline. A generation whose continued emissions drive the climate system past such significant tipping points inflicts severe injustice on multiple future generations. Disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged groups Disadvantaged groups will continue to be disproportionately impacted as climate change persists. These groups will be affected due to inequalities that are based on demographic characteristics such as differences in gender, race, ethnicity, age, and income. Inequality increases the exposure of disadvantaged groups to the harmful effects of climate change while also increasing their susceptibility to destruction caused by climate change. The damage is worsened because disadvantaged groups are the last to receive emergency relief and are rarely included in the planning process at local, national and international levels for coping with the impacts of climate change.Communities of color, women, indigenous groups, and people of low-income all face a larger vulnerability to climate change. These groups will be disproportionately impacted due to heat waves, air quality, and extreme weather events. Women are also disadvantaged and will be affected by climate change differently than men. This may impact the ability of minority groups to adapt unless steps are taken to provide these groups with more access to universal resources. Indigenous groups are affected by the consequences of climate change even though they historically have contributed the least. In addition, indigenous peoples are unjustifiably impacted due to their low income, and they continue to have fewer resources to cope with climate change. Responses to improve climate justice Common principles of justice in burden-sharing There are three common principles of justice in burden-sharing that can be used in decision-making related to who bears the larger burdens of climate change globally and domestically: a) those who most caused the problem, b) those who have the most burden-carrying ability and c) those who have benefited most from the activities that cause climate change. Observing calls for climate reparations in scientific literature, among climate movements, and in policy debates, a 2023 study published in One Earth estimated that the top 21 fossil fuel companies would owe cumulative climate reparations of $5.4 trillion over the period 2025–2050.Another method of deciding starts from the objective of preventing climate change e.g. beyond 1.5 °C and from there reason back to who should do what. This makes use of the principles of justice in burden-sharing to maintain fairness. Court cases and litigation By December 2022, the number of climate change-related lawsuits had grown to 2,180, including 1,522 in the U.S. Already in the present and based on existing laws, some relevant parties can be forced into action (to the degree of accountability, monitoring and law enforcement capacities and assessments of feasibility) by means of courts. Human rights Challenges Disruption of social stability, jobs and uncomfortable changes Climate justice may often conflict with social stability whereby e.g. interventions that establish a more just pricing of products could facilitate social unrest and interventions of socioeconomic decarbonization could lead to, not only decreased e.g. material possessions, number of freely choosable options, comfort, maintained habits and salaries, but also at least temporary increased unemployment rates which may be problematic with contemporary psychology (possibly including norms, expectations, conscience, pressures, feedbacks, bias, plasticity and awareness) and socioeconomic structures (possibly including structural facilitation mechanisms for economic activities, enforceable policies, media systems and education apparatuses) even though multiple studies estimate that if a rapid transitions were to be implemented in certain ways the number of full-time jobs formally recognized in the economy could increase overall – albeit not addressing topics such as retraining – at least temporarily due to the increased demand for labor to e.g. build public infrastructure and other "green jobs" to build the renewable energy system. Even though accumulating evidence suggests that people who are living more environmentally friendly lifestyles are happier, according to a study "current strategies for encouraging lifestyle change aren't working". Many of the measures that could decrease social stability could also decrease public political support and political stability or make such more difficult to maintain. Public political support Due to mechanisms of politics and possibly partly due to an earlier neglection of enacting required policies and relevant education of citizens via education systems and media, the urgency for and extent of policies, especially when seeking to facilitate lifestyle-changes and shifts on the scale of entire industries, could not only lead to social tension but also decrease levels of public support for political parties in power. For instance, in contemporary socioeconomic structures keeping gas prices low is often "really good for the poor and the middle class". This may make it more difficult or less rational for political parties to enact such decisions across the world in cases where the national, rather than international, level is adequate. Citizens often form their opinions based on peer opinions and media as well as according to their personal near-term interests. Endorsements of policies – which historically have often been highly suboptimal – that come from an untrusted source may lower citizens' policy support and competing political campaigns and outreach, a key mechanism of politics, as well as online misinformation may further exploit early public discontent with policies, especially when combined ubiquitously with other grave imperfections and ignorance of relevant political parties. The dilemma that links this problem to the concept of climate justice is that interests – in particular extrapolated interests based on scientific data and projections – of hypothetical yet-unborn generations are not suitably represented and considered in today's climate policy-making, which is further complicated in that the already living young generations that will suffer most from climate change receive a politically equal voice and that large shares of voters generally do not have a good quality understanding of the projected likely effects of climate change and other relevant conditions. Public support could also be decreased by decisions for large financial transfers for the purpose of achieving climate justice, making this a challenging task including in cases where this money largely comes from taxing the general population rather than more select subgroups. Reduced efficiency Some may see climate justice arguments for compensation by rich countries for disasters and similar problems in developing countries (as well as for domestic disasters) as a way for "limitless liability" by which at least high levels of compensations could drain a society's resources, efforts, focus and financial funds away from efficient preventive climate change mitigation towards e.g. immediate climate change relief compensations or climate-unrelated expenses of the receiving country or people. Conflicting interest-driven interpretations as barriers to agreements Substantially different interpretations and perspectives, arising from different interests, needs, circumstances, expectations, considerations and histories, can lead to substantially varying conceptions of what is "fair". Such may lead to countries effectively making it more difficult to reach an agreement, similar to the prisoner's dilemma. Developing effective, legitimate, enforceable agreements could thereby be substantially complicated, especially if traditional ways or tools of policy-making are used, in-sum trusted third party expert authorities are absent and the scientific research base relevant for the decision-making – such as studies and data about the problem, potential mitigation measures and capacities – is not robust. Fundamental fairness principles include or could be: Responsibility Capability and Rights (needs)for which country characteristics can predict relative support. The shared problem-characteristics of climate change could incentivize developing countries to act in concert to deter developed countries from "passing their climate costs onto them" and thereby improve the global mitigation effectiveness to 1.5 °C. Fossil-fuels dependent states Fossil fuel phase out are projected to affect states – and their citizens – with large or central industries of fossil-fuels extraction – including OPEC states – differently than other nations. It was found that they have obstructed climate negotiations and it was argued that many of them have large amounts of wealth due to which they should not need to receive financial support from other countries but could implement adequate transitions on their own in terms of financial resources. A study found that governments of nations which have historically benefited from extraction should take the lead, with countries that have a high dependency on fossil fuels but low capacity for transition needing some support to follow. In particular, transitional impacts of a rapid phase out of extraction is thought to be better absorbed in diversified, wealthier economies which should bear discrepancies in costs needed for a "just transition" as they are most able to bear it and may have better capacities for enacting absorptive socioeconomic policies. Less ambitious mitigation There are concerns that climate justice could be used as an excuse or moral justification by developing, undeveloped or later-developed nations for less ambitious climate change mitigation goals as they have emitted less greenhouse gases in the past. History The concept of climate justice was deeply influential on climate negotiations years before the term "climate justice" was regularly applied to the concept. In December 1990 the United Nations appointed an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to draft what became the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), adopted at the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. As the name “Environment and Development” indicated, the fundamental goal was to coordinate action on climate change with action on sustainable development. It was impossible to draft the text of the FCCC without confronting central questions of climate justice concerning how to share the responsibilities of slowing climate change fairly between developed nations and developing nations. The issue of the fair terms for sharing responsibility was raised forcefully for the INC by statements about climate justice from developing countries. In response, the FCCC adopted the now-famous (and still-contentious) principles of climate justice embodied in Article 3.1: "The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof." The first principle of climate justice embedded in Article 3.1 is that calculations of benefits (and burdens) must include not only those for the present generation but also those for future generations. The second is that responsibilities are "common but differentiated", that is, every country has some responsibilities, but equitable responsibilities are different for different types of countries. The third is that a crucial instance of different responsibilities is that in fairness developed countries' responsibilities must be greater. How much greater continues to be debated politically.In 2000, at the same time as the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP 6), the first Climate Justice Summit took place in The Hague. This summit aimed to "affirm that climate change is a rights issue" and to "build alliances across states and borders" against climate change and in favor of sustainable development.Subsequently, in August–September 2002, international environmental groups met in Johannesburg for the Earth Summit. At this summit, also known as Rio+10, as it took place ten years after the 1992 Earth Summit, the Bali Principles of Climate Justice were adopted. In 2004, the Durban Group for Climate Justice was formed at an international meeting in Durban, South Africa. Here representatives from NGOs and peoples' movements discussed realistic policies for addressing climate change.In 2007 at the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in Bali, the global coalition Climate Justice Now! was founded, and, in 2008, the Global Humanitarian Forum focused on climate justice at its inaugural meeting in Geneva.In 2009, the Climate Justice Action Network was formed during the run-up to the Copenhagen Summit. It proposed civil disobedience and direct action during the summit, and many climate activists used the slogan 'system change not climate change'.In April 2010, the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth took place in Tiquipaya, Bolivia. It was hosted by the government of Bolivia as a global gathering of civil society and governments. The conference published a "People's Agreement" calling, among other things, for greater climate justice.In September 2013 the Climate Justice Dialogue convened by the Mary Robinson Foundation and the World Resources Institute released their Declaration on Climate Justice in an appeal to those drafting the proposed agreement to be negotiated at COP-21 in Paris in 2015.In December 2018, the People's Demands for Climate Justice, signed by 292,000 individuals and 366 organizations, called upon government delegates at COP24 to comply with a list of six climate justice demands. One of the demands was to "Ensure developed countries honor their “Fair Shares” for largely fueling this crisis." Some advance was achieved at the Paris climate finance summit at June 2023. The World Bank allowed to low income countries temporarily stop paying debts if they are hit by climate disaster. Most of financial help to climate vulnerable countries is coming in the form of debts, what often worsens the situation as those countries are overburdened with debts. Around 300 billion dollars was pledged as financial help in the next years, but trillions are needed to really solve the problem. More than 100 leading economists signed a letter calling for an extreme wealth tax as a solution (2% tax can generate around 2.5 trillion). It can serve as a Loss and damage mechanism as the 1% of richest people is responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50%. Examples Subsistence farmers in Latin America Several studies that investigated the impacts of climate change on agriculture in Latin America suggest that in the poorer countries of Latin America, agriculture composes the most important economic sector and the primary form of sustenance for small farmers. Maize is the only grain still produced as a sustenance crop on small farms in Latin American nations. The projected decrease of this grain and other crops can threaten the welfare and the economic development of subsistence communities in Latin America. Food security is of particular concern to rural areas that have weak or non-existent food markets to rely on in the case food shortages. In August 2019, Honduras declared a state of emergency when a drought caused the southern part of the country to lose 72% of its corn and 75% of its beans. Food security issues are expected to worsen across Central America due to climate change. It is predicted that by 2070, corn yields in Central America may fall by 10%, beans by 29%, and rice by 14%. With Central American crop consumption dominated by corn (70%), beans (25%), and rice (6%), the expected drop in staple crop yields could have devastating consequences.The expected impacts of climate change on subsistence farmers in Latin America and other developing regions are unjust for two reasons. First, subsistence farmers in developing countries, including those in Latin America are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change Second, these nations were the least responsible for causing the problem of anthropogenic induced climate.Disproportionate vulnerability to climate disasters is socially determined. For example, socioeconomic and policy trends affecting smallholder and subsistence farmers limit their capacity to adapt to change. A history of policies and economic dynamics has negatively impacted rural farmers. During the 1950s and through the 1980s, high inflation and appreciated real exchange rates reduced the value of agricultural exports. As a result, farmers in Latin America received lower prices for their products compared to world market prices. Following these outcomes, Latin American policies and national crop programs aimed to stimulate agricultural intensification. These national crop programs benefitted larger commercial farmers more. In the 1980s and 1990s low world market prices for cereals and livestock resulted in decreased agricultural growth and increased rural poverty.Perceived vulnerability to climate change differs even within communities, as in the example of subsistence farmers in Calakmul, Mexico.Adaptive planning is challenged by the difficulty of predicting local scale climate change impacts. A crucial component to adaptation should include government efforts to lessen the effects of food shortages and famines. Planning for equitable adaptation and agricultural sustainability will require the engagement of farmers in decision making processes. Hurricane Katrina Because of climate change, tropical cyclones are expected to increase in intensity and have increased rainfall, and have larger storm surges, but there might be fewer of them globally. These changes are driven by rising sea temperatures and increased maximum water vapour content of the atmosphere as the air heats up. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 provided insights into how climate change disasters affect different people individually, as it had a disproportionate effect on low-income and minority groups. A study on the race and class dimensions of Hurricane Katrina suggests that those most vulnerable include poor, black, brown, elderly, sick, and homeless people. Low-income and black communities had little resources and limited mobility to evacuate before the storm. Also, after the hurricane, low-income communities were most affected by contamination, and this was made worse by the fact that government relief measures failed to adequately assist those most at risk. See also References Further reading Dolšak, Nives; Prakash, Aseem (2022). "Three Faces of Climate Justice". Annual Review of Political Science. 25 (1): 283–301. Homeberg, Marc van den; McQuistan, Colin (2018). "Technology for Climate Justice: A Reporting Framework for Loss and Damage as Part of Key Global Agreements". Loss and Damage from Climate Change. 513-545. Department of Economics and Social Affairs, UN (2017). "[1]". Climate Change and Social Inequality. External links In-depth Q&A: What is 'climate justice'? Carbon Brief, 2021.

climate change in nigeria

Climate change in Nigeria is evident from temperature increase, rainfall variability (increasing in coastal areas and decline in continental areas). It is also reflected in drought, desertification, rising sea levels, erosion, floods, thunderstorms, bush fires, landslides, land degradation, more frequent, extreme weather conditions and loss of biodiversity. All of which continues to negatively affect human and animal life and also the ecosystems in Nigeria. Although, depending on the location, regions experience climate change with significant higher temperatures during the dry seasons while rainfalls during rainy seasons help keep the temperature at milder levels. The effects of climate change prompted the World Meteorological Organization, in its 40th Executive Council 1988, to establish a new international scientific assessment panel to be called the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The 2007 IPCC's fourth and final Assessment Report (AR4) revealed that there is a considerable threat of climate change that requires urgent global attention. The report further attributed the present global warming to largely anthropogenic practices. The Earth is almost at a point of no return as it faces environmental threats which include atmospheric and marine pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, the dangers of pollution by nuclear and other hazardous substances, and the extinction of various wildlife species.The escalation of climate variability in Nigeria has led to heightened and irregular rainfall patterns, exacerbating land degradation and resulting in more severe floods and erosion. As one of the top ten most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, Nigeria has experienced a worsening of these environmental challenges. By 2009, approximately 6,000 gullies had emerged, causing destruction to infrastructure in both rural and urban areas of the country.There are few comprehensive reports that provide useful evidence of various impacts of climate change experienced in Nigeria today. The vast majority of the literature provides evidence of climate change holistically and this does not help in providing sustainable solutions to the impacts experienced. However, the agricultural sector should be given more focus especially the existence in diverse regions where large farming is not dominantly practiced. More deliberations should concentrate on other mitigation and adaptation measures in literature which often takes the form of recommendations, rather than examples of what has already been achieved.This topical discourse is likely due to the need for much greater implementation of mitigation and adaption measures in ensuring Nigeria produce more food all through the year round to feed the growing population. In addition, while there is some discussion about necessary capacity building at the individual, group and community level to engage in climate change responses, there is also more or less attention given to higher levels of capacity building at the state and national level.The associated challenges of climate change are not the same across all geographical areas of the country. This is because of the two precipitation regimes: high precipitation in parts of the Southeast and Southwest and low in the Northern Region. These regimes can result in aridity, desertification and drought in the north; erosion and flooding in the south and other regions, Neglected climate change actions is the issue of recycling of PET Bottles particularly in the locally. The use of polyethylene terephthalate also known as PET or PETE (a plastic resin materials used for making packaging materials such as bottles and food containers) is increasingly becoming paramount among manufacturers, as they used these PET bottles to package their products because it (PET) is an excellent barrier material with high strength, thermostability and transparency. Nigeria currently has no standard policy to regulate plastic waste; several efforts including legislations and contracts awarded for the installation of plastic waste recycling plants across the country have been marred by corruption and lack of political will by the government. Greenhouse gas emissions In the year 2018, Nigeria's total greenhouse gas emissions was 336 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), which is less than 1 percent of global emissions.: 1  This means that emissions per person per year is less than 2 tons, compared to the global average of over 6 tons. These greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane are mostly generated from oil and gas production, land-use change, forestry, agriculture and fugitive emissions. The economy is very dependent on oil production, so it may be hard to reach the target of net zero emissions by 2060.There are factors that promote greenhouse gas emissions. It is recorded that the transportation sector is responsible for 28% of the greenhouse gas emissions in 2021. The main source of these emissions is the combustion of fossil fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, in cars. The production of electricity, which makes up 25% of emissions, also adds to the emissions of greenhouse gases. The industrial sector, responsible for 23% of emissions, mostly employs fossil fuels for chemical reactions and energy production. 13% of emissions, including heat and refrigeration in buildings, come from the commercial and residential sectors. Livestock and agricultural soils are the main sources of agriculture, which contributes 10% of emissions. 12% of emissions are offset by land use and forestry, since managed forests have been a net sink for emissions since 1990.In order to warm the biosphere to a temperature suitable for human habitation, greenhouse gases (GHGs) absorb and reemit a considerable portion of the 161 W m−2, making them indispensable for life on Earth. Global surface temperatures have recently increased due to biosphere warming caused by rising GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. Since 1750, agriculture has produced 10–14% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions worldwide each year, directly influencing five of the main radiative sources of climate forcing. More greenhouse gases are impacted by agriculture than not. Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather Current climate Nigeria has three different climate zones: a Sahelian hot and semi-arid climate in the north, a tropical monsoon climate in the south, and a tropical savannah environment in the center regions. While the core regions only get one rainy and one dry season, the southern parts see heavy rainfall from March to October. There is a lot of annual variance in the north, which causes droughts and flooding. The mean annual temperature of the country varies greatly between coastal and interior regions; the plateau has a mean temperature between 21°C and 27°C, while the interior lowlands typically see temperatures above 27°C. There is variation in rainfall from April to October, and the average annual temperature is 26.9°C.Nigeria has a tropical climate with two seasons: (wet and dry). Inland areas especially those in the northeast, experience the greatest fluctuations in temperatures as before the outset of rains, temperatures sometimes rise as high as 44 °C and drops to 6 °C between December and February. In Maiduguri, the maximum temperature may rise to 38 °C in April and May while in the same season frosts might occur at night.For example, in Lagos, the average high is 31 °C and low is 23 °C in January and 28 °C and 23 °C in June. The southeast regions especially located around the coast like Bonny Island (south of Port Harcourt), east of Calabar receive the highest amount of annual rainfalls of around 4,000 millimeters. Changes in climate Climate change in Nigeria is shifting climate regions. The steppe region in the North is set to expand southwards, and tropical monsoon regions in the South are moving northwards, replacing tropical rainforest. Increase in temperature The effects of the temperature increase are unbearable for residents, particularly those living in communities hosting gas flare plants. The increase in temperature causes bodily rashes, among other things, and hinders the growth of food crops. The availability of nutrients, plant and root growth, and seed germination are all affected by soil temperature. High temperatures hinder a plant's regular growth, photosynthesis, and flowering since they do not improve plant physiology. Rising sea levels, fluctuating rainfall, higher temperatures, flooding, droughts, desertification, land degradation, and an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events are all contributing factors to Nigeria's changing climate. Forecasts indicate that this will continue to cause significant runoffs and flooding in several locations. Forecasts of the climate indicate that every biological zone will see a notable rise in temperature. Although there is some literature showing the effects of and solutions to climate change, the majority of it concentrates on the farming industry and specific farming locales. Increased focus must be paid to capacity building at the state and federal levels, as well as increased implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures.The Nigerian Meteorological Service (NiMet) issues a warning about rising temperatures, especially in the north, which can lead to an increase in hospital admissions for elderly patients, neonates, and children due to heatstroke, cardiovascular, respiratory, and cerebrovascular illnesses.Due to climate change, Northern Nigeria is seeing greater heatwaves and lengthier, more erratic rainfall. New problems such extreme droughts, floods, deforestation, pollution, and food shortages have resulted from this. Daily living has been impacted by climate change, and many individuals have had to modify their behavior to cope. Due to the heat, some students have missed class or experienced health issues. Others have fallen behind in their academics and suffered from migraines. The extra strain might have a disastrous effect on Nigeria's underfunded, overcrowded, and fiercely competitive educational system.According to historical data from 2012 to 2019 used to examine trends in temperature and rainfall in Agbani, Enugu State. The climate from 2020 to 2050 was forecasted via Trend Regression analysis to be wetter and hotter. In 2018 and 2015 there were the most and lowest amounts of rainfall, respectively. The months of January, July, and March had the highest monthly mean rainfall, respectively. Also, between 2020 and 2050, farmers expect a wetter environment. Ecosystems An ecosystem is a complex and interconnected community of living organisms, their physical environment, and the interactions between them. It encompasses both biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) components, functioning as a dynamic system where various species interact with one another and with their surroundings. Ecosystems can vary in scale, from small microhabitats to large biomes such as forests, oceans, and grasslands. The concept of ecosystems was first introduced by the British ecologist Arthur Tansley in 1935, who defined it as "the whole system. including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment". This definition highlights the importance of considering both living organisms and their environment when studying ecosystems. Ecosystems are characterized by the flow of energy and the cycling of nutrients. Energy enters an ecosystem through primary producers, such as plants or algae, which capture sunlight and convert it into chemical energy through photosynthesis. This energy is then transferred to higher trophic levels as organisms feed on each other, forming food chains and food webs. Ecosystems are sustained by the cycling of nutrients. Nutrients, such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, are essential for the growth and survival of organisms. These elements are recycled within the ecosystem through various processes like decomposition, nutrient uptake by plants, and consumption by animals. This recycling ensures a continuous supply of nutrients for the organisms within the ecosystem. Ecosystems provide numerous ecological services that are vital for the well-being of both the natural world and human society. For instance, forests act as carbon sinks, absorbing and storing large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Wetlands play a crucial role in water purification and flood control. Coral reefs provide habitat for numerous marine species and act as natural barriers against storms.Ecosystems are facing numerous threats due to human activities, such as deforestation, pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). These disturbances can disrupt the delicate balance of an ecosystem, leading to species extinction, loss of biodiversity, and the degradation of ecosystem services. To better understand and manage ecosystems, scientists employ various approaches, including ecological modeling, field observations, and experimentation. These tools help researchers study the interactions between organisms, identify key ecological processes, and assess the impacts of human activities on ecosystems. Ecosystem management strategies aim to promote sustainable practices that maintain or restore the integrity and functioning of ecosystems.Years ago, Nigeria experienced climate change disaster which happened in the Northeastern region which is now Borno and Yobe states the territory along the southern part of Lake Chad dried up. Due to logging and over dependence on firewood for cooking, a greater part of Nigeria's Guinean forest-savanna mosaic region has been stripped of its vegetation cover. Similarly, the forest around Oyo State has been reduced to grassland. The lack of sufficient cover trees and other vegetation can cause natural change, desertification, and soil breaking down, flooding, and extended ozone exhausting substances in the environment. Sea level rise and floods In late August 2012, Nigeria was hit by the worst flooding ever experienced in 40 years. This affected 7 million people in communities across 33 states including kogi state. More than 2 million people out of the affected 7 million were driven from their homes by rising waters.Nigeria experienced another flooding caused by heavy seasonal rains in 2013 which brought further misery to a population that was still recovering from the 2012 fatal floods. Many mud-brick homes collapsed and families' belongings were ruined. Dug wells which are sources of potable water were also polluted. The states of Abia, Bauchi, Benue, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kano, Kogi and Zamfara were most affected by the floodwaters which lasted for 48 hours. The situation in Kaduna and Katsina was aggravated by the collapse of earth dams. According to the National Emergency Management Agency, more than 47,000 people were affected. This lesser number of people affected is attributed to the lessons of the 2012 floods which prepared the country for a better response.In Nigeria areas around the coastal regions are at risk of rising sea level. For example, the Niger Delta area is extremely vulnerable to flooding at a risk of rising sea level and a victim of extreme oil pollution. Climate change was the reason behind the flood that took place in southern Nigeria in 2012. The flood was responsible for the loss of houses, farms, farm produce, properties and lives. According to statistics released in 2014 by National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), about 5,000 houses and 60 homes were affected in a windstorm that occurred in four states in the south west region. Impacts The country is likely to experience exacerbate floods, droughts, heat waves and hamper agricultural production in hotter and drier seasons. Health NIMET has predicted an increased incidence of malaria due to climate change, and other diseases that will be higher in areas with temperatures ranging between 18 and 32 °C and with relative humidity above 60 percent. Economic Agriculture Agriculture remains the mainstay of the Nigerian economy in spite of oil as it employs two-thirds of the entire working population. The sector is fraught with challenges as agricultural production is still mainly rainfall and subject to weather vagaries. Farmers find it hard to plan their operations due to unpredictable rainfall vagaries. Increase in the total amount of rainfall and extreme temperature would have more of a negative effect on staple crops productivity. However, in northern states such as Borno, Yobe, Kaduna, Kano and Sokoto most crops might benefit economically. Crops such as millet, melon, sugarcane that are grown in the north will most likely benefit from extreme temperature.The sector is also plagued with: an outdated land tenure system that limits access to land (1.8 hectares or 4.4 acres per farming household) reduced irrigation development capacity (cropped land under irrigation less than one percent) lack of access to other agricultural improvements and support indicated by low adoption of technologies, limited access to fertilisers, inadequate storage facilities and limited market access. financial restrictions of limited access to credits; expensive farm inputsAll of these combined, have reduced agricultural productivity to, for example, average cereal production of 1.2 metric tons per hectare [0.48 long ton/acre; 0.54 short ton/acre]). This is coupled with high postharvest losses and wastage. Fisheries The fishery sub-sector in Nigeria contributes about 3–4 percent to the country's annual GDP. It is also a key contributor to the nutritional requirements of the population as it constitutes about 50 percent of animal protein intake. The sector also provides income and employment for a substantial number of small traders and artisanal fishermen. Over the past few years, capture fisheries have been declining and despite high potential Nigeria has in both fresh water and marine fisheries, domestic fish production still falls short of total demand. This has led to a high dependence on imports. To reduce importation dependence, aquaculture has been made one of the priority value chains targeted for development by the government. Climate change affects the characteristics and nature of water resources due to rising sea levels and extreme weather events. Increased salinity and shrinking lakes and rivers are also threats to the viability of inland fisheries. Nigerians are impacted economically both directly and indirectly by the fishing industry, which is important to the nation's economy.The economic advantages and effects of fishing on the people of Nigeria include: Livelihoods and employment: those who reside in coastal and fishing villages, have job options in the fisheries sector. It provides employment for fish processors, boat builders, producers of equipment, traders, and other ancillary businesses. The Nigerian Fisheries Statistical Bulletin estimates that approximately 3.2 million persons were working in the industry in 2019. Particularly in rural and coastal regions, these job options contribute to means of subsistence, income production, and the eradication of poverty. Food security and nutrition: The population's dietary and nutritional needs are mostly met by the fishing industry. Fish is a great source of minerals and animal protein. It offers a reasonably priced and convenient source of nourishment, especially in communities close to waterbodies or coastal regions where fish is easily accessible. Fish availability helps vulnerable communities fight hunger, improves nutrition, and increases food security. Trade and income generation: Both domestically and abroad, the fishing industry helps to generate income. Selling fish to neighborhood markets and processing businesses is how Nigerian fish sellers and fishermen make their living. Nigeria exports a sizeable amount of fish products to its neighbors and other nations, which helps to promote global commerce and generate foreign currency. Economic growth and GDP contribution: Nigeria's fisheries make a positive contribution to the country's overall economic growth and GDP. Through the production of revenue, source of employment, and commerce, it improves the economy. The National Bureau of Statistics estimates that in 2020, the fisheries sector's share of agriculture's contribution to Nigerian GDP was 4.5 percent. Auxiliary businesses and industries: The fishing industry supports a number of auxiliary businesses and industries, expanding economic potential. Boat construction, the manufacture of fishing equipment, the packing and processing of fish, cold storage facilities, transportation, and retail companies are a few examples. These auxiliary businesses support entrepreneurship, the diversification of economic activity, and local economic growth.The fisheries industry suffers a number of difficulties and sustainability issues, such as overfishing, illicit fishing, insufficient infrastructure, restricted availability of credit and funding, and weak regulatory and governance frameworks. The long-term economic advantages may be increased and the sector's contribution to the wellbeing of the Nigerian people can be ensured by addressing these issues through sustainable fisheries management methods and policies. Forestry Nigeria is endowed with variety of forest resources, from savannas in the north to rainforests in the south, and diverse species which fulfill a number of environmental functions. These include wildlife, medicinal plants and herbs, watershed protection, hydrological regime stabilization and carbon sequestration. Forests regulate global climate and serve as a major agent of carbon exchange in the atmosphere. In Nigeria, natural forests have reduced drastically and its impacts on climate change are increasing. Erosion and excessive wind reduces the amount of forestry produce, such as wood and cane. Forests are under significant pressure not only from climate change but also from increasing populations and greater demand for forest resources.The excessive exploitation of these forest resources is a source of concern as it is a threat to the economic, environmental and social wellbeing of Nigerians. Apart from providing a significant proportion of global timber and fuel, . In Nigeria, forestry is important to both the economy and attempts to preserve the environment.Nigeria's woods may be generally divided into three different kinds based on their distribution and characteristics: Rainforests: Located in the southern region of the country, these forests are characterized by high rainfall, dense vegetation, and a wide variety of tree species. They include the freshwater swamp forest and the tropical lowland rainforest. Guinea savanna woodland: These savannas are found in the center of Nigeria and are distinguished by a mixture of trees and grasses. They serve as a transitional area between the southern rainforests. Strengthening defences To address the situation, Nigeria initiated the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP) in 2012. This project embraced progressive integrated methods centered around active community involvement. By its completion in 2022, NEWMAP successfully connected poverty reduction efforts with sustainable ecosystems and enhanced disaster-risk prevention. This comprehensive strategy has had a positive impact on the well-being and safety of over 12 million individuals across 23 states in Nigeria. NEWMAP implemented various mechanisms to safeguard Nigerians from the potential impacts of future climate change. The project restored dozens of gully sites and built nearly 60 catchments to effectively control erosion. To enhance preparedness, warning and monitoring systems were put in place. Stormwater diversion plans were devised and solid waste management was improved to reduce the likelihood of flooding during heavy rainfall events. These efforts aimed at fortifying the nation against the adverse effects of climate change and enhancing resilience in the face of environmental challenges. In order to assist farmers in managing droughts effectively, climate-smart agricultural innovations have been introduced, focusing on water conservation. These innovations include the widespread implementation of solar-powered drip irrigation systems and rainwater harvesting techniques. These measures aim to optimize water usage, allowing farmers to adapt to challenging climate conditions and ensure more sustainable agricultural practices during periods of water scarcity. Climate adaptation or mitigation Climate Carbon mitigation is an issue for the world's economies as they work to combat climate change and advance environmental and socioeconomic sustainability. However, for most of African countries, including Nigeria, the carbon footprint is low yet the effects of the climate crises is in the country is huge. The world's economy cannot abruptly quit using fossil fuels, since that would mean the end of the current way of life. Without the fossil fuel economy, materials for computers or smartphones, or the ability for online communications would end. Fossil fuels are necessary for all aspects of modern living, including food, clothing, shelter, water, entertainment, and others. Adapting to the effects of the climate crises falls on the whole population, despite individuals in domestic settings not being a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Consequent disruptions, especially in areas like agriculture and health, cause ripple effects on human migration, gender inequality, food security and standards of living. The Great Green Wall The Great Green Wall project was adopted by the African Union in 2007, initially conceived as a way to combat desertification in the Sahel region and hold back expansion of the Sahara desert by planting a wall of trees stretching across the entire Sahel. The current focus of the project is to create a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across North Africa by promoting water harvesting techniques, greenery protection, and improving indigenous land use techniques. The ongoing goal of the project is to restore 100 million hectares (250 million acres) of degraded land and capture 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and create 10 million jobs in the process all by 2030. Policies and legislation Nigeria ratified the Paris Agreement, an international deal aimed at tackling climate change, in 2017 and has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2030 with the condition of 45% of international support. Also, in demonstration of the country's seriousness in approaching climate action, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the country's climate change bill into law in November 2021. Mitigation and adaptation policy The IPCC describes climate mitigation as the transition from the fossil fuel economy, where burning fossil fuels to produce energy and emissions to make things to an economy that produces zero emissions; that is to remove carbon emissions from every part of the economy, as fast as possible in order to prevent further global heating. To mitigate the adverse effect of climate change, not only did Nigeria sign the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions, in its national climate pledge, it also committed to attempting to eliminate gas flaring by 2030 and has devised a National Forest Policy. Effort is also been made to stimulate the adoption of climate-smart agriculture and the planting of trees.The increasing vulnerability to extreme climatic change in Nigeria is exacerbated by accelerated urbanization, which is pushing more people into capital cities and other regions. This expansion is encroaching on flood plains and coastal areas, heightening the risks of coastal floods. To address these challenges, promoting planned human settlements and intensive urban infrastructure development is crucial. Additionally, the government must implement policy interventions and allocate increased funding for climate-related projects to protect properties and lives in susceptible areas and build resilience to climate change impacts. To enhance adaptation to climate-related disasters in Nigeria, a comprehensive and structured plan for climate change adaptation must include coastal states and flood plains. The implementation of national initiatives like the Great Green Wall and the Climate Change Act is essential to combat desertification, food shortages, and climate change impacts. Proper funding and implementation of the Nigeria Climate Change Commission are vital to provide strong institutional support for vulnerable states in the country. Prioritizing these measures will improve Nigeria's resilience and capacity to cope with climate-related challenges and foster sustainable development. monitoring to evaluate species and ecosystems stability from climate change perspective. Nigeria Energy Transition Plan In 2021 during COP 26, the then Nigerian President, President Muhammadu Buhari, unveiled the Nigerian Energy Transition Plan as part of country's commitment towards achieving NET Zero by the year 2060. The plan included a timeline and framework for achieving reduced emissions in certain sector of the country such as Oil and Gas, Cooking, Transport and Industry and Power. This is in a bid to help slow down the change in climate. Nigeria's Energy Transition Plan (ETP) is a long-term strategy to decarbonize the country's energy sector and achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. The ETP was launched in August 2022 and is based on a data-driven approach that identifies the most cost-effective pathways to decarbonization. The ETP key sector: Power: The ETP aims to increase the share of renewable energy in the power sector to 30% by 2030 and 60% by 2060. This will be achieved through the deployment of solar, wind, and hydro power projects, as well as the development of a national grid. Cooking: The ETP aims to transition to clean cooking fuels by 2030. This will be achieved through the promotion of solar-powered cooking stoves and the development of a national gas grid. Industry: The ETP aims to decarbonize the industrial sector by 2060. This will be achieved through the adoption of energy-efficient technologies and the use of renewable energy sources. Transportation: The ETP aims to electrify the transportation sector by 2060. This will be achieved through the deployment of electric vehicles and the development of a national charging infrastructure.The Nigeria ETP is a comprehensive and ambitious plan that has the potential to transform the country's energy sector. The plan in its efforts to address climate; change and achieve sustainable development. The plan aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. Gas will play a critical role as a transition fuel in the power and cooking sectors. The plan creates significant investment opportunities in the solar, wind, and hydrogen sectors. The plan is expected to create up to 840,000 jobs by 2060. International cooperation The UNDP is committed to supporting Nigeria and a UNDP-NDC Support Programme is already fully in motion. One of their goals is having increased engagement with the government and private sector. Public perception A study of students at University of Jos, found that 59.7 percent of respondents had good knowledge about climate change, and understood its connection to issues like fossil fuel, pollution, deforestation and urbanization.While the academic community are informed about climate change and its effects, considering the amount of research conducted on the subject, less educated communities and those in rural areas have not regularly demonstrated climate change knowledge. A survey of 1000 people in rural communities in southwestern Nigeria found that many members had superstitions about climate change, and that respondents had poor knowledge about the causes and effects. Some of the challenges with the non-specialist communities include lack of contextual information about climate change, language communication barrier in the local language. See also Agriculture in Nigeria Drought in Nigeria Environmental, social, and corporate governance Geography of Nigeria Sustainable Development Goals and Nigeria References External links Climate change in Nigeria - Federal Ministry of Information and Culture

recognizing the duty of the federal government to create a green new deal

Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal (H. Res. 332), sometimes just referred to as the Green New Deal, is a major resolution introduced in the 117th Congress. The Resolution calls for the creation of a Green New Deal which would create high paying jobs and prevent the Earth from exceeding 1.5°C of warming by investing in renewable energy and putting the United States on track for net-zero emissions.The resolution itself is non-binding, meaning that it would only express a general sense of Congress, and would not actually implement any of the Green New Deal policies it proposes. Any such policies would have to be passed on their own in a separate bill. Background Warming of 2 °C was generally considered (by some) to be an acceptable carbon budget limit until a report in 2018 by the IPCC stated that limiting warming to 1.5 °C would prevent far more damage from a climate catastrophe than limiting emissions to 2 °C. The report also found that global emissions would have to be cut in half by 2030 and the world would have to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 in order to meet the 1.5 °C goal. Provisions Acknowledging Climate Change and Inequality The first section of the resolution acknowledges that climate change is a threat, and that 2 °C of warming should be avoided, or else it will cause significant damage to the environment and infrastructure. It also states that emissions must be cut at the rate described by the IPCC in order to avoid this warming. It also says that because the United States emits a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gasses, that it must take a "leading role" in reducing emissions, and that climate change is a threat to national security.The resolution acknowledges certain wealth inequality problems in the United States: wage stagnation, reduction of bargaining power through unions, and low socioeconomic mobility, among other things. It states that climate change has exacerbated injustices, and that it will mostly effect minorities and people who are low-income. Green New Deal The resolution calls for the creation of a Green New Deal with the following goals: Reducing emissions to stay under 1.5 °C of warming. Create millions of high-wage union jobs and ensuring economic security in general. Investments in infrastructure and industry. Ensuring clean water, clean air, climate resilience, healthy food, the ability to access nature, a sustainable environment. Promoting justice and promoting equality. Mobilization effort The resolution calls for the achievement of these goals through a nation-wide mobilization effort; which it suggests several broad policy objectives, such as: Building smart power grids. Upgrading existing buildings and building new buildings to have the best energy and water efficiency possible. Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution from transportation and agriculture. Cleaning up hazardous waste and abandoned sites. Making sure that people who run a business do not face unfair competition. Making sure that all people have access to a college education, healthcare, and affordable housing. Opinions Public and Congress The Green New Deal is generally opposed by members of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has been split on the issue, however. Public opinion polls seem to suggest that the public in general may be divided on the issue. Democratic Leadership Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has shown reservations on the passage of the bill. Though she has never directly shot it down, she stated in 2019 that she was not making a commitment passing the resolution, but that she welcomed the enthusiasm. At one point she referred to the resolution as "The green dream or whatever they call it". Legislative history Summary As of May 15, 2022: 116th Congress The resolution was first introduced in the 116th Congress. Neither Ed Markey or Ocasio-Cortez's versions of the resolution received a vote in either the House or Senate. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the resolution with the exact same text as Markey's own version and forced a vote on it in an attempt to make Democrats to take a position on the measure and use it against them in the 2020 election. Democrats refused to legitimize the effort and voted "present" in protest. The Resolution was thus defeated 0-57, with three conservative Democrats and one independent also voting against McConnell's resolution. 117th Congress The resolution was introduced on April 20, 2021 and received 101 co-sponsors.Marjorie Taylor Greene challenged the resolution's sponsor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a debate over the measure. Greene said in a tweet that she was told by Ocasio-Cortez to read "all 14 pages" first, and Greene seemingly admitted that she had not yet read the resolution. See also Climate change Climate change denial Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C Renewable energy in the United States Green New Deal New Deal Wealth inequality in the United States == References ==

economic analysis of climate change

The economic analysis of climate change explains how economic thinking, tools and techniques are applied to calculate the magnitude and distribution of damage caused by climate change. It also informs the policies and approaches for mitigation and adaptation to climate change from global to household scales. This topic is also inclusive of alternative economic approaches, including ecological economics and degrowth. In a cost–benefit analysis, the trade offs between climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation are made explicit. Cost–benefit analyses of climate change are produced using integrated assessment models (IAMs), which incorporate aspects of the natural, social, and economic sciences. The total economic impacts from climate change are difficult to estimate, but increase for higher temperature changes.Climate change impacts can be measured as an economic cost.: 936–941  This is particularly well-suited to market impacts, that is impacts that are linked to market transactions and directly affect GDP. However, monetary measures of non-market impacts, e.g., impacts on human health and ecosystems, are more difficult to calculate. Economic analysis of climate change is challenging as it is a long-term problem and has substantial distributional issues within and across countries. Furthermore, it engages with uncertainty about the physical damages of climate changes, human responses, and future socioeconomic development. In most models, benefits exceed costs for stabilization of GHGs leading to warming of 2.5 °C. No models suggest that the optimal policy is to do nothing, i.e., allow "business-as-usual" emissions. Sub-topics within the economic analysis concept are the economic impacts of climate change, as well as the economics of climate change mitigation. Climate change mitigation consist of human actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to enhance carbon sinks that absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.: 2239 Purposes Economic analysis of climate change is an umbrella term for a range of investigations into the economic costs around the effects of climate change, and for preventing or softening those effects. Various economic tools are employed to understand the economic aspects around impacts of climate change, climate change mitigation and adaptation. For example, in some areas, policies designed to mitigate climate change may contribute positively towards other sustainable development objectives, such as abolishing fossil fuel subsidies which would reduce air pollution and thus save lives. Direct global fossil fuel subsidies reached $319 billion in 2017, and $5.2 trillion when indirect costs such as air pollution are priced in. In other areas, the cost of climate change mitigation may divert resources away from other socially and environmentally beneficial investments (the opportunity costs of climate change policy).The economic impacts of climate change also include any mitigation (for example, limiting the global average temperature below 2 °C) or adaption (for example, building flood defences) employed by nations or groups of nations, which might infer economic consequences. Types Cost–benefit analysis of climate change Standard cost–benefit analysis (CBA) (also referred to as a monetized cost–benefit framework) has been applied to the problem of climate change. This requires (1) the valuation of costs and benefits using willingness to pay (WTP) or willingness to accept (WTA) compensation as a measure of value, and (2) a criterion for accepting or rejecting proposals:For (1), in CBA where WTP/WTA is used, climate change impacts are aggregated into a monetary value, with environmental impacts converted into consumption equivalents, and risk accounted for using certainty equivalents. Values over time are then discounted to produce their equivalent present values.The valuation of costs and benefits of climate change can be controversial: 936–938  because some climate change impacts are difficult to assign a value to, e.g., ecosystems and human health. It is also impossible to know the preferences of future generations, which affects the valuation of costs and benefits.: 4  Another difficulty is quantifying the risks of future climate change.For (2), the standard criterion is the Kaldor–Hicks: 3  compensation principle. According to the compensation principle, so long as those benefiting from a particular project compensate the losers, and there is still something left over, then the result is an unambiguous gain in welfare. If there are no mechanisms allowing compensation to be paid, then it is necessary to assign weights to particular individuals.One of the mechanisms for compensation is impossible for this problem: mitigation might benefit future generations at the expense of current generations, but there is no way that future generations can compensate current generations for the costs of mitigation.: 4  On the other hand, should future generations bear most of the costs of climate change, compensation to them would not be possible. Another transfer for compensation exists between regions and populations. If, for example, some countries were to benefit from reducing climate change but others lose out, there would be no guarantee that the winners would compensate the losers.In spite of various uncertainties or possible criticisms of cost–benefit analysis, it does have several strengths: It offers an internally consistent and global comprehensive analysis of impacts.: 955  Furthermore, sensitivity analysis allows critical assumptions in the analysis to be changed. This can identify areas where the value of information is highest and where additional research might have the highest payoffs.: 119 The distribution of benefits from adaptation and mitigation policies are different in terms of damages avoided.: 653  Adaptation activities mainly benefit those who implement them, while mitigation benefits others who may not have made mitigation investments. Mitigation can therefore be viewed as a global public good, while adaptation is either a private good in the case of autonomous adaptation, or a national or regional public good in the case of public sector policies. In a cost–benefit analysis, the trade offs between climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation are made explicit. Cost–benefit analyses of climate change are produced using ssessment models (IAMs), which incorporate aspects of the natural, social, and economic sciences. In an IAM designed for cost–benefit analysis, the costs and benefits of impacts, adaptation and mitigation are converted into monetary estimates. Some view the monetization of costs and benefits as controversial. The "optimal" levels of mitigation and adaptation are then resolved by comparing the marginal costs of action with the marginal benefits of avoided climate change damages.: 654  The decision over what "optimal" is depends on subjective value judgements made by the author of the study.A common finding of cost–benefit analysis is that the optimum level of emissions reduction is modest in the near-term, with more stringent abatement in the longer-term.: 298 : 20  This approach might lead to a warming of more than 3 °C above the pre-industrial level.: 8  There are many uncertainties that affect cost–benefit analysis, for example, sector- and country-specific damage functions.: 654 Alternatives to conventional economic analysis There is considerable uncertainty over decisions regarding climate change, as well as different attitudes over how to proceed, e.g., attitudes to risk and valuation of climate change impacts. Risk management can be used to evaluate policy decisions based a range of criteria or viewpoints, and is not restricted to the results of particular type of analysis, e.g., monetized CBA.: 42  Some authors have focused on a disaggregated analysis of climate change impacts.: 23  "Disaggregated" refers to the choice to assess impacts in a variety of indicators or units, e.g., changes in agricultural yields and loss of biodiversity. By contrast, monetized CBA converts all impacts into a common unit (money), which is used to assess changes in social welfare. Approaches and components Investigating climate change scenarios The long time scales and uncertainty associated with global warming have led analysts to develop "scenarios" of future environmental, social and economic changes. These scenarios can help governments understand the potential consequences of their decisions. The projected temperature in climate change scenarios is subject to scientific uncertainty (e.g., the relationship between concentrations of GHGs and global mean temperature, which is called the climate sensitivity). Projections of future atmospheric concentrations based on emission pathways are also affected by scientific uncertainties, e.g., over how carbon sinks, such as forests, will be affected by future climate change. One of the economic aspects of climate change is producing scenarios of future economic development. Future economic developments can, for example, affect how vulnerable society is to future climate change, what the future impacts of climate change might be, as well as the level of future GHG emissions.In scenario analysis, scenarios are developed that are based on differing assumptions of future development patterns. An example of this are the shared socioeconomic pathways produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These project a wide range of possible future emissions levels. Some analysts have developed scenarios that project a continuation of current policies into the future. These scenarios are sometimes called "business-as-usual" scenarios.: 176 Experts who work on scenarios tend to prefer the term "projections" to "forecasts" or "predictions". This distinction is made to emphasize the point that probabilities are not assigned to the scenarios, and that future emissions depend on decisions made both now and into the future.: 75 Climate risks Another approach is that of uncertainty analysis, where analysts attempt to estimate the probability of future changes in emission levels. In a cost–benefit analysis, an acceptable risk means that the benefits of a climate policy outweigh the costs of the policy. The standard rule used by public and private decision makers is that a risk will be acceptable if the expected net present value is positive. The expected value is the mean of the distribution of expected outcomes.: 25  In other words, it is the average expected outcome for a particular decision. This criterion has been justified on the basis that: a policy's benefits and costs have known probabilities economic agents (people and organizations) can diversify their own risk through insurance and other markets.On the second point, it has been suggested that insurance could be bought against climate change risks. Policymakers and investors are beginning to recognize the implications of climate change for the financial sector, from both physical risks (damage to property, infrastructure, and land) and transition risk due to changes in policy, technology, and consumer and market behavior. Financial institutions are becoming increasingly aware of the need to incorporate the economics of low carbon emissions into business models.In the scientific literature, there is sometimes a focus on "best estimate" or "likely" values of climate sensitivity. However, from a risk management perspective, values outside of "likely" ranges are relevant, because, though these values are less probable, they could be associated with more severe climate impacts (the statistical definition of risk = probability of an impact × magnitude of the impact).: 208 Analysts have also looked at how uncertainty over climate sensitivity affects economic estimates of climate change impacts. Policy guidance from cost-benefit analysis (CBA) can be extremely divergent depending on the assumptions employed. Hassler et al use integrated assessment modeling to examine a range of estimates and what happens at extremes.Two related ways of thinking about the problem of climate change decision-making in the presence of uncertainty are iterative risk management and sequential decision making.: 612–614  Considerations in a risk-based approach might include, for example, the potential for low-probability, worst-case climate change impacts. Sequential decision making One of the responses to the uncertainties of global warming is to adopt a strategy of sequential decision making. Sequential decision making refers to the process in which the decision maker makes consecutive observations of the process before making a final decision. This strategy recognizes that decisions on global warming need to be made with incomplete information, and that decisions in the near term will have potentially long-term impacts. Governments may use risk management as part of their policy response to global warming.: 203 An approach based on sequential decision making recognizes that, over time, decisions related to climate change can be revised in the light of improved information. This is particularly important with respect to climate change, due to the long-term nature of the problem. A near-term hedging strategy concerned with reducing future climate impacts might favor stringent, near-term emissions reductions. As stated earlier, carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, and to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of CO2, emissions would need to be drastically reduced from their present level. Stringent near-term emissions reductions allow for greater future flexibility with regard to a low stabilization target, e.g., 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2. To put it differently, stringent near-term emissions abatement can be seen as having an option value in allowing for lower, long-term stabilization targets. This option may be lost if near-term emissions abatement is less stringent.On the other hand, a view may be taken that points to the benefits of improved information over time. This may suggest an approach where near-term emissions abatement is more modest. Another way of viewing the problem is to look at the potential irreversibility of future climate change impacts (e.g., damages to ecosystems) against the irreversibility of making investments in efforts to reduce emissions. Resilient and adaptive strategies Granger Morgan et al. (2009) suggested two related decision-making management strategies that might be particularly appealing when faced with high uncertainty. The first were resilient strategies. This seeks to identify a range of possible future circumstances, and then choose approaches that work reasonably well across all the range. The second were adaptive strategies. The idea here is to choose strategies that can be improved as more is learned as the future progresses. Granger Morgan contrasted these two approaches with the cost–benefit approach, which seeks to find an optimal strategy. Portfolio theory An example of a strategy that is based on risk is portfolio theory. This suggests that a reasonable response to uncertainty is to have a wide portfolio of possible responses. In the case of climate change, mitigation can be viewed as an effort to reduce the chance of climate change impacts.: 24  Adaptation acts as insurance against the chance that unfavourable impacts occur. The risk associated with these impacts can also be spread. As part of a policy portfolio, climate research can help when making future decisions. Technology research can help to lower future costs. Optimal choices and risk aversion The optimal result of decision analysis depends on how "optimal" is defined. Decision analysis requires a selection criterion to be specified. In a decision analysis based on monetized cost–benefit analysis (CBA), the optimal policy is evaluated in economic terms. The optimal result of monetized CBA maximizes net benefits. Another type of decision analysis is cost-effectiveness analysis. Cost-effectiveness analysis aims to minimize net costs. Monetized CBA may be used to decide on the policy objective, e.g., how much emissions should be allowed to grow over time. The benefits of emissions reductions are included as part of the assessment. Unlike monetized CBA, cost-effectiveness analysis does not suggest an optimal climate policy. For example, cost-effectiveness analysis may be used to determine how to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at lowest cost. However, the actual choice of stabilization target (e.g., 450 or 550 ppm carbon dioxide equivalent), is not "decided" in the analysis. The choice of selection criterion for decision analysis is subjective. The choice of criterion is made outside of the analysis (it is exogenous). One of the influences on this choice on this is attitude to risk. Risk aversion describes how willing or unwilling someone is to take risks. Evidence indicates that most, but not all, individuals prefer certain outcomes to uncertain ones. Risk-averse individuals prefer decision criteria that reduce the chance of the worst possible outcome, while risk-seeking individuals prefer decision criteria that maximize the chance of the best possible outcome. In terms of returns on investment, if society as a whole is risk-averse, we might be willing to accept some investments with negative expected returns, e.g., in mitigation. Such investments may help to reduce the possibility of future climate damages or the costs of adaptation. Paying for an international public good Some early studies suggested that a uniform carbon tax would be a fair and efficient way of reducing emissions.: 103–104  A carbon tax is a Pigouvian tax, and taxes fuels based on their carbon content.: 92  An alternative approach to having a Pigouvian tax is one based on property rights. A practical example of this would be a system of emissions trading, which is essentially a privatization of the atmosphere. Social cost of carbon Effects of economic growth on emissions Some have said that economic growth is a key driver of CO2 emissions.: 707  However later (in late 2022) others have said that economic growth no longer means higher emissions. As the economy expands, demand for energy and energy-intensive goods increases, pushing up CO2 emissions. On the other hand, economic growth may drive technological change and increase energy efficiency. Economic growth may be associated with specialization in certain economic sectors. If specialization is in energy-intensive sectors, specifically carbon energy sources, then there will be a strong link between economic growth and emissions growth. If specialization is in less energy-intensive sectors, e.g. the services sector, then there might be a weak link between economic growth and emissions growth. Much of the literature focuses on the "environmental Kuznets curve" (EKC) hypothesis, which posits that at early stages of development, pollution per capita and GDP per capita move in the same direction. Beyond a certain income level, emissions per capita will decrease as GDP per capita increase, thus generating an inverted-U shaped relationship between GDP per capita and pollution. However, the econometrics literature did not support either an optimistic interpretation of the EKC hypothesis – i.e., that the problem of emissions growth will solve itself – or a pessimistic interpretation – i.e., that economic growth is irrevocably linked to emissions growth. Instead, it was suggested that there was some degree of flexibility between economic growth and emissions growth. Global economic inequality A 2019 modelling study found climate change had contributed towards global economic inequality. Wealthy countries in colder regions had either felt little overall economic impact from climate change, or possibly benefited, whereas poor hotter countries very likely grew less than if global warming had not occurred. Part of this observation stems from the fact that greenhouse gas emissions come mainly from high-income countries, while low-income countries are affected by it negatively. So, high-income countries are producing significant amounts of emissions, but the impacts are unequally threatening low-income countries, who do not have access to the resources to recover from such impacts. This further deepens the inequalities within the poor and the rich, hindering sustainability efforts. Impacts of climate change could even push millions of people into poverty. Cost estimates for mitigation measures Challenges and debates There are a number of benefits of using aggregated assessments to measure economic impacts of climate change.: 954  They allow impacts to be directly compared between different regions and times. Impacts can be compared with other environmental problems and also with the costs of avoiding those impacts. A problem of aggregated analyses is that they often reduce different types of impacts into a small number of indicators. It can be argued that some impacts are not well-suited to this, e.g., the monetization of mortality and loss of species diversity. On the other hand, where there are monetary costs of avoiding impacts, it may not be possible to avoid monetary valuation of those impacts.: 364 Efficiency and equity No consensus exists on who should bear the burden of adaptation and mitigation costs.: 29  Several different arguments have been made over how to spread the costs and benefits of taxes or systems based on emissions trading. One approach considers the problem from the perspective of who benefits most from the public good. This approach is sensitive to the fact that different preferences exist between different income classes. The public good is viewed in a similar way as a private good, where those who use the public good must pay for it. Some people will benefit more from the public good than others, thus creating inequalities in the absence of benefit taxes. A difficulty with public goods is determining who exactly benefits from the public good, although some estimates of the distribution of the costs and benefits of global warming have been made – see above. Additionally, this approach does not provide guidance as to how the surplus of benefits from climate policy should be shared. A second approach has been suggested based on economics and the social welfare function. To calculate the social welfare function requires an aggregation of the impacts of climate change policies and climate change itself across all affected individuals. This calculation involves a number of complexities and controversial equity issues.: 460  For example, the monetization of certain impacts on human health. There is also controversy over the issue of benefits affecting one individual offsetting negative impacts on another. : 958  These issues to do with equity and aggregation cannot be fully resolved by economics.: 87 On a utilitarian basis, which has traditionally been used in welfare economics, an argument can be made for richer countries taking on most of the burdens of mitigation. However, another result is possible with a different modeling of impacts. If an approach is taken where the interests of poorer people have lower weighting, the result is that there is a much weaker argument in favour of mitigation action in rich countries. Valuing climate change impacts in poorer countries less than domestic climate change impacts (both in terms of policy and the impacts of climate change) would be consistent with observed spending in rich countries on foreign aid: 229 A third approach looks at the problem from the perspective of who has contributed most to the problem. Because the industrialized countries have contributed more than two-thirds of the stock of human-induced GHGs in the atmosphere, this approach suggests that they should bear the largest share of the costs. This stock of emissions has been described as an "environmental debt".: 167  In terms of efficiency, this view is not supported. This is because efficiency requires incentives to be forward-looking, and not retrospective.: 29  The question of historical responsibility is a matter of ethics. It has been suggested that developed countries could address the issue by making side-payments to developing countries.: 167 Insurance and markets Traditional insurance works by transferring risk to those better able or more willing to bear risk, and also by the pooling of risk.: 25  Since the risks of climate change are, to some extent, correlated, this reduces the effectiveness of pooling. However, there is reason to believe that different regions will be affected differently by climate change. This suggests that pooling might be effective. Since developing countries appear to be potentially most at risk from the effects of climate change, developed countries could provide insurance against these risks.Disease, rising seas, reduced crop yields, and other harms driven by climate change will likely have a major deleterious impact on the economy by 2050 unless the world sharply reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the near term, according to a number of studies, including a study by the Carbon Disclosure Project and a study by insurance giant Swiss Re. The Swiss Re assessment found that annual output by the world economy will be reduced by $23 trillion annually, unless greenhouse gas emissions are adequately mitigated. As a consequence, according to the Swiss Re study, climate change will impact how the insurance industry prices a variety of risks.Authors have pointed to several reasons why commercial insurance markets cannot adequately cover risks associated with climate change.: 72  For example, there is no international market where individuals or countries can insure themselves against losses from climate change or related climate change policies.Financial markets for risk There are several options for how insurance could be used in responding to climate change.: 72  One response could be to have binding agreements between countries. Countries suffering greater-than-average climate-related losses would be assisted by those suffering less-than-average losses. This would be a type of mutual insurance contract. These two approaches would allow for a more efficient distribution of climate change risks. They would also allow for different beliefs over future climate outcomes. For example, it has been suggested that these markets might provide an objective test of the honesty of a particular country's beliefs over climate change. Countries that honestly believe that climate change presents little risk would be more prone to hold securities against these risks. Incomplete estimates The Stern Review from 2006 for the British Government also predicted that world GDP would be reduced by several percent due to climate related costs. However, their calculations may omit ecological effects that are difficult to quantify economically (such as human deaths or loss of biodiversity) or whose economic consequences will manifest slowly. Therefore, their calculations may be an underestimate. Economic impacts of climate change Impacts by sector A number of sectors will be affected by climate change, including the livestock, forestry, and fisheries industries. Other sectors sensitive to climate change include the energy, insurance, tourism and recreation industries. The exact aggregate impacts of climate change on most of these sectors is still uncertain.: 790 Health and productivity In those studies that had included health impacts, those impacts contributed substantially to the total costs of climate change.: 415 In 2019 the International Labour Organization published a report titled: "Working on a warmer planet: The impact of heat stress on labour productivity and decent work", in which it claims that even if the rise in temperature will be limited to 1.5 degree, by the year 2030, Climate Change will cause losses in productivity reaching 2.2% of all the working hours, every year. This is equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs, or 2,400 billion dollars. The sector expected to be most affected is agriculture, which is projected to account for 60% of this loss. The construction sector is also projected to be severely impacted and accounts for 19% of projected losses. Other sectors that are most at risk are environmental goods and services, refuse collection, emergency, repair work, transport, tourism, sports and some forms of industrial work.It has been estimated that 3.5 million people die prematurely each year from air pollution from fossil fuels. The health benefits of meeting climate goals substantially outweigh the costs of action. The health benefits of phasing out fossil fuels measured in money (estimated by economists using the value of life for each country) are substantially more than the cost of achieving the 2 degree C goal of the Paris Agreement. Agriculture and infrastructure In the agriculture sector, there are substantial regional differences,: 938  Poorer countries are more exposed to climatic changes and extreme weather events because of the important role of agriculture and water resources in the economy.With respect to water supply, a literature survey in 2007 predicted that costs would very likely exceed benefits. Predicted costs included the potential need for infrastructure investments to protect against floods and droughts.: 191  It was estimated in 2007 that the economic costs of extreme weather events, at large national or large regional scale, would be unlikely to exceed more than a few percent of the total economy in the year of the event, except for possible abrupt changes.: 377  In smaller locations, particularly developing countries, it was estimated with high confidence that, in the year of the extreme event, short-run damages could amount to more than 25% GDP. Roads, airport runways, railway lines and pipelines, (including oil pipelines, sewers, water mains etc.) may require increased maintenance and renewal as they become subject to greater temperature variation and are exposed to weather that they were not designed for. Aggregate impacts Aggregating impacts adds up the total impact of climate change across sectors and/or regions (IPCC, 2007a:76). In producing aggregate impacts, there are a number of difficulties, such as predicting the ability of societies to adapt climate change, and estimating how future economic and social development will progress (Smith et al., 2001:941). It is also necessary for the researcher to make subjective value judgements over the importance of impacts occurring in different economic sectors, in different regions, and at different times. Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather events since the 1970s. Socio-economic factors have contributed to the observed trend of global losses, such as population growth and increased wealth. It is difficult to quantify the relative impact of socio-economic factors and climate change on the observed trend. The trend does, however, suggest increasing vulnerability of social systems to climate change.Some of the studies assessed by Schneider et al. (2007:790) predicted that gross world product could increase for 1–3 °C warming (relative to temperatures over the 1990–2000 period), largely because of aggregate benefits in the agricultural sector. In the view of Schneider et al. (2007), these estimates carried low confidence. Stern (2007) assessed climate change impacts using the basic economics of risk premiums (Yohe et al., 2007:821). He found that unmitigated climate change could result in a reduction in welfare equivalent to a persistent average fall in global per-capita consumption of at least 5%. The study by Stern (2007) has received both criticism and support from other economists (see Stern Review for more information). IPCC (2007a) concluded that "Aggregate estimates of costs mask significant differences in impacts across sectors, regions and populations and very likely underestimate damage costs because they cannot include many non-quantifiable impacts." Sensitivity analysis Sensitivity analysis allows assumptions to be changed in aggregate analysis to see what effect it has on results (Smith et al., 2001:943): Shape of the damage function: This relates impacts to the change in atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. There is little information on what the correct shape (e.g., linear or cubic) of this function is. Compared with a linear function, a cubic function shows relatively small damages for small increases in temperature, but more sharply increasing damages at greater temperatures. Rate of climate change: This is believed to be an important determinant of impacts, often because it affects the time available for adaptation. Discount rate and time horizon: Models used in aggregate studies suggest that the most severe impacts of climate change will occur in the future. Estimated impacts are therefore sensitive to the time horizon (how far a given study projects impacts into the future) and the discount rate (the value assigned to consumption in the future versus consumption today). Welfare criteria: Aggregate analysis is particularly sensitive to the weighting (i.e., relative importance) of impacts occurring in different regions and at different times. Studies by Fankhauser et al. (1997) and Azar (1999) found that greater concern over the distribution of impacts lead to more severe predictions of aggregate impacts. Uncertainty: Usually assessed through sensitivity analysis, but can also be viewed as a hedging problem. EMF (1997) found that deciding how to hedge depends on society's aversion to climate change risks, and the potential costs of insuring against these risks. Estimates In 2017, climate change contributed to extreme weather events causing at least $100 billion in damages. The impact can be seen over a longer time period, where "over the past 20 years, an estimated 500,000 people have died and US$3.5 trillion was lost as a result of extreme weather events". Increasing temperature will lead to accelerating economic losses.: 16  A 2017 survey of independent economists looking at the effects of climate change found that future damage estimates range "from 2% to 10% or more of global GDP per year."A United States government report in November 2018 raised the possibility of US GDP going down 10% as a result of the warming climate, including huge shifts in geography, demographics and technology.One 2018 study found that potential global economic gains if countries implement mitigation strategies to comply with the 2 °C target set at the Paris Agreement are in the vicinity of US$17 trillion per year up to 2100, compared to a very high emission scenario.Studies in 2019 suggest that economic damages due to climate change have been underestimated, and may be severe, with the probability of disastrous tail-risk events. Carbon-intensive industries and investors are expected to experience a significant increase in stranded assets with a potential ripple affect throughout the world economy.One 2020 study estimated economic losses due to climate change could be between 127 and 616 trillion dollars extra until 2100 with current commitments, compared to 1.5 °C or well below 2 °C compatible action action. Failure to implement current commitments raises economic losses to 150–792 trillion dollars until 2100. In this study, mitigation was achieved by countries optimising their own economy.In 2020 the World Economic Forum ranked climate change as the biggest risk to economy and society.In 2020 McKinsey & Company issued a report about the current and future impacts of climate change on the economy. The report says that trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of lives are at risk. Climate change should strongly influence the decisions of the business and governmental leaders. The report, for example, found that socioeconomic impacts can increase by 2–20 times compare to today level by 2050.The total economic impacts from climate change increase for higher temperature changes. For instance, total damages are estimated to be 90% less if global warming is limited to 1.5 °C compared to 3.66 °C, a warming level chosen to represent no mitigation. One study in 2018 found a 3.5% reduction in global GDP by the end of the century if warming is limited to 3 °C, excluding the potential effect of tipping points. Another study noted that the global economic impact is underestimated by a factor of two to eight, when tipping points are excluded from consideration. In an Oxford Economics study high emission scenario, a temperature rise of 2 degrees by the year 2050 would reduce global GDP by 2.5–7.5%. By the year 2100 in this case, the temperature would rise by 4 degrees, which could reduce the global GDP by 30% in the worst case.A 2021 study by the reinsurance company Swiss Re estimated global climate change is likely to reduce global economic output by 11–14%, or as much as $23 trillion annually by 2050, compared with output without climate change. According to this study, the economies of wealthy countries like the US would likely shrink by approximately 7%, while some developing nations would be devastated, losing around 20% or in some cases 40% of the their economic output. See also Carbon price Ecological economics Energy transition Environmental economics Just transition Notes References Sources External links Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at University of Leeds and London School of Economics. "The economics of climate change". 2020 lecture by William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University "From Climate Crisis to Real Prosperity". 2020 Reith lecture by Mark Carney, COP26 finance advisor

climate change in the caribbean

Climate change in the Caribbean poses major risks to the islands in the Caribbean. The main environmental changes expected to affect the Caribbean are a rise in sea level, stronger hurricanes, longer dry seasons and shorter wet seasons. As a result, climate change is expected to lead to changes in the economy, environment and population of the Caribbean. Temperature rise of 2 °C above preindustrial levels can increase the likelihood of extreme hurricane rainfall by four to five times in the Bahamas and three times in Cuba and Dominican Republic. Rise in sea level could impact coastal communities of the Caribbean if they are less than 3 metres (10 ft) above the sea. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it is expected that 29–32 million people may be affected by the sea level rise because they live below this threshold. The Bahamas is expected to be the most affected because at least 80% of the total land is below 10 meters elevation. Geography The Caribbean is an archipelago of islands between North and South America. These islands include Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Grenada, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Saba, Saint Croix, Saint Eustatius, Saint John, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Saint Thomas, Saint Vincent, Sint Maarten, the Bahamas, Tortola, and Trinidad and Tobago. The average annual temperature of the Caribbean is 27 °C (81 °F). Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes Extreme weather events An increase in air and sea surface temperature is predicted to promote the development of stronger tropical cyclone. Key factors that lead to the development of hurricanes are the warm temperatures of the air and sea surface. The higher temperatures increase the probability of the storm to become a hurricane. This provides the energy for the hurricane to intensify. In September 2017, the United States National Hurricane Center reported that the North Atlantic basin was highly active because four tropical storms formed and they all became hurricanes. They report a higher than average record on the number of tropical storms that developed into hurricanes this year. Two of these four hurricanes, Irma and Maria, hit the islands in the Caribbean. Once at the Caribbean, both Irma and Maria became Category 5 hurricanes. NASA reported that the temperature of the sea surface in the Caribbean when Irma became a hurricane was 30 °C (86 °F). The required temperature for the development of a major storm is suggested to be higher than 27 °C (80 °F). Hurricanes of category 5 have wind speeds greater than 253 kilometres per hour (157 mph). In addition to being strong, Hurricanes Irma and Maria also carried more rainfall than previous storms. The warmer the air temperature, the more water can be held by air leading to more precipitation. Multiple sources suggest that this increase in strengthening and precipitation in recent hurricanes is due to climate change. Hurricane Irma and Maria had a total of 510 millimetres (20 in) of rainfall. In Cuba, Hurricane Irma sustained precipitation was at 270 millimetres (10.8 in) per hour. In Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria had a sustained precipitation of 164 millimetres (6.44 in) per hour. We are seeing repeated and prolonged droughts, an increase in the number of very hot days, intense rainfall events causing repeated localized flooding, and rising sea levels that are consuming the beautiful beaches on which tourism in the region depends.Temperature rise of 2 °C above preindustrial levels can increase the likelihood of extreme hurricane rainfall by 4–5 times in the Bahamas, 3 times in Cuba and Dominican Republic. Even to the richest nations in the region, it takes 6 years to recover from such event. If the global temperature will rise only by 1.5 °C it will significantly reduce the risk. Ecosystems An increase in surface temperature has also been suggested to affect the coral reefs. In 2005 in the Caribbean, a rise in the sea surface temperature is thought to have caused widespread coral bleaching. In this study, they evaluate if this increase in sea surface temperature was due to natural climate variability or human activity. They concluded that it would be very unlikely that natural climate variability alone could account for this event. Their model suggests that this event would occur once every 1000 years if human activity is not taken into consideration in the model. Coral reefs are a huge part of the Caribbean ocean and an important aspect to their ecosystem. Coral bleaching is an effect of the change in climate because of the rise in water temperature in the seawater. The coral is also being used as a "natural resource" for the natives to create cement and aggregate because they aren't provided with the same materials as are other countries. Sea level rise Rising sea levels are expected to cause coastal erosion due to climate change. According to NASA, the sea level is expected to increase by 0.3–1 metre (1–4 ft) by 2050. By 2100, sea level in the Caribbean is expected to rise by 1.4 m.Rise in sea level could impact coastal communities of the Caribbean if they are less than 3 metres (10 ft) above the sea. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it is expected that 29–32 million people may be affected by the sea level rise because they live below this threshold. The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago are expected to be the most affected because at least 80% of the total land is below the sea level.Coastal losses range between US$940 million to $1.2 billion in the 22 largest coastal cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Main sources of income, such as tourism, will also be affected because many of the main touristic attractions such as beaches and hotels are near the coast. In 2004, a study reported that 12 million tourists had visited the Caribbean. Damage to the beaches can also negatively impact sea turtles that nest in the Caribbeans. The islands serve as nesting sites and habitats for sea turtles, which are all facing endangerment due to coastal erosion and changes in habitat at all stages of the life cycle. Sea level rise can impact where sea turtles nest and their nesting behavior. Impacts on people Multiple sources suggest that the Caribbean is in a particularly difficult position to address climate change. The Caribbean's long history of colonialism for the extraction of goods, such as sugar, has left them dependent on colonial entities. This has created a disadvantage to the Caribbean as they lack the ability to compete with the current world economy and be self-sufficient. Centuries of colonialism has generated a feedback loop of the dependence of the Caribbean's economy on global powers.The damages expected from climate change will weaken the economy of the Caribbean as it will target some of the major sources of income, like tourism. It has been estimated that 25% to 35% of the Caribbean's economy relies on tourism. Tourism could be significantly reduced if less tourists travel to the Caribbean because of an increase in the strength and likelihood of hurricanes in the next century. It is expected that hurricane costs are expected to range between US$350 million to $550 million or about 11% to 17% of the current GDP for hurricane damages annually. They expect that the Bahamas, Haiti, and Jamaica are the islands that will suffer the most from climate change. In addition, they suggest that agricultural and rural areas are among the sectors that will be most affected by hurricanes in the Caribbean. They estimate that damages to these areas could cost about US$3 million per year by 2050 and US$12 million – $15 million by 2100. Cultural impacts There are a variety of people that live on the Caribbean islands and they are heavily impacted on the effects of climate change. Culturally, the peoples of the Caribbean are a mix of Africa, Asian, European, and Indigenous peoples. Tourism is an important aspect in the Caribbeans economy. Without it economies will collapse and residents will struggle more than they already are. The impact of climate change on tourism will lead to unknown results and many difficulties for the islands. The coastal region, where tourist reside on their trips, is nothing like the original residence for the natives. Mitigation In 2019 week of climate action in Latin America and the Caribbean resulted in a declaration in which leaders says that they will act to reduce emissions in the sectors of transportation, energy, urbanism, industry, forest conservation and land use and "sent a message of solidarity with all the people of Brazil suffering the consequences of the rainforest fires in the Amazon region, underscoring that protecting the world's forests is a collective responsibility, that forests are vital for life and that they are a critical part of the solution to climate change". Adaptation In Mesoamerica, climate change is one of the main threats to rural Central American farmers, as the region is plagued with frequent droughts, cyclones and the El Niño- Southern-Oscillation. Although there is a wide variety of adaption strategies, these can vary dramatically from country to country. Many of the adjustments that have been made are primarily agricultural or related to water supply. Some of these adaptive strategies include restoration of degraded lands, rearrangement of land uses across territories, livelihood diversification, changes to sowing dates or water harvest, and even migration. The lack of available resources in Mesoamerica continues to pose as a barrier to more substantial adaptations, so the changes made are incremental.One of the solutions researchers have come to about reducing CO2 emissions is to raise the market price on carbon. By raising the market price of carbon, it provides signals to consumers to reduce consumption of carbon-intensive goods and services, signals producers to substitute away inputs that are carbon intensive, and market incentives to innovate and adopt new low carbon products and processes. It is important to look at means of reducing CO2 emissions to aid in the long term slowing of climate change since the true costs of climate change are unknown. This is due to the possible changes in technology in the future, existence of irreversibility in policies to cope with the problem, and presence of nonmarket goods and services that are vulnerable to climate change. Researchers say the number one attribute of climate change is lack of enforceable policies. By country and territory Grenada Haiti Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands See also Effects of climate change on island nations Impact of hurricanes on Caribbean history Hurricane Irma Caribbean Sea References Works cited "Puerto Rico's State of the Climate 2014-2021: Assessing Puerto Rico's Social-Ecological Vulnerabilities in a Changing Climate" (PDF). Puerto Rico Climate Change Council. 2022. Further reading U.S. Global Change Research Program (2018). "U.S. Caribbean". Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II (Report). Washington, DC, USA: U.S. Global Change Research Program. pp. 809–871. doi:10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH20.

climate change mitigation

Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change. This action either reduces emissions of greenhouse gases or removes those gases from the atmosphere.: 2239  The recent rise in global temperature is mostly due to emissions from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. There are various ways that mitigation can reduce emissions. These are transitioning to sustainable energy sources, conserving energy, and increasing efficiency. It is possible to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. This can be done by enlarging forests, restoring wetlands and using other natural and technical processes. The name for these processes is carbon sequestration.: 12  Governments and companies have pledged to reduce emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. These pledges are in line with international negotiations to limit warming. Solar energy and wind power have the greatest potential for mitigation at the lowest cost compared to a range of other options. The availability of sunshine and wind is variable. But it is possible to deal with this through energy storage and improved electrical grids. These include long-distance electricity transmission, demand management and diversification of renewables.: 1  It is possible to reduce emissions from infrastructure that directly burns fossil fuels, such as vehicles and heating appliances, by electrifying the infrastructure. If the electricity comes from renewable sources instead of fossil fuels this will reduce emissions. Using heat pumps and electric vehicles can improve energy efficiency. If industrial processes must create carbon dioxide, carbon capture and storage can reduce net emissions.Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture include methane as well as nitrous oxide. It is possible to cut emissions from agriculture by reducing food waste, switching to a more plant-based diet, by protecting ecosystems and by improving farming processes.: XXV  Changing energy sources, industrial processes and farming methods can reduce emissions. So can changes in demand, for instance in diets or the way we build and travel in cities. Climate change mitigation policies include: carbon pricing by carbon taxes and carbon emission trading, easing regulations for renewable energy deployment, reductions of fossil fuel subsidies, and divestment from fossil fuels, and subsidies for clean energy. Current policies are estimated to produce global warming of about 2.7 °C by 2100. This warming is significantly above the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 °C and preferably to 1.5 °C. Globally, limiting warming to 2 °C may result in higher economic benefits than economic costs. Definitions and scope Climate change mitigation aims to sustain ecosystems to maintain human civilisation. This requires drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions .: 1–64  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines mitigation (of climate change) as "a human intervention to reduce emissions or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases".: 2239 Some publications describe solar radiation management (SRM) as a climate mitigation technology. Unrelated to greenhouse gas mitigation, SRM would work by changing the way Earth receives solar radiation.: 14–56  Examples include reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface, reducing the optical thickness and lifetime of clouds, and changing the ability of the surface to reflect radiation. The IPCC describes SRM as a climate risk reduction strategy or supplementary option rather than a climate mitigation option.: 14–56 It is possible to approach various mitigation measures in parallel. This is because there is no single pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C.: 109  We can categorize such measures as follows: Sustainable energy and sustainable transport Energy conservation, including efficient energy use Sustainable agriculture and green industrial policy Enhancing carbon sinks and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), including carbon sequestrationThe IPCC defined carbon dioxide removal as "Anthropogenic activities removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products. It includes existing and potential anthropogenic enhancement of biological or geochemical CO2 sinks and direct air carbon dioxide capture and storage (DACCS), but excludes natural CO2 uptake not directly caused by human activities."The terminology in this area is still evolving. Experts sometimes use the term geoengineering or climate engineering in the scientific literature for both CDR or SRM, if the techniques are used at a global scale.: 6–11  IPCC reports no longer use the terms geoengineering or climate engineering. Emission trends and pledges Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect. This contributes to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. Human-caused emissions have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 50% over pre-industrial levels. Emissions in the 2010s averaged a record 56 billion tons (Gt) a year. In 2016, energy for electricity, heat and transport was responsible for 73.2% of GHG emissions. Direct industrial processes accounted for 5.2%, waste for 3.2% and agriculture, forestry and land use for 18.4%.Electricity generation and transport are major emitters. The largest single source is coal-fired power stations with 20% of greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation and other changes in land use also emit carbon dioxide and methane. The largest sources of anthropogenic methane emissions are agriculture, and gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. The largest agricultural methane source is livestock. Agricultural soils emit nitrous oxide, partly due to fertilizers. There is now a political solution to the problem of fluorinated gases from refrigerants. This is because many countries have ratified the Kigali Amendment.Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the dominant emitted greenhouse gas. Methane (CH4) emissions almost have the same short-term impact. Nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases (F-Gases) play a minor role. Livestock and manure produce 5.8% of all greenhouse gas emissions. But this depends on the time frame used to calculate the global warming potential of the respective gas.Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are measured in CO2 equivalents. Scientists determine their CO2 equivalents from their global warming potential (GWP). This depends on their lifetime in the atmosphere. There are widely used greenhouse gas accounting methods that convert volumes of methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases to carbon dioxide equivalents. Estimates largely depend on the ability of oceans and land sinks to absorb these gases. Short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) persist in the atmosphere for a period ranging from days to 15 years. Carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for millennia. Short-lived climate pollutants include methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), tropospheric ozone and black carbon. Scientists increasingly use satellites to locate and measure greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. Earlier, scientists largely relied on or calculated estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and governments' self-reported data. Needed emissions cuts The annual "Emissions Gap Report" by UNEP stated in 2022 that it was necessary to almost halve emissions. "To get on track for limiting global warming to 1.5°C, global annual GHG emissions must be reduced by 45 per cent compared with emissions projections under policies currently in place in just eight years, and they must continue to decline rapidly after 2030, to avoid exhausting the limited remaining atmospheric carbon budget.": xvi  The report commented that the world should focus on broad-based economy-wide transformations and not incremental change.: xvi In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Sixth Assessment Report on climate change. It warned that greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030 to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). Or in the words of Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres: "Main emitters must drastically cut emissions starting this year". Pledges Climate Action Tracker described the situation on 9 November 2021 as follows. The global temperature will rise by 2.7 °C by the end of the century with current policies and by 2.9 °C with nationally adopted policies. The temperature will rise by 2.4 °C if countries only implement the pledges for 2030. The rise would be 2.1 °C with the achievement of the long-term targets too. Full achievement of all announced targets would mean the rise in global temperature will peak at 1.9 °C and go down to 1.8 °C by the year 2100. Experts gather information about climate pledges in the Global Climate Action Portal - Nazca. The scientific community is checking their fulfilment.There has not been a definitive or detailed evaluation of most goals set for 2020. But it appears the world failed to meet most or all international goals set for that year.One update came during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. The group of researchers running the Climate Action Tracker looked at countries responsible for 85% of greenhouse gas emissions. It found that only four countries or political entities – the EU, UK, Chile and Costa Rica – have published a detailed official policy‑plan that describes the steps to realise 2030 mitigation targets. These four polities are responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.In 2021 the US and EU launched the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030. The UK, Argentina, Indonesia, Italy and Mexico joined the initiative. Ghana and Iraq signaled interest in joining. A White House summary of the meeting noted those countries represent six of the top 15 methane emitters globally. Israel also joined the initiative. Low-carbon energy The energy system includes the delivery and use of energy. It is the main emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2).: 6–6  Rapid and deep reductions in the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector are necessary to limit global warming to well below 2 °C.: 6–3  IPCC recommendations include reducing fossil fuel consumption, increasing production from low- and zero carbon energy sources, and increasing use of electricity and alternative energy carriers.: 6–3 Nearly all scenarios and strategies involve a major increase in the use of renewable energy in combination with increased energy efficiency measures.: xxiii  It will be necessary to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy six-fold from 0.25% annual growth in 2015 to 1.5% to keep global warming under 2 °C. The competitiveness of renewable energy is a key to a rapid deployment. In 2020, onshore wind and solar photovoltaics were the cheapest source for new bulk electricity generation in many regions. Renewables may have higher storage costs but non-renewables may have higher clean-up costs. A carbon price can increase the competitiveness of renewable energy. Solar and wind energy Wind and sun can provide large amounts of low-carbon energy at competitive production costs. The IPCC estimates that these two mitigation options have the largest potential to reduce emissions before 2030 at low cost.: 43  Solar photovoltaics (PV) has become the cheapest way to generate electricity in many regions of the world. The growth of photovoltaics has been close to exponential. It has about doubled every three years since the 1990s. A different technology is concentrated solar power (CSP). This uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight on to a receiver. With CSP, the energy can be stored for a few hours. This provides supply in the evening. Solar water heating doubled between 2010 and 2019.Regions in the higher northern and southern latitudes have the greatest potential for wind power. Offshore wind farms are more expensive. But offshore units deliver more energy per installed capacity with less fluctuations. In most regions, wind power generation is higher in the winter when PV output is low. For this reason, combinations of wind and solar power lead to better-balanced systems. Other renewables Other well-established renewable energy forms include hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal energy. Hydroelectricity is electricity generated by hydropower and plays a leading role in countries like Brazil, Norway and China. but there are geographical limits and environmental issues. Tidal power can be used in coastal regions. Bioenergy can provide energy for electricity, heat and transport. Bioenergy, in particular biogas, can provide dispatchable electricity generation. While burning plant-derived biomass releases CO2, the plants withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere while they grow. How we produce, transport and process a fuel has a significant impact on lifecycle emissions. Aviation is starting to use renewable biofuels. Geothermal power is electrical power generated from geothermal energy. Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in 26 countries. Geothermal heating is in use in 70 countries. Integrating variable renewable energy Wind and solar power production does not consistently match demand. To deliver reliable electricity from variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, electrical power systems must be flexible. Most electrical grids were constructed for non-intermittent energy sources such as coal-fired power plants. As we integrate larger amounts of solar and wind energy into the grid, we must change energy system to ensure that the supply of electricity matches demand.There are various ways to make the electricity system more flexible. In many places, wind and solar generation are complementary on a daily and a seasonal scale. There is more wind during the night and in winter when solar energy production is low. Linking different geographical regions through long-distance transmission lines also makes it possible to reduce variability. It is possible to shift energy demand in time. Energy demand management and the use of smart grids make it possible to match the times when variable energy production is highest. Sector coupling can provide further flexibility. This involves coupling the electricity sector to the heat and mobility sector via power-to-heat-systems and electric vehicles.Building overcapacity for wind and solar generation can help ensure sufficient electricity production even during poor weather. In optimal weather, it may be necessary to curtail energy generation if it is not possible to use or store excess electricity. Energy storage helps overcome barriers to intermittent renewable energy. The most commonly used and available storage method is pumped-storage hydroelectricity. This requires locations with large differences in height and access to water. Batteries are also in wide use. They typically store electricity for short periods. Batteries have low energy density. This and their cost makes them impractical for the large energy storage necessary to balance inter-seasonal variations in energy production. Some locations have implemented pumped hydro storage with capacity for multi-month usage. Nuclear power Nuclear power could complement renewables for electricity. On the other hand, environmental and security risks could outweigh the benefits.The construction of new nuclear reactors currently takes about 10 years. This is much longer than scaling up the deployment of wind and solar.: 335  And this timing gives rise to credit risks. However nuclear may be much cheaper in China. China is building a significant number of new power plants. As of 2019 the cost of extending nuclear power plant lifetimes is competitive with other electricity generation technologies. This includes new solar and wind projects. Replacing coal with natural gas Demand reduction Reducing demand for products and services that cause greenhouse gas emissions can help in mitigating climate change. One is to reduce demand by behavioural and cultural changes, for example by making changes in diet, especially the decision to reduce meat consumption, an effective action individuals take to fight climate change. Another is by reducing the demand by improving infrastructure, by building a good public transport network, for example. Lastly, changes in end-use technology can reduce energy demand. For instance a well-insulated house emits less than a poorly-insulated house.: 119 Mitigation options that reduce demand for products or services help people make personal choices to reduce their carbon footprint. This could be in their choice of transport or food.: 5–3  So these mitigation options have many social aspects that focus on demand reduction. We can call these demand-side mitigation actions. For example, people with high socio-economic status often cause more greenhouse gas emissions than those from a lower status. If they reduce their emissions and promote green policies, these people could become low-carbon lifestyle role models.: 5–4  However, there are many psychological variables that influence consumers. These include awareness and perceived risk. Government policies can support or hinder demand-side mitigation options. For example, public policy can promote circular economy concepts which would support climate change mitigation.: 5–6  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is linked to the sharing economy. There is a debate regarding the correlation of economic growth and emissions. It seems economic growth no longer necessarily means higher emissions. Energy conservation and efficiency Global primary energy demand exceeded 161,000 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2018. This refers to electricity, transport and heating including all losses. In transport and electricity production, fossil fuel usage has a low efficiency of less than 50%. Large amounts of heat in power plants and in motors of vehicles go to waste. The actual amount of energy consumed is significantly lower at 116,000 TWh.Energy conservation is the effort made to reduce the consumption of energy by using less of an energy service. One way is to use energy more efficiently. For instance we would use less energy than before to produce the same service. Another way is to reduce the amount of service used. An example of this would be to drive less. Energy conservation is at the top of the sustainable energy hierarchy. We can conserve energy by reducing wastage and losses. We can improve efficiency by upgrading technology, and improving operations and maintenance. Efficient energy use is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. We sometimes simply call it energy efficiency. Improved energy efficiency in buildings ("green buildings"), industrial processes and transportation could reduce the world's energy needs in 2050 by one third. This would help reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain thermal comfort. Improvements in energy efficiency are generally achieved by adopting a more efficient technology or production process. Another way is to use commonly accepted methods to reduce energy losses. Lifestyle changes Individual action on climate change can include personal choices in many areas. These include diet, travel, household energy use, consumption of goods and services, and family size. People who wish to reduce their carbon footprint can take high-impact actions such as avoiding frequent flying and petrol-fuelled cars, eating mainly a plant-based diet, having fewer children, using clothes and electrical products for longer, and electrifying homes. These approaches are more practical for people in high-income countries with high-consumption lifestyles. Naturally, it is more difficult for those with lower income statuses to make these changes. This is because choices like electric-powered cars may not be available. Excessive consumption is more to blame for climate change than population increase. High-consumption lifestyles have a greater environmental impact, with the richest 10% of people emitting about half the total lifestyle emissions. Dietary change Some scientists say that avoiding meat and dairy foods is the single biggest way an individual can reduce their environmental impact. The widespread adoption of a vegetarian diet could cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 63% by 2050. China introduced new dietary guidelines in 2016 which aim to cut meat consumption by 50% and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 Gt per year by 2030. Overall, food accounts for the largest share of consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions. It is responsible for nearly 20% of the global carbon footprint. Almost 15% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have been attributed to the livestock sector.A shift towards plant-based diets would help to mitigate climate change. In particular, reducing meat consumption would help to reduce methane emissions. If high-income nations switched to a plant-based diet, vast amounts of land used for animal agriculture could be allowed to return to their natural state. This in turn has the potential to sequester 100 billion tonnes of CO2 by the end of the century. A comprehensive analysis found that plant based diets reduce emissions, water pollution and land use significantly (by 75%), while reducing the destruction of wildlife and usage of water. Family size Population growth has resulted in higher greenhouse gas emissions in most regions, particularly Africa.: 6–11  However, economic growth has a bigger effect than population growth.: 6–622  Rising incomes, changes in consumption and dietary patterns, as well as population growth, cause pressure on land and other natural resources. This leads to more greenhouse gas emissions and fewer carbon sinks.: 117  Some scholars have argued that humane policies to slow population growth should be part of a broad climate response together with policies that end fossil fuel use and encourage sustainable consumption. Advances in female education and reproductive health, especially voluntary family planning, can contribute to reducing population growth.: 5–35 Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks An important mitigation measure is one the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report calls "preserving and enhancing carbon sinks". This refers to the management of Earth's natural carbon sinks in a way that preserves or increases their capability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and to store it durably. We call this carbon sequestration. In the context of climate change mitigation, the IPCC defines a sink as "Any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere".: 2249  Globally, the two most important carbon sinks are vegetation and the ocean.To enhance the ability of ecosystems to sequester carbon, changes are necessary in agriculture and forestry. Examples are preventing deforestation and restoring natural ecosystems by reforestation.: 266  Scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5 °C typically project the large-scale use of carbon dioxide removal methods over the 21st century.: 1068 : 17  There are concerns about over-reliance on these technologies, and their environmental impacts.: 17 : 34  But ecosystem restoration and reduced conversion are among the mitigation tools that can yield the most emissions reductions before 2030.: 43 Land-based mitigation options are referred to as "AFOLU mitigation options" in the 2022 IPCC report on mitigation. The abbreviation stands for "agriculture, forestry and other land use": 37  The report described the economic mitigation potential from relevant activities around forests and ecosystems as follows: "the conservation, improved management, and restoration of forests and other ecosystems (coastal wetlands, peatlands, savannas and grasslands)". A high mitigation potential is found for reducing deforestation in tropical regions. The economic potential of these activities has been estimated to be 4.2 to 7.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2 -eq) per year.: 37 Forests Conservation The Stern Review on the economics of climate change stated in 2007 that curbing deforestation was a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. About 95% of deforestation occurs in the tropics, where clearing of land for agriculture is one of the main causes. One forest conservation strategy is to transfer rights over land from public ownership to its indigenous inhabitants. Land concessions often go to powerful extractive companies. Conservation strategies that exclude and even evict humans, called fortress conservation, often lead to more exploitation of the land. This is because the native inhabitants turn to work for extractive companies to survive.Proforestation is promoting forests to capture their full ecological potential. This is a mitigation strategy as secondary forests that have regrown in abandoned farmland are found to have less biodiversity than the original old-growth forests. Original forests store 60% more carbon than these new forests. Strategies include rewilding and establishing wildlife corridors.Mitigation measures in forestry are slow. They often have trade-offs with food prices. And they can lead to spill-over effects on climate from indirect land use change. Additionally, the long-term success of forestry mitigation measures depends on careful consideration of their ecological impact and their integration into broader sustainable land use practices. Afforestation and reforestation Afforestation is the establishment of trees where there was previously no tree cover. Scenarios for new plantations covering up to 4000 million hectares (Mha) (6300 x 6300 km) suggest cumulative carbon storage of more than 900 GtC (2300 GtCO2) until 2100. But they are not a viable alternative to aggressive emissions reduction. This is because the plantations would need to be so large they would eliminate most natural ecosystems or reduce food production. One example is the Trillion Tree Campaign.Reforestation is the restocking of existing depleted forests or in places where there were recently forests. Reforestation could save at least 1 GtCO2 per year, at an estimated cost of $5–15 per tonne of carbon dioxide (tCO2). Restoring all degraded forests all over the world could capture about 205 GtC (750 GtCO2). With increased intensive agriculture and urbanization, there is an increase in the amount of abandoned farmland. By some estimates, for every acre of original old-growth forest cut down, more than 50 acres of new secondary forests are growing. In some countries, promoting regrowth on abandoned farmland could offset years of emissions.Planting new trees can be expensive and a risky investment. For example, about 80 percent of planted trees in the Sahel die within two years. Reforestation has higher carbon storage potential than afforestation. In mangroves reforestation is predicted to provide 60% more carbon uptake per hectare in the 40 years after planting. Estuarine and coastal wetland ecosystems could see a 4.3-5.1% increase in annual CO2 uptake by reforesting available mangrove areas. Even long-deforested areas still contain an "underground forest" of living roots and tree stumps. Helping native species sprout naturally is cheaper than planting new trees and they are more likely to survive. This could include pruning and coppicing to accelerate growth. This also provides woodfuel, which is otherwise a major source of deforestation. Such practices, called farmer-managed natural regeneration, are centuries old but the biggest obstacle towards implementation is ownership of the trees by the state. The state often sells timber rights to businesses which leads to locals uprooting seedlings because they see them as a liability. Legal aid for locals and changes to property law such as in Mali and Niger have led to significant changes. Scientists describe them as the largest positive environmental transformation in Africa. It is possible to discern from space the border between Niger and the more barren land in Nigeria, where the law has not changed. Soils There are many measures to increase soil carbon. This makes it complex and hard to measure and account for. One advantage is that there are fewer trade-offs for these measures than for BECCS or afforestation, for example.Globally, protecting healthy soils and restoring the soil carbon sponge could remove 7.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually. This is more than the annual emissions of the US. Trees capture CO2 while growing above ground and exuding larger amounts of carbon below ground. Trees contribute to the building of a soil carbon sponge. Carbon formed above ground is released as CO2 immediately when wood is burned. If dead wood remains untouched, only some of the carbon returns to the atmosphere as decomposition proceeds.Methods that enhance carbon sequestration in soil include no-till farming, residue mulching and crop rotation. Organic farming makes more use of these techniques than conventional farming does. Because only 5% of US farmland currently uses no-till and residue mulching, there is a large potential for carbon sequestration.Farming can deplete soil carbon and render soil incapable of supporting life. However, conservation farming can protect carbon in soils, and repair damage over time. The farming practice of cover crops is a form of climate-smart agriculture. Scientists have described the best management practices for European soils to increase soil organic carbon. These are conversion of arable land to grassland, straw incorporation, reduced tillage, straw incorporation combined with reduced tillage, ley cropping system and cover crops.Regenerative agriculture includes conservation tillage, diversity, rotation and cover crops. It also includes minimizing physical disturbance and supporting carbon sequestration in soils. It has other benefits like improving the state of the soil and consequently yields.Another mitigation option is the production of biochar and its storage in soils This is the solid material that remains after the pyrolysis of biomass. Biochar production releases half of the carbon from the biomass—either released into the atmosphere or captured with CCS—and retains the other half in the stable biochar. It can endure in soil for thousands of years. Biochar may increase the soil fertility of acidic soils and increase agricultural productivity. During production of biochar, heat is released which may be used as bioenergy. Wetlands Wetland restoration is an important mitigation measure. It has moderate to great mitigation potential on a limited land area with low trade-offs and costs. Wetlands perform two important functions in relation to climate change. They can sequester carbon, converting carbon dioxide to solid plant material through photosynthesis. They also store and regulate water. Wetlands store about 45 million tonnes of carbon per year globally.Some wetlands are a significant source of methane emissions. Some also emit nitrous oxide. Peatland globally covers just 3% of the land's surface. But it stores up to 550 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon. This represents 42% of all soil carbon and exceeds the carbon stored in all other vegetation types, including the world's forests. The threat to peatlands includes draining the areas for agriculture. Another threat is cutting down trees for lumber, as the trees help hold and fix the peatland. Additionally, peat is often sold for compost. It is possible to restore degraded peatlands by blocking drainage channels in the peatland, and allowing natural vegetation to recover.Mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses make up the majority of the ocean's vegetated habitats. They only equal 0.05% of the plant biomass on land. But they store carbon 40 times faster than tropical forests. Bottom trawling, dredging for coastal development and fertilizer runoff have damaged coastal habitats. Notably, 85% of oyster reefs globally have been removed in the last two centuries. Oyster reefs clean the water and help other species thrive. This increases biomass in that area. In addition, oyster reefs mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing the force of waves from hurricanes. They also reduce the erosion from rising sea levels. Restoration of coastal wetlands is thought to be more cost-effective than restoration of inland wetlands. Deep ocean These options focus on the carbon we can store in ocean reservoirs. They include ocean fertilization, ocean alkalinity enhancement or enhanced weathering.: 12–36  The IPCC found in 2022 ocean-based mitigation options currently have only limited deployment potential. But it assessed that their future mitigation potential is large.: 12–4  It found that in total, ocean-based methods could remove 1–100 Gt of CO2 per year.: TS-94  Their costs are in the order of 40–500 USD per tonne of CO2. Most of these options could also help to reduce ocean acidification. This is the drop in pH value caused by increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations.Blue carbon management is another type of ocean-based biological carbon dioxide removal (CDR). It can involve land-based as well as ocean-based measures.: 12–51  : 764  The term usually refers to the role that tidal marshes, mangroves and seagrasses can play in carbon sequestration.: 2220  Some of these efforts can also take place in deep ocean waters. This is where the vast majority of ocean carbon is held. These ecosystems can contribute to climate change mitigation and also to ecosystem-based adaptation. Conversely, when blue carbon ecosystems are degraded or lost they release carbon back to the atmosphere.: 2220  There is increasing interest in developing blue carbon potential. Scientists have found that in some cases these types of ecosystems remove far more carbon per area than terrestrial forests. However, the long-term effectiveness of blue carbon as a carbon dioxide removal solution remains under discussion. Enhanced weathering Enhanced weathering could remove 2–4 Gt of CO2 per year. This process aims to accelerate natural weathering by spreading finely ground silicate rock, such as basalt, onto surfaces. This speeds up chemical reactions between rocks, water, and air. It removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, permanently storing it in solid carbonate minerals or ocean alkalinity. Cost estimates are in the 50-200 USD per tonne range of CO2.: TS-94 Other methods to capture and store CO2 In addition to traditional land-based methods to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, other technologies are under development. These could reduce CO2 emissions and lower existing atmospheric CO2 levels. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a method to mitigate climate change by capturing CO2 from large point sources, such as cement factories or biomass power plants. It then stores it away safely instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. The IPCC estimates that the costs of halting global warming would double without CCS.Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) expands on the potential of CCS and aims to lower atmospheric CO2 levels. This process uses biomass grown for bioenergy. The biomass yields energy in useful forms such as electricity, heat, biofuels, etc. through consumption of the biomass via combustion, fermentation, or pyrolysis. The process captures the CO2 that was extracted from the atmosphere when it grew. It then stores it underground or via land application as biochar. This effectively removes it from the atmosphere. This makes BECCS a negative emissions technology (NET).Scientists estimated the potential range of negative emissions from BECCS in 2018 as 0-22 Gt per year. As of 2022, BECCS was capturing approximately 2 million tonnes per year of CO2 annually. The cost and availability of biomass limits wide deployment of BECCS.: 10  BECCS currently forms a big part of achieving climate targets beyond 2050 in modelling, such as by the Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) associated with the IPCC process. But many scientists are sceptical due to the risk of loss of biodiversity.Direct air capture is a process of capturing CO2 directly from the ambient air. This is in contrast to CCS which captures carbon from point sources. It generates a concentrated stream of CO2 for sequestration, utilization or production of carbon-neutral fuel and windgas. Artificial processes vary, and there are concerns about the long-term effects of some of these processes. Mitigation by sector Buildings The building sector accounts for 23% of global energy-related CO2 emissions.: 141  About half of the energy is used for space and water heating. Building insulation can reduce the primary energy demand significantly. Heat pump loads may also provide a flexible resource that can participate in demand response to integrate variable renewable resources into the grid. Solar water heating uses thermal energy directly. Sufficiency measures include moving to smaller houses when the needs of households change, mixed use of spaces and the collective use of devices.: 71  We can construct new buildings using passive solar building design, low-energy building, or zero-energy building techniques. In addition, it is possible to design buildings that are more energy-efficient to cool by using lighter-coloured, more reflective materials in the development of urban areas.Heat pumps efficiently heat buildings, and cool them by air conditioning. A modern heat pump typically transports around three to five times more thermal energy than electrical energy consumed. The amount depends on the coefficient of performance and the outside temperature.Refrigeration and air conditioning account for about 10% of global CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuel-based energy production and the use of fluorinated gases. Alternative cooling systems, such as passive cooling building design and passive daytime radiative cooling surfaces, can reduce air conditioning use. Suburbs and cities in hot and arid climates can significantly reduce energy consumption from cooling with daytime radiative cooling.Energy consumption for cooling is likely to rise significantly due to increasing heat and availability of devices in poorer countries. Of the 2.8 billion people living in the hottest parts of the world, only 8% currently have air conditioners, compared with 90% of people in the US and Japan. By combining energy efficiency improvements with the transition away from super-polluting refrigerants, the world could avoid cumulative greenhouse gas emissions of up to 210–460 GtCO2-eq over the next four decades. A shift to renewable energy in the cooling sector comes with two advantages. Solar energy production with mid-day peaks corresponds with the load required for cooling. Additionally, cooling has a large potential for load management in the electric grid. Transport Transportation accounts for 15% of emissions worldwide. Increasing the use of public transport, low-carbon freight transport and cycling are important components of transport decarbonization.Electric vehicles and environmentally friendly rail help to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. In most cases, electric trains are more efficient than air transport and truck transport. Other efficiency means include improved public transport, smart mobility, carsharing and electric hybrids. Fossil-fuel for passenger cars can be included in emissions trading. Furthermore, moving away from a car-dominated transport system towards low-carbon advanced public transport system is important. Heavyweight, large personal vehicles (such as cars) require a lot of energy to move and take up much urban space. Several alternatives modes of transport are available to replace these. The European Union has made smart mobility part of its European Green Deal. In smart cities, smart mobility is also important.The World Bank is helping lower income countries buy electric buses. Their purchase price is higher than diesel buses. But lower running costs and health improvements due to cleaner air can offset this higher price.Between one quarter and three quarters of cars on the road by 2050 are forecast to be electric vehicles. Hydrogen may be a solution for long-distance heavy freight trucks, if batteries alone are too heavy. Shipping In the shipping industry, the use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a marine bunker fuel is driven by emissions regulations. Ship operators must switch from heavy fuel oil to more expensive oil-based fuels, implement costly flue gas treatment technologies or switch to LNG engines. Methane slip, when gas leaks unburned through the engine, lowers the advantages of LNG. Maersk, the world's biggest container shipping line and vessel operator, warns of stranded assets when investing in transitional fuels like LNG. The company lists green ammonia as one of the preferred fuel types of the future. It has announced the first carbon-neutral vessel on the water by 2023, running on carbon-neutral methanol. Cruise operators are trialling partially hydrogen-powered ships.Hybrid and all electric ferries are suitable for short distances. Norway's goal is an all electric fleet by 2025. Air transport Jet airliners contribute to climate change by emitting carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, contrails and particulates. Their radiative forcing is estimated at 1.3–1.4 that of CO2 alone, excluding induced cirrus cloud. In 2018, global commercial operations generated 2.4% of all CO2 emissions.The aviation industry has become more fuel efficient. But overall emissions have risen as the volume of air travel has increased. By 2020, aviation emissions were 70% higher than in 2005 and they could grow by 300% by 2050.It is possible to reduce aviation's environmental footprint by better fuel economy in aircraft. Optimising flight routes to lower non-CO2 effects on climate from nitrogen oxides, particulates or contrails can also help. Aviation biofuel, carbon emission trading and carbon offsetting, part of the 191 nation ICAO's Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), can lower CO2 emissions. Short-haul flight bans, train connections, personal choices and taxation on flights can lead to fewer flights. Hybrid electric aircraft and electric aircraft or hydrogen-powered aircraft may replace fossil fuel-powered aircraft. Experts expect emissions from aviation to rise in most projections, at least until 2040. They currently amount to 180 Mt of CO2 or 11% of transport emissions. Aviation biofuel and hydrogen can only cover a small proportion of flights in the coming years. Experts expect hybrid-driven aircraft to start commercial regional scheduled flights after 2030. Battery-powered aircraft are likely to enter the market after 2035. Under CORSIA, flight operators can purchase carbon offsets to cover their emissions above 2019 levels. CORSIA will be compulsory from 2027. Agriculture, forestry and land use Almost 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the agriculture and forestry sector. Mitigation measures in the food system can be divided into four categories. These are demand-side changes, ecosystem protections, mitigation on farms, and mitigation in supply chains. On the demand side, limiting food waste is an effective way to reduce food emissions. Changes to a diet less reliant on animal products such as plant-based diets are also effective.: XXV With 21% of global methane emissions, cattle are a major driver of global warming.: 6  When rainforests are cut and the land is converted for grazing, the impact is even higher. In Brazil, producing 1 kg of beef can result in the emission of up to 335 kg CO2-eq. Other livestock, manure management and rice cultivation also emit greenhouse gases, in addition to fossil fuel combustion in agriculture. Important mitigation options for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock include genetic selection, introduction of methanotrophic bacteria into the rumen, vaccines, feeds, diet modification and grazing management. Other options are diet changes towards ruminant-free alternatives, such as milk substitutes and meat analogues. Non-ruminant livestock, such as poultry, emit far fewer GHGs.It is possible to cut methane emissions in rice cultivation by improved water management, combining dry seeding and one drawdown, or executing a sequence of wetting and drying. This results in emission reductions of up to 90% compared to full flooding and even increased yields. Industry Industry is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases when direct and indirect emissions are included. Electrification can reduce emissions from industry. Green hydrogen can play a major role in energy-intensive industries for which electricity is not an option. Further mitigation options involve the steel and cement industry, which can switch to a less polluting production process. Products can be made with less material to reduce emission-intensity and industrial processes can be made more efficient. Finally, circular economy measures reduce the need for new materials. This also saves on emissions that would have been released from the mining of collecting of those materials.: 43 The decarbonisation of cement production requires new technologies, and therefore investment in innovation. Bioconcrete is one possibility to reduce emissions. But no technology for mitigation is yet mature. So CCS will be necessary at least in the short-term. Blast furnaces could be replaced by hydrogen direct reduced iron and electric arc furnaces.Coal, gas and oil production often come with significant methane leakage. In the early 2020s some governments recognized the scale of the problem and introduced regulations. Methane leaks at oil and gas wells and processing plants are cost-effective to fix in countries which can easily trade gas internationally. There are leaks in countries where gas is cheap; such as Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan. Nearly all this can be stopped by replacing old components and preventing routine flaring. Coalbed methane may continue leaking even after the mine has been closed. But it can be captured by drainage and/or ventilation systems. Fossil fuel firms do not always have financial incentives to tackle methane leakage. Co-benefits Health and well-being The health benefits from climate change mitigation are significant. Potential measures can not only mitigate future health impacts from climate change but also improve health directly. Climate change mitigation is interconnected with various health co-benefits, such as those from reduced air pollution. Air pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion is both a major driver of global warming and the cause of a large number of annual deaths. Some estimates are as high as 8.7 million excess deaths during 2018. Mitigation policies can also promote healthier diets such as less red meat, more active lifestyles, and increased exposure to green urban spaces.: 26  Access to urban green spaces provides benefits to mental health as well.: 18  The increased use of green and blue infrastructure can reduce the urban heat island effect. This reduces heat stress on people.: TS-66  Studies suggest that efforts to reduce consumption of goods and services have largely beneficial effects on 18 constituents of well-being.Future sustainable pathways scenarios may result in an annual reduction of 1.18 million air pollution-related deaths, 5.86 million diet-related deaths, and 1.15 million deaths due to physical inactivity, across nine countries by 2040. These benefits were attributable to the mitigation of direct greenhouse gas emissions and the accompanying actions that reduce exposure to harmful pollutants, as well as improved diets and safe physical activity. Globally the cost of limiting warming to 2 °C is less than the value of the extra years of life due to cleaner air - and in India and China much less.In the transportation sector mitigation strategies could enable more equitable access to transportation services and reduce congestion.: SPM-32 Addressing inequality can assist with climate change mitigation efforts.: 38  Placing health as a key focus of the Nationally Determined Contributions could present an opportunity to increase ambition and realise health co-benefits. Climate change adaptation Some mitigation measures have co-benefits in the area of climate change adaptation.: 8–63  This is for example the case for many nature-based solutions.: 4–94 : 6  Examples in the urban context include urban green and blue infrastructure which provide mitigation as well as adaptation benefits. This can be in the form of urban forests and street trees, green roofs and walls, urban agriculture and so forth. The mitigation is achieved through the conservation and expansion of carbon sinks and reduced energy use of buildings. Adaptation benefits come for example through reduced heat stress and flooding risk.: 8–64 Costs and funding Several factors affect mitigation cost estimates. One is the baseline. This is a reference scenario that the alternative mitigation scenario is compared with. Others are the way costs are modelled, and assumptions about future government policy.: 622  Cost estimates for mitigation for specific regions depend on the quantity of emissions allowed for that region in future, as well as the timing of interventions.: 90 Mitigation costs will vary according to how and when emissions are cut. Early, well-planned action will minimize the costs. Globally, the benefits of keeping warming under 2 °C exceed the costs.Economists estimate the cost of climate change mitigation at between 1% and 2% of GDP. Whereas this is a large sum, it is still far less than the subsidies governments provide to the ailing fossil fuel industry. The International Monetary Fund estimated this at more than $5 trillion per year.The economic repercussions of mitigation vary widely across regions and households, depending on policy design and level of international cooperation. Delayed global cooperation increases policy costs across regions, especially in those that are relatively carbon intensive at present. Pathways with uniform carbon values show higher mitigation costs in more carbon-intensive regions, in fossil-fuels exporting regions and in poorer regions. Aggregate quantifications expressed in GDP or monetary terms undervalue the economic effects on households in poorer countries. The actual effects on welfare and well-being are comparatively larger.Cost–benefit analysis may be unsuitable for analysing climate change mitigation as a whole. But it is still useful for analysing the difference between a 1.5 °C target and 2 °C. One way of estimating the cost of reducing emissions is by considering the likely costs of potential technological and output changes. Policymakers can compare the marginal abatement costs of different methods to assess the cost and amount of possible abatement over time. The marginal abatement costs of the various measures will differ by country, by sector, and over time. Avoided costs of climate change effects It is possible to avoid some of the costs of the effects of climate change by limiting climate change. According to the Stern Review, inaction can be as high as the equivalent of losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. This can be up to 20% of GDP or more when including a wider range of risks and impacts. But mitigating climate change will only cost about 2% of GDP. Also it may not be a good idea from a financial perspective to delay significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.Mitigation solutions are often evaluated in terms of costs and greenhouse gas reduction potentials. This fails to take into account the direct effects on human well-being. Distributing emissions abatement costs Mitigation at the speed and scale required to limit warming to 2 °C or below implies deep economic and structural changes. These raise multiple types of distributional concerns across regions, income classes and sectors.There have been different proposals on how to allocate responsibility for cutting emissions.: 103  These include egalitarianism, basic needs according to a minimum level of consumption, proportionality and the polluter-pays principle. A specific proposal is "equal per capita entitlements".: 106  This approach has two categories. In the first category, emissions are allocated according to national population. In the second category, emissions are allocated in a way that attempts to account for historical or cumulative emissions. Funding In order to reconcile economic development with mitigating carbon emissions, developing countries need particular support. This would be both financial and technical. The IPCC found that accelerated support would also tackle inequities in financial and economic vulnerability to climate change. One way to achieve this is the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Feasibility and potential of and risk in mitigation To achieve a drastic reduction in emissions and a significant increase in carbon uptake from the atmosphere, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2022, recommended a considerable number of mitigation options whose feasibility and potential are yet to be examined in each context. The IPCC endorsed an approach to assess the ʽfeasibilityʼ of mitigation options. The approach suggests that the assessment of options can be done by taking into consideration six feasibility dimensions, namely geophysical, environmental-ecological, technological, economic, socio-cultural, and institutional dimensions. The approach has been developed with a special focus on identifying barriers to and enablers of the deployment of mitigation actions and thus assessing their feasibility (IPCC, 2022). For the IPCC a mitigation option can fail to achieve its intended outcome, or create an adverse outcome elsewhere. This means uncertainty about mitigation outcomes or risk. Despite these developments, in specifying mitigation actions, it has been suggested further describing uncertainty and exhausting knowledge about the context of the option. The systematic evaluation of assumptions is also recommended Policies Municipal policies and urban planning Cities have a big potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They emitted 28 GtCO2-eq in 2020 of combined CO2 and CH4 emissions.: TS-61  This was from producing and consuming goods and services.: TS-61  Climate-smart urban planning aims to reduce sprawl to reduce the distance travelled. This lowers emissions from transportation. It supports mixed use of space and transit. Walking, cycling and sharing vehicles can reduce urban emissions. Urban forestry, lakes and other blue and green infrastructure can reduce emissions directly and indirectly by reducing energy demand for cooling.: TS-66  Personal cars are extremely inefficient at moving passengers. Public transport and bicycles are many times more efficient in an urban context. Switching from cars by improving walkability and cycling infrastructure is either free or beneficial to a country's economy as a whole. Methane emissions from municipal solid waste can be reduced by segregation, composting, and recycling. National policies Climate change mitigation policies can have a large and complex impact on the socio-economic status of individuals and countries This can be both positive and negative. It is important to design policies well and make them inclusive. Otherwise climate change mitigation measures can impose higher financial costs on poor households.The most effective and economically efficient approach of achieving lower emissions in the energy sector is to apply a combination of measures. These include market-based instruments such as taxes and permits, standards, and information policies.: 422 Types of national policies that would support climate change mitigation include: Regulatory standards: These set technology or performance standards. They can be effective in addressing the market failure of informational barriers.: 412  If the costs of regulation are less than the benefits of addressing the market failure, standards can result in net benefits. One example is fuel-efficiency standards for cars. Market-based instruments such as emission taxes and charges. An emissions tax requires domestic emitters to pay a fixed fee or tax for every tonne of CO2-eq GHG emissions they release into the atmosphere.: 4123  If every emitter were to face the same level of tax, emitters would choose the lowest cost way of achieving emission reductions first. In the real world, however, markets are not perfect. This means that an emissions tax may deviate from this ideal. Distributional and equity considerations usually result in differential tax rates for different sources. Tradable permits: A permit system can limit emissions.: 415  A number of permits are distributed equal to the emission limit. Each liable entity must hold the number of permits equal to its actual emissions. A tradable permit system can be cost-effective if costs are not excessive. There must also be no significant imperfections in the permit market and markets relating to emitting activities. Voluntary agreements: These are agreements between governments, often in the form of public agencies, and industry.: 417  Agreements may relate to general issues, such as research and development. In other cases they may involve quantitative targets. There is, however, the risk that participants in the agreement will free ride. They can do this by not complying with the agreement or by benefitting from the agreement while bearing no cost. Informational instruments: Poor information is a barrier to improving energy efficiency or reducing emissions.: 419  Examples of policies in this area include increasing public awareness of energy saving with home heating and insulation or emissions from meat and dairy products. However some say that it is politically toxic for a politician to ask people to eat less meat. Research and development policies: Some areas, such as soil, may differ by country and so need national research. Technologies may need financial support to reach commercial scale, for example floating wind power. Low carbon power: Governments may relax planning regulations on solar power and onshore wind. They may also partly finance technologies considered risky by the private sector, such as nuclear. Demand-side management: This aims to reduce energy demand, e.g. through energy audits, labelling, and regulation.: 422  Adding or removing subsidies: A subsidy for greenhouse gas emissions reductions pays entities a specific amount per tonne of CO2-eq for every tonne of greenhouse gas reduced or sequestered.: 421  Subsidies are generally less efficient than taxes. But distributional and competitiveness issues sometimes result when energy/emission taxes are coupled with subsidies or tax exceptions. Creating subsidies and financial incentives. One example is energy subsidies to support clean generation which is not yet commercially viable such as tidal power. Phasing-out of unhelpful subsidies. Many countries provide subsidies for activities that affect emissions. Examples are subsidies in the agriculture and energy sectors, and indirect subsidies for transport. A Green Marshall Plan. This calls for global central bank money creation to fund green infrastructure. Market liberalization: Energy markets have been restructured in several countries and regions. These policies mainly aim to increase competition in the market. But they can also have a significant impact on emissions.: 409–410 Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies Carbon pricing Imposing additional costs on greenhouse gas emissions can make fossil fuels less competitive and accelerate investments into low-carbon sources of energy. A growing number of countries raise a fixed carbon tax or participate in dynamic carbon emission trading (ETS) systems. In 2021, more than 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions were covered by a carbon price. This was a big increase from earlier due to the introduction of the Chinese national carbon trading scheme.: 23 Trading schemes offer the possibility to limit emission allowances to certain reduction targets. However, an oversupply of allowances keeps most ETS at low price levels around $10 with a low impact. This includes the Chinese ETS which started with $7/tCO2 in 2021. One exception is the European Union Emission Trading Scheme where prices began to rise in 2018. They reached about €80/tCO2 in 2022. This results in additional costs of about €0.04/KWh for coal and €0.02/KWh for gas combustion for electricity, depending on the emission intensity.Industries which have high energy requirements and high emissions often pay only very low energy taxes, or even none at all.: 11–80 Methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction are occasionally taxed. But methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture are typically not subject to tax. International agreements Almost all countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.Although not designed for this purpose, the Montreal Protocol has benefited climate change mitigation efforts. The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty that has successfully reduced emissions of ozone-depleting substances such as CFCs. These are also greenhouse gases. Paris Agreement History Historically efforts to deal with climate change have taken place at a multinational level. They involve attempts to reach a consensus decision at the United Nations, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is the dominant approach historically of engaging as many international governments as possible in taking action on a worldwide public issue. The Montreal Protocol in 1987 is a precedent that this approach can work. But some critics say the top-down framework of only utilizing the UNFCCC consensus approach is ineffective. They put forward counter-proposals of bottom-up governance. At this same time this would lessen the emphasis on the UNFCCC.The Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC adopted in 1997 set out legally binding emission reduction commitments for the "Annex 1" countries.: 817  The Protocol defined three international policy instruments ("Flexibility Mechanisms") which could be used by the Annex 1 countries to meet their emission reduction commitments. According to Bashmakov, use of these instruments could significantly reduce the costs for Annex 1 countries in meeting their emission reduction commitments.: 402 The Paris Agreement reached in 2015 succeeded the Kyoto Protocol which expired in 2020. Countries that ratified the Kyoto protocol committed to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in carbon emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. In 2015, the UNFCCC's "structured expert dialogue" came to the conclusion that, "in some regions and vulnerable ecosystems, high risks are projected even for warming above 1.5 °C". Together with the strong diplomatic voice of the poorest countries and the island nations in the Pacific, this expert finding was the driving force leading to the decision of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference to lay down this 1.5 °C long-term target on top of the existing 2 °C goal. Society and culture Commitments to divest More than 1000 organizations with investments worth US$8 trillion have made commitments to fossil fuel divestment. Socially responsible investing funds allow investors to invest in funds that meet high environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards. Barriers There are individual, institutional and market barriers to achieving climate change mitigation.: 5–71  They differ for all the different mitigation options, regions and societies. Difficulties with accounting for carbon dioxide removal can act as economic barriers. This would apply to BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage).: 6–42  The strategies that companies follow can act as a barrier. But they can also accelerate decarbonisation.: 5–84 In order to decarbonize societies the state needs to play a predominant role. This is because it requires a massive coordination effort.: 213  This strong government role can only work well if there is social cohesion, political stability and trust.: 213 For land-based mitigation options, finance is a major barrier. Other barriers are cultural values, governance, accountability and institutional capacity.: 7–5 Developing countries face further barriers to mitigation. The cost of capital increased in the early 2020s. A lack of available capital and finance is common in developing countries. Together with the absence of regulatory standards, this barrier supports the proliferation of inefficient equipment. There are also financial and capacity barrier in many of these countries.: 97 One study estimates that only 0.12% of all funding for climate-related research goes on the social science of climate change mitigation. Vastly more funding goes on natural science studies of climate change. Considerable sums also go on studies of the impact of climate change and adaptation to it. Risks Mitigation measures can also have negative side effects and risks.: TS-133  In agriculture and forestry, mitigation measures can affect biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.: TS-87  In renewable energy, mining for metals and minerals can increase threats to conservation areas. There is some research into ways to recycle solar panels and electronic waste. This would create a source for materials so there is no need to mine them.Scholars have found that discussions about risks and negative side-effects of mitigation measures can lead to deadlock or the feeling that there are insuperable barriers to taking action. A qualitative investigation of extreme weather events in a district of Sweden 1867-8 shows that public/ state incentives can mitigate starvation risk in the future. Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic led some governments to shift their focus away from climate action, at least temporarily. This obstacle to environmental policy efforts may have contributed to slowed investment in green energy technologies. The economic slowdown resulting from COVID-19 added to this effect.In 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4% or 2.3 billion tonnes globally. Greenhouse gas emissions rebounded later in the pandemic as many countries began lifting restrictions. The direct impact of pandemic policies had a negligible long-term impact on climate change. Examples by country United States China China has committed to peak emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2060. Warming cannot be limited to 1.5 °C if any coal plants in China (without carbon capture) operate after 2045. The Chinese national carbon trading scheme started in 2021. See also Attribution of recent climate change Carbon budget Climate movement Climate change denial Nature-based solutions Tipping points in the climate system Tree planting Wildfire prevention == References ==

climate change adaptation

Climate change adaptation is the process of adjusting to the effects of climate change. These can be both current or expected impacts. Adaptation aims to moderate or avoid harm for people. It also aims to exploit opportunities. Humans may also intervene to help adjustment for natural systems. There are many adaptation strategies or options. They can help manage impacts and risks to people and nature. We can classify adaptation actions in four ways. These are infrastructural and technological; institutional; behavioural and cultural; and nature-based options.: fig. 16.5 The need for adaptation varies from place to place. It depends on the risk to human or ecological systems. Adaptation is particularly important in developing countries. This is because developing countries are most vulnerable to climate change. So they bear the brunt of the effects of climate change. Adaptation needs are high for food and water. They are high for other sectors that are important for economic output, jobs and incomes. Adaptation planning is important to help countries manage climate risks. Plans, policies or strategies are in place in more than 70% of countries. Other levels of government like cities and provinces also use adaptation planning. So do economic sectors. Developing countries can receive international funding to help develop national adaptation plans. This is important to help them implement more adaptation. The adaptation carried out so far is not enough to manage risks at current levels of climate change.: 20  : 130  And adaptation must also anticipate future risks of climate change. The costs of climate change adaptation are likely to cost billions of dollars a year for the coming decades. In many cases the cost will be less than the damage that it avoids. Definition The IPCC defines climate change adaptation in this way: "In human systems, as the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects in order to moderate harm or take advantage of beneficial opportunities.": 5  "In natural systems, adaptation is the process of adjustment to actual climate and its effects; human intervention may facilitate this.": 5 Adaptation actions can be incremental or transformative. Incremental actions are actions that aim to maintain the essence and integrity of a system. Transformative actions are actions that change the fundamental attributes of a system in response to climate change and its impacts. Understanding the need Research on climate change adaptation has been ongoing since the 1990s. The number and variety of subtopics has greatly increased since then. Adaptation has become an established policy area in the 2010s and since the Paris agreement, and an important topic for policy research.: 167 Climate change impacts research Scientific research into climate change adaptation generally starts with analyses of the likely effects of climate change on people, ecosystems and the environment. These impacts cover its effects on lives, livelihoods, health and well-being, ecosystems and species, economic, social and cultural assets, and infrastructure. : 2235  Impacts may include changed agricultural yields, increased floods, and droughts or coral reef bleaching. Analysis of such impacts is an important step in understanding current and future adaptation needs and options.As of 2022, the level of warming is 1.2°C (2.2°F) above levels before the industrial revolution. It is on track to increase to 2.5 to 2.9°C (4.5 to 5.2°F) by the end of the century. This is causing a variety of secondary effects. Many negative effects of climate change involve changes in extremes or the way conditions vary rather than changes in average conditions. For example, the average sea level in a port might not be as important as the height of water during a storm surge. That is because a storm surge can cause flooding. The average rainfall in an area might not be as important as how frequent and severe droughts and extreme precipitation events become. Disaster risks, response and preparedness Climate change contributes to disaster risk. So experts sometimes see climate change adaptation as one of many processes within disaster risk reduction. In turn, disaster risk reduction is part of the broader consideration of sustainable development. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction have similar goals (to reduce potential impacts of hazards and increase the resilience of people at risk). They use similar concepts and are informed by similar sources and studies.Disasters are often triggered by natural hazards. A natural event such as a fire or flood is not of itself a disaster: it's only when it affects people or is caused by them that is counts as a disaster. It is argued that natural disasters are always linked to human action or inaction or rooted in anthropogenic processes. Disasters, economic loss and the underlying vulnerabilities that drive risk are increasing. Global risks like climate change are having major impacts everywhere. Scientists forecast climate change will increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and disasters. So adaptation may include measures to increase preparedness and relevant disaster response capacities. Aims For humans, adaptation aims to moderate or avoid harm, and to exploit opportunities. For natural systems, humans may intervene to help adjustment. Policy aims The Paris Agreement of 2015 requires countries to keep global temperature rise this century to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. Even if greenhouse gas emissions are stopped relatively soon, global warming and its effects will last many years. This is due to the inertia of the climate system. So both carbon neutrality ("net zero") and adaptation are necessary.The Global Goal on Adaptation was also established under the Paris Agreement. The specific targets and indicators for the Global Goal are in development as of 2023. It will support the long-term adaptation goals of the governments that are parties to the agreement. It also aims to fund support for the most vulnerable countries’ adaptation needs in the context of the 1.5/2°C goal. It has three core components. These are reducing vulnerability to climate change, enhancing adaptive capacity, and strengthening resilience. Reduce risk factors: vulnerability and exposure Adaptation can help decrease climate risk by addressing three interacting risk factors. These are hazards, vulnerability and exposure. It is not possible to directly reduce hazards. This is because hazards are affected by current and future changes in climate. Instead, adaptation addresses the risks of climate impacts that arise from the way climate-related hazards interact with the exposure and vulnerability of human and ecological systems.: 145–146  Exposure refers to the presence of people, livelihoods, ecosystems and other assets in places that could suffer negative effects. It is possible to reduce exposure by retreating from areas with high climate risks, such as floodplains. Improving systems for early warnings and evacuations are other ways to reduce exposure.: 88  The IPCC defines climate change vulnerability as "the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change. It can apply to humans but also to natural systems. Human and ecosystem vulnerability are interdependent.: 12  According to the IPCC, climate change vulnerability encompasses a variety of concepts and elements, including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.: 5  Sensitivity to climate change could be reduced by for example increasing the storage capacity of a reservoir, or planting crops that are more resistant to climate variability. It is also possible to reduce vulnerability in towns and cities with green garden spaces. These can reduce heat stress and food insecurity for low-income neighbourhoods.: 800 Ecosystem-based adaptation is one way to reduce vulnerability to climate hazards. For instance, mangroves have the ability to dampen storm energy. So they can help prevent flooding. In this way, protection of the mangrove ecosystem can be a form of adaptation. Insurance and livelihood diversification increase resilience and decrease vulnerability. Other ways to decrease vulnerability include strengthening social protection and building infrastructure more resistant to hazards. Increase adaptive capacity Adaptive capacity in the context of climate change covers human, natural or managed systems. It looks at how they respond to both climate variability and extremes. It covers the ability of a system to adjust to climate change to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with consequences. Adaptive capacity is not the same as adaptation itself. Adaptive capacity is the ability to reduce the likelihood of negative impacts of climate-related hazards. It does this through the ability to design and implement effective adaptation strategies, or to react to evolving hazards and stresses. Societies that can respond to change quickly and successfully have a high adaptive capacity. Conversely, high adaptive capacity does not necessarily lead to successful adaptation action. It does not necessarily succeed in goals of equity and enhancing well-being.: 164  For example, adaptive capacity in Western Europe is generally considered to be high. Experts have documented the risks of warmer winters increasing the range of livestock diseases. But many parts of Europe were still badly affected by outbreaks of bluetongue virus in livestock in 2007.In general, adaptation capacity differs between high and low-income countries. By some indices such as ND-GAIN, high-income countries tend to have higher adaptive capacity. However, there is strong variation within countries.: 164 The determinants of adaptive capacity include:: 895–897  Economic resources: Wealthier nations are better able to bear the costs of adaptation to climate change than poorer ones. Technology: Lack of technology can impede adaptation. Information and skills: Information and trained personnel are necessary to assess and implement successful adaptation options. Social infrastructure Institutions: Nations with well-developed social institutions are likely to have greater adaptive capacity than those with less effective institutions. These are typically developing nations and economies in transition. Equity: Some believe that adaptive capacity is greater where there are government institutions and arrangements in place that allow equitable access to resources.Adaptive capacity is closely linked to social and economic development. In general higher levels of development mean higher adaptive capacity. However, some development locks people into certain patterns or behaviours. And the most developed areas may have low adaptation capacity to new types of natural hazards that they have not previously experienced.Measures to promote sustainable development often overlap with those for adaptive capacity. Both types of activity can reduce climate risk while also yielding development benefits. These activities can include: Improving access to resources, reducing poverty, lowering inequities of resources and wealth among groups, improving education and information, improving infrastructure, improving institutional capacity and efficiency, and promoting local indigenous practices, knowledge, and experiences.: 899 Strengthening resilience The IPCC considers climate resilience to be “the capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance”. It includes the abilities to reorganise and learn.: 7  This definition is similar to that of climate change adaptation. However resilience involves a more systematic approach to absorbing change. It involves using those changes to become more efficient. The idea is that people can intervene to reorganise the system when disturbance creates an opportunity to do so.: 174  They could guide the reorganisation in more desirable directions such as social or development goals.Implemented adaptation most often builds upon resilience as a way of bouncing back to recover after a disturbance. Experts consider it to be incremental rather than transformational.: 130, 134  On the other hand, climate resilience-focused projects can be activities to promote and support transformational adaptation. This is because transformational adaptation is connected with implementation at scale and ideally at the system-level.: 72 : 26 Strengthening resilience is therefore important for maintaining a capacity for transformation. Transformations, and the processes of transition, cover the major systems and sectors at scale. These are energy, land and ecosystems, urban and infrastructure, and industrial and societal.: 125  Transformations may fail if they do not integrate social justice, consider power differences and political inclusion, and if they do not deliver improvements in incomes and wellbeing for everyone.: 171 Climate resilient development is a closely related area of work and research topic that has recently emerged. It describes situations in which adaptation, mitigation and development solutions are pursued together. It is able to benefit from synergies from among the actions and reduce trade-offs.: 172 Co-benefits with mitigation Strategies to limit climate change are complementary to efforts to adapt to it.: 128  Limiting warming, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere, is also known as climate change mitigation.There are some synergies or co-benefits between adaptation and mitigation. Synergies include the benefits of public transport for both mitigation and adaptation. Public transport has lower greenhouse gas emissions per kilometer travelled than cars. A good public transport network also increases resilience in case of disasters. This is because evacuation and emergency access becomes easier. Reduced air pollution from public transport improves health. This in turn may lead to improved economic resilience, as healthy workers perform better. Options by type of action There are many adaptation responses. We sometimes call them adaptation measures, strategies or solutions. They help manage impacts and risks to people and nature. Current adaptation focuses on near-term climate risks. It also focuses on particular sectors, such as water and agriculture, and on regions, such as Africa and Asia. It is important to close gaps between adaptation that is carried out and the needs relative to today's climate in order to reduce risks to a tolerable level. However, future adaptation must also anticipate future climate change risks. Some options may become less effective or entirely unfeasible as global warming increases. Adaptation responses fall into four categories that all directly aim to reduce risks and exploit opportunities:: 2428  Infrastructural and technological adaptation (including engineering, built environment, and high-tech solutions); Institutional adaptation (economic organizations, laws and regulation, government policies and programmes); Behavioural and cultural (individual and household strategies as well as social and community approaches); Nature-based solutions (including ecosystem-based adaptation options).We can also group options is in three categories: 1. Structural and physical adaptation (including engineering and built environment, technological, ecosystem-based, services); 2. Social adaptation (educational, informational, behavioural); 3. Institutional adaptation (economic organizations, laws and regulation, government policies and programmes).: 845 Other ways to distinguish types of adaptation are anticipatory versus reactive, autonomous versus planned and incremental versus transformational.: 134  Incremental adaptation actions aim to maintain the essence and integrity of a system. Transformative actions change the fundamental attributes of a system in response to climate change and its impacts. Autonomous adaptation is adaptation responds to experienced climate and its effects. It does not involve explicit planning and does not specifically focus on addressing climate change. Planned adaptation can be reactive or anticipatory. Anticipatory adaptation is undertaken before impacts are apparent. Relying on autonomous adaptation to climate change can result in substantial costs. It is possible to avoid many of these costs with planned adaptation.: 904 Infrastructural and technological options Built environment Built environment options include installing or upgrading infrastructure to protect against flooding, sea level rise, heatwaves and extreme heat. They also include infrastructure to respond to changed rainfall patterns in agriculture. This could be infrastructure for irrigation. These are explained further in the section below "by type of climate change impact". Early warning systems Climate services Institutional options Institutional responses include zoning regulations, new building codes, new insurance schemes, and coordination mechanisms.Policies are important tools to integrate issues of climate change adaptation. At the national level, adaptation strategies appear in National Adaptation Plans (NAPS) and National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA). They also occur in national climate change policies and strategies. These are at different levels of development in different countries and in cities. This is discussed further in the section below on "implementation". Cities, states, and provinces often have considerable responsibility in land use planning, public health, and disaster management. Institutional adaptation actions occur more frequently in cities than in other sectors.: 2434  Some have begun to adapt to threats intensified by climate change, such as flooding, bushfires, heatwaves, and rising sea levels. Building codes Managing the codes or regulations that buildings must conform to is important for keeping people healthy and comfortable during extremes of hot and cold and protecting them from floods.: 953–954  There are many ways to do this. They include increasing the insulation values, adding solar shading, increasing natural ventilation or passive cooling, codes for green roofs to reduce urban heat island effects or requiring waterfront properties to have higher foundations.: 953–954  Land use zoning controls are central to investment in urban development. They can reduce risks to areas threatened by floods and landslides.: 942–943 Insurance Insurance spreads the financial impact of flooding and other extreme weather events. There is an increasing availability of such options.: 814  For example, index-based insurance is a new product which triggers payment when weather indices such as precipitation or temperature cross a threshold. It aims to help customers such as farmers deal with production risks. Access to reinsurance may make cities more resilient. Where there are failures in the private insurance market, the public sector can subsidize premiums. One study identified key equity issues for policy considerations: Transferring risk to the public purse does not reduce overall risk; Governments can spread the cost of losses across time rather than space; Governments can force home-owners in low-risk areas to cross-subsidize the insurance premiums of those in high-risk areas; Cross-subsidization is increasingly difficult for private sector insurers operating in a competitive market; Governments can tax people to pay for tomorrow's disaster.Government-subsidized insurance, such as the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, comes under criticism for providing a perverse incentive to develop properties in hazardous areas. This increases overall risk. Insurance can also undermine other efforts such as property level protection and resilience to increase adaptation. Appropriate land-use policies can counter this behavioural effect. These policies limit new construction where there are current or future climate risks. They also encourage the adoption of resilient building codes to mitigate potential damages. Coordination mechanisms Coordination helps achieve goals shared by a range of people or organizations. Examples are information-sharing or joint implementation of adaptation options. Coordination helps use resources effectively. It avoids duplication, promotes consistency across government, and makes it easier for all people and organizations involved to understand the work.: 5  In the food production sector, adaptation projects financed through the UNFCCC often include coordination between national governments and administrations at the state, provincial or city level. There are fewer examples of coordination between community-level and national government. Behavioural and cultural options Individuals and households play a central role in adaptation. There are many examples particularly in the global south. Behavioural adaptation is a change in the strategies, practices and actions that help to reduce risk. These can include protecting homes from flooding, protecting crops from drought, and adopting different income-earning activities. Behavioural change is the most common form of adaptation.: 2433 Change in diets and food waste Food waste spoilage increases with exposure to higher temperatures and humidity. It also increases with extreme events such as flooding and contamination.: 787  This can happen at different points in the food supply chain. Thus it can be a risk to food security and nutrition. Adaptation measures can review the production, processing and other handling practices of suppliers. Examples include further sorting to separate damaged products, drying the product for better storage or improved packaging.: 787  Other behaviour change options for retailers and consumers include accepting fruit and vegetables that appear less than perfect, redistributing food surpluses, and lowering prices on nearly expired food.Dietary change options in regions with excess consumption of calories include replacing meat and dairy foods with a higher share of plant-based foods. This has both mitigation and adaptation benefits. Plant-based options have much lower energy and water requirements. Adaptation options can investigate the dietary patterns that are better suited to the regional, socioeconomic and cultural context. Social-cultural norms strongly affect preferences for foods. Policies such as subsidies, taxes, and marketing can also support dietary choices that help adaptation.: 799 Change in livelihood strategies Agriculture offers many opportunities for adaptation. These include changing planting times, or changing to crops and livestock that are better adapted to climate conditions and presence of pests. Other examples are breeding more resilient crops and selecting genetically modified crops.: 787  All these aim to improve food security and nutrition. Seasonal migration Seasonal migration or mobility includes traditional strategies such as pastoralism or seeking seasonal employment in urban centres. and is They are normally voluntary and economically motivated. Weather fluctuations and extremes can influence migration.: 2428  Weather variability is an important contributor to declines in agricultural incomes and employment. Climate change has made these impacts more likely. As a result migration has increased, particularly rural to urban movement. Migration, including seasonal migration, counts as behavioural climate adaptation. But many other factors influence migration decisions. It is difficult to say how much climate change influences migration.: 2428 Nature-based options Nature-based solutions (NBS) work with nature and ecosystems to provide benefits to both societies and overall biodiversity. In the context of climate change, they provide adaptation and mitigation options that benefit and support wild species and habitats. In doing this they often contribute to other sustainable development goals.: 303  Nature-based solutions is an overarching term that includes actions known as ecosystem-based adaptation. However NBS is not restricted to climate change, and often also refers to climate change mitigation. So it is a less specific term.: 284  Both approaches require benefits to people and nature to be delivered simultaneously. Supporting ecosystems and biodiversity Ecosystems adapt to global warming depending on their resilience to climate change. Humans can help adaptation in ecosystems in order to strengthen biodiversity. One example is to increase links between ecosystems so that species can migrate on their own to more favourable climate conditions. Another is to assist this migration through human transport of plants or animals. Another example is to use scientific research and development to help coral reefs survive climate change. Protection and restoration of natural and semi-natural areas also helps build resilience, making it easier for ecosystems to adapt. Supporting people and societies Many actions that promote adaptation in ecosystems also help humans adapt via ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. For instance, restoration of natural fire regimes makes catastrophic fires less likely and reduces the human exposure to this hazard. Giving rivers more space allows natural systems to store more water. This makes floods in inhabited areas less likely. The provision of green spaces and tree planting creates shade for livestock. There is a trade-off between agricultural production and the restoration of ecosystems in some areas. Options by type of impact Some adaptation options tackle specific climate hazards like floods or drought. Other options emerge when there are risks from different hazards as well as other factors that contribute to them such as with migration. Flooding Flooding can occur in cities or towns as urban flooding. It can also take place by the sea as coastal flooding. Sea level rise can make coastal flooding worse. In some areas there are also risks of glacial lake outburst floods. There are many adaptation options for flooding: Installing better flood defences such as flood barriers, sea walls and increased pumping capacity Installing devices to prevent seawater from backflowing into storm drains Rainwater storage to deal with increased run-off from rainfall. This includes reducing paved areas or changing to water-permeable pavements, adding water-buffering vegetation, adding underground storage tanks, and subsidizing household rain barrels Raising pumps at wastewater treatment plants Buying out homeowners in flood-prone areas Raising street level to prevent flooding Using and protecting mangroves Glacial lakes in danger of outburst flooding can have their moraines replaced with concrete dams to provide protection. This may also provide hydroelectric powerMore frequent drenching rains may make it necessary to increase the capacity of stormwater systems. This separates stormwater from blackwater, so that overflows in peak periods do not contaminate rivers. One example is the SMART Tunnel in Kuala Lumpur. New York City produced a comprehensive report for its Rebuilding and Resiliency initiative after Hurricane Sandy. It includes making buildings less prone to flooding. It also aims to make specific problems encountered during and after the storm less likely to recur. These include weeks-long fuel shortages even in unaffected areas due to legal and transportation problems, flooded health care facilities, insurance premium increases, damage to electricity and steam generation and distribution networks, and flooding of subway and roadway tunnels. Sea level rise Heat waves A 2020 study projects that regions inhabited by one third of the human population could become as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara within 50 years. This will happen without a change in patterns of population growth and without migration, unless there is a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to limit warming to 1.5 °C. The most affected regions have little adaptive capacity as of 2020.Cities are particularly affected by heat waves due to the urban heat island effect. Climate change does not cause urban heat islands. But it leads to more frequent and more intense heat waves which in turn amplify the urban heat island effect in cities.: 993  Compact, dense urban development may increase the urban heat island effect. This results in higher temperatures and increased exposure.Tree cover and green space can reduce heat in cities. They act as sources of shade and promote evaporative cooling. Other options include green roofs, passive daytime radiative cooling applications, and the use of lighter-coloured surfaces and less absorptive building materials in urban areas. These reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat. It may be necessary to change city trees to more heat-tolerant varieties.Methods for adapting to increased heat include: The use and development of air conditioning and cooling systems. Adding air conditioning can make schools and workplaces cooler. But it results in additional greenhouse gas emissions unless it uses renewable energy. Solar-energy passive cooling systems for houses and/or refrigeration. Changed rainfall patterns in agriculture Cclimate change is altering global rainfall patterns. This affects agriculture. Rainfed agriculture accounts for 80% of global agriculture. Many of the 852 million poor people in the world live in parts of Asia and Africa that depend on rainfall to cultivate food crops. Climate change will modify rainfall, evaporation, runoff, and soil moisture storage. Extended drought can cause the failure of small and marginal farms. This results in increased economic, political and social disruption. Water availability strongly influences all kinds of agriculture. Changes in total seasonal precipitation or its pattern of variability are both important. Moisture stress during flowering, pollination, and grain-filling harms most crops. It is particularly harmful to corn, soybeans, and wheat. Increased evaporation from the soil and accelerated transpiration in the plants themselves will cause moisture stress. There are many adaptation options. One is to develop crop varieties with greater drought tolerance and another is to build local rainwater storage. Using small planting basins to harvest water in Zimbabwe has boosted maize yields. This happens whether rainfall is abundant or scarce. And in Niger they have led to three or fourfold increases in millet yields.Climate change can threaten food security and water security. It is possible to adapt food systems to improve food security and prevent negative impacts from climate change in the future. More spending on irrigation Demand for water for irrigation is likely to rise in a warmer climate. This will increase competition between agriculture and urban and industrial users. Agriculture is already the largest consumer of water in semi-arid regions. Falling water tables and the resulting increase in energy to pump water will make irrigation more expensive. This is particularly the case when drier conditions will require more water per acre. Other strategies can make the most efficient use of water resources. The International Water Management Institute has suggested five strategies that could help Asia feed its growing population in light of climate change. These are modernizing existing irrigation schemes to suit modern methods of farming; supporting farmers' efforts to find their own water supplies by tapping into groundwater in a sustainable way; looking beyond conventional Participatory Irrigation Management schemes by working with the private sector; expanding capacity and knowledge; and investing outside the irrigation sector. Drought and desertification Reforestation is one way to stop desertification fueled by climate change and non-sustainable land use. One of the most important projects is the Great Green Wall that aims to stop the southward expansion of the Sahara desert. By 2018 only 15% of it had been carried out. But there are already many positive effects. These include the restoration of over 12 million acres (5 million hectares) of degraded land in Nigeria; the planting of roughly 30 million acres of drought-resistant trees across Senegal; and the restoration of 37 million acres of land in Ethiopia. Tree maintenance led to the refilling of groundwater wells with drinking water, additional food supplies for rural towns, and new sources of work and income for villagers. Added migration pressures Migration events have many causes. The environment is one of many factors. Economic, demographic or political factors are often important in migration decisions. Climate change is an indirect or less important cause.: 1079–1080 Migration is a form of adaptation. People may be able to generate more income, diversify livelihoods, and spread climate risk. But there are other ways of looking at migration and environmental change. Migration can be a human rights issue or a security issue. The human rights framing suggests developing protection frameworks for migrants. Increased border security may be an implication of treating migration as a national security issue. It is possible to combine both approaches, taking national concerns into account in accordance with human rights.Would-be migrants often need access to social and financial capital. These include support networks in the chosen destination and funds or physical resources to move. Migration is often the last adaptive response households will take when they face environmental factors that threaten their livelihoods and other strategies would not work. Measures to increase adaptive capacity, such as social protection and promoting women's empowerment, can help people with little power in migration decisions.: 25  Sometimes people are unwilling or unable to migrate. In such cases it may be necessary for the government to intervene to keep people safe.: 1079–1081 Many discussions around migration are based on projections. Relatively few use current migration data. Migration related to sudden events like hurricanes, wildfires, heavy rains, floods, and landslides is often short-distance, involuntary, and temporary. Slow-impact events such as droughts and slowly rising temperatures have more mixed effects. But they are more likely to lead to longer-term changes.: 1079 International impacts and cascading risk International climate risks are climate risks that cross national borders. Sometimes the impacts of climate change in one country or region can have further consequences for people in other countries. Risks can spread from one country to a neighbouring country, or from one country to distant regions. Risks can also cascade and have knock-on effects elsewhere, across multiple borders and sectors. For example, an impact of the floods in Thailand in 2011 was disruption to manufacturing supply chains affecting the automotive sector and electronics industry in Japan, Europe and the USA.: 2441–2444 Options for adapting are less developed. They include developing resilient infrastructure in the originating country, increasing storage facilities to allow more buffer in the recipient country, or diversifying and re-routing trade.: 2441–2444 Options by sector This section looks at the main sectors and systems affected by climate change. Experts have assessed the risks and adaptation options for them.: ix Ecosystems and their services The main risks to ecosystems from climate change are biodiversity loss, ecosystem structure change, increased tree mortality, increased wildfire, and ecosystem carbon losses. These risks are linked. Loss of species can increase the risks to ecosystem health.: 279  Wildfire is an increasing risk for people as well as to ecosystems in many parts of the world.: 290  Wildfires and increased pest infestations due to climate change caused much of the recent tree mortality in North America. : 280 Risks to seas and coastal areas include coral bleaching linked with ocean warming. This can change the composition of ecosystems. Coral bleaching and mortality also increase the risks of flooding on nearby shorelines and islands. Ocean acidification attributed to climate change drives change in coral reefs and other ecosystems such as rocky shores and kelp forests.: 142 Ecosystems can respond to climatic and other environmental pressures in different ways. Individual organisms can respond through growth, movement and other developmental processes. Species and populations can relocate or genetically adapt. Human interventions can make ecosystems more resilient and help species adapt. Examples are protecting larger areas of semi-natural habitat and creating links between parts of the landscape to help species move.: 283 Ecosystem-based adaptation actions provide benefits for both ecosystems and humans. They include restoring coastal and river systems to reduce flood risk and improve water quality, creating more green areas in cities to reduce temperatures, and reinstating natural fire regimes to reduce risk of severe wildfires. There are many ways to reduce the risk of disease outbreaks. They include building surveillance systems of pathogens affecting humans, wildlife and farm animals.: 288, 295 Assisted migration Assisted migration is the act of moving plants or animals to a different habitat. The destination habitat may or may not have once previously held the species. The only requirement is the destination habitat must provide the bioclimatic requirements to support the species. Assisted migration aims to remove the species from a threatening environment. It aims to give them a chance to survive and reproduce in an environment that does not pose an existential threat to the species.Assisted migration is a potential solution to changes in environments due to climate change that are faster than natural selection can adapt to. It has the potential to allow species that have poor natural dispersal abilities to avoid extinction. However it has also sparked debate over the possibility of the introduction of invasive species and diseases into previously healthy ecosystems. Despite these debates, scientists and land managers have already begun the process of assisted migration for certain species. There have been several studies of the climate adaptive potential of butterflies. Health Climate change-related risks to health include direct risks from extreme weather such as cold waves, storms, or prolonged high temperatures. There are also indirect risks such as mental health impacts of undernutrition or displacement caused by extreme weather.: 1076  Similarly there are mental health risks from loss of access to green spaces, reduced air quality, or from anxiety about climate change.: 1076, 1078  There are further risks from changes in conditions for transmission of infectious diseases. Malaria and dengue are particularly climate-sensitive.: 1062 There are several approaches to adapt to new or increased infectious disease risks. These include vector control through improved housing and better sanitation conditions through WASH services. It could also include insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor spraying. For food-borne diseases it includes food processing and storage.: 1107 Adaptation options for heat include expanding access to air conditioning and establishing heat action plans that include early warning systems for heatwaves. Other options are passive cooling systems to include shading and ventilation. These could be part of improved building and urban design and planning, green infrastructure or public cooling centres.: 1108–1109 Adaptation options to respond to mental health impacts include increasing funding and access to mental healthcare, incorporating mental health into climate resilience and disaster risk planning, and improving post-disaster support.: 1112  Mental health also benefits from broader activities such as design of healthy natural spaces, education and cultural activities. It is also closely related to food security and nutrition. Cities Rising temperatures and heatwaves are key risks for cities. With warmer temperatures the urban heat island effect is likely to get worse. Population growth and land use change will influence human health and productivity risks in cities.: 993  Urban flooding is another key risk. This is especially the case in coastal settlements where flood risks are exacerbated by sea-level rise and storm surges. A further set of risks arises from reduced water availability. When supply cannot meet demand from expanding settlements, urban residents become exposed to water insecurity and climate impacts. This is especially so during periods of lower rainfall. These key risks differ greatly between cities, and between different groups of people in the same city.: 993 Adaptation options for cities include flood control measures within and outside properties and urban drainage projects. Other examples are nature-based solutions such as bioswales or other vegetated infrastructure and restoration and/or protection of mangroves along coastlines. Vegetation corridors, greenspace, wetlands and other green infrastructure can also reduce heat risks. Building designs such as installing air conditioning, ‘cool roofs’ with high-reflectance materials or solar chimneys can also help. Several institutional adaptations are particularly important for cities, for example legislation of building codes, zoning and land use measures.: 952 Many cities have integrated city-wide adaptation strategies or plans that bring together social and economic activities, civil authorities and infrastructure services. Such actions are more effective if they are implemented in partnership with local communities, national governments, research institutions, and the private and third sector.: 994 Water Climate change is affecting the overall and seasonal availability of water across regions. Climate change is projected to increase the variability of rain. There will be impacts on water quality as well as quantity. Floods can wash pollutants into water bodies and damage water infrastructure. In many places, particularly in the tropics and sub-tropics, there are longer dry spells and droughts, sometimes over consecutive years. These have contributed to drier soil conditions, lower groundwater tables and reduced or changed flows of rivers. There are risks to ecosystems, and across many water-using sectors of the economy.: 660  Agriculture is likely to be affected by changes in water availability, putting food security at risk. Irrigation has often contributed to groundwater depletion and changes in the water cycle. It can sometimes make a drought worse.: 1157 Some of the most popular adaptations in agriculture include choosing less water-intensive crops or drought and flood-resistant varieties. They include shifting the timing of sowing and harvesting according to the start of the rainy season. There are other technological options available for saving water.: 584  Water is used for hydroelectric generation, for cooling of power plants, and in other industries such as mining. Adapting hydroelectric plant designs and control systems to operate with less water or diversifying in energy generation with other renewables are effective options.: 626 Livelihoods and communities Climate change affects livelihoods and living conditions in significant ways. These include access to natural resources and ecosystems, land and other assets. Access to basic infrastructure services such as water and sanitation, electricity, roads, telecommunications is another aspect of vulnerability of communities and livelihoods to climate change.: 1119 The biggest livelihood-related risks stem from losses of agricultural yields, impacts on human health and food security, destruction of homes, and loss of income. There are also risks to fish and livestock that livelihoods depend on. : 1178  Some communities and livelihoods also face risks of irreversible losses and challenges to development, as well as more complex disaster risks.: 1214 The consequences of climate change are the most severe for the poorest populations. These are disproportionately more exposed to hazards such as temperature extremes and droughts. They usually have fewer resources and assets and less access to funding, support and political influence. There are other forms of disadvantage due to discrimination, gender inequalities and through lack of access to resources This includes people with disabilities or minority groups.: 1251 Across livelihoods sectors for households and communities the most common adaptation responses are engineered and technological options. These include traditional infrastructure to protect a specific land use, ecosystem approaches such as watershed restoration or climate-smart agriculture technologies. Adaptation requires public and private investment in various natural assets. It also requires institutions that prioritize the needs of communities, including the poorest.: 1253 Options by region Developing countries tend to be more vulnerable to climate change than developed countries.: 957  Based on development trends in 2001, scientists have found that few developing countries would have the capacity to efficiently adapt to climate change.: 957  This was partly due to their low adaptive capacity and the high costs of adaptation in proportion to their GDP. Examples: Africa: Africa's major economic sectors are vulnerable to observed climate variability.: 435  This vulnerability contributed to Africa's weak adaptive capacity. As a result Africa is highly vulnerable to future climate change. Projected sea-level rise is likely to increase the socio-economic vulnerability of African coastal cities. Asia: Climate change can result in the degradation of permafrost in boreal Asia. This will make climate-dependent sectors more vulnerable and affect the region's economy.: 536  Australia and New Zealand: In Australia and New Zealand, most human systems have considerable adaptive capacity. Some Indigenous communities have low adaptive capacity.: 509  Europe: Scientists judge the adaptation potential of socioeconomic systems in Europe as relatively high in 2001.: 643  This is due to Europe's high GNP, stable growth, stable population, and well-developed political, institutional, and technological support systems. Latin America: The adaptive capacity of socioeconomic systems in Latin America is very low, particularly with regard to extreme weather events. As a result the region is highly vulnerability.: 697  Polar regions: The Arctic is extremely vulnerable to climate change. It was predicted in 2007 that there would be major ecological, sociological, and economic impacts in the region.: 804–805  Small islands: Scientists found in 2007 that small islands were particularly vulnerable to climate change.: 689 Costs Economic costs The economic costs of adaptation to climate change will depend on how much the climate changes. Higher levels of warming lead to considerably higher costs. Globally, adaptation is likely to cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars annually for the next several decades. The IPCC's most recent summary states that adaptation will cost $15 to 411 billion per year for climate change impacts to 2030. Most estimates are well above $100 billion.": Cross-Chapter Box FINANCE  Because these costs are much higher than the finance available, there is an adaptation gap. This is especially pressing in developing countries.: SPM C1.2  This gap is widening: ch 17 and forms a major barrier to adaptation. This widening has become apparent because the overwhelming majority of global tracked climate finance goes to mitigation. Only a small proportion goes on adaptation.More regional estimates are also available. For example, the Asian Development Bank has a series of studies on the Economics of Climate Change in the Asia-Pacific region. These studies provide cost analysis of both adaptation and mitigation measures. The WEAP (Water Evaluation And Planning system) assists water resources researchers and planners in assessing impacts of and adaptations to climate change. The United Nations Development Programme's Climate Change Adaptation Portal includes studies on climate change adaptation in Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and Asia and the Pacific. Cost benefit analysis As of 2007 there was still a lack of comprehensive, global cost and benefit estimates for adaptation.: 719  Since then, an extensive research literature has emerged. Studies generally focus on adaptation in developing countries or within a sector. For many adaptation options in specific contexts, the investment will be lower than the avoided damages. But global estimates have considerable uncertainty.: ch 15 : Cross-Chapter Box FINANCE International finance The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change incorporates a financial mechanism to developing country parties to support them with adaptation. This is in Article 11 of the convention. Until 2009, three funds existed under the UNFCCC financial mechanism. The Global Environmental Facility administers the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) and the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF). The Adaptation Fund resulted from negotiations during COP15 and COP16 in 2009 and 2010. It has its own Secretariat. Initially, when the Kyoto Protocol was in operation, the Adaptation Fund was financed by a 2% levy on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). At the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, nations committed to the goal of sending $100 billion per year to developing countries for climate change mitigation and adaptation by 2020. The Green Climate Fund was created in 2010 as one of the channels for mobilizing this climate finance. The 2015 Paris conference, COP21, clarified that the $100 billion per year should involve a balanced split between mitigation and adaptation. As of December 2020, the promised $100 billion per year had not been fully delivered. Most developing country finance was still targeted towards mitigation. Adaptation received only 21% of the public finance provided in 2020.Global adaptation financing from multilateral development banks exceeded €19 billion in 2021. This implies a rising trend in the financing of adaptation. Multilateral banks made a commitment to increase adaptation financing in a joint declaration on climate change at COP27. This particularly targets low-income nations, small island developing states, and underprivileged people. The European Investment Bank has said that it will raise the share it contributes to 75% for projects focusing on climate adaptation. The bank usually contributes up to 50% to a project it participates in. Also in 2022, nations agreed on a proposal to establish a loss and damage fund to support communities in averting, minimizing, and addressing damages and risks where adaptation is not enough or comes too late. Additionality A key feature of international adaptation finance is the concept of additionality. This reflects the linkages between adaptation finance and other levels of development aid. Many developed countries already provide international aid assistance to developing countries. This addresses challenges such as poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity, availability of drinking water, indebtedness, illiteracy, unemployment, local resource conflicts, and lower technological development. Climate change threatens to exacerbate or stall progress on fixing some of these problems, and creates new ones. Additionality refers to the extra costs of adaptation to avoid existing aid being redirected. The four main definitions of additionality are: Climate finance classified as aid, but additional to the Millennium Development Goals; Increase on previous year's Official Development Assistance (ODA) spent on climate change mitigation; Rising ODA levels that include climate change finance but where it is limited to a specified percentage; and Increase in climate finance not connected to ODA.A criticism of additionality is that it encourages business as usual. This is because it does not account for the future risks of climate change. Some advocates have proposed integrating climate change adaptation into poverty reduction programs.From 2010 to 2020, Denmark increased its global warming adaptation aid by one third, from 0.09% of GDP to 0.12% of GDP. But this did not involve additional funds. Instead, the aid was taken from other foreign assistance funds. Politiken wrote: "Climate assistance is taken from the poorest." Challenges Differing time scales Adaptation can occur in anticipation of change or be a response to those changes. For example, artificial snow-making in the European Alps responds to current climate trends. The construction of the Confederation Bridge in Canada at a higher elevation takes into account the effect of future sea-level rise on ship clearance under the bridge.Effective adaptive policy can be difficult to implement because policymakers are rewarded more for enacting short-term change, rather than long-term planning. Since the impacts of climate change are generally not seen in the short term, policymakers have less incentive to act. Furthermore, climate change is occurring on a global scale. This requires a global framework for adapting to and combating climate change. The vast majority of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies are being implemented on a more local scale. This is because different regions must adapt differently. National and global policies are often more challenging to enact. Maladaptation Much adaptation takes place in relation to short-term climate variability. But this may cause maladaptation to longer-term climate trends. The expansion of irrigation in Egypt into the Western Sinai desert after a period of higher river flows is maladaptation given the longer-term projections of drying in the region. Adaptations at one scale can have impacts at another by reducing the adaptive capacity of other people or organizations. This is often the case when broad assessments of the costs and benefits of adaptation are examined at smaller scales. An adaptation may benefit some people, but have a negative effect on others. Development interventions to increase adaptive capacity have tended not to result in increased power or agency for local people. Agency is a central factor in all other aspects of adaptive capacity and so planners need to pay more attention to this factor. Limits to adaptation People have always adapted to climate change. Some community coping strategies already exist. Examples include changing sowing times or adopting new water-saving techniques. Traditional knowledge and coping strategies must be maintained and strengthened. If not there is a risk of weakening adaptive capacity as local knowledge of the environment is lost. Strengthening these local techniques and building upon them also makes the adoption of adaptation strategies more likely. This is because it creates more community ownership and involvement in the process. In many cases this will not be enough to adapt to new conditions. These may be outside the range of those previously experienced, and new techniques will be necessary. The incremental adaptations become insufficient as the vulnerabilities and risks of climate change increase. This creates a need for transformational adaptations which are much larger and costlier. Current development efforts increasingly focus on community-based climate change adaptation. They seek to enhance local knowledge, participation and ownership of adaptation strategies. Incentivizing private investment in adaptation Climate change adaptation is a much more complex investment area than mitigation. This is mainly because of the lack of a well-defined income stream or business case with an attractive return on investment on projects. There are several specific challenges for private investment: Adaptation is often needed in non-market sectors or is focused on public goods that benefit many. So there is a shortage of projects that are attractive to the private sector; There is a mismatch between the timing of investments needed in the short term and the benefits that may occur in the medium or long term. Future returns are less attractive to investors than short-term returns; There is a lack of information about investment opportunities. This especially concerns uncertainties associated with future impacts and benefits. These are key considerations when returns may accrue over longer timeframes; There are gaps in human resources and capacities to design adaptation projects and understand financial implications of legal, economic and regulatory frameworks.However, there is considerable innovation in this area. This is increasing the potential for private sector finance to play a larger role in closing the adaptation finance gap. Economists state that climate adaptation initiatives should be an urgent priority for business investment. Trade-offs with mitigation Trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation may occur when climate-relevant actions point in different directions. For instance, compact urban development may lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions from transport and building. On the other hand, it may increase the urban heat island effect, leading to higher temperatures and increasing exposure, making adaptation more challenging. Planning and implementation Climate adaptation planning aims to manage the level of risks of negative impacts. Adaptation planning is similar to risk management. It is a continuing process of assessment, action, learning and adjustment, rather than a single set of decisions. In this way planning and implementing adaptation are both closely connected.: 133 Adaptation planning is an activity. But it is also associated with a type of adaptation. Planned adaptation is sometimes distinguished from autonomous adaptation.Another important concept in adaptation planning is mainstreaming. Mainstreaming means integrating climate change into established strategies, policies or plans. This can be more efficient than developing separate climate adaptation activities and is more likely to succeed.: 28 : 15  It can also be more sustainable. It involves changing the mindsets and practices of policymakers to bring in new issues and have them widely accepted.: 968 A key entry point for this type of integration is national development planning. It needs to take into account new and existing national policies, sectoral policies and budgets. Similarly, mainstreaming adaptation in cities should consider existing city plans, such as land use planning.: 166  There approach also has shortcomings. One criticism is that it has reduced the visibility of stand-alone adaptation programmes.: 166 Adaptation planning usually draws on assessments of risks and vulnerability to climate change. It evaluates the relative benefits and costs of different measures to reduce these risks. Following planning, the next stage is implementation. Guidance has been developed that outline these general stages of an adaptation process, such as the EU Adaptation Support Tool. Preparing the ground for adaptation Assessing climate change risks and vulnerabilities Identifying adaptation options Assessing adaptation options Implementing adaptation Monitoring and evaluating adaptationAs of 2022, adaptation efforts have focused more on adaptation planning than on implementation. All regions and sectors have made progress. However the gaps between current needs and current implementation continues to grow.: 20  : 130 Monitoring and evaluation of adaptation is crucial to ensure that adaptation action is proceeding as planned. It also provide lessons to improve them and understand which additional actions are necessary. Development and use of monitoring and evaluation systems is increasing at national and local levels. As of 2020, around a quarter of countries had a monitoring and evaluation framework in place.: 28  : 20 By country and city National governments typically have the key role in setting policies, planning, coordinating and distributing finance for climate adaptation. They are also accountable to the international community through international agreements. Many countries document their adaptation plans in their NDCs submitted under the Paris Agreement and/or national adaptation plans. Developing countries can receive support with international funding to help them develop their national adaptation plans.As of 2020, 72% of countries had a high level adaptation instrument – such as a plan, policy or strategy. Relatively few had progressed to the tangible implementation of projects: at least not to significantly reduce the climate risk their populations are exposed to.Countries have also made progress in developing plans for subnational government authorities. These include county/provincial level, sectors and city plans. In 2020, around 21% of countries had sub-national plans and 58% had sectoral plans.As of 2022, there is better integration of adaptation priorities into other national plans and planning systems. Planning is also more inclusive. This means that climate laws and policies increasingly reference different groups such as persons with disabilities, children, young people and future generations.Many cities have integrated city-wide adaptation strategies or plans that bring together their social and economic activities, civil authorities and infrastructure services.: 994    A survey of 812 global cities found that 93% reported they are at risk from climate change, 43% did not have an adaptation plan in 2021, and 41% of cities had not carried out a climate risk and vulnerability assessment. Global goals Sustainable Development Goal 13 aims to strengthen countries' resilience and adaptive capacities to climate-related issues. This adjustment includes many areas such as infrastructure, agriculture and education. The Paris Agreement includes several provisions for adaptation. It seeks to promote the idea of global responsibility, improve communication via the adaptation component of the Nationally Determined Contributions, and includes an agreement that developed countries should provide some financial support and technology transfer to promote adaptation in more vulnerable countries.The United Nations estimates Africa would need yearly funding of $1.3 trillion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the region, considering population growth. The International Monetary Fund also estimates that $50 billion may be needed only to cover the expenses of climate adaptation. History When climate change first became prominent on the international political agenda in the early 1990s, talk of adaptation was considered an unwelcome distraction from the need to reach agreement on effective measures for mitigation - which has mainly meant reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. A few voices had spoken out in favour of adaptation even in the late 20th and early 21st century. In 2009 and 2010, adaptation began to receive more attention during international climate negotiations. This was after limited progress at the Copenhagen Summit had made it clear that achieving international consensus for emission reductions would be more challenging than had been hoped. In 2009, the rich nations of the world committed to providing a total of $100 billion per year to help developing nations fund their climate adaptation projects. This commitment was underscored at the 2010 Cancún Summit , and again at the 2015 Paris Conference. The promise was not fulfilled, but the amount of funding provided by the rich nations for adaptations did increase over the 2010 - 2020 period.Climate change adaptation has tended to be more of a focus for local authorities, while national and international politics has tended to focus on mitigation. There have been exceptions - in countries that feel especially exposed to the effects of climate change, sometimes the focus has been more on adaptation even at national level. See also Adaptation in Africa Green bond Climate change adaptation strategies on the German coast Climate finance Climate justice Climate Vulnerability Monitor References External links The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II assesses the scientific literature on adaptation: Working Group II — IPCC The weADAPT platform encourages the sharing of experiences from adaptation projects to accelerate learning and climate action.

effects of climate change on human health

The effects of climate change on human health are increasingly well studied and quantified. Rising temperatures and changes in weather patterns are increasing the frequency and severity of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, landslides, hurricanes, and other causes of injury and illness. Heat waves and extreme weather events have a big impact on health both directly and indirectly. Direct effects of exposure to high and extended temperatures include illness, reduced labour capacity for outdoor workers, and heat-related mortality.In addition to direct impacts, climate change and extreme weather events cause changes in the biosphere. Climate-sensitive pathogens and vector-borne diseases may increase in some regions. Changes in temperature are creating conditions favorable to mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever, and waterborne diseases including diarrhoeal disease. Climate change will impact where infectious diseases are able to spread in the future. Many infectious diseases will spread to new geographic areas where people have not previously been exposed or developed immunity.Changes in climate can cause decreasing yields for some crops and regions, resulting in higher food costs, food insecurity, and undernutrition. Water insecurity is also a concern. Increases in poverty, displacement, migration, violent conflict, and negative effects on mental health are all occurring.Climate change affects human health at all ages, from infancy through adolescence, adulthood and old age. Factors such as age, gender and socioeconomic status influence to what extent these effects become wide-spread risks to human health.: 1867  Extreme weather creates physical and economic risks for whole families, particularly those headed by women. Temperature and heatwaves affect the earning capacity and economic stability of individuals and households. Populations over 65 years of age are particularly vulnerable to heat and other health effects of climate change. Health risks are unevenly distributed across the world. Disadvantaged populations are especially vulnerable to climate change effects.: 15 The health effects of climate change are increasingly a matter of concern for the international public health policy community. Already in 2009, a publication in the general medical journal The Lancet stated: "Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century". The World Health Organization reiterated this in 2015. In 2019, the Australian Medical Association formally declared climate change a health emergency.Research shows that health professionals around the world agree that climate change is real, is caused by humans, and is causing increased health problems in their communities. Studies also show that taking action to address climate change improves public health. Health professionals can act by informing people about health harms and ways to address them, by lobbying leaders to take action, and by taking steps to decarbonize their own homes and workplaces. Studies have found that communications on climate change that present it as a health concern rather than just an environmental matter are more likely to engage the public. Root causes Effects of climate change Climate change vulnerability A 2021 report published in The Lancet found that climate change does not affect people's health in an equal way. The greatest impact tends to fall on the most vulnerable such as the poor, women, children, the elderly, people with pre-existing health concerns, other minorities and outdoor workers.: 13 There are certain predictors of health patterns that determine the social vulnerability of the individuals. These can be grouped into "demographic, socioeconomic, housing, health (such as pre-existing health conditions), neighbourhood, and geographical factors". Overview of health effects Types of pathways affecting health The effects of climate change on human health can be grouped into direct and indirect effects.: 1867   Both types of effects interact with social dynamics. The combination of effects and social dynamics determines the eventual health outcomes. Mechanisms and social dynamics are explained further below: Direct mechanisms or risks: changes in extreme weather and resultant increased storms, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires Indirect mechanisms or risks: these are mediated through changes in the biosphere (e.g., the burden of disease and redistribution of disease vectors, or food availability, water quality, air pollution, land use change, ecological change) Social dynamics (age and gender, health status, socioeconomic status, social capital, public health infrastructure, mobility and conflict status)These health risks vary across the world and between different groups of people. For example, differences in health service provision or economic development will result in different health risks for people in different regions, with less developed countries facing greater health risks. In many places, the combination of lower socioeconomic status and cultural gender roles result in increased health risks to women and girls as a result of climate change, compared to those faced by men and boys (although the converse may apply in other instances). Impact on general health and wellbeing The direct, indirect and social dynamic effects of climate change on health and wellbeing produce the following health effects: cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, undernutrition, mental illness, allergies, injuries and poisoning.: Figure 2 Health and health care provision can also be impacted by the collapse of health systems and damage to infrastructure due to climate-induced events such as flooding. Therefore, building health systems that are climate resilient is a priority.: 15 Impact on mental health Impact caused by heat Impact of higher global temperatures will have ramifications for the following aspects: vulnerability to extremes of heat, exposure of vulnerable populations to heatwaves, heat and physical activity, change in labor capacity, heat and sentiment (mental health), heat-related mortality.The global average and combined land and ocean surface temperature show a warming of 1.09 °C (range: 0.95 to 1.20 °C) from 1850–1900 to 2011–2020, based on multiple independently produced datasets. The trend is faster since the 1970s than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years.A 2023 study estimated that climate change since 1960–1990 has put over 600 million people (9% of the global population) outside the "temperature niche" - the average temperature range at which humans flourish.A 2020 study projects that regions inhabited by a third of the human population could become as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara within 50 years without a change in patterns of population growth and without migration, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. The projected annual average temperature of above 29 °C for these regions would be outside the "human temperature niche" – a suggested range for climate biologically suitable for humans based on historical data of mean annual temperatures (MAT) – and the most affected regions have little adaptive capacity as of 2020. The UK Met Office came to similar conclusions, reporting that the "numbers of people in regions across the world affected by extreme heat stress – a potentially fatal combination of heat and humidity – could increase" "from 68 million today to around one billion" if the world's temperature rise reaches 2°C, albeit it is unclear if that limit or the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement is achieved. Heat-related health effects for vulnerable people Vulnerable people with regard to heat illnesses include people with low incomes, minority groups, women (in particular pregnant women), children, older adults (over 65 years old), people with chronic diseases, disabilities and co-morbidities.: 13  Other people at risk include those in urban environments (due to the urban heat island effect), outdoor workers and people who take certain prescription drugs. Exposure to extreme heat poses an acute health hazard for many of the people deemed as vulnerable.Climate change increases the frequency and severity of heatwaves and thus heat stress for people. Human responses to heat stress can include heat stroke and hyperthermia. Extreme heat is also linked to low quality sleep, acute kidney injury and complications with pregnancy. Furthermore, it may cause the deterioration of pre-existing cardiovascular and respiratory disease.: 1624  Adverse pregnancy outcomes due to high ambient temperatures include for example low birth weight and pre-term birth.: 1051 Heat waves have also resulted in epidemics of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Prolonged heat exposure, physical exertion, and dehydration are sufficient factors for the development of CKD.The human body requires evaporative cooling to prevent overheating, even with a low activity level. With excessive ambient heat and humidity during heatwaves, adequate evaporative cooling might be compromised. A wet-bulb temperature that is too high means that human bodies would no longer be able to adequately cool the skin. A wet bulb temperature of 35 °C is regarded as the limit for humans (called the "physiological threshold for human adaptability" to heat and humidity).: 1498  As of 2020, only two weather stations had recorded 35 °C wet-bulb temperatures, and only very briefly, but the frequency and duration of these events is expected to rise with ongoing climate change. Global warming above 1.5 degrees risks making parts of the tropics uninhabitable because the threshold for the wet bulb temperature may be passed.Further study found that even a wet bulb temperature of 31 degrees is dangerous, even for young and healthy people. This threshold is not uniform for all and depend on many factors including environmental factors, activity and age. If the global temperature will rise by 3 degrees (the most likely scenario if things will not change), temperatures will exceed this limit at large areas in Pakistan, India, China, Sub Saharan Africa, United States, Australia, South America.People with cognitive health issues (e.g. depression, dementia, Parkinson's disease) are more at risk when faced with high temperatures and ought to be extra careful as cognitive performance has been shown to be differentially affected by heat. People with diabetes and those who are overweight, have sleep deprivation, or have cardiovascular/cerebrovascular conditions should avoid too much heat exposure.The risk of dying from chronic lung disease during a heat wave has been estimated at 1.8-8.2% higher compared to average summer temperatures. An 8% increase in hospitalization rate for people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmunary Disease has been estimated for every 1 °C increase in temperatures above 29 °C. In urban areas The effects of heatwaves tend to be more pronounced in urban areas because they are typically warmer than surrounding rural areas due to the urban heat island effect.: 2926  This is caused from the way many cities are built. For example, they often have extensive areas of asphalt, reduced greenery along with many large heat-retaining buildings that physically block cooling breezes and ventilation. Lack of water features are another cause.: 2926 Extreme heat exposure in cities with a wet bulb globe temperature above 30 °C tripled between 1983 and 2016. It increased by about 50% when the population growth in these cities is not taken into account.Cities are often on the front-line of climate change due to their densely concentrated populations, the urban heat island effect, their frequent proximity to coasts and waterways, and reliance on ageing physical infrastructure networks. Heat-related mortality Health experts warn that "exposure to extreme heat increases the risk of death from cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory conditions and all-cause mortality. Heat-related deaths in people older than 65 years reached a record high of an estimated 345 000 deaths in 2019".: 9  More than 70,000 Europeans died as a result of the 2003 European heat wave. Also more than 2,000 people died in Karachi, Pakistan in June 2015 due to a severe heat wave with temperatures as high as 49 °C (120 °F).Increasing access to indoor cooling (air conditioning) will help prevent heat-related mortality but current air conditioning technology is generally unsustainable as it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, peak electricity demand, and urban heat islands.: 17 Mortality due to heat waves could be reduced if buildings were better designed to modify the internal climate, or if the occupants were better educated about the issues, so they can take action on time. Heatwave early warning and response systems are important elements of heat action plans. Reduced labour capacity Heat exposure can affect people's ability to work.: 8  The annual Countdown Report by The Lancet investigated change in labour capacity as an indicator. It found that during 2021, high temperature reduced global potential labour hours by 470 billion - a 37% increase compared to the average annual loss that occurred during the 1990s. Occupational heat exposure especially affects laborers in the agricultural sector of developing countries. In those countries, the vast majority of these labour hour losses (87%) were in the agricultural sector.: 1625 Working in extreme heat can lead to labor force productivity decreases as well as participation because employees' health may be weaker due to heat related health problems, such as dehydration, fatigue, dizziness, and confusion.: 1073–1074 Sports and outdoor exercise With regards to sporting activities it has been observed that "hot weather reduces the likelihood of engaging in exercise".: 1625  Furthermore, participating in sports during excessive heat can lead to injury or even death.: 1073–1074  It is also well established that regular physical activity is beneficial for human health, including mental health.: 1625  Therefore, an increase in hot days due to climate change could indirectly affect health due to people exercising less. Effects caused by weather and climate events other than heat Climate change is increasing the periodicity and intensity of some extreme weather events. Confidence in the attribution of extreme weather to anthropogenic climate change is highest in changes in frequency or magnitude of extreme heat and cold events with some confidence in increases in heavy precipitation and increases in the intensity of droughts.Extreme weather events, such as floods, hurricanes, droughts and wildfires can result in injuries, death and the spread of infectious diseases. For example, local epidemics can occur due to loss of infrastructure, such as hospitals and sanitation services, but also because of changes in local ecology and environment. Floods Due to an increase in heavy rainfall events, floods are expected to become more severe in future when they do occur.: 1155  However, the interactions between rainfall and flooding are complex. In some regions, flooding is expected to become rarer. This depends on several factors, such as changes in rain and snowmelt, but also soil moisture.: 1156  Floods have short and long-term negative implications to people's health and well-being. Short term implications include mortalities, injuries and diseases, while long term implications include non-communicable diseases and psychosocial health aspects.For example, the 2022 Pakistan Floods (which were likely more severe because of climate change) affected people's health directly and indirectly. There were outbreaks of diseases like malaria, dengue, and other skin diseases. Flood runoff can wash soil contaminants like fertilisers and toxins into estuaries, lakes and seas, posing a threat to human health by reducing water quality. Hurricanes and thunderstorms Stronger hurricanes create more opportunities for vectors to breed and infectious diseases to flourish. Extreme weather also means stronger winds. These winds can carry vectors tens of thousands of kilometers, resulting in an introduction of new infectious agents to regions that have never seen them before, making the humans in these regions even more susceptible.Another result of hurricanes is increased rainwater, which promotes flooding. Hurricanes result in ruptured pollen grains, which releases respirable aeroallergens. Thunderstorms cause a concentration of pollen grains at the ground level, which result in an increase in the release of allergenic particles in the atmosphere due to rupture by osmotic shock. Around 20–30 minutes after a thunderstorm, there is an increased risk for people with pollen allergies to experience severe asthmatic exacerbations, due to high concentration inhalation of allergenic peptides. Droughts Climate change affects multiple factors associated with droughts, such as how much rain falls and how fast the rain evaporates again. Warming over land increases the severity and frequency of droughts around much of the world.: 1057  Many of the consequences of droughts have effects on human health. This can be through destruction of food supply (loss of crop yields), malnutrition and with this, dozens of associated diseases and health problems. Wildfires Climate change increases wildfire potential and activity. Climate change leads to a warmer ground temperature and its effects include earlier snowmelt dates, drier than expected vegetation, increased number of potential fire days, increased occurrence of summer droughts, and a prolonged dry season.Wood smoke from wildfires produces particulate matter that has damaging effects to human health. The primary pollutants in wood smoke are carbon monoxide and nitric oxide. Through the destruction of forests and human-designed infrastructure, wildfire smoke releases other toxic and carcinogenic compounds, such as formaldehyde and hydrocarbons. These pollutants damage human health by evading the mucociliary clearance system and depositing in the upper respiratory tract, where they have toxic effects.The health effects of wildfire smoke exposure include exacerbation and development of respiratory illness such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder; increased risk of lung cancer, mesothelioma and tuberculosis; increased airway hyper-responsiveness; changes in levels of inflammatory mediators and coagulation factors; and respiratory tract infection. Health risks due to climate-sensitive infectious diseases Health risks from food and water insecurity Climate change affects many aspects of food security through "multiple and interconnected pathways".: 1619  Many of these are related to the effects of climate change on agriculture, for example failed crops due to more extreme weather events. This comes on top of other coexisting crises that reduce food security in many regions. Less food security means more undernutrition with all its associated health problems. Food insecurity is increasing at the global level (some of the underlying causes are related to climate change, others are not) and about 720–811 million people suffered from hunger in 2020.: 1629 The number of deaths resulting from climate change-induced changes to food availability are difficult to estimate. The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report does not quantify this number in its chapter on food security. A modelling study from 2016 found "a climate change–associated net increase of 529,000 adult deaths worldwide [...] from expected reductions in food availability (particularly fruit and vegetables) by 2050, as compared with a reference scenario without climate change." Reduced nutritional value of crops Food production from the oceans A headline finding in 2021 regarding marine food security stated that: "In 2018–20, nearly 70% of countries showed increases in average sea surface temperature in their territorial waters compared within 2003–05, reflecting an increasing threat to their marine food productivity and marine food security".: 14 Water insecurity Access to clean drinking water and sanitation is important for healthy living and well-being. Other health risks influenced by climate change Pollen allergies A warming climate can lead to increases of pollen season lengths and concentrations in some regions of the world. For example, in northern mid-latitudes regions, the spring pollen season is now starting earlier.: 1049  This can affect people with pollen allergies (hay fever). The rise in pollen also comes from rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and resulting CO2 fertilisation effects.: 1096 Violence and conflicts Climate change may increase the risk of violent conflict, which can lead to injuries, such as battle injuries, and death. Conflict can result from the increased propensity towards violence after people become more irritable due to excessive heat. There can also be follow-on effects on health from resource scarcity or human migrations that climate change can cause or aggravate in already conflict prone areas.However, the observed contribution of climate change to conflict risk is small in comparison with cultural, socioeconomic, and political causes. There is some evidence that rural-to-urban migration within countries worsens the conflict risk in violence prone regions. But there is no evidence that migration between countries would increase the risk of violence.: 1008, 1128 Ozone-related health burden The relationship between surface ozone (also called ground-level ozone) and ambient temperature is complex. Changes in air temperature and water content affect the air's chemistry and the rates of chemical reactions that create and remove ozone. Many chemical reaction rates increase with temperature and lead to increased ozone production. Climate change projections show that rising temperatures and water vapour in the atmosphere will likely increase surface ozone in polluted areas like the eastern United States.On the other hand, ozone concentrations could decrease in a warming climate if anthropogenic ozone-precursor emissions (e.g., nitrogen oxides) continue to decrease through implementation of policies and practices. Therefore, future surface ozone concentrations depend on the climate change mitigation steps taken (more or less methane emissions) as well as air pollution control steps taken.: 884 High surface ozone concentrations often occur during heat waves in the United States. Throughout much of the eastern United States, ozone concentrations during heat waves are at least 20% higher than the summer average. Broadly speaking, surface ozone levels are higher in cities with high levels of air pollution.: 876  Ozone pollution in urban areas affects denser populations, and is worsened by high populations of vehicles, which emit pollutants NO2 and VOCs, the main contributors to problematic ozone levels.There is a great deal of evidence to show that surface ozone can harm lung function and irritate the respiratory system. Exposure to ozone (and the pollutants that produce it) is linked to premature death, asthma, bronchitis, heart attack, and other cardiopulmonary problems. High ozone concentrations irritate the lungs and thus affect respiratory function, especially among people with asthma. People who are most at risk from breathing in ozone air pollution are those with respiratory issues, children, older adults and those who typically spend long periods of time outside such as construction workers. Harmful algal blooms in oceans and lakes The warming oceans and lakes are leading to more frequent harmful algal blooms. Also, during droughts, surface waters are even more susceptible to harmful algal blooms and microorganisms. Algal blooms increase water turbidity, suffocating aquatic plants, and can deplete oxygen, killing fish. Some kinds of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) create neurotoxins, hepatoxins, cytotoxins or endotoxins that can cause serious and sometimes fatal neurological, liver and digestive diseases in humans. Cyanobacteria grow best in warmer temperatures (especially above 25 degrees Celsius), and so areas of the world that are experiencing general warming as a result of climate change are also experiencing harmful algal blooms more frequently and for longer periods of time.One of these toxin producing algae is Pseudo-nitzschia fraudulenta. This species produces a substance called domoic acid which is responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning. The toxicity of this species has been shown to increase with greater CO2 concentrations associated with ocean acidification. Some of the more common illnesses reported from harmful algal blooms include; Ciguatera fish poisoning, paralytic shellfish poisoning, azaspiracid shellfish poisoning, diarrhetic shellfish poisoning, neurotoxic shellfish poisoning and the above-mentioned amnesic shellfish poisoning. Carbon dioxide levels and human cognition Higher levels of indoor and outdoor CO2 levels may impair human cognition. Accidents Researchers found that there is a strong correlation between higher winter temperatures and drowning accidents in large lakes, because the ice gets thinner and weaker.Available evidence on the effect of climate change on the epidemiology of snakebite is limited but it is expected that there will be a geographic shift in risk of snakebite: northwards in North America and southwards in South America and in Mozambique, and increase in incidence of bite in Sri Lanka. Potential health benefits Health co-benefits from mitigation The health benefits (also called "co-benefits") from climate change mitigation measures are significant: potential measures can not only mitigate future health effects from climate change but also improve health directly. Climate change mitigation is interconnected with various co-benefits (such as reduced air pollution and associated health benefits) and how it is carried out (in terms of e.g. policymaking) could also determine its effect on living standards (whether and how inequality and poverty are reduced).There are many health co-benefits associated with climate action. These include those of cleaner air, healthier diets (e.g. less red meat), more active lifestyles, and increased exposure to green urban spaces.: 26  Access to urban green spaces provides benefits to mental health as well.: 18 Compared with the current pathways scenario (with regards to greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation efforts), the "sustainable pathways scenario" will likely result in an annual reduction of 1.18 million air pollution-related deaths, 5.86 million diet-related deaths, and 1.15 million deaths due to physical inactivity, across the nine countries, by 2040. These benefits were attributable to the mitigation of direct greenhouse gas emissions and the commensurate actions that reduce exposure to harmful pollutants, as well as improved diets and safe physical activity. Air pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion is both a major driver of global warming and the cause of a large number of annual deaths with some estimates as high as 8.7 million excess deaths during 2018.Placing health as a key focus of the Nationally Determined Contributions could present an opportunity to increase ambition and realize health co-benefits. Potential health benefits from global warming It is possible that a potential health benefit from global warming could result from fewer cold days in winter:: 1099  This could lead to some mental health benefits. However, the evidence on this correlation is regarded as inconsistent in 2022.: 1099 Global estimates Estimating deaths (mortality) or DALYs (morbidity) from the effects of climate change at the global level is very difficult. A 2014 study by the World Health Organization estimated the effect of climate change on human health, but not all of the effects of climate change were included. For example, the effects of more frequent and extreme storms were excluded. The study assessed deaths from heat exposure in elderly people, increases in diarrhea, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood undernutrition. The authors estimated that climate change was projected to cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 but also stated that "these numbers do not represent a prediction of the overall impacts of climate change on health, since we could not quantify several important causal pathways".Climate change was responsible for 3% of diarrhoea, 3% of malaria, and 3.8% of dengue fever deaths worldwide in 2004. Total attributable mortality was about 0.2% of deaths in 2004; of these, 85% were child deaths. The effects of more frequent and extreme storms were excluded from this study. The health effects of climate change are expected to rise in line with projected ongoing global warming for different climate change scenarios. A review found if warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, roughly 1 billion premature deaths would be caused by anthropogenic global warming. Society and culture Climate justice and climate migrants Much of the health burden associated with climate change falls on vulnerable people (e.g. indigenous peoples and economically disadvantaged communities). As a result, people of disadvantaged sociodemographic groups experience unequal risks. Often these people will have made a disproportionately low contribution toward man-made global warming, thus leading to concerns over climate justice.Climate change has diverse effects on migration activities, and can lead to decreases or increases in the number of people who migrate.: 1079  Migration activities can have an effect on health and well-being, in particular for mental health. Migration in the context of climate change can be grouped into four types: adaptive migration (see also climate change adaptation), involuntary migration, organised relocation of populations, and immobility (which is when people are unable or unwilling to move even though it is recommended).: 1079 Communication strategies Studies have found that when communicating climate change with the public, it can help encourage engagement if it is framed as a health concern, rather than as an environmental issue. This is especially the case when comparing a health related framing to one that emphasised environmental doom, as was common in the media at least up until 2017. Communicating the co-benefits to health helps underpin greenhouse gas reduction strategies. Safeguarding health—particularly of the most vulnerable—is a frontline local climate change adaptation goal. Policy responses Due to its significant impact on human health, climate change has become a major concern for public health policy. The United States Environmental Protection Agency had issued a 100-page report on global warming and human health back in 1989. By the early years of the 21st century, climate change was increasingly addressed as a public health concern at a global level, for example in 2006 at Nairobi by UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Since 2018, factors such as the 2018 heat wave, the Greta effect and the IPCC's 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C further increased the urgency for responding to climate change as a global health issue.The World Bank has suggested a framework that can strengthen health systems to make them more resilient and climate-sensitive. See also Health policy Health system Health law Environmental health Global health Universal health care References External links Public health and climate change (Lancet) Climate change and health (World Health Organization)

climate change and poverty

Climate change and poverty are deeply intertwined because climate change disproportionally affects poor people in low-income communities and developing countries around the world. The impoverished have a higher chance of experiencing the ill-effects of climate change due to the increased exposure and vulnerability. Vulnerability represents the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change including climate variability and extremes.Climate change highly exacerbates existing inequalities through its effects on health, the economy, and human rights. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth National Climate Assessment Report found that low-income individuals and communities are more exposed to environmental hazards and pollution and have a harder time recovering from the impacts of climate change. For example, it takes longer for low-income communities to be rebuilt after natural disasters. According to the United Nations Development Programme, developing countries suffer 99% of the casualties attributable to climate change.Different countries' impact on climate change also varies based on their stage of development; the 50 least developed countries of the world account for a 1% contribution to the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gasses, which are a byproduct of global warming. Additionally, 92% of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to countries from the Global North, which comprise 19% of the global population, while 8% of emissions are attributed to countries from the Global South, who bear the heaviest consequences of increasing global temperature.Climate and distributive justice questions are central to climate change policy options. Many policy tools can be employed to solve environmental problems such as cost-benefit analysis; however, such tools usually do not deal with such issues because they often ignore questions of just distribution and the environmental effects on human rights. Connection to poverty A 2020 World Bank paper estimated that between 32 million and 132 million additional people will be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030 due to climate change. The cycle of poverty exacerbates the potential negative impacts of climate change. This phenomenon is defined when poor families become trapped in poverty for at least three generations, have limited to no resources access, and are disadvantaged in means of breaking the cycle. While in rich countries, coping with climate change has largely been a matter of dealing with longer, hotter summers, and observing seasonal shifts; for those in poverty, weather-related disasters, bad harvest, or even a family member falling ill can provide crippling economic shocks.Besides these economic shocks, the widespread famine, drought, and potential humanistic shocks could affect the entire nation. High levels of poverty and low levels of human development limit the capacity of poor households to manage climate risks. With limited access to formal insurance, low incomes, and meager assets, poor households have to deal with climate-related shocks under highly constrained conditions. In addition, poorer households are heavily impacted by environmental shocks due to the lack of post-shock support from friends and family, the financial system, and social safety nets. Relationship to environmental racism As global climate has changed progressively over the past several decades, it has collided with environmental racism. The overlap of these two phenomena, has disproportionately affected different communities and populations throughout the world due to disparities in socio-economic status. This is especially evident in the Global South where, for example, byproducts of global climate change such as increasingly frequent and severe landslides resulting from more heavy rainfall events in Quito, Ecuador force people to also deal with profound socio-economic ramifications like the destruction of their homes and death. Countries such as Ecuador often contribute relatively little to climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions but have far fewer resources to ward off the negative localized impacts of climate change. This issue occurs globally, where nations in the global south bear the burden of natural disasters and weather extremes despite contributing little to the global carbon footprint.While people living in the Global South have typically been impacted most by the effects of climate change, people of color in the Global North also face similar situations in several areas. The issues of climate change and communities that are in a danger zone are not limited to North America or the United States either. Environmental racism and climate change coincide with one another. Rising seas affect poor areas such as Kivalina, Alaska, and Thibodaux, Louisiana, and countless other places around the globe.Impacts of environmental racism due to climate change become particularly evident during climate disasters. Following the 1995 Chicago heat wave, scholars analyzed the effects of environmental racism on the unequal death rate between races during this crisis. Direct impacts of this phenomenon can be observed through the lack of adequate warning and the failure to utilize pre-existing cooling centers which disadvantaged impoverished groups, and caused particularly devastating effects in Chicago's poorest areas. Poorer individuals are more susceptible to harm from climate change because they have less access to resources to help them recover from natural disasters. With the number of climate disasters increasing dramatically over the past 50 years, the impacts of environmental racism has increased, and social movements calling for environmental justice have grown in turn. Atmospheric colonization The concept of 'atmospheric colonization' refers to the observation that 92% of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to countries from the Global North, comprising 19% of global population, while only 8% of emissions are attributable to countries from the Global South that will bear the heaviest consequences of increasing global temperatures.A 2020 World Bank paper estimated that between 32 million and 132 million additional people will be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030 due to climate change. Reversing development Climate change is globally encompassing and can reverse development in some areas in the following ways. Agricultural production and food security There has been considerable research comparing the interrelated processes of climate change on agriculture. Climate change affects rainfall, temperature, and water availability for agriculture in vulnerable areas. It also affects agriculture in several ways including productivity, agricultural practices, environmental effects, and distribution of rural space. Additional numbers affected by malnutrition could rise to 600 million by 2080. Climate change could worsen the prevalence of hunger through direct negative effects on production and indirect impacts on purchasing powers. Water insecurity Of the 3 billion growth in population projected worldwide by the mid-21st century, the majority will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages. As the overall climate of the earth warms, changes in the nature of global rainfall, evaporation, snow, and runoff flows will be affected. Safe water sources are essential for survival within a community. Manifestations of the projected water crisis include inadequate access to safe drinking water for about 884 million people as well as inadequate access to water for sanitation and water disposal for 2.5 billion people. As waters become warmer, hazardous algae and other bacteria growth increase, not only contaminating the water that we drink but also the seafood that we consume. With a population ranging between 198 and 210 million people in Nigeria, existing sanitation and water infrastructural facilities remain inadequate with 2.2billion people lacking access to safe water and 4.2 billion lacking safe sanitations both in the rural and urban areas. Rising sea levels and exposure to climate disasters Sea levels could rise rapidly with accelerated ice sheet disintegration. Global temperature increases of 3–4 degrees C could result in 330 million people being permanently or temporarily displaced through flooding Warming seas will also fuel more intense tropical storms. The destruction of coastal landscapes exacerbates the damage done by this increase in storms. Wetlands, forests, and mangroves have been removed for land development. These features usually slow runoff, storm surges, and prevent debris from being carried by flooding. Developing over these areas has increased the destructive power of floods and makes homeowners more susceptible to extreme weather events. Flooding causes the risk of submersion of lands in coastal areas in densely populated poverty areas, such as Alexandria and Port Said in Egypt, Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria, and Cotonou in Benin. In some areas, such as coastal properties, real estate prices go up because of ocean access and housing scarcity, in part caused by homes being destroyed during storms. Wealthy homeowners have more resources to rebuild their homes and have better job security, which encourages them to stay in their communities following extreme weather events. Highly unstable areas, such as slopes and delta regions, are sold to lower-income families at a cheaper price point. After extreme weather events, Impoverished people have a difficult time finding or maintaining a job and rebuilding their homes. These challenges force many to relocate in search of job opportunities and housing. Ecosystems and biodiversity Climate change is already transforming ecological systems. Around one-half of the world's coral reef systems have suffered bleaching as a result of warming seas. In addition, the direct human pressures that might be experienced include overfishing which could lead to resource depletion, nutrient, and chemical pollution and poor land-use practices such as deforestation and dredging. Also, climate change may increase the number of arable land in high-latitude regions by reduction of the number of frozen lands. A 2005 study reports that temperature in Siberia has increased three degrees Celsius on average since 1960, which is reportedly more than in other areas of the world. Human health A direct effect is an increase in temperature-related illnesses and deaths related to prolonged heat waves and humidity. Climate change could also change the geographic range of vector-borne, specifically mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria dengue fever exposing new populations to the disease. Because a changing climate affects the essential ingredients of maintaining good health: clean air and water, sufficient food, and adequate shelter, the effects could be widespread and pervasive. The report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health points out that disadvantaged communities are likely to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of climate change because of their increased exposure and vulnerability to health threats. Over 90 percent of malaria and diarrhea deaths are borne by children aged 5 years or younger, mostly in developing countries. Other severely affected population groups include women, the elderly, and people living in small island developing states and other coastal regions, mega-cities, or mountainous areas. Aspects of Climate Change on Human Health Likely Relative Impact on Health Outcomes of the Components of Climate Change ++++= great effect; += small effect; empty cells indicate no known relationship. Human rights and democracy In June 2019, United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston warned of a "climate apartheid" where the rich pay to escape the effects of climate change while the rest of the world suffers, potentially undermining basic human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. When Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012, he recounts, most people in New York City were left without power, while the Goldman Sachs headquarters had a private generator and protection by "tens of thousands of its own sandbags". Security impacts The concept of human security and the effects that climate change may have on it will become increasingly important as the affects become more apparent. Some effects are already evident and will become very clear in the human and climatic short-run (2007–2020). They will increase and others will manifest themselves in the medium term (2021–2050); whilst in the long run (2051–2100), they will all be active and interacting strongly with other major trends. There is the potential for the end of the petroleum economy for many producing and consuming nations, possible financial and economic crisis, a larger population of humans, and a much more urbanized humanity – far in excess of the 50% now living in small to very large cities. All these processes will be accompanied by the redistribution of the population nationally and internationally. Such redistributions typically have significant gender dimensions; for example, extreme event impacts can lead to male out migration in search of work, culminating in an increase in women-headed households – a group often considered particularly vulnerable. Indeed, the effects of climate change on impoverished women and children is crucial in that women and children, in particular, have unequal human capabilities. Infrastructure impacts The potential effects of climate change and the security of infrastructure will have the most direct effect on the poverty cycle. Areas of infrastructure effects will include water systems, housing and settlements, transport networks, utilities, and industry. Infrastructure designers can contribute in three areas for improving the living environment for the poor, in building design, in settlement planning and design as well as in urban planning.The National Research Council has identified five climate changes of particular importance to infrastructure and factors that should be taken into consideration when designing future structures. These factors include increases in very hot days and heat waves, increases in Arctic temperatures, rising sea levels, increases in intense precipitation events, and increases in hurricane intensity. Heat waves affect communities that live in traditionally cooler areas because many of the homes are not equipped with air conditioning units. Rising sea levels can be devastating for poor countries situated near the ocean and in delta regions, which experience increasingly overwhelming storm damage. In parts of eastern Caribbean nations, almost 60 percent of the homes were constructed without any building regulations. Many of these endangered populations are also affected by an increase in flooding in locations that lack adequate drainage. In 1998, close to 200 million people were affected by flooding in China's Yangtze River Valley; and in 2010, flooding in Pakistan affected 20 million people. These issues are made worse for people living in lower income areas and force them to relocate at a higher rate than other economic groups.In areas where poverty is prevalent and infrastructure is underdeveloped, climate change produces a critical threat to the future development of that country. Reports of a study done on ten geographically and economically diverse countries show how nine out of ten countries revealed an inability to develop infrastructures and its expensive maintenance due to the influence of climate change and cost. Proposed policy solutions Mitigation efforts Adaptation efforts Adaptation to global warming involves actions to tolerate the effects of global warming. Collaborative research from the Institute of Development Studies draws links between adaptation and poverty to help develop an agenda for pro-poor adaptation that can inform climate-resilient poverty reduction. Adaptation to climate change will be "ineffective and inequitable if it fails to learn and build upon an understanding of the multidimensional and differentiated nature of poverty and vulnerability". Poorer countries tend to be more seriously affected by climate change, yet have reduced assets and capacities with which to adapt. One can see this effect by comparing outcomes between Bangladesh and the United States following two severe storms. In the United States, Hurricane Andrew killed 23 people when it made landfall in 1992; however, one year before, in Bangladesh, a tropical cyclone killed approximately 100,000 people. Bangladesh, having a poorer population, was less prepared for the storm; and the country lacked sufficient weather forecasting systems needed to predict meteorological events. After the storm, Bangladesh required assistance from the international community because it didn't possess the funds needed to recover. As events like these increase in their frequency and severity, a more proactive approach is needed. This has led to more activities to integrate adaptation within development and poverty reduction programs. The rise of adaptation as a development issue has been influenced by concerns around minimizing threats to progress on poverty reduction, notably the Millennium Development Goals, and by the injustice of impacts that are felt hardest by those who have done least to contribute to the problem, framing adaptation as an equity and human rights issue.Other solutions include increasing access to quality health care for poor people and people of color, preparedness planning for urban heat island effects, identifying neighborhoods that are most likely to be impacted, investing in alternative fuel and energy research, and measuring the results of policy impacts. Regional effects Regional effects from global climate change varies from country to country. Many countries have different approaches to how they adapt to global climate change versus others. Bigger countries with more resources do not react the same as a country with less resources to use. Urgency to fix the problem is not present until the effect of global climate change is felt directly. Bangladesh is just one of the many examples of people being affected because they are not properly prepared to face global climate. Workers in the agriculture field in these countries specifically are effected more than others but the extent to how much each agriculture worker is effected varies from region to region. A country that exemplifies the inequality that is created due to varying affects in different regions by climate change is Nigeria. Nigeria is a country that mainly relies on oil as its main money generator, but is being affected by climate change and affecting the lower class workers such as farmers in their every day life. Lack of climate change information along with overprice land cost and government irresponsibleness towards climate change adaption continues to constrain farmers in Nigeria. A country supported by agricultural would take more action in order to combat climate change. Its economic value would be too high not to put more effort into fighting climate change. Since it's not a priority for the wealthier class in Nigeria, lower-class people directly suffer the effects of climate change in Nigeria more. Nigeria along with the rest of Africa is in danger of being affected by climate change the most. According to author Ignatius A. Madu research, the IPCC has declared Africa a high vulnerable area based on its high exposure, and lack of adaptability to global climate change.(IPCC 2007) It will effect the economy as well as social system in Africa if it is not addressed the way it should be. A country with so many natural resources such as Africa will lose those resources over time and will be effected harder than most regions of the world if climate change is not addressed with urgency. Lower class workers feel the effects differently region to region of climate change but the effects in some of these countries are not as devastating due to better adaption methods than others in different countries and regions. Located in South Asia is the country Sri Lanka that struggles with global climate change, but is doing more to combat it than others. The country Sri Lanka has now started to investigate farm level adaptation to climate change by observing smaller farming communities in Sri Lanka. These farmers use their personal experiences and gained knowledge to fight global climate change. They have emphasized managing non-climatic elements which they have no control over and this has helped them adapt faster than most farming communities to climate change. Climate change has caused these farmers efficiency to increase. This increase gives them a greater chance of not being effected by climate change too much. It also shows how social networks can effect adaption efforts. When more people take an issue seriously the response will be greater. Sri Lanka depends on agriculture goods to keep their economy stable and many people depend on it. Adaption efforts in Sri Lanka shows how the response from society can dictate the level of importance that people see in an issue. Understanding of the way people process information is just as important as knowing the information needed to combat socio-economic, cognitive and normative aspects with in communities. Unlike Nigeria, studies have been run and tested by the Sri Lanka government on how to adapt to climate change which is helping them not be completely defenseless against global climate change. Countries like Sri Lanka who have a government who depend on agricultural exports to sustain part of the government sure completely different response to combating climate change unlike places like Nigeria. When the issue affects those of the top adaption will happen with the urgency. This war cause approaches the climate change to look different until we are all affected equally. Adaption efforts have to be collective or we will not fix the worldwide problem or climate change in poverty. Proposed policy challenges The main difficulties involved with climate change policy are the timetable of return on investment and the disparate costs on countries. To control the price of carbon, richer countries would have to make large loans to poorer countries, with the potential return on investment taking generations. References Bibliography Delaney and Elizabeth Shrader (2000) "Gender and Post-Disaster Reconstruction: The Case of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua", LCSPG/LAC Gender Team, The World Bank, Decision Review Draft, page 24 http://www.gdnonline.org/resources/reviewdraft.doc Esham, M., & Garforth, C. (2013). Agricultural adaptation to climate change: insights from a farming community in Sri Lanka. Mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change, 18(5), 535–549. IPCC. 2001. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. Online at www.ipcc.ch (Accessed October 23, 2010) IPCC. 2007. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (Accessed on November 2, 2010). IPCC (2007). "Summary for Policymakers" (PDF). Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. pp. 1–23. IDS Bulletin. Poverty in a Changing Climate IDS Bulletin 39(4):2, September 2008 Jabeen, Huraera and Fuad H. Mallick. "Urban Poverty, climate change and built environment." The Daily Star. January 24, 2009. La Trobe, S. 2002. Climate Change and Poverty. https://web.archive.org/web/20110719200401/http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/Campaigning/Policy%20and%20research/Climate%20change%20and%20poverty%20paper.pdf (Accessed October 23, 2010) Liotta, Peter. "Climate Change and Human Security: The Use of Scenarios" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Town & Country Resort and Convention Center, San Diego, California, USA, Mar 22, 2006. 2009-05-25 <[2]> Madu, I. A., & Nwankwo, C. F. (2021). Spatial pattern of climate change and farmer–herder conflict vulnerabilities in Nigeria. GeoJournal, 86(6), 2691–2707. Marger (2008). Examples of these disadvantages working in a circular process would be: economic decline, low personal income, no funds for school, which leads to lack of education. The lack of education results in unemployment and lastly low national productivity. ‘‘Social Inequality: Patterns and Processes.’’ McGraw Hill publishing. 4th edition. ISBN 0-07-352815-3 Mohammed, A., Hassan, H., & Zakari, M. (2021). Impact of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) on Poverty Alleviation among Rural Women and Youth in Federal Capital Territory Abuja, Nigeria. KIU Journal Of Humanities, 6(1), 109-122. Retrieved from https://ijhumas.com/ojs/index.php/kiuhums/article/view/1175 Molina, M.; Zaelke, D.; Sarmac, K. M.; Andersen, S. O.; Ramanathane, V.; Kaniaruf, D. (2009). "Tipping Elements in Earth Systems Special Feature: Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (49): 20616–21. Bibcode:2009PNAS..10620616M. doi:10.1073/pnas.0902568106. PMC 2791591. PMID 19822751. Miller, Kathleen. 1997. Climate Variability, Climate Change and Western Water. Report to the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission, NTIS, Springfield, VA. https://web.archive.org/web/20151031172136/http://www.isse.ucar.edu/water_climate/impacts.html (Accessed on November 2, 2010). O’Leary, Maureen. March 21, 2008. Climate Change on Infrastructure. http://scitizen.com/climate-change/climate-change-on-infrastructure_a-13-1788.html (Accessed on November 2, 2010). Olivier, J.G.J.; Peters, J.A.H.W. (2020). "Trends in global CO2 and total greenhouse gas emissions (2020)" (PDF). The Hague: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Ozor, N., Madukwe, M. C., Enete, A. A., Amaechina, E. C., & Onokala, P. (2010). Barriers to climate change adaptation among farming households of Southern Nigeria. Journal of Agricultural Extension, 14(1). Ram, M.; Bogdanov, D.; Aghahosseini, A.; Gulagi, A. (2019). Global Energy System based on 100% Renewable Energy – Power, Heat, Transport and Desalination Sectors (PDF). Lappeenranta University of Technology / Energy Watch Group. ISBN 978-9523353398. ISSN 2243-3376. Rayner, S.; Malone, E.L. (2001). "Climate Change, Poverty, and Intragernerational Equity: The National Level". International Journal of Global Environmental Issues. 1 (2): 175–202. doi:10.1504/ijgenvi.2001.000977. Sample, Ian. "Warming hits ‘tipping point’" The Guardian. August 11, 2005. (Accessed on November 12, 2010). Schneider, S.H. et al. (2007). "Assessing key vulnerabilities and the risk from climate change. In: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [M.L. Parry et al. (eds.)"]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., and New York, N.Y., U.S.A.. pp. 779–810. Retrieved 2009-05-20. Simon, David. (2007), "Cities and Global Environmental Change: Exploring the Links," The Geographical Journal 173, 1 (March): 75–79 & see chapters 3 & 4 of Sir Nicholas Stern et al. (2007) Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. London: UK, Department of the Treasury http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm Smit, B.; Burton, I.; Klein, R.J.T.; Street, R. (1999). "The Science of Adaption: A framework for Assessment". Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. 4 (3/4): 199–213. doi:10.1023/A:1009652531101. S2CID 17970320. United Nations Development Programme. "Human Development Report 2007/2008: The 21st Century Climate Challenge." United Nations Development Programme, http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_20072008_en_complete.pdf (Accessed October 23, 2010). United Nations Development Programme. 1998. "Unequal Human Impacts of Environmental Damage," in Human Development Report 1998. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. United Nations Development Programme. 2006. "Human Development Report: Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. (pp. 25–199). UNICEF. 2007. Climate Change and Children. New York: United Nations Children's Fund. Progress in Drinking-water and Sanitation: special focus on sanitation. WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. July 17, 2008. p. 25. http://www.unicef.org/media/files/Joint_Monitoring_Report_-_17_July_2008.pdf Archived 2018-07-11 at the Wayback Machine. Updated Numbers: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation Updated Report. 2008. http://www.unicef.org/media/media_44093.html Archived 2020-03-13 at the Wayback Machine http://www.ied.ethz.ch/pub/pdf/IED_WP01_Schubert.pdf Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2010/11/02/000158349_20101102135244/Rendered/PDF/WPS5468.pdf World Health Organization. 2004. The Global Burden Disease: 2004 Update. [3] CRC Press. 2018. "Poverty and Climate Change." https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/43910.

climate change and infectious diseases

Global climate change has increased the occurrence of some infectious diseases. Those infectious diseases whose transmission is impacted by climate change include for example the vector-borne diseases dengue fever, malaria, tick-borne diseases, leishmaniasis, zika fever, chikungunya and Ebola virus disease. One of the mechanisms for increased disease transmission is that climate change is altering the geographic range and seasonality of the insects (or disease vectors) that can carry the diseases. Scientists stated a clear observation in 2022: "the occurrence of climate-related food-borne and waterborne diseases has increased (very high confidence).": 11 Infectious diseases that are sensitive to climate can be grouped into: vector-borne diseases (transmitted via mosquitos, ticks etc.), waterborne diseases (transmitted via viruses or bacteria through water), and food-borne diseases.: 1107  Climate change is affecting the distribution of these diseases due to the expanding geographic range and seasonality of these diseases and their vectors.: 9  Like other ways in which climate change affects on human health, climate change exacerbates existing inequalities and challenges in managing infectious disease. Mosquito-borne diseases that are sensitive to climate include malaria, elephantiasis, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika virus, and chikungunya. Scientists found in 2022 that rising temperatures are increasing the areas where dengue fever, malaria and other mosquito-carried diseases are able to spread.: 1062  Warmer temperatures are also advancing to higher elevations, allowing mosquitoes to survive in places that were previously inhospitable to them.: 1045  This risks malaria making a return to areas where it was previously eradicated.Ticks are changing their geographic range because of rising temperatures, and this puts new populations at risk. Ticks can spread lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis. It is expected that climate change will increase the incidence of these diseases in the Northern Hemisphere.: 1094  For example, a review of the literature found that "In the USA, a 2°C warming could increase the number of Lyme disease cases by over 20% over the coming decades and lead to an earlier onset and longer length of the annual Lyme disease season".: 1094 Waterborne diseases are caused by a pathogen transmitted through water. The symptoms of waterborne diseases typically include diarrhea, fever and other flu-like symptoms, neurological disorders, and liver damage. Changes in climate have a large effect on the distribution of microbial species. These communities are very complex and can be extremely sensitive to external climate stimuli. There are a range of waterborne diseases and parasites that will pose greater health risks in future. This will vary by region. For example, in Africa Cryptosporidium spp. and Giardia duodenalis (two protozoan parasites) will increase. This is due to increasing temperatures and drought.: 1095  Scientist also expect that disease outbreaks caused by vibrio (in particular the bacterium that causes cholera, called vibrio cholerae) are increasing in occurrence and intensity.: 1107  One reason is that the area of coastline with suitable conditions for vibrio bacteria has increased due to changes in sea surface temperature and sea surface salinity caused by climate change.: 12  These pathogens can cause gastroenteritis, cholera, wound infections, and sepsis. The increasing occurrence of higher temperature days, heavy rainfall events and flooding due to climate change could lead to an increase in cholera risks.: 1045 Public health context In 1988, little was known about the effects of climate change on human health. As of 2023, the evidence has grown significantly and is for example summarised in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientific understanding about the potential health risks and observed health impacts caused by climate change is now better understood. One category of health risks is that of infectious diseases. A study concluded in 2022 that "58% (that is, 218 out of 375) of infectious diseases confronted by humanity worldwide have been at some point aggravated by climatic hazards". The World Health Organization considers climate change as one of the greatest threats to human health.Infectious diseases have played a significant role in human history, impacting the rise and fall of civilizations and facilitating the conquest of new territories. During recent decades, there are significant regional changes in vector and pathogen distribution reported in temperate, peri‐Arctic, Arctic, and tropical highland regions. Climate change is only one factor in the spread of human diseases. Many other key factors affect the spread and severity of human diseases as well, including mobility of people, animals, and goods; control measures in place; availability of effective drugs; quality of public health services; human behavior; and political stability and conflicts.The effects of climate change on health will impact most populations over the next few decades. However, Africa, and specifically, the African Highlands, are susceptible to being particularly negatively affected. For example, with regards to malaria, in 2010, 91% of the global burden due to malaria deaths occurred in Africa. Several spatiotemporal models have been studied to assess the potential effect of projected climate scenarios on malaria transmission in Africa. It is expected that the most significant climate change effects are confined to specific regions, including the African Highlands.Climate change may lead to dramatic increases in prevalence of a variety of infectious diseases. Beginning in the mid-'70s, an "emergence, resurgence and redistribution of infectious diseases" has occurred. Reasons for this are likely multi-causal, dependent on a variety of social, environmental and climatic factors, however, many argue that the "volatility of infectious disease may be one of the earliest biological expressions of climate instability". Mechanisms and pathways Infectious diseases (also called pathogenic diseases) depend on "a pathogen and a person coming into contact, and the extent to which peoples’ resistance is diminished, or the pathogen is strengthened, by a climatic hazard." Climatic hazards, which can be strengthened by climate change, include for example warming of land and oceans, heatwaves and marine heatwaves, floods, drought, storms, land cover change, fires and so forth.Possible pathways that can increase the infectious disease occurrence and which are affected by climate change include: Climatic hazards bringing pathogens closer to people (e.g. shifts in the geographical range of species) Climatic hazards bringing people closer to pathogens (e.g. heatwaves bringing more people to recreational water activities) Pathogens strengthened by climatic hazards (e.g. "improved climate suitability for reproduction, acceleration of the life cycle, increasing seasons/length of likely exposure", for example ocean warming can lead to increased Vibriosis outbreaks) People impaired by climatic hazards (e.g. from malnutrition due to drought conditions)Infectious diseases that are sensitive to climate can be grouped into: water-borne diseases (transmitted via viruses or bacteria, e.g.: E. Coli), vector-borne diseases (transmitted via mosquitos, ticks etc.), and food-borne diseases (e.g. Salmonella bacteria, causing Salmonellosis).: 1107 Climate change is affecting the distribution of these diseases due to the expanding geographic range and seasonality of these diseases and their vectors.: 9  Though many infectious diseases are affected by changes in climate, vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever and leishmaniasis, present the strongest causal relationship. One reason for that is that temperature and rainfall play a key role in the distribution, magnitude, and viral capacity of mosquitoes, who are primary vectors for many vectors borne diseases. Observation and research detect a shift of pests and pathogens in the distribution away from the equator and towards Earth's poles. Changes to the distribution of vectors Climate change affects vector-borne diseases by affecting the survival, distribution and behavior of vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks and rodents.: 29  The viruses, bacteria and protozoa are carried by these vectors transferring them from one carrier to another. Vector and pathogen can adapt to the climate fluctuations by shifting and expanding their geographic ranges, which can alter the rate of new cases of disease depending on vector-host interaction, host immunity and pathogen evolution. This means that climate change affects infectious diseases by changing the length of the transmission season and their geographical range.Climate change is leading to latitudinal and altitudinal temperature increases. Global warming projections indicate that surface air warming for a "high scenario" is 4 C, with a likely range of 2.4–6.4 C by 2100. A temperature increase of this size would alter the biology and the ecology of many mosquito vectors and the dynamics of the diseases they transmit such as malaria. Changes in climate and global warming have significant influences on the biology and distribution of vector-borne diseases, parasites, fungi, and their associated illnesses. Regional changes resulting from changing weather conditions and patterns within temperate climates will stimulate the reproduction of certain insect species that are vectors for disease. One major disease-spreading insect is the mosquito, which can carry diseases like malaria, West Nile virus, and dengue fever. With regional temperatures changing due to climate change the range of mosquitos will change as well. The range of mosquitoes will move farther north and south, and places will have a longer period of mosquito habitability than at present, leading to an increase in the mosquito population in these areas. This range shift has already been seen in highland Africa. Since 1970, the incidence of malaria in high elevation areas in East Africa has increased greatly. This has been proven to be caused by the warming of regional climates.The vectors of transmission are the major reason for the increased ranges and infection of these diseases. If the vector has a range shift, so do the associated diseases; if the vector increases in activity due to changes in climate, then there is an effect on the transmission of disease. However it will be hard to classify exactly why the range shifts or an increase in infection rates occurs as there are many other factors to consider besides climate change, such as human migration, poverty, infrastructure quality, and land usage; but climate change is still potentially a key factor.Environmental changes, climate variability, and climate change are such factors that could affect biology and disease ecology of Anopheles vectors and their disease transmission potential.Anopheles mosquitoes in highland areas are to experience a larger shift in their metabolic rate due to climate change. This climate change is due to the deforestation in the highland areas where these mosquitos' dwell. When the temperature rises, the larvae take a shorter time to mature and, consequently, a greater capacity to produce more offspring. In turn this could potentially lead to an increase in malaria transmission when infected humans are available. Environmental changes such as deforestation could also increase local temperatures in the highlands thus could enhance the vectorial capacity of the anopheles. Anopheles mosquitoes are responsible for the transmission of a number of diseases in the world, such as, malaria, lymphatic filariasis and viruses that can cause such ailments, like the O'nyong'nyong virus. Increased water temperature High temperatures can alter the survival, replication, and virulence of a pathogen. Higher temperatures can also increase the pathogen yields in animal reservoirs. During the warmer summer months an increase in yield of bacteria from drinking water delivery systems has been recorded. During times of warmer temperatures water consumption rates are also typically higher. These together increase the probability of pathogen ingestion and infection.With an increase in not only temperature, but also higher nutrient concentrations due to runoff there will be an increase in cyanobacterial blooms. Changes in precipitation and water cycle Climate change is forecast to have substantial effects on the water cycle, with an increase in both frequency and intensity of droughts and heavy precipitation events.A literature review in 2016 found that generally there is an increase in diarrheal disease (except for viral diarrheal disease) during or after certain weather conditions: elevated ambient temperature, heavy rainfall, and flooding. These three weather conditions are predicted to increase (or to intensify) with climate change in future. There is already now a high current baseline rate of the diarrheal diseases in developing countries. Climate change therefore poses a real risk of an uptick in these diseases for those regions. Selected examples of relevant infectious diseases in humans Malaria Increased rainfall could increase the number of mosquitos indirectly by expanding larval habitat and food supply. Malaria, which kills about 300,000 children (under age 5) annually, poses an imminent threat through temperature increase. Models suggest, conservatively, that the risk of malaria will increase 5–15% by 2100 due to climate change. In Africa alone, according to the MARA Project (Mapping Malaria Risk in Africa), there is a projected increase of 16–28% in person-month exposures to malaria by 2100.Climate is an influential driving force of vector-borne diseases such as malaria. Malaria is especially susceptible to the effects of climate change because mosquitoes lack the mechanisms to regulate their internal temperature. This implies that there is a limited range of climatic conditions within which the pathogen (malaria) and vector (a mosquito) can survive, reproduce, and infect hosts. Vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, have distinctive characteristics that determine pathogenicity. These include the survival and reproduction rate of the vector, the level of vector activity (i.e. the biting or feeding rate), and the development and reproduction rate of the pathogen within the vector or host. Changes in climate factors substantially affect reproduction, development, distribution, and seasonal transmissions of malaria. Malaria is a mosquito-borne parasitic disease that infects humans and other animals caused by microorganisms in the Plasmodium family. It begins with a bite from an infected female mosquito, which introduces the parasite through its saliva and into the infected host's circulatory system. It then travels through the bloodstream into the liver, where it can mature and reproduce. Dengue fever Dengue fever is an infectious disease caused by dengue viruses known to be in the tropical regions. It is transmitted by the mosquito Aedes, or A. aegypti. Dengue incidence has increased in the last few decades and is projected to continue to do so with changing climate conditions.> Dengue can be fatal. Dengue fever is spread by the bite of the female mosquito known as Aedes aegypti. The female mosquito is a highly effective vector of this disease.The evidence for the spread of dengue fever is that climate change is altering the geographic range and seasonality of the mosquito that can carry dengue. Because there are multiple drivers of transmission, it is easier to model and project changes in the geographic range and seasonality. The drivers for the recent spread of this disease are globalization, trade, urbanization, population growth, increased international travel, and climate change. The same trends also led to the spread of different serotypes of the disease to new areas, and to the emergence of dengue hemorrhagic fever. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported an increase from a thousand to one million confirmed cases between 1955 and 2007. The presence and number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes is strongly influenced by the amount of water-bearing containers or pockets of stagnant water in an area, daily temperature and variation in temperature, moisture, and solar radiation. While dengue fever is primarily considered a tropical and subtropical disease, the geographic ranges of the Aedes aegypti are expanding. The cases of dengue fever have increased dramatically since the 1970s and it continues to become more prevalent.Dengue is ranked as the most important vector-borne viral disease in the world. An estimated 50–100 million dengue fever infections occur annually. In just the past 50 years, transmission has increased drastically with new cases of the disease (incidence) increasing 30-fold. The number of reported cases has continually increased along with dengue spreading to new areas. Tick borne disease Tick-borne disease, which affect humans and other animals, are caused by infectious agents transmitted by tick bites. A high humidity of greater than 85% is ideal for a tick to start and finish its life cycle. Studies have indicated that temperature and vapor play a significant role in determining the range for tick population. More specifically, maximum temperature has been found to play the most influential variable in sustaining tick populations. Higher temperatures augment both hatching and developmental rates while hindering overall survival. Temperature is so important to overall survival that an average monthly minimum temperature of below -7 °C in the winter can prevent an area from maintaining established populations.The effect of climate on the tick life cycle is one of the more difficult projections to make in relation to climate and vector-borne disease. Unlike other vectors, tick life cycles span multiple seasons as they mature from larva to nymph to adult. Further, infection and spread of diseases such as Lyme disease happens across the multiple stages and different classes of vertebrate hosts, adding additional variables to consider. Although it is a European species from the Lyme borreliosis spirochetes, Borrelia garinii was documented from infected ticks on seabirds in North America. Further research is needed to improve evolutionary models predicting distributional changes in this tick-borne system in the face of climate change. Infection of ticks happen in the larval/nymph stage (after the first blood meal) when they are exposed to Borrelia burgdorferi (the spirochete responsible for Lyme disease), but transmission to humans doesn't occur until the adult stages. The expansion of tick populations is concurrent with global climatic change. Species distribution models of recent years indicate that the deer tick, known as I. scapularis, is pushing its distribution to higher latitudes of the Northeastern United States and Canada, as well as pushing and maintaining populations in the South Central and Northern Midwest regions of the United States. Climate models project further expansion of tick habit north into Canada as progressing Northwest from the Northeastern United States. Additionally, however, tick populations are expected to retreat from the Southeastern coast of the U.S., but this has not yet been observed. It's estimated that coinciding with this expansion, increased average temperatures may double tick populations by 2020 as well as bring an earlier start to the tick exposure season.In the face of these expanding threats, strong collaboration between government officials and environmental scientists is necessary for advancing preventive and reactive response measures. Without acknowledging the climate changes that make environments more habitable for disease carriers, policy and infrastructure will lag behind vector borne disease spread.In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is conducting a grant program called Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) which details a 5 step process for combating climate effects like tick borne disease spread. Leishmaniasis As in other vector-borne diseases, one of the reasons climate changes can affect the incidence of leishmaniasis is the susceptibility of the sandfly vectors to changes in temperature, rainfall and humidity; these conditions will alter their range of distribution and seasonality. For example, modelling studies have predicted that climate change will increase suitable conditions for Phlebotomus vector species in Central Europe. Another model that looked at the distribution of Lutzomyia longipalpis, an important visceral leishmaniasis vector, suggested an increased range of this species in the Amazon Basin. A different study model that factored data on climate, policy and socio-economic changes of land use, found that the effects were different for cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis, emphasizing the importance of considering each disease and region separately.Parasite development inside the sandfly can also be affected by temperature changes. For instance, Leishmania peruviana infections were lost during sandfly defecation when the infected vector was kept at higher temperatures, whereas in the same experiment Leishmania infantum and Leishmania braziliensis temperature seemed to make no difference.Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease, caused by parasites of the genus Leishmania and transmitted by sandflies; it is distributed mostly in tropical and subtropical regions around the world, wherever the sand fly vector and reservoir hosts are present. The WHO estimates 12 million people around the world are living with leishmaniasis. Risk factors for the spread of this disease include poverty, urbanization, deforestation, and climate change. Ebola The Ebola virus has been infecting people from time to time, leading to outbreaks in several African countries. The average case fatality rate of the Ebola virus is approximately 40% and there have been more than 28,600 cases with 11,310 deaths. Many researchers are linking deforestation to the disease, observing that change in the landscape increases wildlife contact with humans.Recent studies are holding climate change indirectly liable for the uptick in Ebola: Seasonal droughts alongside strong winds, thunderstorms, heat waves, floods, landslides, and a change in rainfall patterns also impact wildlife migration. These conditions pull them away from their natural environment and closer to human proximity. One example of an Ebola outbreak caused by climate change or a shift in nature was seen during the drought of Central Africa. This ultimately amplified food insecurity leading West African communities to eat animals such as bats who were infected with the virus. Zika fever Zika virus, a vector-borne virus was historically presented in cluster outbreaks in the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Zika fever epidemics have affected larger populations including Micronesia and South Pacific Islands in 2007, and the Americas in 2013. Brazil has experienced one of the largest outbreaks of Zika virus with approximately 1.5 million cases reported in 2015. Pregnant women infected with Zika virus are at a higher risk of giving birth to children with congenital malformations, including microcephaly.In the context of climate change and temperature rise, it is predicted that Zika virus will affect more than 1.3 billion people by 2050. This is largely due to the expansion of environments conducive to vector growth and life cycles, such as those with temperatures ranging from 23.9 °C to 34 °C. Mosquito behaviors are also affected by the change in temperature including increased breeding and biting rates. Furthermore, extreme climate patterns, including drought, floods and heatwaves are known to exacerbate the proliferation of mosquito breeding ground and as a result, escalate the rate of virus-borne diseases. COVID-19 There is no direct evidence that the spread of COVID-19 is worsened or is caused by climate change, although investigations continue. As of 2020, the World Health Organization summarized the current knowledge about the issue as follows: "There is no evidence of a direct connection between climate change and the emergence or transmission of COVID-19 disease. [...] However, climate change may indirectly affect the COVID-19 response, as it undermines environmental determinants of health, and places additional stress on health systems."A 2021 study found possible links between climate change and transmission of COVID-19 by bats. The authors found that climate-driven changes in the distribution and richness of bat species increased the likelihood of bat-borne coronaviruses in the Yunnan province, Myanmar, and Laos. This region was also the habitat of Sunda pangolins and masked palm civits which were suspected as intermediate hosts of COVID-19 between bats and humans. The authors suggest, therefore, that climate change possibly contributed to some extent to the emergence of the pandemic.Climate changed might induce changes to bat habitats which may have driven them closer to populated areas. Increased aridity and drought periods are predicted to push bats out of their endemic areas and into populated areas. This creates a knock-on effect of increasing their interactions with humans and hence the likelihood of zoonotic disease transfer. Vibrio infections Scientist expect that disease outbreaks caused by vibrio (in particular the bacterium that causes cholera, called vibrio cholerae) are increasing in occurrence and intensity.: 1107  One reason is that the area of coastline with suitable conditions for vibrio bacteria has increased due to changes in sea surface temperature and sea surface salinity caused by climate change.: 12  These pathogens can cause gastroenteritis, cholera, wound infections, and sepsis. It has been observed that in the period of 2011–21, the "area of coastline suitable for Vibrio bacterial transmission has increased by 35% in the Baltics, 25% in the Atlantic Northeast, and 4% in the Pacific Northwest.: 12  Furthermore, the increasing occurrence of higher temperature days, heavy rainfall events and flooding due to climate change could lead to an increase in cholera risks.: 1045 Vibrio illnesses are a waterborne disease and are increasing worldwide. Vibrio infections are recently being reported where historically it did not occur. The warming climate seems to be playing a substantial role in the increase in cases and area of occurrence.Vibrio infections are caused by consuming raw or undercooked seafood, or by exposing an open wound to contaminated sea water. Vibrio infections are most likely to occur during the warm season, May through October. Diarrhea diseases One of the most commonly transmitted waterborne disease categories are the diarrhea diseases. These diseases are transmitted through unsafe drinking water or recreational water contact. Diarrheal diseases account for 10–12% of deaths in children under five, as the second leading cause of death in children this age. They are also the second leading cause of death in low and middle income countries. Diarrhea diseases account for an estimated 1.4–1.9 million deaths worldwide. Fungal infections Fungal infections will also see an increase due to the warming of certain climates. For example, the fungus Cryptococcus gattii has been found in Canada but is normally found in warmer climates such as in Australia. There are now two strains of this fungus in the northwestern part of North America, affecting many terrestrial animals. The spread of this fungus is hypothesized to be linked to climate change. Emergence of new infectious diseases There is concern about the emergence of new diseases from the fungal kingdom. Mammals have endothermy and homeothermy, which allows them to maintain elevated body temperature through life; but it can be defeated if the fungi were to adapt to higher temperatures and survive in the body. Fungi that are pathogenic for insects can be experimentally adapted to replicate at mammalian temperatures through cycles of progressive warming. This demonstrates that fungi are able to adapt rapidly to higher temperatures. The emergence of Candida auris on three continents is proposed to be as a result of global warming and has raised the danger that increased warmth by itself will trigger adaptations on certain microbes to make them pathogenic for humans.It is projected that interspecies viral sharing, that can lead to novel viral spillovers, will increase due to ongoing climate change-caused geographic range-shifts of mammals (most importantly bats). Risk hotspots would mainly be located at "high elevations, in biodiversity hotspots, and in areas of high human population density in Asia and Africa".Climate change may also lead to new infectious diseases due to changes in microbial and vector geographic range. Microbes that are harmful to humans can adapt to higher temperatures, which will allow them to build better tolerance against human endothermy defences. Infectious diseases in wild animals Climate change and increasing temperatures will also impact the health of wildlife animals as well. Specifically, climate change will impact wildlife disease, specifically affecting "geographic range and distribution of wildlife diseases, plant and animal phenology, wildlife host-pathogen interactions, and disease patterns in wildlife".The health of wild animals, particularly birds, is assumed to be a better indicator of early climate change effects because very little or no control measures are undertaken to protect them. Geographic range and distribution of wildlife diseases Northern geographic shifts of disease vectors and parasitic disease in the Northern Hemisphere have likely been due to global warming. The geographic range of a lung parasite that impacts ungulates like caribou and mountain goats, Parelaphostrongylus odocoilei, has been shifting northward since 1995, and a tick vector for Lyme disease and other tick-borne zoonotic diseases known as Ixodes scapularis has been expanding its presence northward as well. It is also predicted that climate warming will also lead to changes in disease distribution at certain altitudes. At high elevation in the Hawaiian Islands, for example, it is expected that climate warming will allow for year-round transmission of avian malaria. This increased opportunity for transmission will likely be devastating to endangered native Hawaiian birds at those altitudes that have little or no resistance to the disease. Phenology and wildlife diseases Phenology is the study of seasonal cycles, and with climate change the seasonal biologic cycles of many animals have already been affected. For example, the transmission of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is higher to humans when early spring temperatures are warmer. The warmer temperatures result in an overlap in feeding activity of ticks who are infected with the virus (nymphal) with ticks who aren't (larval). This overlapped feeding leads to more of the uninfected larval ticks acquiring the infection and therefore increases the risk of humans being infected with TBE. On the other hand, cooler spring temperatures would result in less overlapped feeding activity, and would therefore decrease the risk of zoonotic transmission of TBE. Wildlife host-to-pathogen interaction The transmission of pathogens can be achieved through either direct contact from a diseased animal to another, or indirectly through a host like infected prey or a vector. Higher temperatures as a result of climate change results in an increased presence of disease producing agents in hosts and vectors, and also increases the "survival of animals that harbor disease". Survival of Parelaphostrongylus tenuis, a brain worm of white-tailed deer that affects moose, could be increased due to the higher temperatures and milder winters that are caused by climate change. In moose, this brain causes neurological disease and eventually ends up being fatal. Moose are already facing heat stress due to climate change, and may have increased susceptibility to parasitic and infectious diseases like the brain worm. Wildlife disease patterns Predicting the impact climate change might have on disease patterns in different geographic regions can be difficult, because its effects likely have high variability. This has been more evident in marine ecosystems than terrestrial environments, where massive decline in coral reefs has been observed due to disease spread. Infectious diseases in domestic animals and livestock Vector-borne diseases seriously affect the health of domestic animals and livestock (e.g., trypanosomiasis, Rift Valley Fever, and bluetongue). Therefore, climate change will also indirectly affect the health of humans through its multifaceted impacts on food security, including livestock and plant crops. Mosquitoes also carry diseases like Dirofilaria immitis which affect dogs (dog heartworm). Therefore, tropical diseases will probably migrate and become endemic in many other ecosystems due to an increase in mosquito range. Responses The policy implications of climate change and infectious diseases fall into two categories: Enacting policy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thus slowing down climate change, and Mitigating problems that have already arisen, and will inevitably continue to develop, due to climate change.Addressing both of these areas is of importance, as those in the poorest countries face the greatest burden. Additionally, when countries are forced to contend with a disease like malaria (for example), their prospects for economic growth are slowed. This contributes to continued and worsening global inequality.Policies are required that will significantly increase investments in public health in developing countries. This achieves two goals, the first being better outcomes related to diseases like malaria in the affected area, and the second being an overall better health environment for populations. It is also important to focus on "one-health approaches." This means collaborating on an interdisciplinary level, across various geographic areas, to come up with workable solutions. As is the case when responding to the effects of climate change, vulnerable populations including children and the elderly will need to be prioritized by any intervention. The United Nations Environment Programme states that: "The most fundamental way to protect ourselves from zoonotic diseases is to prevent destruction of nature. Where ecosystems are healthy and bio-diverse, they are resilient, adaptable and help to regulate diseases." Monitoring and research Significant progress has been achieved in terms of surveillance systems, disease and vector control measures, vaccine development, diagnostic tests, and mathematical risk modeling/mapping in recent decades.A tool that has been used to predict this distribution trend is the Dynamic Mosquito Simulation Process (DyMSiM). DyMSiM uses epidemiological and entomological data and practices to model future mosquito distributions based upon climate conditions and mosquitos living in the area. This modeling technique helps identify the distribution of specific species of mosquito, some of which are more susceptible to viral infection than others.Scientists are carrying out attribution studies, to find the degree to which climate change affects the spread of infectious diseases. There is also a need for scenario modeling which can help further our understanding of future climate change consequences on infectious disease rates. Surveillance and monitoring of infectious diseases and their vectors is important to better understand these diseases. Governments should accurately model changes in vector populations as well as the burden of disease, educate the public on ways to mitigate infection, and prepare health systems for the increasing disease load. See also Disease ecology Effects of climate change on human health Environmental health == References ==

climate change vulnerability

Climate change vulnerability (or climate vulnerability or climate risk vulnerability) is a concept that describes how strongly people or ecosystems are likely to be affected by climate change. It is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change. It can apply to humans and also to natural systems (or ecosystems).: 12  Related concepts include climate sensitivity and the ability, or lack thereof, to cope and adapt.: 5  Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability differs within communities and across societies, regions, and countries, and can increase or decrease over time.: 12 Vulnerability of people and ecosystems with regards to climate change effects is driven by certain unsustainable development patterns such as "unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, and governance".: 12  Therefore, vulnerability is higher in some locations than in others. Certain aspects within a region increase vulnerability, for example poverty, bad governance and violent conflict. Some types of livelihoods are regarded as particularly climate-sensitive, resulting in a higher level of climate change vulnerability. These include for example smallholder farmers, pastoralists and fishing communities.: 12 Vulnerability can be grouped into two overlapping categories: These are economic vulnerability, based on socioeconomic factors, and geographic vulnerability. People who are more vulnerable than others include for example people with low incomes, indigenous peoples, women, children, the elderly. There are several tools available to assess climate vulnerability. Because climate vulnerability disproportionally affects low-income countries, climate vulnerability has become an important tool in international negotiations about climate change adaptation, climate finance and other international policy making activities. Definition Climate change vulnerability is defined as the "propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change. It can apply to humans but also to natural systems (ecosystems), and both are interdependent.: 12  Vulnerability is a component of climate risk. Vulnerability will be higher if the capacity to cope and adapt is low.: 5 Climate vulnerability can include a wide variety of different meanings, situations, and contexts in climate change research, but has been a central concept in academic research since 2005. The concept was defined in the third IPCC report in 2007 as "the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes".: 89  The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in 2022 stated that "approaches to analysing and assessing vulnerability have evolved since previous IPCC assessments".: 5 Scale It has been estimated in 2021 that "approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change".: 12 The vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change is not the same everywhere: there are marked differences among and within regions.: 12  Vulnerability can also increase or decrease over time.: 5  See regions that are particularly vulnerable below. Types Vulnerability can be grouped into two overlapping categories: economic vulnerability, based on socioeconomic factors, and geographic vulnerability. Neither are mutually exclusive. Economic vulnerability At its basic level, a community that is economically vulnerable is one that is ill-prepared for the effects of climate change because it lacks the needed financial resources. Preparing a climate resilient society will require huge investments in infrastructure, city planning, engineering sustainable energy sources, and preparedness systems. From a global perspective, it is more likely that people living at or below poverty will be affected the most by climate change and are thus the most vulnerable, because they will have the least amount of resource dollars to invest in resiliency infrastructure. They will also have the least amount of resource dollars for cleanup efforts after more frequently occurring natural climate change related disasters.Vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change is driven by certain unsustainable development patterns such as "unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, and governance".: 12  Therefore, vulnerability is higher in some locations than in others. Certain aspects within a region increase vulnerability, for example poverty, governance challenges and violent conflict. Some types of livelihoods are regarded as particularly climate-sensitive, resulting in a higher level of climate change vulnerability. These include for example smallholder farmers, pastoralists and fishing communities.: 12 Societal vulnerability to climate change is largely dependent on development status.: 336  Developing countries lack the necessary financial resources to relocate those living in low-lying coastal zones, making them more vulnerable to climate change than developed countries.: 317 Geographic vulnerability A second definition of vulnerability relates to geographic vulnerability. The most geographically vulnerable locations to climate change are those that will be impacted by side effects of natural hazards, such as rising sea levels and by dramatic changes in ecosystem services, including access to food. Island nations are usually noted as more vulnerable but communities that rely heavily on a sustenance based lifestyle are also at greater risk.Vulnerable communities tend to have one or more of these characteristics: food insecure, water is scarce, delicate marine ecosystem, fish dependent, small island community. Around the world, climate change affects rural communities that heavily depend on their agriculture and natural resources for their livelihood. Increased frequency and severity of climate events disproportionately affects women, rural, dryland, and island communities. This leads to more drastic changes in their lifestyles and forces them to adapt to this change. It is becoming more important for local and government agencies to create strategies to react to change and adapt infrastructure to meet the needs of those impacted. Various organizations work to create adaptation, mitigation, and resilience plans that will help rural and at risk communities around the world that depend on the earth's resources to survive. Regions that are more vulnerable All regions of the world are vulnerable to climate change but to a different degree. With high confidence, researchers concluded in 2001 that developing countries would tend to be more vulnerable to climate change than developed countries.: 957–958  For example, Africa's major economic sectors are vulnerable to climate variability.: 435  Latin America's vulnerability is considered to be high.: 697  In Australia and New Zealand, some indigenous communities were judged to have a higher level of vulnerability and low adaptive capacity.: 509  Small island Developing States are particularly vulnerable to climate change.: 689  Partly this was attributed to their low adaptive capacity and the high costs of adaptation in proportion to their GDP. The Arctic is extremely vulnerable to climate change. It is predicted that there will be major ecological, sociological, and economic impacts in the region.: 804–805 In comparison, the climate vulnerability of Europe is lower than in developing countries. This was attributed to Europe's high GNP, stable growth, stable population, and well-developed political, institutional, and technological support systems.: 643 Climate Vulnerable Forum People who are more vulnerable People who are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than others include for example people with low incomes, indigenous peoples, women, children, the elderly. More specifically, when looking at the effects of climate change on human health, a report published in The Lancet found that the greatest impact tends to fall on the most vulnerable people such as the poor, women, children, the elderly, people with pre-existing health concerns, other minorities and outdoor workers.: 13 Reducing vulnerability Vulnerability can be reduced through climate change adaptation measures.: 5  For this reason, vulnerability is often framed in dialogue with climate change adaptation. Furthermore, measures that reduce poverty, gender inequality, bad governance and violent conflict would also reduce vulnerability. And finally, vulnerability would be reduced for everyone if decisive action on climate change was taken (climate change mitigation) so that the effects of climate change are less severe. Climate change adaptation Climate resilience Climate justice Equity is another essential component of vulnerability and is closely tied to issues of environmental justice and climate justice. As the most vulnerable communities are likely to be the most heavily impacted, a climate justice movement is coalescing in response. There are many aspects of climate justice that relate to vulnerability and resiliency. The frameworks are similar to other types of justice movements and include contractarianism which attempts to allocate the most benefits for the poor, utilitarianism which seeks to find the most benefits for the most people, egalitarianism which attempts to reduce inequality, and libertarianism which emphasizes a fair share of burden but also individual freedoms. Measurement tools Vulnerability assessment is important because it provides information that can be used to develop management actions in response to climate change. Climate vulnerability can be analyzed or evaluated using a number of processes or tools, depending mainly on the scale of assessment (see below). Assessments Climate change vulnerability assessments are available at all scales. Global vulnerability assessments are based on spatial mapping using aggregated data for the regional or national level.: 1195–1199  Assessments are also done at sub-national and sectoral level, and also increasingly for cities on an urban district or neighbourhood scale. Vulnerability assessment is also done for local communities to evaluate where and how communities and livelihoods are vulnerable to climate change. Studies can vary widely in scope and scale-- for example the World Bank and Ministry of Economy of Fiji commissioned a report for the whole country in 2017-18 while the Rochester, New York commissioned a much more local report for the city in 2018. Or, for example, NOAA Fisheries commissioned Climate Vulnerability assessments for marine fishers in the United States. In some cases vulnerability assessment is done in advance of preparing local climate adaptation plans or risk management plans.While the macro-scale vulnerability assessment often uses indices, modelling and participatory approaches are also used for which there are a range of tools (see below). Indicators and indices Global indices for climate change vulnerability include the ND-GAIN Country Index, which measures national climate vulnerability globally, INFORM Risk Index and the WorldRiskIndex, which include social vulnerability indices. Indicator approaches are also used at national and sub-national levels. They use a composite index of many individual quantifiable indicators. To generate the index value or 'score', most often a simple average is calculated across a set of standardized values. However, sometimes weighting is done according what are thought to be the most important determinants of vulnerability. Climate vulnerability tracking starts identifying the relevant information, preferably open access, produced by state or international bodies at the scale of interest. Then a further effort to make the vulnerability information freely accessible to all development actors is required. Vulnerability tracking has many applications. It constitutes an indicator for the monitoring and evaluation of programs and projects for resilience and adaptation to climate change. Vulnerability tracking is also a decision making tool in regional and national adaptation policies. Tools for vulnerability assessment Similarly as for climate risk assessment, tools for vulnerability assessment vary depending on the sector, the scale at which the study is being carried out, and the entity or system which is thought to vulnerable. Modelling and other participatory tools include WEAP for understanding water resource vulnerabilities and assessing adaptation options. The Vulnerability Sourcebook is a guide for practical and scientific knowledge on vulnerability assessment. Climate vulnerability mapping is also used to understand which areas are the most geographically vulnerable. A systematic review published in 2019 found 84 studies focused on the use of mapping to communicate and do analysis of climate vulnerability. Examples by country See also Climate Vulnerability Monitor Effects of climate change Effects of climate change on human health == References ==

2023 in climate change

This article documents events, research findings, scientific and technological advances, and human actions to measure, predict, mitigate, and adapt to the effects of global warming and climate change—during the year 2023. Summaries 6 February: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said "I have a special message for fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business." 20 March – The final synthesis of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is published. It summarises the state of knowledge relating to climate change with assessed levels of confidence. Conclusions in the summary for contemporary policy-makers include that the extent to which both current and future generations will be impacted depends on choices now and in the near-term, with "high confidence" that policies implemented by the end of 2020 are "projected to result in higher global GHG emissions in 2030 than emissions implied by NDCs" and would fail to meet global climate goals. 6 September: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said "Our planet has just endured a season of simmering — the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun." 24 October: BioScience's "2023 state of the climate report" stated that "we must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat". Measurements and statistics 3 January: the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that Antarctic sea ice extent stood at the lowest in the 45-year satellite record—more than 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) below the previous record (2018), with four of the five lowest years for the last half of December having occurred since 2016. 26 January: Bloomberg NEF's "Energy Transition Investment Trends" report estimated that, for the first time, energy transition investment matched global fossil fuel investment—$1.1 trillion in 2022, including China with $546 billion, the US with $141 billion, and the EU if treated as a bloc, $180 billion. 3 April: An unexplained rise of emissions of five chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), successfully banned by the Montreal Protocol of 1989, is reported in Nature Geoscience. Their climate impact in 2020 is roughly equivalent to that of the CO2e from Denmark in 2018. Reported 10 May: Drax Electric Insights reported that in the first three months of 2023, Britain's wind turbines generated more electricity (32.4%) than gas-fired power stations (31.7%) for the first time. 18 May: a study published in Science reported that more than 50% of freshwater lakes and reservoirs lost volume from 1992 to 2020. 31 May: an international study in Nature, using modelling and literature assessment, codifies, integrates into and quantifies "safe and just Earth system boundaries" (ESBs) with the context of Earth system stability and minimization of human harm. They expand upon earlier boundary frameworks by incorporating concepts such as intra- and intergenerational justice, propose that their framework may better enable a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons, and report many of the ESBs are already exceeded. 15 June: the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that for 11 days, global surface air temperatures had risen to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above pre-industrial levels for the first time—the limit aspired to in the 2015 Paris Agreement—the rise occurring near the beginning of an El Niño warming phase. 24 July: the National Data Buoy Center recorded an unprecedented temperature of 101.1 °F (38.4 °C) at a depth of 5 feet (1.5 m) in Florida Bay, Florida, US, raising concerns about catastrophic coral bleaching. 8 August: in coastal Iran, the heat index reached 70 °C (158 °F). 29 August: an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) publication stated that ~86% (187 GW) of renewable capacity added in 2022 had lower costs than electricity generated from fossil fuels. 31 August: an article in Geophysical Research Letters reported a March 2022 "unprecedented heatwave" in the Antarctic reaching 39 °C (70 °F) above average—the largest temperature anomaly ever recorded globally—attributed 2 °C of the increase to global warming, and projected possible heatwaves of an additional 5–6 °C (9.0–10.8 °F) warmer by 2100. 29 September: a study published in Nature Communications estimated the global costs of extreme weather attributable to climate change in the last twenty years to be US$143 billion per year, 63% of which is due to human loss of life. 19 October: a study published in Scientific Reports said that the number of North Atlantic tropical cyclones that intensify from a Category 1 into a major hurricane within 36 hours, has more than doubled from 1971-1990 to 2001-2020. Natural events and phenomena 7 February: a study published in Nature Communications concluded that 15 million people globally are exposed to impacts from potential glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), more than half being from India, Pakistan, Peru, and China. Climate change has intensified glacial ice melt and expanded glacial lakes. 13 February: a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that increasing abundance of a thermotolerant symbiotic alga hosted by corals has facilitated maintenance of high coral cover after three mass coral bleaching events, suggesting that future reefs might maintain high cover for several decades, albeit with low diversity and provided that other stressors are minimized. 2 March: a study published in Science said that boreal fires, typically accounting for 10% of global fire CO2 emissions, contributed 23% in 2021, by far the highest fraction since 2000. 2021 was an abnormal year because North American and Eurasian boreal forests synchronously experienced their greatest water deficit. 13 March: a study published in Nature Water found that total intensity of extreme events (droughts and pluvials (rainfall events)) is strongly correlated with global mean temperature, and concluded that continued warming of the planet will cause more frequent, more severe, longer and/or larger of such extreme events, and that "distortion of the water cycle... will be among the most conspicuous consequences of climate change". 15 February: Two joint studies by the British Antarctic Survey and the US Antarctic programme finds that glaciers on the icy continent may be more sensitive to changes in sea temperature than previously thought. Researchers used sensors and an underwater robot beneath the Thwaites glacier to study melting. One day earlier, a new record low Antarctic sea ice extent is reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US, beating the previous record set a year earlier. 7 April: citing reduced air density caused by global warming, a study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society estimated global warming has enabled more than 500 excess home runs in Major League Baseball since 2010, and projected hundreds more in this century, explaining that "even the elite billion-dollar sports industry is vulnerable to unexpected impacts" of global warming. 29 March: a study published in Nature concluded that under a high-emissions scenario, abyssal warming is set to accelerate over the next 30 years, and that meltwater input around Antarctica drives a contraction of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), opening a pathway that allows warm circumpolar deep water greater access to the continental shelf and results in warming and aging of the abyssal ocean. The study described the "critical importance of Antarctic meltwater in setting the abyssal ocean overturning, with implications for global ocean biogeochemistry and climate that could last for centuries". On 25 May, observational evidence for problematic fast slowdown of the Antarctic bottom water current is presented in Nature Climate Change. 5 June: a study published in Current Biology estimated that fungi can fix (remove from the atmosphere) the equivalent of ~36% of global fossil fuel Greenhouse gas emissions. 8 June: NOAA published an "ENSO update" declaring that "El Niño is here", estimating the odds of it becoming a strong event (56%), at least a moderate event (84%), and "fizzling out" (4-7%).11 June: Fluchthorn, a mountain between Switzerland and Austria, experienced a landslide of 3,500,000 cubic feet (99,000 m3) and a loss of 60 feet (18 m) in height, that has been attributed to melting of permafrost. 20 June (reported): the Panama Canal is experiencing its lowest rainfall since inception, lowering water levels and requiring restrictions for some vessels to limit their cargo by about 25% to maintain a safe draft and avoid running aground. 4 July: the WMO formally declared "onset of El Niño conditions", projecting it to be "at least of moderate strength". 11 July: a study of Chicago structures published in Communications Engineering found that in urban settings, subsurface heat islands caused by global warming cause significant deformations and displacements that may be "incompatible with the operational requirements of civil structures". 28 July: Yale Environment 360 reported that, adding to ongoing climate change's dominant warming influence, additional factors contributing to current temperature increases include: (1) 2022 eruption of an underwater volcano near Tonga, vaporizing large amounts of sea water and contributing an estimated 0.03 °C (0.054 °F) of warming, (2) solar radiance increasing towards its ~2025 11-year peak when it may contribute 0.05 °C (0.090 °F) of warming, and (3) the Pacific Ocean entering its El Niño phase, projected to contribute 0.14 °C (0.25 °F) of warming. 23 August (reported): the Panama Canal experienced an unprecedented dry season causing a decline in water levels and prompting canal administrators to limit daily vessel passages from 36 to 32, and forcing some ships to carry up to 40% less cargo to avoid hitting the bottom. 24 August: a study published in Nature Communications concluded that tropical cyclone rapid intensification (RI) events in offshore areas within 400 kilometres (250 mi) of coastlines, tripled in frequency from 1980 to 2020. 8 September (date of report): for the first time in recorded history, all seven tropical ocean basins saw cyclones/hurricanes reach Category 5 strength in the same year. 13 September: a study published in Communications Earth & Environment concluded that, while for many years Antarctic sea ice had increased, from recent record lows in Antarctic sea ice coverage "it appears that we may now be seeing the inevitable decline, long projected by climate models", and that a "regime shift" may be taking place "in which previously important relationships no longer dominate sea ice variability". 13 September: a study published in Science Advances indicated that six of the nine "planetary boundaries"—delimiting the "safe operating space"—had been exceeded. Carbon dioxide concentration and radiative forcing were among the boundaries that had been exceeded. 27 September: studying tropical cyclones from 1981–2017, a study published in Nature found that cyclones formed almost two weeks sooner, on average, which authors said was "closely related to the seasonal advance of rapid intensification events". The time advance shifts cyclones from autumn into summer, increasing overlap with the peak rainfall season. Actions, and goal statements Science and technology 8 February: Scientists in the U.S. propose mining the lunar soil and launching it towards the Sun to form a shield (space sunshade) against global warming. 3 March: After a study (31 Jan) indicated that in building heating in the EU, the feasibility of staying within planetary boundaries is possible only through electrification, with green hydrogen heating being 2–3 times more expensive than heat pump costs, a study indicates that replacing gas boilers with heat pumps is the fastest way to cut German gas consumption. 17 April – A study in Earth System Science Data expands upon the international Earth heat inventory from 2020, which provides a measure of the Earth energy imbalance (EEI) and allows for quantifying how much and where heat has accumulated in the Earth system with comprehensive data. It suggests that the EEI is the "most fundamental global climate indicator" to gauge climate change mitigation efforts. 8 May: a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that studies extending the reach of "vertical fingerprinting" to the mid to upper stratosphere provide "incontrovertible evidence of anthropogenic impact on Earth’s climate". 17 October: a study published in Nature Communications concluded that, subject to various uncertainties, "a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies". Political, economic, legal, and cultural actions 1 January: Extinction Rebellion made a statement that for 2023 it had made "a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic", after 2022's traffic blockages and throwing soup on the case of Vincent van Gogh’s "Sunflowers" painting. 5 January: A paywalled meta-analysis in Nature Climate Change reports "required technology-level investment shifts for climate-relevant infrastructure until 2035" within the EU, which it finds to be "most drastic for power plants, electricity grids and rail infrastructure", ~87€ billion above the planned budgets and in need of sustainable finance policies. 11 January: the French National Assembly adopted the Acceleration of Renewable Energies bill, which includes a requirement to install solar panels on all car parks (parking lots) of over 1,500 square metres (16,100 square feet). 12 January: A study in Environmental Research Letters suggests that applying the principle of extended producer responsibility to fossil fuels could deconflict energy security and climate policy at an affordable cost, in particular authors suggest the responsibility could be used to establish the financing of CO2 storage and nature-based solutions. 25 January: A paper in Harvard Environmental Law Review suggests that according to already-existing law fossil fuel companies may be chargeable with homicide due to climate change effects and e.g. partly their deception of the public and proactive prevention of regulations or adequate regulations. The paper is focused on corporate actors and does not address e.g. politicians' and policymakers' responsibilities, economic pressures or incentives, and responsibilities for solutions to these underlying economic issues. 14 February: the European Parliament effectively banned sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the European Union from 2035, and set a 55% cut over 2021 CO2 emission levels for new cars sold from 2030. 19 February: A study in Ethics, Policy & Environment reports that rationing has been neglected as a policy option for mitigating climate change, and, partly based on historical data and economic analysis, concludes that such personal carbon allowances (PCAs) could help states reduce emissions rapidly and fairly. March: the UN 2023 Water Conference was held in New York. 21 April: a review study published in One Earth stated that opinion polls show that most people perceive climate change as occurring now and close by. The study concluded that seeing climate change as more distant does not necessarily result in less climate action, and reducing psychological distancing does not reliably increase climate action. 21 April: the Director General of the United Nations' International Organization for Migration said that there are more people displaced because of climate change than because of conflicts, explaining that climate change and conflict interact as triggers of displacement. 24 April: A policy study in Nature Communications identifies reduction of car travel activity as the most important transportation policy option in reducing GHG emissions to levels comparable to carbon budget levels, with a "decrease car distance driven and car ownership by over 80% as compared to current levels" by 2027 being effective in "edging close to the designated carbon budget" in their case-study of London and electrification being highly insufficient. 19 May: a study published in One Earth estimated that the top 21 fossil fuel companies will owe cumulative climate reparations of $5.4 trillion over the period 2025–2050. 12 June: the trial phase of Held v. Montana, the first constitutional climate trial in US, began in the U.S. state of Montana. Sixteen young residents filed the suit based on the state’s 1972 constitution requiring that the "state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations". On August 14, 2023, the trial court judge ruled in the youth plaintiffs' favor, though the state indicated it would appeal the decision. 23 June: a global summit on finance and climate ended in Paris without creating a tax on greenhouse gas emissions from maritime transport, or fulfilling promises to transfer money to poor countries through the International Monetary Fund. 11 July: A study suggests in One Earth that carbon taxation approaches or instruments would be more effective and fairer when distinguishing between luxury- and basic goods and services. A separate study (17 July) in Nature Energy finds that for energy demand reduction (EDR), "capping energy use of the top quintile of consumers" would be effective, more equitable, and increase public acceptance of transformative climate action in Europe. July: at a meeting in Chennai, India, G20 climate and environment ministers did not come to agreement on four of 68 points considered, including achieving peak emissions by 2025, converting to clean energy, or taxing carbon. August: the International Monetary Fund stated that in 2022, global fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion (7.1% of GDP). 17 August: Scientists publish in PLOS Climate what could be the first study both investigating climate-polluting investments and proposing taxation thereof as transformative revenue for climate finance, i.a. indicating "40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households" in 2019 with a growing emissions inequality. 18 August: A study in One Earth investigating public policies and spending as well as lobbying activities regarding a transition to a sustainable food system finds that governments "largely ignore the climate-mitigation potential of animal product analogs" and that food production has 'lock-in' problems. 6 September: the first Africa Climate Summit concluded with the "Nairobi Declaration", in which African leaders requested global taxes on carbon pollution, phasing out coal use, and ending fossil fuel subsidies. 6 September: A study in PLOS Climate using a global food system model suggests that net-negative greenhouse gas emissions could be possible in a sustainable food system achievable with full global deployment of diverse interventions, with the most promising options including hydrogen-powered fertilizer production, livestock feeds, organic and inorganic soil amendments, agroforestry, sustainable seafood harvesting practices, and adoption of flexitarian diets. November: the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference is scheduled to be held in Dubai. Mitigation goal statements 15 April: a communique from a meeting of G7 ministers pledged to collectively increase offshore wind capacity by 150 gigawatts by 2030 and solar capacity to more than 1 terawatt, and agreed to accelerate the phase-out of unabated (without recapture) fossil fuels to achieve net zero by 2050. They stopped short of endorsing a 2030 deadline for phasing out coal, and left the door open for continued investment in gas to help address potential energy shortfalls. 19 May: a policies study review in One Earth, based on a systematic examination of existing methane policies across sectors, concludes that both only "about 13% of methane emissions are covered by methane mitigation policies and that the effectiveness of these policies "is far from clear". Adaptation goal statements Consensus 8 June: a study published in PLOS Climate studied defensive and secure forms of national identity—respectively called "national narcissism" and "secure national identification"—for their correlation to support for policies to mitigate climate change and to transition to renewable energy. The researchers concluded that secure national identification tends to support policies promoting renewable energy; however, national narcissism was found to be inversely correlated with support for such policies—except to the extent that such policies, as well as greenwashing, enhance the national image. Right-wing political orientation, which may indicate susceptibility to climate conspiracy beliefs, was also concluded to be negatively correlated with support for genuine climate mitigation policies. 7 August: A global survey study of climate policy researchers, published in Nature Sustainability, finds these experts substantially doubt the prevailing green growth narrative, "underscor[ing] the importance of considering alternative post-growth perspectives" that include approaches of agrowth and degrowth. Projections 2 January: a study published in Earth's Future (American Geophysical Union) concluded that the greatest increase in the amount of coastal area below mean sea level will occur in the early stages of sea level rise (SLR), contrary to earlier assessments, shortening time for adaptation efforts. Latest projections indicate that SLR is certain to exceed 2 metres (6.6 ft) in coming centuries, and a rise by 4 metres (13 ft) is considered possible. 5 January: a study published in Science stated that, based on then-current pledges, global mean temperature is projected to increase by +2.7 °C, which would cause loss of about half of Earth's glaciers by 2100, causing a sea level rise of 115±40 millimeters (not counting ice sheet melt). 30 January: Climate scientists predict, using artificial intelligence, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that global warming will exceed 1.5 °C in the next decade (scenario SSP2-4.5), and a nearly 70% chance of 2 °C between 2044 and 2065 (~2054) – a substantial probability of exceeding the 2 °C threshold – even if emissions rapidly decline (scenario SSP1-2.6). 30 January: A study in Nature Sustainability outlines challenges of aviation decarbonization by 2050 whose identified factors mainly are future demand, continuous efficiency improvements, new short-haul engines, higher SAF (biofuel) production, CO2 removal to compensate for non-CO2 forcing, and related policy-options. With constant air transport demand and aircraft efficiency, decarbonizing aviation would require nearly five times the 2019 worldwide biofuel production, competing with other hard-to-decarbonize sectors and land-use (or food security). 6 February: A study in Nature Climate Change integrates policy as an aspect into an integrated assessment model, showing that Powering Past Coal Alliance-based (from COP23) coal phase-out is highly unlikely (<5%) with current policies where both coal-use would substantially only shift from power to other industries (steel, cement, and chemicals) and China will now potentially "dangerously delay" the phase-out.February: the International Energy Agency's Electricity Market Report 2023 projected that low-emissions sources will constitute almost all the growth in global electricity demand through 2025, with renewables' portion of global power generation rising from 29% in 2022 to 35% in 2025. 6 March: The highest-granularity study on food GHGs, published in Nature Climate Change, reports that global food consumption alone would lead to failed climate goals with constant patterns, with ~75% of the projected warming due to ruminant meat, dairy and rice, albeit consumption currently shifts towards higher emissions overall as economic development is expected to facilitate acquisitions of undifferentiated goods like beef. 13 March: a study published in Nature Sustainability forecast that floating photovoltaic (FPV) systems on reservoirs could provide 9,434±29 terawatt-hours/year—over a third of global electricity. 27 March: a study in Geophysical Research Letters attempts to provide estimations of the tipping point(s) of the Greenland ice sheet. 5 April: in its Boom and Bust Coal publication, Global Energy Monitor stated that phasing out operating coal power by 2040 would require an average of 117 GW of retirements per year—4.5 times the capacity retired in 2022. An average of 60 GW/yr for OECD countries, and 91 GW/year for non-OECD countries, must come offline. 17 May: the WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update projected that the chance of global near-surface temperature exceeding 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels for at least one year between 2023 and 2027 is 66%, though it is unlikely (32%) that the five-year mean will exceed 1.5 °C. 20 May: a study published in One Earth found that increased temperature delays sleep onset and increases the probability of insufficient sleep, estimating that global warming may erode 50–58 hours of sleep per person-year while producing geographic inequalities that scale with future emissions.22 May: a study published in Nature Sustainability projected that current policies leading to ~2.7 °C global warming could leave 22–39% of humans outside their "human climate niche"—defined as "the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature." The study projected that reducing warming from 2.7 to 1.5 °C would result in a ~5-fold decrease in population exposed to unprecedented heat. 6 June: a study published in Nature Communications projected that under all SSP emissions scenarios considered, the Arctic would be ice-free in September as soon as the 2030s, sooner than the IPCC's earlier projection of mid-century. 7 June: the American Lung Association projected that, by 2050, as the U.S. moves to 100 percent zero emission new passenger vehicles sales and clean electricity generation, the resulting cleaner air could bring $978 billion in public health benefits, 89,300 fewer premature deaths, 2.2 million fewer asthma attacks, and 10.7 million fewer lost workdays. 14 June: the International Energy Agency's Oil 2023: Analysis and forecast to 2028 said that demand for oil from combustible fossil fuels is on course to peak in 2028 (the final year of the forecast), and that growth is set to reverse after 2023 for gasoline and after 2026 for transport fuels overall. 25 July: a study published in Nature Communications projected a tipping point collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) by mid-century, causing long term cooling of Europe. Earlier IPCC projections were that such a collapse is not likely within the century. 19 August: a study published in Energies projected that global warming reaching 2 °C this century will cause premature deaths in roughly 1 billion humans. The study cited the order-of-magnitude estimate in the "1000-ton rule" that states that a future person is killed every time 1000 tons of fossil carbon are burned. 28 August: a study published in Nature Climate Change projected that without snowmaking, 53% of ski resorts in 28 European countries will be at "very high risk for snow supply" under global warming of 2 °C (98% under 4 °C warming). 5 September: A study in The Lancet Planetary Health shows decoupling rates in high-income countries are inadequate for Paris Agreement commitments and suggests post-growth approaches such as demand reduction strategies and reorienting the economy. 2 October: a study published in Nature Communications studied the effect of the expected reduction in the amount of dark-colored, light-absorbing atmospheric particles (LAPs) that snow would absorb, making the snow reflect more sunlight, thus reducing radiative forcing that would otherwise warm the Earth. The study concluded that there would be a reduction in radiative forcing from 0.65 W/m2 (1995-2014) to 0.49 W/m2 (in 2081-2100). 23 October: a study published in Nature Climate Change projected that ocean warming at about triple the historical rate is likely unavoidable in the 21st century, with no significant difference between mid-range emissions scenarios versus achieving the most ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement—suggesting that greenhouse gas mitigation has limited ability to prevent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. 24 October: the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2023 stated that "the momentum behind clean energy transitions is now sufficient for global demand for coal, oil and natural gas to all reach a high point before 2030 in the STEPS" (Stated Policies Scenario). 2 November: a study published in Oxford Open Climate Change (co-author: James E. Hansen) projected that the recent decline of aerosol emissions should increase the global warming rate of 0.18 °C per decade (1970–2010) to at least 0.27 °C per decade, so that "under the present geopolitical approach to GHG emissions", warming will exceed 1.5 °C in the 2020s and 2 °C before 2050. Significant publications February: "Electricity Market Report 2023" (PDF). iea.org. International Energy Agency. February 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 February 2023. 22 March: "AR6 Synthesis Report / Headline Statements". IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. March 2023. Archived from the original on 22 March 2023. 22 March: "Longer Report of the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Six Assessment Report (AR6)" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. March 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 March 2023. 23 March: Gilmore, Anna B; et al. (April 2023). "Defining and conceptualising the commercial determinants of health". The Lancet. 401 (10383): 1194–1213. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(23)00013-2. hdl:1893/35148. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 36966782. S2CID 257698115. 21 April: "State of the Global Climate". WMO.int. World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 21 April 2023. Archived from the original on 21 April 2023. 17 May: "WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update". World Meteorological Organization. 17 May 2023. Archived from the original on 17 May 2023. 22 August: Committee on the Rights of the Child (22 August 2023). "Convention on the Rights of the Child / General comment No. 26 (2023) on children's rights and the environment, with a special focus on climate change". United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Archived from the original on 29 August 2023. 4 October: "Apostolic Exhortation / Laudate Deum of the Holy Father Francis to all people of good will on the climate crisis". vatical.va. The Vatican. 4 October 2023. Archived from the original on 26 October 2023. 24 October: World Energy Outlook 2023 (PDF). International Energy Agency. 24 October 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 October 2023. 24 October: Ripple, William J.; Wolf, Christopher; Gregg, Jillian W.; Rockström, Johan; et al. (24 October 2023). "The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory". BioScience. biad080. doi:10.1093/biosci/biad080. 14 November: Fifth National Climate Assessment, U.S. Global Change Research Program. (overview, 47 pp) (Report in Brief, 144pp) Notes See also 2023 in the environment 2023 in science Climatology § History Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) 2023 History of climate change policy and politics History of climate change science Politics of climate change § History Timeline of sustainable energy research 2020–present References External links Organizations The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Climate indicators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Surveys, summaries and report lists Watts, Jonathan; Swan, Lucy; Cousins, Rich; Blight, Garry; Symons, Harvey; Scruton, Paul (29 September 2023). "The hottest summer in human history – a visual timeline". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 16 October 2023.

climate change and children

Children are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than adults. The World Health Organization estimated that 88% of the existing global burden of disease caused by climate change affects children under five years of age. A Lancet review on health and climate change lists children as the worst-affected category by climate change. Children under 14 are 44 percent more likely to die from environmental factors, and those in urban areas are disproportionately impacted by lower air quality and overcrowding.Children are physically more vulnerable to climate change in all its forms. Climate change affects the physical health of children and their well-being. Prevailing inequalities, between and within countries, determine how climate change impacts children. Children often have no voice in terms of global responses to climate change.People living in low-income countries experience a higher burden of disease and are less capable of coping with climate change-related threats. Nearly every child in the world is at risk from climate change and pollution, while almost half are at extreme risk. Impacts of climate change on children Climate change impacts children's futures as well as their present. Children do not have the ability to control their environment and are disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change. Climate change-related disasters have impacted children in recent years, particularly children from poor communities. Children are experiencing diseases, flooding, pollution and water scarcity all due to climate change, particularly in countries of the global South.Unstable climate conditions created by the use of fossil fuels, deforestation and agriculture decrease access to clean water and food, and destroy secure living environments. Consequently, these systems lead to malnutrition, migration, and poor health, which leaves youth particularly vulnerable. Children are more biologically and psychologically susceptible to these conditions compared to adults due to their ongoing developmental growth. Their systems for detoxification, temperature regulation, and immune responses, and their inability to care for themselves leave them far more impacted than adults. Their underdeveloped respiratory systems are at an increased risk from the pollution caused by fossil fuels.Children's mental health is greatly impacted by the effects of global climate change. Displacement caused by natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and fires has a negative impact of the mental health conditions of children. 71% of middle school-aged children and 50% of preschool-aged children that experienced Hurricane Katrina experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. The World Health Organization has estimated that children under five years of age carry the burden of 88% of global climate change.Children are affected by the destruction of homes, threats to food security, and loss of family livelihoods brought about by climate change. The effects on children may be exacerbated by social and economic inequality, armed conflict, and health epidemics. Climate change effects fall under two main dimensions: direct or indirect, instant or postponed. The effects on the child's physical health include death and injuries, heat diseases, exposure to environmental toxins, infections, and other illnesses present within warmer temperatures.Disasters caused by extreme weather result in a significant increase in mental health and learning issues in children, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, cognitive deficits, and learning difficulties. Given this example about the post flood period in Pakistan in 2010, 73% of 10- to 19-year-olds displayed high levels of PTSD, where displaced girls were severely impacted.Other severe occurrences that were detected were distress, grief, and anger; loss of identity; feelings of helplessness and hopelessness; higher rates of suicide; and increased aggression and violence.Adding to the physical effects, there are the psychological and mental health influences that are threatening to a child's wellbeing. Health and wellbeing Climate change may affect children's health more directly than adults since children's organs and immune systems are still developing and they eat and drink more for their weight. Children's lungs are also more easily damaged by air pollutants since children breathe at a faster rate. Children also face increased risk of pregnancy complications, allergies and asthma, and developmental delays, as well as waterborne diseases.Children today face three times more wildfires, storms, floods, and droughts than experienced by their grandparents. Extreme events caused by climate change can destroy homes, schools, child-care centers, and other critical infrastructure. Typhoon Haian flattened entire cities and towns on the islands of Leyte and Samar, Philippines. Many child survivors of Typhoon Haian lost their homes and belongings. In 2020, Typhoon Molave caused floods and landslides that destroyed homes, placing an estimated 2.5 million children in Vietnam at risk. It killed nine and displaced more than one million individuals in Vietnam and the Philippines.Climate events have caused severe damage to lives and livelihoods. Typhoons, storm surges, and other disturbances have resulted in the loss of assets and capital and declines in family income among farmers, fishers, informal sector workers, and small business owners. Families with more children are more vulnerable to catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenses. After Typhoon Parma hit the Philippines, there was a rise in school dropout rates resulting from the loss of family incomes. Children who continued with school sometimes had to go to class without allowances to buy food. In rural areas, fields, gardens, fishponds, crops, fishing boats, and farming equipment have been destroyed, while livestock have been lost, affecting food security for entire communities. Environmental impact Children are vulnerable to the lack of basic natural resources that can be caused by natural phenomena like droughts and flooding. Significantly, around 160 million children live within extremely high drought regions and over 500 million inhabit areas with extremely high frequencies of flooding. Natural disasters also lead to displacement of families and children. Extreme weather events may also increase rates of physical and mental health insecurities.On the global level, children are estimated to tolerate 88% of the burden of disease because of climate change. The burden is exacerbated within underprivileged areas already suffering from environmental challenges. These areas see higher rates of various diseases, disabilities, and a higher mortality rate among children. In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed that the global temperatures will likely increase by 4.8 °C by 2100 if the current emissions continue to rise. Constant exposure to air pollutants affects birth weights, and leads to a small size for gestational age (SGA), and preterm birth cases. Children exposed to air pollution (ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, or nitrogen dioxide) tend to suffer from asthma resulting an increase airway oxidative stress and airway inflammation in asthmatic children Air pollution also affects children's neurodevelopment. A comparison of children born before and after the closure of a local coal power plant, found that the children born after the closure had significantly lower cord blood levels of PAH–DNA adducts and higher levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein needed in early brain development. Climate change action by children School strike for climate Legal action Juliana v. United States was dismissed in 2020 on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, but a new case has been launched on narrower grounds. In the case Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others brought by children and young adults, the European Court of Human Rights asked 33 states to respond by May 2021 with information on how they are trying to limit climate change. Arts-based educational approaches Many schools have integrated climate change within their curriculums. Children who learn about the existence and urgency of global environmental problems, become more aware of and engaged in improving the world's environmental status. Global initiatives A number of global initiatives and projects had been launched to address the impact and challenges of climate change on children. Youth activists on climate change Youth activism plays a role in reducing the impact of global climate change on children.Over 4,500 children and young people have participated in annual United Nations Environment Programme Tunza International Conferences since 2004. Children that represent over 100 countries and have covered a multitude of issues concerning climate change, including green jobs and a green economy. Involving youth in conversations around the climate adds a level of diversity and a shared understanding of how climate change affects different communities and age groups. See also Mari Copeny Autumn Peltier Xiuhtezcatl Martinez Leah Namugerwa Ridhima Pandey Isra Hirsi Yusuf Baluch == References ==

climate change scenario

Climate change scenarios or socioeconomic scenarios are projections of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions used by analysts to assess future vulnerability to climate change. Scenarios and pathways are created by scientists to survey any long term routes and explore the effectiveness of mitigation and helps us understand what the future may hold this will allow us to envision the future of human environment system. Producing scenarios requires estimates of future population levels, economic activity, the structure of governance, social values, and patterns of technological change. Economic and energy modelling (such as the World3 or the POLES models) can be used to analyze and quantify the effects of such drivers. Scientists can develop separate international, regional and national climate change scenarios. These scenarios are designed to help stakeholders understand what kinds of decisions will have meaningful effects on climate change mitigation or adaptation. Most countries developing adaptation plans or Nationally Determined Contributions will commission scenario studies in order to better understand the decisions available to them. International goals for mitigating climate change through international processes like the Paris Agreement are based on reviews of these scenarios. For example, the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C was released in 2018 order to reflect more up-to-date models of emissions, Nationally Determined Contributions, and impacts of climate change than its predecessor IPCC Fifth Assessment Report published in 2014 before the Paris Agreement. Purpose Climate change scenarios can be thought of as stories of possible futures. They allow the description of factors that are difficult to quantify, such as governance, social structures, and institutions. There is considerable variety among scenarios, ranging from variants of sustainable development, to the collapse of social, economic, and environmental systems.A baseline scenario is used as a reference for comparison against an alternative scenario, e.g., a mitigation scenario. A wide range of quantitative projections of greenhouse gas emissions have been produced. The "SRES" scenarios are "baseline" emissions scenarios (i.e., they assume that no future efforts are made to limit emissions), and have been frequently used in the scientific literature (see Special Report on Emissions Scenarios for details). Tools Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Representative Concentration Pathway Factors affecting future GHG emissions No strong patterns were found in the relationship between economic activity and GHG emissions. Economic growth was found to be compatible with increasing or decreasing GHG emissions. In the latter case, emissions growth is mediated by increased energy efficiency, shifts to non-fossil energy sources, and/or shifts to a post-industrial (service-based) economy. Factors affecting the emission projections include: Population projections: All other factors being equal, lower population projections result in lower emissions projections. Economic development: Economic activity is a dominant driver of energy demand and thus of GHG emissions. Energy use: Future changes in energy systems are a fundamental determinant of future GHG emissions. Energy intensity: This is the total primary energy supply (TPES) per unit of GDP. In all of the baseline scenarios assessments, energy intensity was projected to improve significantly over the 21st century. The uncertainty range in projected energy intensity was large. Carbon intensity: This is the CO2 emissions per unit of TPES. Compared with other scenarios, Fisher et al. (2007) found that the carbon intensity was more constant in scenarios where no climate policy had been assumed. The uncertainty range in projected carbon intensity was large. At the high end of the range, some scenarios contained the projection that energy technologies without CO2 emissions would become competitive without climate policy. These projections were based on the assumption of increasing fossil fuel prices and rapid technological progress in carbon-free technologies. Scenarios with a low improvement in carbon intensity coincided with scenarios that had a large fossil fuel base, less resistance to coal consumption, or lower technology development rates for fossil-free technologies. Land-use change: Land-use change plays an important role in climate change, impacting on emissions, sequestration and albedo. One of the dominant drivers in land-use change is food demand. Population and economic growth are the most significant drivers of food demand.In producing scenarios, an important consideration is how social and economic development will progress in developing countries. If, for example, developing countries were to follow a development pathway similar to the current industrialized countries, it could lead to a very large increase in emissions. Emissions do not only depend on the growth rate of the economy. Other factors include the structural changes in the production system, technological patterns in sectors such as energy, geographical distribution of human settlements and urban structures (this affects, for example, transportation requirements), consumption patterns (e.g., housing patterns, leisure activities, etc.), and trade patterns the degree of protectionism and the creation of regional trading blocks can affect availability to technology. In the majority of studies, the following relationships were found (but are not proof of causation): Rising GHGs: This was associated with scenarios having a growing, post-industrial economy with globalization, mostly with low government intervention and generally high levels of competition. Income equality declined within nations, but there was no clear pattern in social equity or international income equality. Falling GHGs: In some of these scenarios, GDP rose. Other scenarios showed economic activity limited at an ecologically sustainable level. Scenarios with falling emissions had a high level of government intervention in the economy. The majority of scenarios showed increased social equity and income equality within and among nations. Scenarios for different degrees of mitigation efforts Climate change mitigation scenarios are possible futures in which global warming is reduced by deliberate actions, such as a comprehensive switch to energy sources other than fossil fuels. These are actions that minimize emissions so atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilized at levels that restrict the adverse consequences of climate change. Using these scenarios, the examination of the impacts of different carbon prices on an economy is enabled within the framework of different levels of global aspirations.A typical mitigation scenario is constructed by selecting a long-range target, such as a desired atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), and then fitting the actions to the target, for example by placing a cap on net global and national emissions of greenhouse gases. An increase of global temperature by more than 2 °C has come to be the majority definition of what would constitute intolerably dangerous climate change with efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels per the Paris Agreement. Some climate scientists are increasingly of the opinion that the goal should be a complete restoration of the atmosphere's preindustrial condition, on the grounds that too protracted a deviation from those conditions will produce irreversible changes. Stabilization wedges A stabilization wedge is an action which incrementally reduces projected emissions. The name is derived from the triangular shape of the gap between reduced and unreduced emissions trajectories when graphed over time. For example, a reduction in electricity demand due to increased efficiency means that less electricity needs to be generated and thus fewer emissions need to be produced. The term originates in the Stabilization Wedge Game. As a reference unit, a stabilization wedge is equal to the following examples of mitigation initiatives: deployment of two hundred thousand 10 MW wind turbines; completely halting the deforestation and planting of 300 million hectares of trees; the increase in the average energy efficiency of all the world's buildings by 25 percent; or the installation of carbon capture and storage facilities in 800 large coal-fired power plants. Pacala and Socolow proposed in their work, Stabilization Wedges, that seven wedges are required to be delivered by 2050 – at current technologies – to make a significant impact on the mitigation of climate change. There are, however, sources that estimate the need for 14 wedges because Pacala and Socolow's proposal would only stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at current levels but not the atmospheric concentration, which is increasing by more than 2 ppm/year. In 2011, Socolow revised their earlier estimate to nine. Target levels of CO2 Contributions to climate change, whether they cool or warm the Earth, are often described in terms of the radiative forcing or imbalance they introduce to the planet's energy budget. Now and in the future, anthropogenic carbon dioxide is believed to be the major component of this forcing, and the contribution of other components is often quantified in terms of "parts-per-million carbon dioxide equivalent" (ppm CO2e), or the increment/decrement in carbon dioxide concentrations which would create a radiative forcing of the same magnitude. 450 ppm The BLUE scenarios in the IEA's Energy Technology Perspectives publication of 2008 describe pathways to a long-range concentration of 450 ppm. Joseph Romm has sketched how to achieve this target through the application of 14 wedges.World Energy Outlook 2008, mentioned above, also describes a "450 Policy Scenario", in which extra energy investments to 2030 amount to $9.3 trillion over the Reference Scenario. The scenario also features, after 2020, the participation of major economies such as China and India in a global cap-and-trade scheme initially operating in OECD and European Union countries. Also the less conservative 450 ppm scenario calls for extensive deployment of negative emissions, i.e. the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and OECD, "Achieving lower concentration targets (450 ppm) depends significantly on the use of BECCS". 550 ppm This is the target advocated (as an upper bound) in the Stern Review. As approximately a doubling of CO2 levels relative to preindustrial times, it implies a temperature increase of about three degrees, according to conventional estimates of climate sensitivity. Pacala and Socolow list 15 "wedges", any 7 of which in combination should suffice to keep CO2 levels below 550 ppm.The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook report for 2008 describes a "Reference Scenario" for the world's energy future "which assumes no new government policies beyond those already adopted by mid-2008", and then a "550 Policy Scenario" in which further policies are adopted, a mixture of "cap-and-trade systems, sectoral agreements and national measures". In the Reference Scenario, between 2006 and 2030 the world invests $26.3 trillion in energy-supply infrastructure; in the 550 Policy Scenario, a further $4.1 trillion is spent in this period, mostly on efficiency increases which deliver fuel cost savings of over $7 trillion. Other greenhouse gases Greenhouse gas concentrations are aggregated in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent. Some multi-gas mitigation scenarios have been modeled by Meinshausen et al. Trends and predictions Previous predictions UNEP 2011 synthesis report The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 2011): 7  looked at how world emissions might develop out to the year 2020 depending on different policy decisions. To produce their report, UNEP (2011): 8  convened 55 scientists and experts from 28 scientific groups across 15 countries. Projections, assuming no new efforts to reduce emissions or based on the "business-as-usual" hypothetical trend, suggested global emissions in 2020 of 56 gigatonnes CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq), with a range of 55-59 GtCO2-eq.: 12  In adopting a different baseline where the pledges to the Copenhagen Accord were met in their most ambitious form, the projected global emission by 2020 will still reach the 50 gigatonnes CO2. Continuing with the current trend, particularly in the case of low-ambition form, there is an expectation of 3° Celsius temperature increase by the end of the century, which is estimated to bring severe environmental, economic, and social consequences.The report also considered the effect on emissions of policies put forward by UNFCCC Parties to address climate change. Assuming more stringent efforts to limit emissions lead to projected global emissions in 2020 of between 49 and 52 GtCO2-eq, with a median estimate of 51 GtCO2-eq.: 12  Assuming less stringent efforts to limit emissions lead to projected global emissions in 2020 of between 53 and 57 GtCO2-eq, with a median estimate of 55 GtCO2-eq.: 12 National climate (change) projections National climate (change) projections (also termed "national climate scenarios" or "national climate assessments") are specialized regional climate projections, typically produced for and by individual countries. What distinguishes national climate projections from other climate projections is that they are officially signed off by the national government, thereby being the relevant national basis for adaptation planning. Climate projections are commonly produced over several years by countries' national meteorological services or academic institutions working on climate change. Typically distributed as a single product, climate projections condense information from multiple climate models, using multiple greenhouse gas emission pathways (e.g. Representative Concentration Pathways) to characterize different yet coherent climate futures. Such a product highlights plausible climatic changes through the use of narratives, graphs, maps, and perhaps raw data. Climate projections are often publicly available for policy-makers, public and private decision makers, as well as researchers to undertake further climate impact studies, risk assessments, and climate change adaptation research. The projections are updated every few years, in order to incorporate new scientific insights and improved climate models. National climate projections form the basis of national climate adaptation and climate resilience plans, which are reported to UNFCCC and used in IPCC assessments. Design To explore a wide range of plausible climatic outcomes and to enhance confidence in the projections, national climate change projections are often generated from multiple general circulation models (GCMs). Such climate ensembles can take the form of perturbed physics ensembles (PPE), multi-model ensembles (MME), or initial condition ensembles (ICE). As the spatial resolution of the underlying GCMs is typically quite coarse, the projections are often downscaled, either dynamically using regional climate models (RCMs), or statistically. Some projections include data from areas which are larger than the national boundaries, e.g. to more fully evaluate catchment areas of transboundary rivers. Some countries have also produced more localized projections for smaller administrative areas, e.g. States in the United States, and Länder in Germany. Various countries have produced their national climate projections with feedback and/or interaction with stakeholders. Such engagement efforts have helped tailoring the climate information to the stakeholders' needs, including the provision of sector-specific climate indicators such as degree-heating days. Examples Over 30 countries have reported national climate projections / scenarios in their most recent National Communications to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Many European governments have also funded national information portals on climate change. Australia: CCIA California: Cal-Adapt Netherlands: KNMI'14 Switzerland: CH2011 / CH2018 UK: UKCP09 / UKCP18For countries which lack adequate resources to develop their own climate change projections, organisations such as UNDP or FAO have sponsored development of projections and national adaptation programmes (NAPAs). See also Carbon budget CMIP Copernicus Programme Ensemble forecasting Sensitivity analysis Uncertainty analysis Scenario planning References External links UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles - Introduction;UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles (61 countries)

climate change in the united states

Climate change has led to the United States warming by 2.6 °F (1.4 °C) since 1970. The climate of the United States is shifting in ways that are widespread and varied between regions. From 2010 to 2019, the United States experienced its hottest decade on record. Extreme weather events, invasive species, floods and droughts are increasing. Climate change's impacts on tropical cyclones and sea level rise also affects regions of the country. Cumulatively since 1850, the U.S. has emitted a larger share than any country of the greenhouse gases causing current climate change, with some 20% of the global total of carbon dioxide alone. Current US emissions per person are among the largest in the world. Various state and federal climate change policies have been introduced, and the US has ratified the Paris Agreement despite temporarily withdrawing. In 2021, the country set a target of halving its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.Climate change is having considerable impacts on the environment and society of the United States. This includes implications for agriculture, the economy, human health and indigenous peoples, and it is seen as a national security threat. States that emit more carbon dioxide per person and introduce policies to oppose climate action are generally experiencing greater impacts. 2020 was a historic year for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in U.S. Although historically a non-partisan issue, climate change has become controversial and politically divisive in the country in recent decades. Oil companies have known since the 1970s that burning oil and gas could cause global warming but nevertheless funded deniers for years. Despite the support of a clear scientific consensus, as of 2021 one third of Americans deny that human-caused climate change exists although the majority are concerned or alarmed about the issue. Greenhouse gas emissions Impact on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes Human-induced climate change has the potential to alter the prevalence and severity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, cold waves, storms, floods and droughts. A 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report confirmed that a strong body of evidence links global warming to an increase in heat waves, a rise in episodes of heavy rainfall and other precipitation, and more frequent coastal flooding. March 2020 placed second to 2016 for being the second-hottest March on record with an average of 2.09 Fahrenheit (1.16 Celsius) above that of the 20th-century.According to the American government's Climate Change Science Program, "With continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."In 2022, Climate Central reported that, since 1970, the U.S. is 2.6 °F (1.4 °C) warmer, all 49 states analyzed(Hawaii data not available) warmed by at least 1.8 °F (1.0 °C), and 244 of 246 U.S. cities analyzed warmed. Many of the fastest-warming locations were in the drought-prone Southwest, with Reno, Nevada, warming by +7.7 °F (4.3 °C). Alaska warmed by 4.3° F (2.4 °C), where melting glaciers contribute to sea level rise, and permafrost melt releases greenhouse gases. Ninety percent of U.S. counties experienced a federal climate disaster between 2011 and 2021, with some having as many as 12 disasters during that time. Extreme weather events The number and severity of high-cost extreme weather events has increased in the 21st century in the United States, and some of these are because of global warming. By August 2011 alone, the NOAA had registered nine distinct extreme weather disasters for that year, each totalling $1 billion or more in economic losses. Total losses for 2011 were evaluated as more than $35 billion before Hurricane Irene.Though the costs and frequency of cyclones have increased on the east coast, it remains unclear whether these effects have been driven primarily by climate change. When correcting for this, a comprehensive 2006 article in Geophysical Research Letters found "no significant change in global net tropical cyclone activity" during past decades, a period when considerable warming of ocean water temperatures occurred. However, the study found major regional shifts, including a general rise of activity in the North Atlantic area, including on the U.S. eastern coast.From 1898 through 1913, there have been 27 cold waves which totalled 58 days. Between 1970 and 1989, there were about 12 such events. From 1989 until January 6, 2014, there were none. The one on the latter date caused consternation because of decreased frequency of such experiences.Looking at the lack of certainty as to the causes of the 1995 to present increase in Atlantic extreme storm activity, a 2007 article in Nature used proxy records of vertical wind shear and sea surface temperature to create a long-term model. The authors found that "the average frequency of major hurricanes decreased gradually from the 1760s until the early 1990s, reaching anomalously low values during the 1970s and 1980s." As well, they also found that "hurricane activity since 1995 is not unusual compared to other periods of high hurricane activity in the record and thus appears to represent a recovery to normal hurricane activity, rather than a direct response to increasing sea surface temperature." The researches stated that future evaluations of climate change effects should focus on the magnitude of vertical wind shear for answers.The frequency of tornadoes in the U.S. has increased, and some of this trend takes place due to climatological changes though other factors such as better detection technologies also play large roles. According to a 2003 study in Climate Research, the total tornado hazards resulting in injury, death, or economic loss "shows a steady decline since the 1980s." The authors reported that tornado "deaths and injuries decreased over the past fifty years." They state that additional research must look into regional and temporal variability in the future. Heat waves From the 1960s the amount and longevity of heat waves have increased in the contiguous United States. The general effect of climate changes has been found in the journal Nature Climate Change to have caused increased likelihood of heat waves and extensive downpours. Concerns exist that, as stated by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study in 2003, increasing "heat and humidity, at least partially related to anthropogenic climate change, suggest that a long-term increase in heat-related mortality could occur." However, the report found that, in general, "over the past 35 years, the U.S. populace has become systematically less affected by hot and humid weather conditions" while "mortality during heat stress events has declined despite increasingly stressful weather conditions in many urban and suburban areas." Thus, as stated in the study, "there is no simple association between increased heat wave duration or intensity and higher mortality rates" with current death rates being largely preventable, the NIH deeply urging American public health officials and physicians to inform patients about mitigating heat-related weather and climate effects on their bodies. In 2021 an unprecedented heat wave occurred in the northwest linked to climate change. The heatwave brought temperatures close to 50 °C to many areas that generally do not experience such heat like Portland and Seattle, killed 500 people and caused 180 wildfires in British Columbia in Canada. The heat wave was made 150 times more likely by climate change. According to World Weather Attribution such events occur every 1,000 years in today climate but if the temperature will rise by 2 degrees above preindustrial levels, such events will occur each 5–10 years. However, it was more severe than predicted climate models. Significant impacts in that area were expected in the Pacific Northwest only by the middle of the 21st century. Currently, scientists search ways to make the predictions more accurate because: "researchers need to assess whether places such as North America or Germany will face extremes like the heat dome and the floods every 20 years, 10 years, five years – or maybe even every year. This level of accuracy currently isn’t possible".The leading cause of animal extinction rates within the United States is due to rising temperatures and heat waves. Science writer Mark C. Urban states, "Species must disperse into newly suitable habitats as fast as climate shifts across landscapes." The risk of extinction among species isn't as detrimental in the United States as compared to other countries such as, "South America, Australia, and New Zealand." Due to these species needing to adapt as fast as rising temperature, Urban stresses the idea of countries who are at great risk, and even those who aren't to adapt strategies to limit further advances in rising temperatures and climate change. Droughts A 2006 study suggested that drought conditions appear to be worsening in the southwest while improving in the northeast. In the years 2000–2021 the southwestern North American megadrought persisted. Climate change increased temperature, reduced the amount of precipitation, decreased snowpack and increased the ability of air to soak humidity, helping to create arid conditions. As of 2021 the drought was the most severe in the last 500 years. As of 30 June 2021 61% of continental USA were in drought conditions. Demand for water and cooling rose. In June 2021 water restrictions entered into force in California. Climate change is responsible for 50% of the severity of the drought in California. Water restrictions are expected to expand on many states in the US west, farmers are already affected. In San Francisco a hydropower plant can stop work due to lack of water.A study published in Nature Climate Change concluded that 2000–2021 was the driest 22-year period in southwestern North America since at least 800 CE. One of the study's researchers said that, without climate change, the drought would probably have ended in 2005. 42% of the megadrought's severity is said to be attributable to temperature rise as a result of climate change, with 88% of the area being drought-stricken. In 2020–2021, the Colorado River, feeding seven states, shrank to the lowest two-year average in more than a century of record keeping. Megafloods A study published in Science Advances in 2022 stated that climate-caused changes in atmospheric rivers affecting California had already doubled the likelihood of megafloods—which can involve 100 inches (250 cm) of rain and/or melted snow in the mountains per month, or 25 to 34 feet (7.6 to 10.4 m) of snow in the Sierra Nevada—and runoff in a future extreme storm scenario is predicted to be 200 to 400% greater than historical values in the Sierra Nevada. Weakened polar vortex jet stream Climate scientists have hypothesised that the stratospheric polar vortex jet stream will gradually weaken as a result of global warming and thus influence U.S. conditions. This trend could possibly cause changes in the future such as increasing frost in certain areas. The magazine Scientific American noted in December 2014 that ice cover on the Great Lakes had recently "reached its second-greatest extent on record", showing climate variability. In February 2021 when the United States, officially rejoined the Paris Agreement, John Kerry spoke about it, mentioning the latest extreme cold events in the USA that in his opinion: "related to climate because the polar vortex penetrates further south because of the weakening of the jet stream related to warming." This opinion is shared by many climate scientists. Sea level rise Sea level rise has taken place in the U.S. for decades, going back to the 19th century. 40% of the U.S. population live near a coast, and are vulnerable to sea level rise. For almost all coastal areas of the US, except for Alaska, the future rise in sea level is expected to be higher than the global average. NOAA's Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios said in February 2022 that relative sea level along the contiguous U.S. coastline is expected to rise on average as much over the next 30 years—25 to 30 centimetres (9.8 to 11.8 in)—as it has over the preceding 100 years.More specifically, NOAA's February 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report estimated that rise in the following three decades is anticipated to be, on average: 10-14 inches (0.25-0.35 m) for the East coast; 14-18 inches (0.35-0.45 m) for the Gulf coast; 4-8 inches (0.1-0.2 m) for the West coast; 8-10 inches (0.2-0.25 m) for the Caribbean; 6-8 inches (0.15-0.2 m) for the Hawaiian Islands; and 8-10 inches (0.2-0.25 m) for northern Alaska. Also, by 2050, "moderate" (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today, and "major" (often destructive) flooding is expected to occur five times as often as it does today.The U.S. Geological Survey has conducted research on sea level rise, addressing coastal vulnerability, and incorporating six physical variables to analyze the changes in sea level: geomorphology, coastal slope (percent), rate of relative sea level rise (mm/yr), shoreline erosion and acceleration rates (m/yr), mean tidal range (m), and mean wave height (m). The research was conducted on the various coastline areas of the United States. Along the Pacific coast, the most vulnerable areas are low-lying beaches, and "their susceptibility is primarily a function of geomorphology and coastal slope." From research along the Atlantic coast, the most vulnerable areas to sea level rise were found to be along the Mid-Atlantic coast (Maryland to North Carolina) and Northern Florida, since these are "typically high-energy coastlines where the regional coastal slope is low and where the major landform type is a barrier island." For the Gulf coast, the most vulnerable areas are along the Louisiana-Texas coast. According to the results, "the highest-vulnerability areas are typically lower-lying beach and marsh areas; their susceptibility is primarily a function of geomorphology, coastal slope and rate of relative sea-level rise." Coastal regions would be most affected by rising sea levels. The increase in sea level along the coasts of continents, especially North America are much more significant than the global average. According to 2007 estimates by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "global average sea level will rise between 0.6 and 2 feet (0.18 to 0.59 meters) in the next century. Along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, however, sea level rose in the last century 5 to 6 inches more than the global average. This is due to the subsiding of coastal lands. The sea level along the U.S. Pacific coast has also increased more than the global average, but less than along the Atlantic coast. This can be explained by the varying continental margins along both coasts; the Atlantic type continental margin is characterized by a wide, gently sloping continental shelf, while the Pacific type continental margin incorporates a narrow shelf and slope descending into a deep trench. Since low-sloping coastal regions should retreat faster than higher-sloping regions, the Atlantic coast is more vulnerable to sea level rise than the Pacific coast.A rise in sea level will have a negative impact not only on coastal property and economy, but on our supply of fresh water. According to the EPA, "Rising sea level increases the salinity of both surface water and ground water through salt water intrusion." Coastal estuaries and aquifers are therefore at a high risk of becoming too saline from rising sea levels. With respect to estuaries, an increase in salinity would threaten aquatic animals and plants that cannot tolerate high levels of salinity. Aquifers often serve as a primary water supply to surrounding areas, such as Florida's Biscayne aquifer, which receives freshwater from the Everglades and then supplies water to the Florida Keys. Rising sea levels would submerge low-lying areas of the Everglades, and salinity would greatly increase in portions of the aquifer. The considerable rise in sea level and the decreasing amounts of freshwater along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts would make those areas rather uninhabitable. Many economists predict that global warming will be one of the main economic threats to the West Coast, specifically in California. "Low-lying coastal areas, such as along the Gulf Coast, are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise and stronger storms—and those risks are reflected in rising insurance rates and premiums. In Florida, for example, the average price of a homeowners' policy increased by 77 percent between 2001 and 2006."Another important coastal habitat that is threatened by sea level rise is wetlands, which "occur along the margins of estuaries and other shore areas that are protected from the open ocean and include swamps, tidal flats, coastal marshes and bayous." Wetlands are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels, since they are within several feet of sea level. The threat posed to wetlands is serious, due to the fact that they are highly productive ecosystems, and they have an enormous impact on the economy of surrounding areas. Wetlands in the U.S. are rapidly disappearing due to an increase in housing, industry, and agriculture, and rising sea levels contribute to this dangerous trend. As a result of rising sea levels, the outer boundaries of wetlands tend to erode, forming new wetlands more inland. According to the EPA, "the amount of newly created wetlands, however, could be much smaller than the lost area of wetlands— especially in developed areas protected with bulkheads, dikes, and other structures that keep new wetlands from forming inland." When estimating a sea level rise within the next century of 50 cm (20 inches), the U.S. would lose 38% to 61% of its existing coastal wetlands.Beachfront property is at risk from eroding land and rising sea levels. Since the threat posed by rising sea levels has become more prominent, property owners and local government have taken measures to prepare for the worst. For example, "Maine has enacted a policy declaring that shorefront buildings will have to be moved to enable beaches and wetlands to migrate inland to higher ground." Additionally, many coastal states add sand to their beaches to offset shore erosion, and many property owners have elevated their structures in low-lying areas. As a result of the erosion and ruin of properties by large storms on coastal lands, governments have looked into buying land and having residents relocate further inland. Locations in the US with low elevation above sea level Freshwater ecosystems A study published in 2009 delves into the effects to be felt by lotic (flowing) and lentic (still) freshwater ecosystems in the American Northeast. According to the study, persistent rainfall, typically felt year round, will begin to diminish and rates of evaporation will increase, resulting in drier summers and more sporadic periods of precipitation throughout the year. Additionally, a decrease in snowfall is expected, which leads to less runoff in the spring when snow thaws and enters the watershed, resulting in lower-flowing fresh water rivers. This decrease in snowfall also leads to increased runoff during winter months, as rainfall cannot permeate the frozen ground usually covered by water-absorbing snow. These effects on the water cycle will wreak havoc for indigenous species residing in fresh water lakes and streams. Socioeconomic impacts An article in Science predicts that the Southern states, such as Texas, Florida, and the Deep South will be economically affected by climate change more severely than northern states, some of which would even gain "moderate benefits." In October 2021, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) released a report that identified climate change as an emerging and increasing threat to the stability of the U.S. financial system. A 2021 survey of 1,422 members of the American Economic Association found that 86 percent of professional economists generally agreed with the statement: "Climate change poses a major risk to the US economy." Agriculture and food security The 2018 the Fourth National Climate Assessment notes that regional economies dominated by agriculture may have additional vulnerabilities from climate change. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist, notes that climate-related disasters in 2017 cost the equivalent of 1.5% of GDP. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged. Cost of disaster relief Since 1980, the United States has experienced 323 in climate and weather related disasters, which have cost more than $2.195 trillion in total. According to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), 2021 witnessed 20 climate-related disasters, each exceeding losses of $1 billion.These increasingly common and severe weather events have put pressure on existing disaster-relief efforts. For instance, the increasing rate of wildfires, the increasing length of the fire season, and increasing severity have put pressure on national and international resources. In the US, federal firefighting efforts surpassed $2 billion a year for the first time in 2017, and this expense was repeated in 2018. At the same time, internationally shared capital, such as firefighting planes, has experienced increasing demand, requiring new investment. Culture By August 2022, an increasing number of outdoor theater and musical performances, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and The Great Passion Play in Arkansas, were being canceled due to wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and heavy rains. Health impacts Climate change is expected to pose increased threats to human health. The physical and psychological effects of climate change in the United States on human health will likely depend on specific location. Researchers have determined that locations of concern are "coastal regions, islands, deserts in the southwest, vector-borne and zoonotic disease border regions, cities, and the U.S. Arctic (Alaska)". Physical impacts include injury and illness from both initial incidents and secondary effects of major weather events or the changing climate. Psychological impacts include post-traumatic stress disorder, forced emigration and social loss related to people's attachment to place and identity. The impacts these have on the individual are felt throughout the community as well. Displacement after a major weather event harms a community's capacity to engage and become resilient. Immigration Climate change has increased migration to the United States from Central America. Due to rising sea levels in coastal areas in the United States, it is projected that 13 million Americans will be forced to move away from submerged coastlines. Indigenous peoples According to Indigenous scholars such as Daniel Wildcat, Zoe Todd, and Kyle Whyte, the experience of modern climate change echoes previous experiences of environmental damage and territorial displacement brought about by European settlement. Colonial practices such as damming and deforestation forced Indigenous peoples to adapt to unfamiliar climates and environments. Thus, the impacts of global climate change are viewed as being not separate from but rather an intensification of the impacts of settler colonialism.Indigenous scholars and activists argue that colonialist policies—prioritizing exploitation and commoditization of resources over Indigenous teachings favoring environmental stability and seeking a symbiotic relation with nature—have fueled climate change. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has stated that "Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, due to their dependence upon, and close relationship, with the environment and its resources." More specifically, North American tribes' present-day lands are on average more exposed to extreme heat and receive less precipitation, nearly half of tribes experience heightened wildfire hazard exposure, and tribes' present-day lands have less mineral value potential. Coastal Native peoples residing on the Gulf and West Coasts are affected by the rising sea temperatures because that makes the fish and shellfish, that they rely on for food and cultural activities, more susceptible to contamination. In California, climate change has wiped out much of the salmonids and acorns that were a significant portion of the Karuk people's traditional diet. Native Hawaiians In the last century, climate change has played a part in causing "between 90 and 95 percent of Hawai'i's dryland forests" to disappear, which is especially important because many of the native species that exist in Hawai’i cannot be found anywhere else on earth.Indigenous communities developed agroecosystems that could have had production levels comparable to consumption today. As such, Indigenous agroecosystems may help climate change mitigation. Great Lakes Tribes Exploitation practices produce pollution and introduce non-native species, promoting the intensity of climate change. Conservation efforts of the Great Lakes ecosystems are necessary in order to prevent climate change from doing further damage to the environment and the Indigenous communities living there.Increasing temperatures have stunted the growth of wild rice, negatively impacting the Anishinaabe and Ojibwe people's health and culture. Indigenous Alaskans Thinning sea ice on which some Alaskan tribes traditionally rely for hunting contributes to climigration—migration caused by climate change, a term originally was coined for Arctic Alaska towns and villages. The policy advisor for the National Congress of American Indians has stated that "among indigenous peoples in North America, the Native Americans who continue to practice traditional and subsistence lifestyles to perhaps the highest degree are those in Alaska, where 80% of the diet comes from the immediate surroundings".Coastal erosion and rising sea levels caused by climate change have threatened coastal communities. For example, reports suggest that melting permafrost, repeated storms, and decrease of land could make Kivalina unlivable by 2025, though some residents do not have the enough money to relocate. Sea ice that historically sheltered the town has retreated, and storms that would have previously hit the ice now reach the town. The decline in ice sheets has been directly linked to a decline in the population of polar bears on which many Indigenous people rely.Because of melting ice, global climate change makes Arctic Indigenous lands more accessible for resource extraction. Whyte cites a source saying that this increased accessibility brings oil production projects having laborers' camps that "attract violent sex trafficking of Indigenous persons".Wildfires impact both urban and rural communities, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. However, Indigenous communities do not have the same economic resources to deal with these fires, and their lifestyles and cultures are more dependent on the land. Rural communities rely more on surrounding land for wild food harvest and nutritional intake, and thus are at risk for food insecurity.Warming temperatures in the Arctic allow beavers to extend their habitat further north, where their dams impair boat travel, impact access to food, affect water quality, and endanger downstream fish populations. Pools formed by the dams store heat, thus changing local hydrology and causing localized thawing of permafrost that in turn contributes to global warming.For generations, people in Alaska's far-north whaling villages have relied on ice cellars (food caches) dug deep into the permafrost to store and age their subsistence food, and keep it cold throughout the year. However, global warming—along with changes in sediment chemistry, local hydrology, and urbanization—are causing ice cellars to fail through flooding and collapse. Southwest The Navajo Nation will experience increasing droughts and air pollution from dust. In Arizona, rising temperatures and more severe rain events will likely exacerbate existing water purity problems, resulting in increased diarrhea and stomach problems, especially among children. Northeast In Maine, habitat loss and increasing temperatures, especially in the colder seasons, encourage the survival of ticks. This harms moose populations that Indigenous people have historically relied on. Security Climate change is a threat to the national security of the United States, according to the Defense secretary. The President Joe Biden claims that top military officials described climate change as the biggest threat to the security of the country. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in reaction that from a strictly military point of view Russia and China are the biggest threats but national security is a much broader issue. Studies have also found that some dimensions of climate change increase rates of violent crime. Overall, the IPCC reports with medium confidence that climate change is related to both violent and property crime in the US. Mitigation and adaptation Mitigation Calculations in 2021 showed that, for giving the world a 50% chance of avoiding a temperature rise of 2 degrees or more USA should increase its climate commitments by 38%.: Table 1  For a 95% chance it should increase the commitments by 125%. For giving a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees USA should increase its commitments by 203%.Increasing use of public transport and related transit-oriented development can reduce transportation emissions in human settlements by 78% and overall US emissions by 15%.In April, 2022, wind and solar energy sources provided more electricity than nuclear power plants, overtaking nuclear for the first time in U.S. history. Clean energy (also including geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass) comprised nearly 30% of the total electricity in the U.S., compared to about 20% in 2021.Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the United States include energy policies which encourage efficiency through programs like Energy Star, Commercial Building Integration, and the Industrial Technologies Program.In the absence of substantial federal action, state governments have adopted emissions-control laws such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast and the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 in California. In 2019 a new climate change bill was introduced in Minnesota. One of the targets, is making all the energy of the state carbon free, by 2030.Several pieces of legislation introduced in the 116th and 117th Congresses, including the Climate Stewardship Act of 2019, the Ocean Based Climate Solutions Act of 2020, the Healthy Soil, Resilient Farmers Act of 2020, and the Healthy Soils Healthy Climate Act of 2020, have sought to increase carbon sequestration on private and public lands through financial incentivization. Several state governments, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, and New York, have passed versions of a carbon farming tax credit, which seek to improve soil health and increase carbon sequestration by offering financial assistance and incentives for farmers who practice regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, and other climate change mitigation practices. The California Healthy Soils Program is estimated to have resulted in 109,809 metric tons of CO2 being sequestered annually on average.A 2011 survey of 568 members of the American Economic Association (AEA) found that 80 percent of professional economists generally agreed with the statement: "The long run benefits of higher taxes on fossil fuels outweigh the short run economic costs." A 2021 survey of 1,422 AEA members found that 88 percent of professional economists generally agreed with the same statement. Relatedly, surveys of AEA members since the 1970s have shown that professional economists generally agree with the statement: "Pollution taxes and marketable pollution permits represent a better approach to pollution control than emission standards."The White House and USDA are reportedly developing plans to use $30 billion in funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) for the creation of a carbon bank program, which would involve giving carbon credits to farmers and landowners in return for adopting carbon sequestration practices, which they could then sell in a cap and trade market.In November 2023, the first commercial direct air capture (DAC) plant in the U.S. began operation. DAC technology captures carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming—and seals it permanently in a solid such as concrete. That plant removes only 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars. However, a $1.2 billion Biden administration award for DAC aims to expand the technology and reduce cost per ton. Carbon emissions trading schemes by state and regional programs In 2003, New York State proposed and attained commitments from nine Northeast states to form a cap-and-trade carbon dioxide emissions program for power generators, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). This program launched on January 1, 2009, with the aim to reduce the carbon "budget" of each state's electricity generation sector to 10% below their 2009 allowances by 2018.Also in 2003, U.S. corporations were able to trade CO2 emission allowances on the Chicago Climate Exchange under a voluntary scheme. In August 2007, the Exchange announced a mechanism to create emission offsets for projects within the United States that cleanly destroy ozone-depleting substances.In 2006, the California Legislature passed the California Global Warming Solutions Act, AB-32. Thus far, flexible mechanisms in the form of project based offsets have been suggested for three main project types. The project types include: manure management, forestry, and destruction of ozone-depleted substances. However, a ruling from Judge Ernest H. Goldsmith of San Francisco's Superior Court stated that the rules governing California's cap-and-trade system were adopted without a proper analysis of alternative methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The tentative ruling, issued on January 24, 2011, argued that the California Air Resources Board violated state environmental law by failing to consider such alternatives. If the decision is made final, the state would not be allowed to implement its proposed cap-and-trade system until the California Air Resources Board fully complies with the California Environmental Quality Act. However, on June 24, 2011, the Superior Court's ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeals. By 2012, some of the emitters obtained allowances for free, which is for the electric utilities, industrial facilities and natural gas distributors, whereas some of the others have to go to the auction. The California cap-and-trade program came into effect in 2013. In 2014, the Texas legislature approved a 10% reduction for the Highly Reactive Volatile Organic Compound (HRVOC) emission limit. This was followed by a 5% reduction for each subsequent year until a total of 25% percent reduction was achieved in 2017.In February 2007, five U.S. states and four Canadian provinces joined to create the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a regional greenhouse gas emissions trading system. In July 2010, a meeting took place to further outline the cap-and-trade system. In November 2011, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington withdrew from the WCI. As of 2021, only the U.S. state of California and the Canadian province of Quebec participate in the WCI.In 1997, the State of Illinois adopted a trading program for volatile organic compounds in most of the Chicago area, called the Emissions Reduction Market System. Beginning in 2000, over 100 major sources of pollution in eight Illinois counties began trading pollution credits. Adaptation The state of California enacted the first comprehensive state-level climate action plan with its 2009 "California Climate Adaptation Strategy." California's electrical grid has been impacted by the increased fire risks associated with climate change. In the 2019 "red flag" warning about the possibility of wildfires declared in some areas of California, the electricity company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) was required to shut down power to prevent inflammation of trees that touch the electricity lines. Millions were impacted.Within the state of Florida four counties (Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Palm Beach) have created the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact in order to coordinate adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with the impact of climate change on the region. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has issued grants to coastal cities and towns for adaptation activities such as fortification against flooding and preventing coastal erosion.New York State is requiring climate change be taken into account in certain infrastructure permitting, zoning, and open space programs; and is mapping sea level rise along its coast. After Hurricane Sandy, New York and New Jersey accelerated voluntary government buy-back of homes in flood-prone areas. New York City announced in 2013 it planned to spend between $10 and $20 billion on local flood protection, reduction of the heat island effect with reflective and green roofs, flood-hardening of hospitals and public housing, resiliency in food supply, and beach enhancement; rezoned to allow private property owners to move critical features to upper stories; and required electrical utilities to harden infrastructure against flooding.In 2019, a $19.1 billion "disaster relief bill" was approved by the Senate. The bill should help the victims of extreme weather that was partly fueled by climate change.In mid February 2014, President Barack Obama announced his plan to propose a $1 billion "Climate Resilience Fund". Obama's fund incorporates facets of both urban resiliency and human resiliency theories, by necessarily improving communal infrastructure and by focusing on societal preparation to decrease the country's vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) A 2013 USDA Technical Report stated that Indigenous peoples' traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has the potential to play a vital role in indigenous climate change assessment and adaptation efforts, and that contributions from both Western science and TEK knowledge systems are imperative. Bridging these two knowledge systems is said to "produce() a better understanding of the issue than either would alone."Western climate science and TEK represent complementary and overlapping views of the causes and consequences of change. TEK provides information about changes in the natural world useful for adaptation at the community level, information that is not readily available to western science observations. Specifically, TEK—described as the "accumulation of highly localized, experiential, place-based wisdom over a long period, most often passed down orally from generation to generation"—provides wisdom for community-level adaptation. TEK often focuses on phenology (the study of the dates of recurrent natural events such as the flowering of certain plants or the first or last appearance of migrant birds) in relation to seasonal climatic changes. TEK-based adaptations include traditional food substitutions, and adjusting timing sequences of hunting, gathering, and fishing. Policies, legislation and legal actions Federal, state, and local governments have all debated climate change policies, but the resulting laws vary considerably. The U.S. Congress has not adopted a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions reduction scheme, but long-standing environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act have been used by the executive branch and litigants in lawsuits to implement regulations and voluntary agreements.The federal government has the exclusive power to regulate emissions from motor vehicles, but has granted the state of California a waiver to adopt more stringent regulations. Other states may choose to adopt either the federal or California rules. Individual states retain the power to regulate emissions from electrical generation and industrial sources, and some have done so. Building codes are controlled by state and local governments, and in some cases have been altered to require increased energy efficiency. Governments at all levels have the option of reducing emissions from their own operations such as through improvements to buildings, purchasing alternative fuel vehicles, and reducing waste; and some have done so.Political opponents to emissions regulations argue that such measures reduce economic activity in the fossil fuel industry (which is a substantial extractive industry in the United States), and impose unwanted costs on drivers, electricity users, and building owners. Some also argue that stringent environmental regulations infringe on individual liberty, and that the environmental impact of economic activity should be driven by the informed choices of consumers. Regulatory proponents argue that the economy is not a zero-sum game, and that individual choices have proven insufficient to prevent damaging and costly levels of global warming. Some states have financed programs to boost employment in green energy industries, such as production of wind turbines. Areas heavily dependent on coal production have not taken such steps and are suffering economic recession due to both competition from now lower-priced natural gas and environmental rules that make generation of electricity from coal disadvantageous due to high emissions of CO2 and other pollutants compared to other fuels.In 2021 phase 4 of the Keystone XL pipeline, considered a symbol of the battle over climate change and fossil fuels, was cancelled, following strong objections from environmentalists, indigenous peoples, The Democratic Party, and the Joe Biden administration. The current U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate is John Kerry. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is the largest investment in climate change mitigation in US history, with $369 billion allocated towards energy and climate initiatives. State and regional policy Across the country, regional organizations, states, and cities are achieving real emissions reductions and gaining valuable policy experience as they take action on climate change. According to the report of America's Pledge, 65% of the American population, 51% of the GHG emissions and 68% of the GDP, are now part of different coalitions that support climate action and want to fulfill the commitments of the US in the Paris Agreement. The coalitions include We Are Still In, US Climate Alliance, Climate Mayors and more.These actions include increasing renewable energy generation, selling agricultural carbon sequestration credits, and encouraging efficient energy use. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program is a joint program of over twenty U.S. cabinet departments and federal agencies, all working together to investigate climate change. In June 2008, a report issued by the program stated that weather would become more extreme, due to climate change. States and municipalities often function as "policy laboratories", developing initiatives that serve as models for federal action. This has been especially true with environmental regulation—most federal environmental laws have been based on state models. In addition, state actions can significantly affect emissions, because many individual states emit high levels of greenhouse gases. Texas, for example, emits more than France, while California's emissions exceed those of Brazil. State actions are also important because states have primary jurisdiction over many areas—such as electric generation, agriculture, and land use—that are critical to addressing climate change. Many states are participating in regional climate change initiatives, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the northeastern United States, the Western Governors' Association (WGA) Clean and Diversified Energy Initiative, and the Southwest Climate Change Initiative. Inside the ten northeastern states implementing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, carbon dioxide emissions per capita decreased by about 25% from 2000 and 2010, as the state economies continued to grow while enacting various energy efficiency programs.In May 2023, Republican lawmakers in Montana passed a law—possibly the nation's most aggressive anti-climate action law—prohibiting state agencies from considering climate change impacts when considering permits for projects like coal mines and power plants. Tennessee and Louisiana had already passed laws requiring colleges to teach "both sides" of the debate over whether human-made climate change is real. Legal actions In April 2010, Virginia's Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli claimed that climate scientist Michael E. Mann had possibly violated state fraud laws, and without providing evidence of wrongdoing, filed the Attorney General of Virginia's climate science investigation. The case involved extensive demands for document production, and was seen as an assault on academic freedom. After two years of litigation, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in March 2012 that Cuccinelli did not have the authority to demand such records, and dismissed the action.Held v. Montana was the first constitutional law climate lawsuit to go to trial in the United States, on June 12, 2023. The case was filed in March 2020 by sixteen youth residents of Montana, then aged 2 through 18, who argued that the state's support of the fossil fuel industry had worsened the effects of climate change on the their lives, thus denying their right to a "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations":Art. IX, § 1 as required by the Constitution of Montana. On August 14, 2023, the trial court judge ruled in the youth plaintiffs' favor, though the state indicated it would appeal the decision.In June 2023, Multnomah County, Oregon filed a lawsuit against seven defendants, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and the Western States Petroleum Association, for materially contributing to the 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, which is thought to have killed hundreds of people. According to the Center for Climate Integrity, the Multnomah County lawsuit is the 36th action filed against fossil fuel interests for worsening the effects of climate change. International cooperation The United States, although a signatory to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under President Clinton, neither ratified nor withdrew from the protocol. In 1997, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously under the Byrd–Hagel Resolution that it was not the sense of the senate that the United States should be a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, and in March 2001, the Bush Administration announced that it would not implement the treaty, saying it would create economic setbacks in the U.S. and does not put enough pressure to limit emissions from developing nations. In February 2002, Bush announced his alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, by bringing forth a plan to reduce the intensity of greenhouse gasses by 18 percent over 10 years. The intensity of greenhouse gasses specifically is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions and economic output, meaning that under this plan, emissions would still continue to grow, but at a slower pace. Bush stated that this plan would prevent the release of 500 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, which is about the equivalent of 70 million cars from the road. This target would achieve this goal by providing tax credits to businesses that use renewable energy sources.In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency that EPA regulation of carbon dioxide is required under the Clean Air Act. President Barack Obama proposed a cap-and-trade program as part of the 2010 United States federal budget, but this was never adopted by Congress.President Obama committed in the December 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, 42% below 2005 levels by 2030, and 83% below 2005 levels by 2050. Data from an April 2013 report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), showed a 12% reduction in the 2005 to 2012 period. Just over half of this decrease has been attributed to the recession, and the rest to a variety of factors such as replacing coal-based power generation with natural gas and increasing energy efficiency of American vehicles (according to a Council of Economic Advisors analysis).In an address to the U.S. Congress in June 2013, the President detailed a specific action plan to achieve the 17% carbon emissions cut from 2005 by 2020, including measures such as shifting from coal-based power generation to solar and natural gas production. Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed concern at the idea of imposing new fines and regulations on the coal industry while the U.S. still tries to recover from the world economic recession, with Speaker of the House John Boehner saying that the proposed rules "will put thousands and thousands of Americans out of work". Christiana Figueres, executive director of the UN's climate secretariat, praised the plan as providing a vital benchmark that people concerned with climate change can use as a paragon both at home and abroad.After not participating in previous climate international treaties, the United States signed the Paris Agreement on April 22, 2016, during the Obama administration. Though this agreement does not mandate a specific reduction for any given country, it sets global goals, asks countries to set their own goals, and mandates reporting. United States international leadership was considered crucial in the negotiation during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference and successful adoption of the international treaty.The U.S. submitted its action plan in March 2015, ahead of the treaty signing. Reaffirming the November 2014 announcement it made with China, the United States declared it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 26–28% below 2005 levels by 2025. This is to be accomplished by several executive actions: Clean Power Plan - regulating sources of electricity (put on hold by the Supreme Court in February, 2016, pending the outcome of a lawsuit) New emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles, finalized by EPA in March, 2016 Department of Energy efficiency standards for commercial buildings, appliances, and equipment Various actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, including regulation and voluntary efforts related to methane from landfills, agriculture, coal mines; and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) reduction through domestic regulation and amendment of the Montreal ProtocolIn June 2017, President Donald Trump announced United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, although the exit process specified by the treaty (which Trump said the U.S. would follow) will last until at least November 4, 2020. Trump states that dropping out the agreement will create more job opportunities in the United States, but it may actually have the opposite effect by stifling the renewable energy industries. At the same time, Trump administration shut down the United States Environmental Protection Agency's climate change web pages and removed mentions of the topic elsewhere on the site. In April 2018, the Trump administration cancelled NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) program, which helped with the monitoring of CO2 emissions and deforestation in the United States and in other countries. The Trump administration also moved to increase fossil fuel consumption and roll back environmental policies that are considered to be burdensome to businesses.For offsetting the dismantlement of the Clean Power Plan approximately 10 billion trees would need to be planted. Activists try to plant this number of trees.In January 2020 Trump announced that the USA would join the Trillion Tree Campaign. Climate activists critiqued the plan for ignoring the root causes of climate change. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva critiqued the plan as "a feel-good participatory gesture" without a broader portfolio of environmental actions surrounding it.In 2019, Democrats proposed a plan for climate action in USA aiming to not sell greenhouse gas emitting cars by 2035, reach zero emissions from the energy sector by 2040 and reduce to zero all the greenhouse gas emission of the country by 2050. The plan includes some actions to improve environmental justice. In 2016, 38% of adults in United States thought that stopping climate change are a top priority which rose to 52% in 2020. Many Republicans share this opinion. In November 2020 the Federal Reserve asked to join the Network for Greening the Financial System and included Climate Change in the list of risks to the economy. On November 2, Wired published an article about Trump administration efforts to distort and suppress information about climate change by firing the acting chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and distorting the use of climate models at the United States Geological Survey.On his first day as president, January 20, 2021, Joe Biden signed an executive order pledging that the US would rejoin the Paris Agreement. The US rejoined the agreement on February 19, 2021. This means that countries responsible for two thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions have pledged to become carbon neutral; without the US, it had been half. Society and culture Public opinion about climate change The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication is working on understanding public opinion about climate change in the US, and how it changes with time. They divided the population of the USA into six categories: Alarmed: people who think that climate change happens, it is man made, and an urgent threat. Concerned: people who think climate change exists, it is man made, and it is a serious problem. Cautious: people that have heard about climate change but are not sure what causes it and are "not very worried about it". Disengaged: people that do not know much about climate change. Doubtful: people who think that climate change probably does not exist or it is not man made, but are not sure. They consider climate change as "a low risk". Dismissive: people that think that man made climate change does not exist, and who mostly oppose climate measures. About 6 of 10 Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change. Overall, the support for climate policy is growing and across political parties. The "Alarmed" section has almost doubled. The Cautious, Doubtful, and Dismissive groups all shrank through the later years of the study. In the exit polls for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, 67 percent of voters surveyed agreed that climate change is a serious problem, while 71 percent of voters surveyed in the exit polls for the 2022 U.S. House of Representatives elections agreed that climate change is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem.In August 2022, Nature Communications published a survey with 6,119 representatively sampled Americans that found that 66 to 80% of Americans supported major climate change mitigation policies (i.e. 100% renewable energy by 2035, Green New Deal, carbon tax and dividend, renewable energy production siting on public land) and expressed climate concern, but that 80 to 90% of Americans underestimated the prevalence of support for such policies and such concern by their fellow Americans (with the sample estimating that only 37 to 43% on average supported such policies). Americans in every state and every assessed demographic (e.g. political ideology, racial group, urban/suburban/rural residence, educational attainment) underestimated support across all policies tested, and every state survey group and every demographic assessed underestimated support for the climate policies by at least 20%. The researchers attributed the misperception among the general public to pluralistic ignorance. Conservatives were found to underestimate support for the policies due to a false consensus effect, exposure to more conservative local norms, and consumption of conservative news, while liberals were suggested to underestimate support for the policies due to a false-uniqueness effect. Political ideologies Historical support for environmental protection has been relatively non-partisan. Republican Theodore Roosevelt established national parks whereas Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Soil Conservation Service. A 1977 memo from President Carter's chief science adviser Frank Press warned of the possibility of catastrophic climate change caused by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations introduced into the atmosphere by fossil fuel consumption. However, other issues—such as known harms to health from pollutants, and avoiding energy dependence on other nations—seemed more pressing and immediate. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger advised that "the policy implications of this issue are still too uncertain to warrant Presidential involvement and policy initiatives", and the fossil fuel industry began sowing doubt about climate science.Historical non-partisanship began to change during the 1980s when the Reagan administration stated that environmental protection was an economic burden. Views over global warming began to seriously diverge among Democrats and Republicans when ratifying the Kyoto Protocol was being debated in 1998. Gaps in opinions among the general public are often amplified among political figures, such as members of Congress, who tend to be more polarized. A 2017 study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund of climate change denial in the United States Congress found 180 members who deny the science behind climate change; all were Republicans.On January 20, 2017, within moments of Donald Trump's inauguration as president, all references to climate change were removed from the White House website. The U.S. has been considered the most authoritative researcher of this information, and there was concern amongst the scientific community as to how the Trump administration would prioritize the issue. In early indications to news media of the first federal budget process under Donald Trump's administration, there were signs that most efforts under the Obama administration to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would effectively be rolled back. In July 2018, the Trump Administration released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement from the NHTSA. In it was the prediction that on our current course the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees Fahrenheit (or about 3.9 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century. Speaking to the California Secretary for Natural Resources during the 2020 California wildfires, Trump said of the changing climate, "It'll start getting cooler, you just watch". When the Secretary implied that the science disagreed, Trump responded, "I don't think science knows, actually".Many pages were created to examine and compare the views of the candidates in the 2020 presidential election on climate change. The League of Conservation Voters create a special site, entirely dedicated to the issue called: "Change the Climate 2020". Similar pages were created in the site of NRDC, Ballotpedia, Boston CBS, the Skimm A study published in 2021, found that Republicans could be persuaded to change opinions about climate change with targeted advertising. Activism The climate movement and climate change protests have taken place in the United States. The 2014 People's Climate March attracted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to New York. Some evangelical Christian groups have also partaken in climate change activism. Research and educational institutions NASA conducts, publishes and communicates research on climate change.The University of Maine Climate Change Institute (founded 1973) has mapped the difference between climate during the Ice Age and during modern times, and found that the climate can change abruptly through analysis of Greenland ice cores.In 2011, the University of California, Davis, incorporated 4.1 MW of solar panels in the student housing community of West Village effectively reaching 82% of net zero energy. The University of California, Irvine, added hydrogen fuel cell buses to their mircrogrid, which contain no tailpipe emissions of carbon, better fuel economy than diesel and natural gas buses and have a significant longer range than battery powered buses. The University of California, Merced, began the UC Solar initiative in which 9 out of the 10 US campuses installed 1-megawatt solar array where researchers are utilizing non-imaging optics to design thermal and photovoltaic solar concentrators. Business community In 2015, according to The New York Times and others, oil companies knew that burning oil and gas could cause global warming since the 1970s but, nonetheless, funded deniers for years. Likewise, scientists at General Motors and the Ford Motor Company knew as early as the 1960s that their products caused climate change and the companies did the same.A review, published in 2016, of academic literature that explores the potential for greenhouse emissions related liability, calculated that climate change related liability could reach trillions of dollars based on lost revenue from nations that would forced to evacuate because of sea level rise. Climate change by state or territory The impacts of climate change are different from state to state. Generally, states that emit more carbon dioxide per person and block climate action, are suffering more. To learn more about the climate change by state, see the following articles: See also References Bundled references Works cited Thurman, Harold V.; Trujillo, Alan P. (2005). Introductory Oceanography. Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-143888-0. Titus, James G. (1989). "Chapter 7: Sea Level Rise". In Joel B. Smith; Dennis Tirpak (eds.). The potential effects of global climate change on the United States (Report). EPA-230-05-89-050. United States Environmental Protection Agency. External links NASA: Global Climate Change "America's Preparedness Report Card"

climate change in bangladesh

Climate change in Bangladesh is a critical issue as the country is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In the 2020 edition of Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index, it ranked seventh in the list of countries most affected by climate calamities during the period 1999–2018. Bangladesh's vulnerability to the effects of climate change is due to a combination of geographical factors, such as its flat, low-lying, and delta-exposed topography, and socio-economic factors, including its high population density, levels of poverty, and dependence on agriculture. The impacts and potential threats include sea level rise, temperature rise, food crises, droughts, floods, and cyclones.Factors such as frequent natural disasters, lack of infrastructure, high population density (166 million people living in an area of 147,570 km2 ), an extractivist economy and social disparities are increasing the vulnerability of the country in facing the current changing climatic conditions. Almost every year large regions of Bangladesh suffer from more intense events like cyclones, floods and erosion. The mentioned adverse events are slowing the development of the country by bringing socio-economical and environmental systems to almost collapse.Natural hazards that come from increased rainfall, rising sea levels, and tropical cyclones are expected to increase as the climate changes, each seriously affecting agriculture, water and food security, human health, and shelter.Sea levels in Bangladesh are predicted to rise by up to 0.30 metres by 2050, resulting in the displacement of 0.9 million people, and by up to 0.74 metres by 2100, resulting in the displacement of 2.1 million people.To address the sea level rise threat in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 was launched in 2018. The government of Bangladesh is working on a range of specific climate change adaptation strategies. Climate Change adaptation plays a crucial role in fostering the country's development. This is already being considered as a synergic urgent action together with other pressing factors which impede higher growth rates (such as the permanent threat of shocks – natural, economic or political – the uncertain impact of globalization, and an imbalanced world trade). As of 2020, it was seen falling short of most of its initial targets, still leaving 80 million people at risk of flooding where it should have been reduced to 60 million people. The progress is being monitored. Effects on the natural environment Bangladesh is known for its vulnerability to climate change and more specifically to natural disasters. It is important to mention the fact that the location of the country is vulnerable for the presence for three powerful rivers, Asian rivers, Brahmaputra, Ganges and the Meghna along with their numerous tributaries that could result massive floods. Temperature and weather changes Extreme weather events and natural disasters From a prehistoric age, Bangladesh has faced numerous natural disasters in every decade but due to climate change, the intensity and extremity of disasters has increased. The country experiences small to medium scale floods, cyclones, flash floods, and landslides almost every year. Between 1980 and 2008, it experienced 219 natural disasters. Flood is the most common form of disaster in Bangladesh. The country was affected by six major floods in the 19th century and 18 floods in the 20th century. Among them, 1987, 1985 and 1998 were the most catastrophic. Major cyclones that occurred in the 20th century were in the years 1960, 1961, 1963, 1970, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1995. The cyclone in 1991 killed an estimated 140,000 people and 10 million people lost their homes. In the recent past, the country faced two major cyclones in 2007 and 2009. The geographic location of Bangladesh makes it highly prone to natural disasters. Situated in between the intersection of Himalayan mountains in the North and the Bay of Bengal in the South, the country experiences 2 completely different environmental conditions leading to long monsoons and catastrophic natural disasters. With new phenomena like climate change and the rise of sea levels, the situation is getting even worse. The country is also very low and flat, having only 10% of its land more than a meter above sea level. Being crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, and having one of the largest river systems in the whole world (the estuarial region of Padma, Meghna and Brahmaputra rivers), Bangladesh frequently experiences gigantic cyclones and floods. The Bangladesh Coastal Zone (BCZ) is highly vulnerable to tropical cyclones and subsequent storm surges, which are projected to increase in frequency and intensity in Bangladesh due to climate change. The area covers 47,201 km2 with 19 districts and was home to approximately 37.2 million in 2011 and 43.8 million at present (2022). The BCZ lags behind other parts of the country in socioeconomic development and struggles to cope with natural disasters and the gradual deterioration of the environment.Floods have a destructive power over the whole state of the country and it is directly related to the effects of climate change. As estimated by UNICEF more than 19 million children in Bangladesh will be threatened by this situation.Modelling work in 2022 showed only a very small poverty exposure bias (which is when poorer populations may suffer disproportionately from disasters) of potentially flooded households when compared to non-flooded households in the coastal zones. This is in contrast to some of the literature in Bangladesh that did find an exposure bias for river flooding. This could be explained from the random nature of cyclones which makes the occurrence of an exposure bias less likely, as it less dependent on long-term structural conditions that might determine the location of a household (e.g. land prices). Sea level rise Low-lying coastal regions, such as Bangladesh, are vulnerable to sea level rise and the increased occurrence of intense, extreme weather conditions such as the cyclones of 2007–2009, as well as the melting of polar ice. To address the sea level rise threat in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 has been launched in 2018.Existing challenges in the Bangladesh Coastal Zone are likely to be exacerbated by the effects of climate change and associated sea-level rise, with 62 percent of coastal lands being less than 3 m above sea level. Impact on people Bangladesh is one of the most populated countries in the world and the high population density of the country makes it vulnerable to any kind of natural disasters. In recent past, the country has shown remarkable success of poverty reduction yet 24% people live under poverty line. Moreover, the country is experiencing a rapid and unplanned urbanisation without ensuring the adequate infrastructure and basic social services. The unsustainable process of urbanisation makes the city dweller vulnerable to climate change as well. Bangladesh has a critical environmental state by its nature. The fact that it has inland huge rivers makes it subject to constant floods especially due to severe climate change. Around 163 million living in Bangladesh has almost no escape from these natural phenomena due to their closeness to the rivers passing through and around the country.Bangladesh lies at the bottom of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna (GBM) river system. Bangladesh is watered by a total of 57 trans-boundary rivers flowing to it: 54 from neighboring India and three from Myanmar. The country, which has no control of water flows and volume, drains to the Bay of Bengal. Coupled with the high level of widespread poverty and increasing population density, limited adaptive capacity, and poorly funded, ineffective local governance have made the region one of the most adversely affected on the planet. There are an estimated one thousand people in each square kilometer, with the national population increasing by two million people each year. Almost half the population is in poverty (defined as purchasing power parity of US$1.25 per person a day). The population lacks the resources to respond to natural disasters as the government cannot help them. Economic impact Bangladesh is one of the countries that contributes the least to greenhouse emissions, yet has one of the highest vulnerability conditions to global warming, prone to a significant number of climate related disasters. There are serious consequences from the impact of climate change on different sectors of the economy in the country, mainly but not exclusively concentrated in the agriculture sector. Agriculture In most countries like Bangladesh, yields from rain-fed agriculture was predicted to be reduced to 50% by 2020. For a country with increasing population and hunger, this will have an adverse effect on food security. Although the effects of climate change are highly variable, by 2030, South Asia could lose 10% of rice and maize yields, while neighboring states like Pakistan could experience a 50% reduction in crop yield. As a result of all this, Bangladesh would need to prepare for long-term adaptation, which could be as drastic as changing sowing dates due to seasonal variations, introducing different varieties and species, to practicing novel water supply and irrigation systems.: 230  Bangladeshi farmers have been adapting to rising water levels by making creative floating gardens which mesh water hyacinth plants with bamboo and fertilizer to provide a sturdy floating platform for agriculture, according to climate researcher Alizé Carrère.Being an agrarian society, people of Bangladesh are greatly dependent on various forms of agriculture. It is the main source of rural job in the country having over 87% people somewhat related to agri-based economy. In 2016, according to World Bank, agriculture contributed to 14.77% of country's GDP. A steady increase in agricultural production with the use of modern equipment and scientific methods, agriculture has been a key driver to eradicate rural poverty in Bangladesh. The risk of sea level rising and global warming is the biggest challenge not only to country's agricultural improvement but also the success on poverty reduction. As agricultural production is heavily related with temperature and rainfall, the current change in weather conditions is creating negative impact on crop yielding and the total area of arable land has been decreased. According to a report published by the Ministry of Environment and Forests - GoB, 1 degree Celsius increase in maximum temperature at vegetative, reproductive and ripening stages there was a decrease in Aman rice production by 2.94, 53.06 and 17.28 tons respectively. Another major threat deriving from this factor is water salinity which directly affects rice production especially in the coastal part of Bangladesh. The same report state that, the country will lose 12-16% of its land if the sea level rises by 1 meter. These challenges lead to food scarcity and insecurity for the huge populace of the country. There are several adaptation measures which are practised to cope up with the abnormal behaviour of climate such as: resilient varieties of crops, diversification, change in cropping pattern, mixed cropping, improved irrigation facility, adopting soil conservation, agroforestry and so on.A number of these measures have already been adapted by the government of Bangladesh and well practised throughout the country. The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute has introduced a varieties of saline tolerant rices like BR-11, BR-23, BRRI rice -28, BRRI rice -41, BRRI rice -47, BRRI rice -53 and BRRI rice -54. In the drought prone areas, BR-11, BR-23, BRRI rice -28, BRRI rice -41, BRRI rice -47, BRRI rice -53 and BRRI rice -54 are used which take short time to cultivate. To make the best and efficient utilization of water the Department of Agricultural Extension has introduced 'Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD). The government also provide financial support to the affected farmers from different disasters and hazards Food security With a larger population facing losses in arable lands, climate change poses an acute risk to the already malnourished population of Bangladesh. Although the country has managed to increase its production of rice since the nation's birth—from 10 million metric tons (MT) to over 30 MT—around 15.2 percent of the population is undernourished. Now more than five million hectares of land are irrigated, almost fourfold that in 1990. Even though modern rice varieties have been introduced in three-fourths of the total rice irrigation area, the sudden shift in population increase is putting strains on the production. Climate change threatens the agricultural economy, which, although it counts for just 20 percent of GDP, contributes to over half the labor force. In 2007, after a series of floods and cyclone Sidr, food security was severely threatened. Given the country's infrastructure and disaster response mechanisms, crop yields worsened. The loss of rice production was estimated at around two million metric tons (MT), which could potentially feed 10 million people. This was the single most important catalyst of the 2008 price increases, which led to around 15 million people going without much food. This was further worsened by cyclone Aila. In March 2017, extreme pre-monsoon rains and flash floods damaged 220,000 hectares of rice crops. Rice imports increased to three million tonnes from less than 100,000 tonnes the year before. A December 2018 study published by the American Meteorological Society found that climate change doubled the likelihood of the extreme pre-monsoon rainfall. Given the frequent climate change-based catastrophes, Bangladesh needs to enhance food security by drafting and implementing new policies such as the 2006 National Sausage Policy. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supported this policy through the "National Food Policy Capacity Strengthening Program" (NFPCSP). There is also an initiative for the start of a "Food Security Country Investment Plan" enabling the country to secure around US$52 million under the "Global Agriculture and Food Security Program" (GAFSP), making it Asia's first recipient. More work and better implementation from the government is necessary for activities to reach fruitful outcomes. Already, 11 ministries and governmental agencies are involved in this integrated endeavor. In the aftermath of the "East Pakistan Coastal Embankment plan" (CEP) in the mid-20th century, Bangladesh has recently started work on the "Master Plan for the South". The southern coastal area is vulnerable to the ill-effects of global climate. Crops, livestock, and fisheries of the southern delta are threatened. There are plans for a US$3 billion multi-purpose bridge named "Pad ma" to transform the agricultural sector in the region. The government estimates a GDP increase of around two percent as a result of the project. In an effort to achieve middle income country status by 2021, the government is focusing on increasing agriculture production, productivity, water management techniques, surface water infrastructure, irrigation, fisheries, and promoting poultry and dairy development. Bio fuels fit into this scenario by providing energy for agriculture. In 2006, the Ministry of Agriculture provided a 30 percent subsidy to diesel to power irrigation for farming, further proposing a 7,750 million BDT disbursement to help almost a million farmers with fuel.: 354 Impact on migration Climate change has caused many citizens of Bangladesh to migrate and by 2013 already 6.5 million people had been displaced. Poor and other vulnerable population groups have been affected disproportionally. Dhaka as well as local urban centers are mostly the destination of migration caused by climate change. This leads to an increased pressure on urban infrastructure and services, especially around health and education and creates a heightened risk of conflicts.An increased number of floods, due to reduced river gradients, higher rainfall in the Ganges-Meghna-Brahmaputra river basins, and the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, is considered the major reason for migration in the context of climate change in Bangladesh over all. These floods not only lead to the erosion of arable land, but also impact negatively the other income opportunities and often disrupt the livelihood patterns of whole families. In the northern regions of Bangladesh drought plays a major role in displacement of persons, in the South rising sea levels and cyclones are reasons for migration.: 166 Impacts on urban areas Bangladesh has seven major cities, namely, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Barisal, Chittagong, and Sylhet. Around these cities, there are many rivers, which are very polluted via industrial and household waste, and are in serious impact of climate change and unexpected weather patterns. Impact on rural areas Most of the people living in the rural areas of Bangladesh are farmers. In recent years, they faced several catastrophic climatic incidents, such as unexpected droughts, unexpected rain, river erosion, flood, increase of severe storm and cyclones, which ultimately challenge the farmer's food production system, food security, and water security. Efforts to protect impacted areas While the small group of most impacted individuals in Bangladesh can only do so much, their efforts are a testament to finding necessary solutions. A lot of Bangladeshis have phones and are able to log the water levels and report back to scientists who can use the data for future forecasts. A lot of homes have been rebuilt sustainably and at a higher level to cope with the rising sea levels and help families live through the conditions without a destroyed home. Mitigation As a Least developed country (LDC), Bangladesh is exempt from any responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are the primary cause of global warming. But lately this has been the rallying factor for policy makers to give off higher amounts of emissions in nearly all sectors with disregard for the environment. Large developed industrial nations are emitting increasing quantities of GHGs. The country cannot go far in their struggle with reducing emissions and fighting global warming with the considerable scantily supported funding and help it receives from the international community. There exist plans such as the "National Action Plan on Adaptation" (NAPA) of 2005, and the "Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan" (BCCSAP) of 2009. BCCSAP states that an integrated approach is necessary and the only way to gain sustainability is where economic and social development is pursued to the exclusion of disaster management, as one major calamity will destroy any socio-economic gains. Around 40–45 percent of GHG emissions are required to be reduced by 2020 and 90–95 percent by 2050. This is using the 1990 GHG concentration levels as a benchmark. With higher population and rapid industrialization, Bangladesh should be on its way to developing a low-carbon path given it initially receives significant financial and technical support from the international community and national goals of economic growth and social development is not hampered. But a more holistic short-term plan is also necessary. Bangladesh has established the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) and the Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF) allocating US$200 million and cumulating around further US$114 million respectively. Although 3000 cyclone shelters were constructed with over 40,000 trained volunteers and 10,000 km of embankments erected, Bangladesh should not only place emphasis on capacity building and disaster management but also institutional and infrastructure strengthening, development of research and low carbon technologies in order to create an inclusive and truly comprehensive mitigation scheme. Even though it is agreed that the willingness and cooperation of the current UNFCCC parties (194 member states as of 2011) is necessary to help the nation, funds like the Special Climate and LDC, Adaptation Fund should be easily made available.: 133 International cooperation Various countries have pledged to provide funding for adaptation and mitigation in developing nations, such as Bangladesh. The accord committed up to US$30 billion of immediate short term funding over the 2010–2012 period from developed to developing countries to support their action in climate change mitigation. This funding is available for developing nations to build their capacity to reduce emissions and responds to effects of climate change. Furthermore, this funding will be balanced between mitigation and infrastructure adaptation in various sectors including forestry, science, technology and capacity building. Moreover, the Copenhagen Accord (COP 15) also pledges US$100 million of public and private finance by 2020, mostly to developing nations. Another misconception is that this accord will divert funding from poverty reduction. The private sector alone contributes more than 85 percent of current investments for a low carbon economy. In order to maximize any future contributions from this sector, the public sector needs to overcome the political and bureaucratic barriers the private sector has to face towards a low carbon future.: 72 Adaptation Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction may seem two different fields but both are similar in their objectives which is to build resilience in the face of hazards. The relation between the two field in one study is explained as 'Climate change adaptation requires the re-shaping and re-designing of development, social and economic practices to respond effectively to new or anticipated environmental changes. Likewise Disaster Risk Reduction seeks to influence development decision-making and protect development aspirations from environment related risks. The effectiveness of both adaptation and DRR are limited if they are not viewed within the broader context of sustainable development.Bangladesh has shown important results on disaster risk mitigation and is in fact, one of the world leaders in disaster management. It has been made possible as the country changed its disaster programs from prevention to risk reduction. The deaths and damages by natural catastrophes has been drastically reduced in comparison to 1970. Once highly dependent on international aid for providing relief to the affected communities through ad-hoc relief supports, the country soon realized the importance of establishing a culture of resilience to mitigate the risk occurred from the catastrophes. With a mission 'to achieve a paradigm shift in disaster management from conventional response and relief to a more comprehensive risk reduction culture, and to promote food security as an important factor in ensuring the resilience of communities to hazards' the government of Bangladesh in collaboration with multilateral partners and civil society organizations working on a direction to achieve 3 goals which are i. Saving lives, ii. Protecting investments iii. Effective recovery and building.One of the major successes of Bangladesh on adaptation of climate change is a strong institutional setup. The Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (MoDMR) has a wide range of programs on DRR. It has recently drafted a 'National Plan for Disaster Management (2016-2020)' with a detail institutional framework on disaster management. According to the NPDM, disaster management policy and activities is guided by several drivers including, a) Disaster Management Act 2012; b) Standing Orders on Disasters (SOD) first introduced in 1997 and then revised in 2010; (SOD) first introduced in 1997 and then revised in 2010; c) National Plan for Disaster Management 2010–2015; d) Disaster Policy Act 2015; e) SAARC Framework for Action (SFA) 2006–2015; f) Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) 2016–2030; g) Asian Regional Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction (ARPDRR); and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).A better baseline understanding of where populations live exactly in the coastal zones, and their poverty incidence or socioeconomic vulnerability, could help inform decision-making concerning large-scale adaptation options. Possible options include embankments and cyclone shelters, or softer adaptation solutions like cash transfers and social safety nets. Research work on high-resolution synthetic population mapping can help target such interventions more accurately for the benefit of poorer population segments. Policies and legislation Besides the consequences from the impact of climate change, the whole country is yet affected by the results of maladaptation processes. Most of the aid and efforts put in alleviating the systems from vulnerability factors, have being object of bad management resulting in accentuating ethnic hierarchies in some communities, trapping the poor, powerless and displaced in a patronage system, leading to increased human insecurity and intensified violent conflict.Bangladesh loses land to rising sea levels, but gains land from sediment deposits. The effects of sea level rise and land accretion in Bangladesh are highly regional and variegated. Natural land accretion, paired with targeted policies to secure such land for farming use has the potential to partially mitigate the effects of land lost. Action plans The Bangladesh National Adaptation Programme Action - NAPA in its action plan have collected, structured and ranked a series of climate adaptation needs and vulnerabilities, as well as sector-specific costs and benefits. These proposed actions have considered poverty reduction and security of livelihoods with a gender perspective as the most important set of criteria for prioritization of adaptation needs and activities.Bangladesh is also supported by different international organizations such as United Nations, World Bank, and so on. With help from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Bangladesh developed a flood action plan initiating a culture of disaster management and risk reduction. UNDP also supported Bangladesh to establish the Disaster Management Bureau. Society and culture Women Bangladesh is prone to flooding and waterlogging because of its location as a river delta. In 2012, it was labeled a Least Developed Country by the United Nations, with high rates of poverty and weak government, meaning it is especially vulnerable to natural disasters. It is densely populated and about 63 percent of its population was working in the agriculture, forestry, or fishing sectors in 2010. Slightly less than half of Bangladesh's population is women and, in 2001, 80 percent of women lived in rural areas. Bangladeshi women are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they have limited mobility and power in society. Research shows that, after the cyclone and flooding of 1991, Bangladeshi women aged 20–44 had a much higher death rate than men of the same age: 71 per 1000, compared to 15 per 1000 for men. Even if a cyclone warning is issued, many women die because they must wait at home for their relatives to return before they can seek shelter.As climate change progresses, access to and salinization of water sources are becoming problems in Bangladesh. When there is a lack of drinking water, women are responsible for procuring it regardless of the distance they must travel or the terrain they must cover. During natural disasters, male unemployment rises. When men become unemployed, women's responsibilities increase because they must secure and manage income and resources on top of feeding the family and caring for children and the elderly. As the number of men at home without income or occupation rises, more women report mental and physical abuse by their male relatives. To cope with climatic change, women store matches, food for the family, fodder for the livestock, medicine, and fuel sources in safe places in case of disaster. They also teach their children skills such as swimming to prepare them for crisis. The global relief agency CARE believes that climate-resilient jobs such as duck rearing can help increase Bangladeshi women's resilience to climate change.Since the disasters of 1991, Bangladeshi women are more involved in disaster response decision-making, through local committees and community organizations established by the government and NGOs. As part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), Bangladesh published a Poverty Reduction Strategy paper in 2005 that incorporated gender mainstreaming into its climate change adaptation plan, but as of 2008 those goals and policies were not fully implemented. Media In 2018, the New York WILD film festival gave the "Best Short Film" award to a 12-minute documentary, titled Adaptation Bangladesh: Sea Level Rise. The film explores the way in which Bangladeshi farmers are preventing their farms from flooding by building floating gardens made of water hyacinth and bamboo. Civil society Bangladesh also has a large network of NGOs all through the country who are highly active in supporting the people vulnerable from climate change. Various CSOs and NGOs have been helping the Bangladeshi government in policy formulations. Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), SUSHILON, Forum of Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh (FEJB) are some of the CSOs and NGOs that have been actively coordinating the government of Bangladesh in recent years in formulating climate change policies. See also Environment of Bangladesh Energy policy of Bangladesh Renewable energy in Bangladesh References External links Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Climate Change in Bangladesh at World Bank Energy, Environment and Climate Change of Bangladesh at United Nations Development Program Reports on Climate Change in Bangladesh Climate Change Cell, Department of Environment Environment and climate change report of Bangladesh Integrating Agriculture in National Adaptation Plans National Adaptation Plan Global Support Program Formulation and Advancement of the National Adaptation Plan Process in Bangladesh Bangladesh to empower women and girls in the face of increasing climate impacts National Adaptation Plans in focus: Lessons from Bangladesh Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into Sustainable Development Pathways of Bangladesh Datasets on Climate Change Adaptation The Economics of Climate Change Adaptation Programme in Asia and the Pacific Economics of Adaptation: Toolkit Bangladesh National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) Bangladesh's Second National Communication - In Progress Community based Adaptation to Climate Change through Coastal Afforestation in Bangladesh Community-Based Adaptation: Bangladesh Enhancing Adaptive Capacities of Coastal Communities, especially Women, to Cope with Climate Change-Induced Salinity in Bangladesh CBA Bangladesh: Community-Based Wetland Management Project (BIRAM) CBA Bangladesh: Coping with Climate Risks by Empowering Women in Coastal Areas (GBSS) CBA Bangladesh: Piloting Climate-Resilient Development Initiatives (CNRS) CBA Bangladesh: Promoting Diversified Agro-Based Activities in Jamalpur District (RDOP)

climate change in vietnam

Climate change in Vietnam is having considerable environmental, economic and social impacts. Vietnam is among the most affected countries by global climate change. A large number of studies show that Vietnam is experiencing climate change and will be severely negatively affected in coming decades. These negative effects include sea level rise, salinity intrusion and other hydrological problems like floods, river mouth evolution and sedimentation. Natural hazards such as cold waves, storm surges will increase in frequency, with negative effects on the country's development, infrastructure and economy. Some issues, such as land subsidence (caused by excessive groundwater extraction) further worsen some of the effects climate change will bring (sea level rise) especially in areas such as the Mekong Delta. The government, NGOs, and citizens have taken various measures to mitigate and adapt to the impact. Background The increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere has caused anthropogenic global climate change, which has drawn wide attention from the international community. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental organization affiliated with the United Nations, established in 1998 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, to study climate change caused by human activities. The IPCC report (2014) believes that global climate change will have a major impact on a large number of countries, which is unfavorable for areas with poor adaptability and unusually fragile natural conditions. Unfortunately, Vietnam is identified by IPCC as one of the countries likely to be most affected by climate change due to its extensive coastline, vast deltas and floodplains, location on the path of typhoons as well as its large population in poverty. Greenhouse gas emissions The main contributor to the country's emissions is fossil fuel combustion, which accounted for about 60% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2014. As of 2018, the electricity sector accounted for 48% of Vietnam's CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, industry for 28%, transport 16%, the residential sector 4%, the commercial sector 3%, and agriculture 1%. In 2019 Vietnam was the world's 22nd largest CO2 emitter from fuel combustion and the 3rd largest in ASEAN.Vietnam is one of the top 10 countries with the most serious air pollution in the world. The level of unsafe particles is similar to that of large cities and industrial areas in China. The International Monetary Fund reports that Vietnam's greenhouse gas emissions will triple by 2030, basically because of the dependence on fossil fuels for power generation. Coal Coal accounted for 65% of the country's primary energy supply in 2021. Coal is the key source for electricity generation, accounting for about 47% of the power generation and 30% of installed capacity. Vietnam has been a net coal importer since 2015, importing about 55 million tons in 2021. Emissions from all coal combustion were 203 million of CO2 in 2019, about 72% of the country's total CO2 emission from fuel combustion. Impacts on the natural environment Through various observations and research methods, scholars generally believe that in the past historical period and the forecasting future model, over the whole territory of Vietnam, climate change signals have been identified through the changes in various observed climate elements. In sum, the temperature and the precipitation are generally presenting an increasing trend; the frequency of extreme values is rising. Moreover, the precipitation distribution of time and space is more uneven. Temperature and weather changes According to daily data collected from 23 coastal meteorological stations in Vietnam for the period from 1960 to 2011, during the 52 years (from 1960 to 2011), average annual temperatures in the coastal zones of Vietnam have increased significantly. High increases of 0.24 °C and 0.28 °C per decade are found at Vung Tau and Ca Mau stations, respectively, located in the South Coast. Most of the stations in the North - Central Coast show an increase of 0.15 °C to 0.19 °C per decade. Furthermore, changes in maximum temperature in Vietnam varied in the range from −3 °C to 3 °C. Changes in minimum temperatures mostly varied in the range from −5 °C to 5 °C. Both maximum and minimum temperatures have tended to increase, with minimum temperatures increasing faster than maximum temperatures, reflecting the trend of global climate warming. Precipitation Unlike temperature, changes in rainfall trends vary significantly between regions. Statistics of rainfall over Vietnam for the period from 1961 to 2008 show a significant increasing trend in the South-Central Coast while it has tended to decrease in the northern coast (from approximately 17N northward). Another indicator is the annual maximum 1-day precipitation (RX1day). During 1961 to 2008, there is an increasing trend of up to 14% per decade for RX1day, which means that the extreme value of rainfall has been mounting. Extreme weather events Other consequences are the increased frequency of extreme weather events. In the past 40 years, the number of typhoons in Vietnam has decreased, but the intensity has increased and the scope of damage has expanded. According to this scenario, the intensity and unpredictability of the typhoon will increase, and the scope of damage will continue to expand southward. In 2007 to 2008, the flooding in the central provinces exceeded that of past 48 years; the northern part of Vietnam encountered an unprecedented cold wave, lasting for 38 days, resulting in 30 million US dollars Crop and livestock losses. Sea level rise One significant result is the sea level rise and seawater intrusion, with the coastline retreat, coastal erosion, salinity intrusion related to them. Also, scholars warn that other hydrological problems will emerge, such as flood, river mouth evolution, sedimentation. Frequency of tropical cyclones, storm surges, tsunami and other natural hazards will increase, too, to varying degrees.The water level monitored at Vietnam coastal gauges has shown that the pattern of changes in annual average sea level is different over the years (starting 1960). Almost all the stations have shown an increasing trend. Based on data collected from the monitoring stations the mean sea level rise along the Vietnamese coastal area is about 2.8 mm/ year during the period 1993–2008. According to these simulations, 37% of the total area of the Mekong Delta may be inundated to a depth of over 1 m under a sea level rise scenario of 0.5 m. The Southern Institute of Water Resources Research (SIWRR) reported the increasing trend of salinity intrusion. A large area of the Mekong Delta is seasonally affected by salinity intrusion during the dry season, especially during the months of March and April, when river flow is at its minimum. Considerable changes have been observed in the flow regime of the Mekong River, with a lower water flow at the beginning of the dry season, resulting in salinity intrusion starting earlier than usual. Impacts on people Economic impacts Vietnam's geography of long coastal areas and monsoon rains makes its land and people highly sensitive to the above-mentioned results such as elevations in sea levels and the intensification of weather extremes that climate change will bring. While the magnitude and speed of such trends remains unclear, there is sufficient certainty in the range of likely effects. The most obvious and extensive impact is on economic growth, which could be observed in a number of sectors. The International Monetary Fund estimates that Vietnam's economic growth may fall by 10% in 2021 due to climate change. Vietnam's coastline is 3,200 kilometers long and 70 percent of its population lives in coastal areas and low-lying deltas. Given the country's concentration of population and economic assets in exposed areas, the negative impact on industrial production and economic growth could be unimaginable. A 1-meter rise in sea level would partially inundate 11 percent of the population and 7 percent of agricultural land. The agricultural industry in Vietnam may suffer a decline in GDP between 0.7% and 2.4% by 2050 as a result of climate change and natural disasters.Also, extreme natural disasters has caused huge Vietnamese casualties and property damage. In the first half of 2016, water intrusion, heavy rainfall, and extremely cold weather resulted in 37 deaths and 108 injuries, disaster losses are estimated to be 757 million US dollars. Agriculture Agriculture still accounts for about a quarter of Vietnam's GDP and is the main livelihood of 60% of the population. However, agriculture is one of the industries that are directly and adversely affected by climate change. The impact of climate change on agriculture is reflected in the problems of agricultural land, plants, livestock, their survival and development, water supply difficulties and natural disasters affecting agricultural production. Changes in yields vary widely across crops, agroecological zones, and climate scenarios. For rice, the projected Dry scenario would lead to reductions in yields ranging from 12 percent in the Mekong River Delta to 24 percent in the Red River Delta. Daily meteorological data at 19 representative locations over the recent 50 years (1959 to 2009) were collected to analyze Northern Vietnam' s climatic change and its effects on rice production. On one side, the rising temperature due to the increase in CO2 concentration will increase the rice planting area in Vietnam and prolong the growing season. It is very likely that the rice planting limit in northern Vietnam will move west and north, the area will expand and the multiple cropping index will increase. On the other side, the growth period of rice in winter and spring is sensitive to temperature. The development process is accelerated, the vegetative growth period is shortened, even early flowering occurs, which is not conducive to the yield.There would be more extensive inundation of crop land in the rainy season and increased saline intrusion in the dry season as a consequence of the combination of sea level rise and higher river flooding. For the Mekong River Delta, it is estimated that about 590,000 ha of rice area could be lost due to inundation and saline intrusion, which accounts for about 13 percent of today's rice production in the region. Studies have shown the potential impact of climate change without adaptation under alternative climate scenarios on production of six major crops or crop categories relative to a 2050 baseline. Aquaculture Aquaculture, especially in the Mekong River Delta, is an important source of employment and rural income. It is estimated that some 2.8 million people are employed in the sector, while export revenue is expected to be about $2.8 billion in 2010. Higher temperatures, an increased frequency of storms, sea level rise, and other effects of climate change are likely to affect fish physiology and ecology as well as the operation of aquaculture. Some fish species, such as catfish, may grow more rapidly with higher temperatures but be more vulnerable to disease. Meanwhile, the main impacts of climate change on aquaculture seem likely to be a consequence of increased flooding and salinity. Infrastructure Current and future domestic infrastructure is influenced. For instance, the physical asset of road infrastructure, will be vulnerable to climate change impacts. Based on the existing road inventories and provincial allocations, one meter SLR would inundate, and hence destroy, 19,000 kilometers of roads in Vietnam, which is equivalent to 12 percent of existing road stocks. Rebuilding these damaged roads would cost approximately US$2.1 billion. Health impacts Climate warming will directly or indirectly affect the spread of many infectious diseases, especially for the occurrence and spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria, viral encephalitis and dengue. As the temperature of the sea surface rises, the incidence of disease transmitted through the water body will also increase. Tran Thi Giang Huong, Director of the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Health of Vietnam, stated in 2017 that "from 2030 to 2050, climate change will cause, every year, 250,000 people's death from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat shock" globally, according to the World Health Organization. Impacts on disadvantaged groups Gender inequality exists under the impact of climate change. Socio-economic vulnerability of rural poor women is often entangled with the vulnerability of climate change; climate change often further expands their gender disadvantage. The extreme weather caused by climate change, such as high temperatures, cold waves, and floods, increases the labor burden of women; infectious diseases due to warmer temperatures impair women's health. Since women are inherently at a disadvantage due to access to family and social resources, it is necessary to enhance women's awareness of climate change and promote the development of human resources. to organize environmental knowledge training and knowledge contests, moreover, to implement projects to improve women's disaster response capabilities. Mitigation and adaptation Based on IPCC's classification, responses to deal with climate change could be generally classified into two genres: mitigation and adaptation. Climate change mitigation generally involves reductions in human (anthropogenic) emissions of greenhouse gases. Adaptation, in a broad sense, refers to all measures to respond to the existing and potential impacts, such as building seawalls to adapt to sea level rise, upgrading water reservoirs to adapt to flood and other water resource problems, etc. Policies and legislation According to the reporting obligations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Vietnam issued the preliminary national initiative in December 2003, with the baseline lists of greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation options in the energy, forestry and agriculture sectors, and assessment of final adaptation measures. MONRE (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam) drafted the National Target Plan for Climate Change (NTP-RCC), which was approved in December 2008 by the Prime Minister's Decree. In 2015, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment issued the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Climate Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (Vietnam SREX) suggesting a series of measures to prevent extreme weather disasters.In response to different impacts, the measures vary. In order to deal with the direct consequence of Sea Level Rise, the authority suggests measures including full protection: strengthening and elevating embankments nationwide; elevating houses above flood levels as well as withdrawal: "averts" sea-level rise impacts by leaving coastal areas and retreating inland. In terms of agriculture, the programmes by the government as well as local farmers could be roughly divided into three aspects: Short-term measures: Prevent soil erosion, implement soil protection, provide proactive crop irrigation, select crops suited to climate change, etc. Long-term measures: Adopt climate change-suited cropping patterns, create new species, modernize cultivation and stockbreeding techniques, etc. Management and harvesting practices: Redistribute regional crop and livestock production to better suit changing climate conditions, provide additional incentives for agriculture, forestry and aquafarming, etc.Due to specific geographical conditions, local governments choose to carry programmes according to their own consideration under the framework of NTP-RCC. For instance, local government in Thanh Hoa Province and the Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province have released a large number of proposal and projects on upgrading of water reservoirs, revision of the landuse plan, and lectures and exhibitions to raise climate change awareness for all public servants, organizations, citizens. These measures are also divided into priority projects in the period 2013–2015, 2016-2020 according to the time schedule, and projects on groundwater resources, salinisation protection, natural disaster damage control, etc. according to different sectors.In 2020, Vietnam legalized carbon pricing in the form of an emission trading scheme or a carbon market. A carbon tax is also an option for adoption. Details are expected to be determined in a government decree by the end of 2021. Renewable energy At the COP 26, Vietnam announced its net zero emissions by 2050 and pledged to phase out unabted coal power by the 2040s of or as soon as possible thereafter. To realise this pledge will require enormous efforts, given that the country has been relying on fossil fuels to power its fast growing economy. Vietnam has achieved initial success in developing solar and wind power. It has been leading Southeast Asia in terms of solar and wind power uptake since 2019. International cooperation Vietnam has participated actively in international treaties including the Paris Agreement. The country ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1994 and ratified the "Kyoto Protocol" in 2002. Vietnam joined the Just Energy Transition Partnership in 2022. Apart from NTP-RCC, Vietnam government has been cooperating with other countries and international organizations. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam is hosting 58 foreign programs and projects to assist Vietnam in tackling climate change, with a commitment of nearly US$430 million, including funding from World Bank, the Holland government and the Denmark government. In recent years, international cooperation mechanisms involving climate issues emerges. The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism, is one mechanism between countries in the Mekong Basin (including China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) to jointly enhance economic growth, poverty reduction, and, to deal with climate change and the water resources allocation associated with it. Society and culture Activism The development and the implementation of climate change response measures is very demanding and complicated because it involves several scientific disciplines, stakeholders and decision makers. In respect to responses to climate change in Vietnam, there are different voices, such as criticism on the authorities' measures, calls for more emphasis on farmers, women, etc. This is not only due to different methods the researchers adopted, different sources, for different purposes, and also due to the divergence exist in different regions, different geographical conditions, different political and economic statuses and relationship, different genders, etc. The 88 Project, which campaigns for human rights in Vietnam, say that the conviction of activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong in 2023 for tax evasion was "yet another example of the law being weaponised to persecute climate activists who are fighting to save the planet.” Criticism of the Government's Response There are other critics on the government's climate change adaptive strategy. Some people believe that up to now government policies have focused on sector-wide assessments for the whole country and on "hard" adaptation measures—such as sea dikes, reinforced infrastructure, and durable buildings. Little attention has been paid to "soft" adaptation measures like increasing institutional capacity or the role of collective action and social capital in building resilience. The government's projects are partial and problematic in several ways. The first problem lies in the design of the process. It is mainly based on narrow analyses of the official information that "remain mostly blind to the power relations", which will necessarily shape climate change policy-making. Second, government's measures indeed increase poor citizen's vulnerability to climate change. For example, the privatization of mangroves is seen as the main reasons for the increase in long-term inequality in Xuan Thuy. Then, this inequality is related to vulnerability, by directly concentrating human resources in the hands of fewer people, thereby limiting the right to use and dispose of assets under stressful strategies; and also by indirectly strengthening poverty and marginalization in local areas. The context of narrow political reforms and accumulation-intensifying capitalist delimits the possibilities and constraints of "the emerging stakes", objectives and processes of the Vietnamese government's climate change strategy. Vietnam government's current adapting strategy reflects and reinforces existing power relations in both politics and production. National climate change strategy provides "an illusion of intervention and security", but actually largely fails to identify and mitigate the underlying causes of climate change, or to lay the ground for a mid-term and long-term adaptation strategy that can truly cope with "yet unknown levels of climatic and other structural changes". Inequality Due to the inequality in identity and economic and social status, the impact of climate change vary on different people. Also, due to natural conditions, the effect on regions vary in degrees. Regions such as the Mekong Delta are more vulnerable to climate change. Thus, in response to the impacts, people in different regions tend to take different measures, in which process, the vulnerable group, especially the worst off, are often not able to equally enjoy the benefit of the government's policy, or might even be severely marginalized or impaired. A study involving 598 rice farmers in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam found that adapting to climate change in agriculture fundamentally depends on farmers' perceptions on climate change, their adaptive institutions and the effectiveness of adaptive measures. Farmers in the Mekong Delta have different perceptions of climate change due to their knowledge, information resources, etc. Importantly, inappropriate adaptive decisions can result from misleading perceptions. When farmers obtained the information of adaptive measures from their friends, relatives, neighbours or other sources (e.g. the Internet, pesticide companies and priests), this influenced their adaptation assessments. In contrast, there was no significant influence of information from public media and local authorities. Sources and quality of information are particularly important and expect the improvement of both the accessibility and usefulness of local services. Improvement of farmers' knowledge about these matters should be the prior focus of the authorities in the Mekong Delta intending to promote adaptive behaviours.Some people believe that the current policies and programmes have certain defects, ignoring the disadvantaged groups. Therefore, there are some voices arguing that adaptation options that reduce poverty and increase household resilience or that integrate climate change into development planning should be emphasized. See also Climate of Vietnam Geography of Vietnam Environmental issues in Vietnam Climate change in Cambodia Plug-in electric vehicles in Vietnam References External links Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) Department of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change (DMHCC) Archived 2018-06-26 at the Wayback Machine Department of Water Resource Management The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism

climate change in malaysia

Climate change is having a considerable impact in Malaysia. Increasing temperatures are likely to greatly increase the number of heatwaves occurring annually. Variations in precipitation may increase the frequency of droughts and floods in various local areas. Sea level rise may inundate some coastal areas. These impacts are expected to have numerous environmental and socioeconomic effects, exacerbating existing environmental issues and reinforcing inequality. Malaysia itself contributes emissions given its significant use of coal and natural gas. However, the use of hydropower has expanded in the 21st century, and other potential energy sources such as solar power and biomass are being explored. The government anticipates the need to adapt in areas such as health and coastal defenses, and has ratified the Paris Agreement. Malaysia has experienced warming and rainfall irregularities particularly in the last two decades Emissions As of 2000, the largest sectoral contributor to greenhouse gas emissions was the energy sector, whose 58 million Tonnes (Mt) of CO2 equivalent emissions made up 26% of the national total. This was followed by the transport sector with 36 Mt, or 16%.: 7  Other estimates put the energy sector as producing 55% of CO2 emissions in 2011, and 46% in 2013. Fossil fuels remain the primary fuel for electricity generation. Demand for electricity grew 64% in the decade prior to 2017. In 2017, over 44% of electricity was produced from burning coal, and 38% from natural gas. The 17% produced through renewable energy came almost completely from hydropower, with other renewables producing just 0.5% of electricity. Coal usage has been increasing, overtaking natural gas usage in 2010. The percentage produced by natural gas has decreased from 57% in 1995, when coal produced only 9%. Most coal is imported, due to the high costs of mining domestic deposits. Much of this change is due to the amount of natural gas being used deliberately being maintained at its 2000 levels, leaving further demand to be taken up by coal as part of diversification. Natural gas production continued to increase, but was diverted to exports. At one point oil was a significant fuel for electricity generation, producing 21% of electricity in 1995, but as oil prices rose this decreased to 2% in 2010 and 0.6% in 2017.Hydropower is concentrated in East Malaysia, although potential also exists in Perak and Pahang. Despite the recent increase in coal use, no new coal capacity is expected under current plans, which instead target natural gas, and to a lesser extent solar and hydropower. CO2 and CH4 emissions decreased from 2010 to 2017, during a period of hydropower expansion, while the growth in N2O emissions slowed.Short-lived climate pollutants are related to high levels of air pollution in major cities.: 5 Deforestation, particularly for palm oil and natural rubber production, is also a major contributor to the country's greenhouse gas emissions. A 2016 study estimated deforestation and land use change between 2010 and 2015 contributed to 22.1 million Mg annual CO2 emissions. Impacts Existing environmental pressures on natural resources are expected to be exacerbated.: 3  Natural disasters already cause around $1.3 billion in damage annually, mostly due to flooding.: 21 Temperature changes Temperatures rose by 0.14–0.25 °C per decade from 1970 to 2013.: 6  By 2090, they are projected to rise between an additional 0.8 °C and 3.11 °C depending on global emissions.: 2  There is little expected seasonal variation for temperature increase.: 10  However, heatwaves are expected to increase in frequency and intensity. Currently, a period of three days at the extreme high of expected temperatures has a 2% probability of occurring. Under high emissions scenarios, this will increase to 93%, reflecting the overall higher temperatures.: 12  Such high temperatures will worsen existing urban heat islands such as Kuala Lumpur, which can already reach temperatures 4–6 °C (39–43 °F) higher than surrounding areas.: 20  Annual heat-related deaths among the elderly may go from less than 1 per 100,000 to 45 per 100,000 in high-emission scenarios.: 1 : 23  Coral bleaching is another expected effect, which will have both environmental and economic impacts.: 18 Precipitation and flooding A reliance on surface water leaves Malaysia vulnerable to precipitation changes, however models do not show significant expected changes, and Kelantan and Pahang may see more water than they do at present.: 15  Rainfall is expected to increase, and more so in East Malaysia than Peninsular Malaysia. The precise magnitude of the increase varies between predictions, and between potential emissions scenarios. Under the scenarios predicting high levels of global emissions, the increase is expected to be around 12% above the current 2,732 millimetres (107.6 in). Flooding, exacerbated by extreme rainfall events, is a present and growing risk.: 2, 6–7, 11  With no action taken, under a high emissions scenario floods may affect an average of 234,500 people annually between 2070 and 2100.: 1  Extreme rainfall events may deposit up to 32% more rain in 2090. In 2010, around 130,000 people in the country were exposed to potential 1-in-25-year flood events. Under high emissions, this will increase to 200,000 by 2030. Even in low emission scenarios, 1-in-100-year events are expected to become 1-in-25-year occurrences.: 13–14  Ecosystem degradation and the spread of urban areas have weakened natural flood resilience.: 16 Sea level rise From 1993 to 2015, sea levels rose between 3.3 millimetres (0.13 in) and 5 millimetres (0.20 in) annually, depending on location.: 16  In the future, sea levels are expected to rise 0.4–0.7m, with East Malaysia being particularly vulnerable. Coastal agricultural areas are a noted area of risk, and current mangrove habitats may disappear by 2060.: 17  Such a rise will increase the impact of typhoons, which themselves may be increased in intensity.: 14–15  This brings risk to current ecotourism in coastal areas.: 18 Impacts on people Agriculture is further threatened by droughts and floods. Rice yields may decline by 60%. Other potentially impacted products include rubber, palm oil, and cocoa.: 2  Annual drought probability, which currently lies at 4%, may increase to 9%. Such probability varies by locality, being most likely in Sabah.: 12–13  Overall, precipitation changes will have a more significant impact on agriculture than temperature changes.: 19 Communities most exposed to the impact of climate change are poorer, including those involved in manual labour, agriculture, and fisheries. The impacts of climate change are thus expected to reinforce existing inequality, both in impact and in the ability to adapt.: 22 Mitigation The International Renewable Energy Agency predicted in 2014 that Malaysia might reach just over 50% of its electricity production from renewables by 2030.In 2021, the government announced the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 in the Twelfth Malaysia Plan. Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob also said that Malaysia would not build any new coal power plants, would expand electric vehicle infrastructure, and introduce a blue economic blueprint for coastal development.An attempt to sell 2 million hectares of forest in Sabah as carbon offset credits stalled in 2022 amid local opposition following a lack of consultation and questions as to where profits would go. Adaptation Climate resilience measures were included in the Tenth and Eleventh Malaysia Plans.: 3  The government states it has invested in the health service in anticipation of an expected 144% increase in the population at risk of malaria, and expected increases in dengue, diarrhoea, and waterborne diseases.: 23 Adaptation measures such as improving dikes would greatly reduce the impact of sea level rise on coastal communities within this century.: 3 Policies Malaysia ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1994, and the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. A National Policy on Climate Change was enacted in 2009, along with a National Renewable Energy Policy.: 7  Around this time Malaysia pledged a 40% reduction in carbon intensity by 2020 compared to 2005,: 1  and the Renewable Energy Act was adopted in 2011 alongside the Sustainable Energy Development Authority Act.: 7 In the late 20th century, energy policy centred around diversification for energy security. Renewable energy became more prominent in the 21st century, becoming part of official policy in the 2016–2020 Eleventh Malaysia Plan, alongside the 2016–2025 National Energy Efficiency Action Plan.Malaysia ratified the Paris Agreement on 16 November 2016, while submitting its first Nationally Determined Contribution. An Intended Nationally Determined Contribution had previously been submitted on 27 November 2015.: 3  The Second National Communication to the UNFCCC emphasises improved Water resource management.: 16 In 2018, the government announced a target for 20% renewable energy by 2025. Hydropower had grown from 5% of the energy mix in 2010 to 17% in 2017, matching much of the increased demand during that time. Solar power has become more used as its price has decreased, such as along the North–South Expressway. There is growing interest in biomass from agricultural waste.Emission data collected by the Department of Environment is not publicly released. See also Environmental issues in Malaysia Plug-in electric vehicles in Malaysia Langkawi Declaration Climate change in Indonesia References External links "Southeast Asia coal consumption by country, 2010 and 2019". International Energy Agency (IEA). "Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2019" (PDF). International Energy Agency (IEA). October 2019. "Malaysia Country Summary". World Bank Group Climate Change Knowledge Portal. Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (11 May 2020). "Malaysia: CO2 Country Profile". Our World in Data. "CO2 Emissions: Malaysia". Climate Trace. "The Renewable Energy Roadmap" (PDF). Sustainable Energy Development Authority Malaysia. 28 February 2012. "National Energy Efficiency Action Plan". Prime Minister’s Office. 2015. "Documents submitted by Malaysia". UNFCCC.

climate change in new zealand

Climate change in New Zealand involves historical, current and future changes in the climate of New Zealand; and New Zealand's contribution and response to global climate change. Summers are becoming longer and hotter, and some glaciers have melted completely and others have shrunk. In 2021, the Ministry for the Environment estimated that New Zealand's gross emissions were 0.17% of the world's total gross greenhouse gas emissions. However, on a per capita basis, New Zealand is a significant emitter, the sixth highest within the Annex I countries, whereas on absolute gross emissions New Zealand is ranked as the 24th highest emitter.Almost half New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions are from agriculture, mainly methane from sheep and cow belches. Between 1990 and 2019, New Zealand's gross emissions (excluding removals from land use and forestry) increased by 26%. When the uptake of carbon dioxide by forests (sequestration) is taken into account, net emissions (including carbon removals from land use and forestry) have also risen – by 34% since 1990.Climate change is being responded to in a variety of ways by civil society and the New Zealand Government. This includes participation in international treaties and in social and political debates related to climate change. New Zealand has an emissions trading scheme, and in 2019 the government introduced the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill which created a Climate Change Commission responsible for advising government on policies and emissions budgets.New Zealand made a number of pledges on climate change mitigation in 2019: to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, to plant 1 billion trees by 2028, and to bring pastoral agriculture (farmers) into an emissions price policy by 2025. Already in 2019, New Zealand banned new offshore oil and gas drilling and decided that climate change issues would be examined before every important decision. In early December 2020, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a climate change emergency and pledged that the New Zealand Government would be carbon neutral by 2025. Key goals and initiatives include requiring the public sector to buy only electric or hybrid vehicles, government buildings will have to meet new "green" building standards, and all 200 coal-fired boilers in public service buildings will be phased out. Greenhouse gas emissions New Zealand has a relatively unique emissions profile. In 2019, agriculture contributed 48.1% of total emissions; energy (including transport), 41.6%; industry, 6.2%; waste, 4.0%. In other Kyoto Protocol Annex 1 countries, agriculture typically contributes about 12% of total emissions.Between 1990 and 2016, New Zealand emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by 35.4%; methane (CH4) by 4.4%; and nitrous oxide (N2O) by 27.6%. hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) have also gone up. Emissions of perfluorocarbons (PFCs) have decreased by 94.6%; sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) decreased by 13.4%. Overall, these figures represent a total CO2-equivalent increase of 19.6%.The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, which came into effect in 2010, was intended to provide a mechanism which encouraged different sectors of the economy to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. It may have slowed the increase somewhat. Between 2007 and 2017 total national emissions decreased 0.9%, reflecting growth in renewable energy generation. However, between 2016 and 2017, New Zealand's gross emissions jumped 2.2%, bringing the total (or gross) increase in greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2017 to 23.1%. Net emissions (after subtracting land use change and forest sequestration removals) increased by 64.9%. Emission increases by sector were: agriculture; 13.5%, energy; 38.2%, industry; 38.8%. waste; 2.1%. The 2019 Greenhouse Gas Inventory noted that in 2017, New Zealand's per capita emissions of the six greenhouse gases listed in the Kyoto Protocol were 16.9 tonnes CO2 equivalents per head of population. In 2018, on a per capita basis, New Zealand was the 21st biggest contributor to global emissions in the world and fifth highest in the OECD. Carbon dioxide New Zealand has a long-term record of atmospheric carbon dioxide similar to the Keeling Curve. In 1970, Charles Keeling asked David Lowe, a physics graduate from Victoria University of Wellington to establish continuous atmospheric measurements at a New Zealand site. The south-facing Baring Head, on the eastern entrance to Wellington Harbour, was chosen as being representative of the atmosphere of the southern hemisphere. Despite the majority of CO2 emissions coming from the Northern Hemisphere, the atmospheric concentration in New Zealand is similar. The Baring Head records show that CO2 concentrations rose from 325 ppm in 1972 to 380 ppm in 2009, and over 400 ppm in 2015.Modelled wind directions indicated that air flows were originating from 55 degrees south. The Baring Head data shows about the same overall rate of increase in CO2 as the measurements from the Mauna Loa Observatory, but with a smaller seasonal variation. The rate of increase in 2005 was 2.5 parts per million per year. The Baring Head record is the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 in the Southern Hemisphere and it featured in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 in conjunction with the better-known Mauna Loa record.According to estimates from the International Energy Association, New Zealand's per capita carbon dioxide emissions roughly doubled from 1970 to 2000 and then exceeded the per capita carbon dioxide emissions of either the United Kingdom or the European Union. Per capita carbon dioxide emissions are in the highest quartile of global emissions. Methane The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has also recorded atmospheric concentrations of methane (from 1989) and nitrous oxide (from 1997) at Baring Head. More than 80% of methane emissions in New Zealand come from enteric fermentation in ruminant livestock – sheep, cattle, goats and deer – with sheep the greatest single source. This emissions profile is significantly different to that of other countries as, internationally, the dominant sources of methane are rice paddies and wetlands. As a greenhouse gas, methane is 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. A dairy cow produces between 84 and 123 kg of methane per year from rumen fermentation. Since New Zealand has large stock numbers these emissions are significant. In 1997, New Zealand's per capita emissions of methane were almost six times the OECD average and ten times the global average. In other words, on a per capita basis, New Zealand has the largest methane emission rate in the world. In 2003, the Government proposed an Agricultural emissions research levy to fund research into reducing ruminant emissions. The proposal, popularly called a "fart tax", was strongly opposed by Federated Farmers and was later abandoned.The Livestock Emissions and Abatement Research Network (LEARN) was launched in 2007 to address livestock emissions. The Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium between the New Zealand government and industry groups seeks to reduce agricultural emissions through the funding of research. At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the New Zealand government announced the formation of the Global Research Alliance involving 20 other countries. New Zealand will contribute NZ$45 million over four years towards research on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.In 2019, it was announced that the government had awarded funding to cultivate and research a red native seaweed known as Asparagopsis armata to the Cawthron Institute in Nelson. This particular seaweed has been found to reduce methane emissions from animals by as much as 80% when small amounts (2%) are added as a supplement to animal food. Nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide is emitted primarily from agriculture, but also comes from industrial processes and fossil fuel combustion. Over 100 years, it is 298 times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat. In New Zealand in 2018, 92.5% of N2O came from agricultural soils mainly due to urine and dung deposited by grazing animals. Overall, N2O emissions increased 54% from 1990 to 2018 and now make up 19% of all agricultural emissions. By sector Averaging total emissions in New Zealand down to an individual level, each New Zealander contributes about 6,000 kg of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. One third of that (2,000 kg) comes from all the food we eat which involves the release of carbon dioxide to produce it; 1,600 kg comes from New Zealanders use of cars and planes for travel; 1,500 kg comes from our use of electricity; the remaining 900 kg comes from other kinds of consumption such as the purchase of clothes. Agriculture The agriculture industry is responsible for half of all emissions in New Zealand, but contributes less than 7% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the last ten years there have been modest reductions in emissions from sheep, beef, deer and poultry farms, but these have been offset by a rapid growth in dairy farming which has had the biggest increase in emissions of any single industry. In fact, emissions from dairy have risen 27% over the decade such that this industry is now responsible for more emissions than the manufacturing and electricity and gas supply industries combined. Food processing Dairy giant Fonterra is responsible for 20% of New Zealand's entire greenhouse gas emissions. This is largely due to Fonterra's use of coal-powered boilers to dry milk into milk powder. Clean energy expert, Michael Liebreich, describes the use of coal for this process as "insane". Genesis Energy Limited chief executive, Marc England, said in 2019 that Fonterra is using more coal than Genesis uses at its Huntly power station and should use electricity, which is already 85% renewable, in its milk powder factories. Electricity Both historically and presently, the majority of New Zealand's electricity has been generated from hydroelectricity. In the 2019 calendar year, 82.4% of the country's electricity was generated from renewable or low-carbon resources: 58.2% from hydroelectricity, 17.4% from geothermal, 12.6% from natural gas, 5.1% from wind, 4.9% from coal, and 1.7% from other sources.The Huntly Power Station consumes about 300,000 tonnes of coal every year and is one of the biggest carbon dioxide generators in the country contributing over half of New Zealand's emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity generation. According to Chris Baker, chief executive of Straterra, "that scenario won't change for years to come." Only 10% of the power from the Huntly plant is used by Genesis Energy Limited itself. The remaining 90% is sold to other electricity companies to ease their own supply issues. In February 2018 Genesis Energy said it may keep burning fossil fuels until 2030.A major barrier in decommissioning Huntly is ensuring continued security of supply, especially to Auckland and Northland. In June 2019, transmission grid operator Transpower analysed the effects of closing the two remaining coal-fired units at Huntly on its grid. It concluded that without the coal-fired units and no major new generation or transmission upgrades, voltage collapse could occur during Auckland and Northland winter peak demand from 2023 onwards with the 400 MW combined-cycle gas turbine Huntly Unit 5 out of service, or from 2019 onwards with both Huntly Unit 5 and any one of the 220,000-volt transmission lines from Whakamaru out of service. Ten biggest polluters The ten companies which emit the most greenhouse gases in New Zealand are Fonterra, Z Energy, Air New Zealand, Methanex, Marsden Point Oil Refinery, BP, Exxon Mobil, Genesis Energy Limited, Contact Energy, and Fletcher Building. These companies emit around 54.5 million tonnes of CO2 each year – more than two thirds of New Zealand's total emissions. Favourable treatment for high polluters The seven biggest industrial emitters in New Zealand are Fonterra, NZ Steel, New Zealand Aluminium Smelters (which operates the Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter), NZ Refining, Golden Bay Cement, Methanex and Pan Pac Forest Products. According to business journalist Rod Oram, for years these companies have been the main beneficiaries of favourable Government policies designed to minimise the impact of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme on companies which are emissions intensive and trade exposed (EITE). In 2017 these companies (plus another three of the largest emitters) received 90% of the free credit allocations—essentially a licence to continue polluting—offered by the Government under the scheme. Households The bulk of household emissions stem from New Zealanders' reliance on combustion engine cars for transport, with relatively small amounts coming from heating and cooling. In 2019, there were less than 10,000 electric vehicles on New Zealand roads leading the New Zealand Productivity Commission to recommend a rapid and comprehensive switch from petrol cars to EVs. Professor David Frame, director of Victoria University's New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute says "the growth (in use) of electric cars has been nowhere fast enough to get to where we've said we want to be by 2030".In the last ten years, New Zealand and Australia were among a handful of developed nations where household emissions are increasing. The others are all Eastern European countries. A New Zealand study conducted in 2019 says housing must shrink its carbon footprint by 80% to meet New Zealand's commitment to the Paris Agreement - adding that a typical new Kiwi home emits five times as much carbon dioxide as it should if the world is to stay below 2C warming. Transportation Road & rail Due to the growth in the number of vehicles on New Zealand roads (now more than four million vehicles) emissions from transport have grown 78% since 1990 and are now the second-largest source of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. Road transport contributes 45% of all emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in New Zealand. New Zealanders tend to buy big cars, SUVs and utes, and for this reason our average vehicle CO2 emissions per head of population is high compared to other developed nations, such that the country's transport emissions per person are the fourth highest in the world.One reason for this is that New Zealand is one of only three countries without fleet-wide vehicle emissions standards leading the New Zealand Productivity Commission to argue the country is "becoming a dumping ground for high-emitting cars from other nations busy decarbonising their highways". As a result, there has been little incentive for the public to buy electric cars or hybrids; as at May 2019, only 61,000 hybrid vehicles were registered in New Zealand.However, in July 2019, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter announced a government proposal to impose substantial price discounts on imported cars with low emissions and price penalties on those with high emissions. This would knock about $8,000 off the price of new or near-new imported electric vehicles (EVs) while the heaviest petrol using polluters would cost $3,000 more. The scheme is expected to remove more than five million tonnes of CO2 from New Zealand's emissions even though it only applies to (new and used) vehicles coming into the country and does not apply to the 3.2 million vehicles already on the roads which account for 74% of annual sales.Around 589 km (366 mi) of New Zealand's 4,128 km (2,565 mi) of railway track is electrified. This includes the majority of the Auckland and Wellington regional commuter networks (with the notable exception of Papakura to Pukekohe and Wellington to Masterton services), and the central section of the North Island Main Trunk between Hamilton and Palmerston North. There is no electrified track in the South Island. Air travel New Zealand's aviation emissions have resumed increasing rapidly after a decline in 2020 caused by the COVID19 pandemic. From 1990 to 2019 New Zealand's aviation emissions increased by 116% to 4.9 Mt CO2. New Zealand ranks 4th highest in the world for per-capita domestic aviation emissions and 6th highest in the world for per-capita international aviation emissions, which are about 10 times the world average. From 2015 to 2019 international aviation emissions rose more rapidly at more than 40%. In summary,New Zealand has particularly high aviation emissions and has been on a very rapid growth path that is incompatible with the Paris Agreement on climate change.Air New Zealand is one of the country's largest climate polluters, emitting more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This represents about 4% of New Zealand's total greenhouse gas emissions. Air New Zealand offers a voluntary scheme, called FlyNeutral, which allows passengers buy carbon credits to offset their flights. Currently customers offset less than 1.5% of the airline's total carbon emissions. Air New Zealand also offsets its domestic emissions through the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. The airline says that in 2019 it will purchase emission units to cover 100% of its domestic carbon footprint. Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes New Zealand has reliable air temperature records going back to the early 1900s. Temperatures are taken from seven climate stations throughout the country and combined into an average. According to NIWA, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, 2022 was Aotearoa New Zealand’s warmest year on record. The nationwide average temperature for 2022 was +1.15 ˚C above the 1981–2010 annual average. From 1909 to 2022 the air around New Zealand has warmed by1.37 °C. That record succeeded 2021 as the warmest year on record. Temperatures are expected to warm by at least 2 °C by the end of the century although an Australian report released in 2019 called Breakthrough, says the plans that countries have put forward for cutting emissions for the Paris Agreement will lead to around 3 °C of warming. Breakthrough says warming will be even higher than that because the model used does not include long-term carbon cycle feedback loops. Ecosystems The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand has pointed out that New Zealand's native plants and animals are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. More frequent storms combined with rising sea levels will make it harder for seabirds like hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin) to find food. Warmer temperatures will lead to more frequent mast events (sudden abundance of food in an area of forest leading to huge population irruptions of mice, rats and stoats). This puts greater pressure on native species like kiwi which are already in trouble. Warmer temperatures also allow pests and weeds will extend their range, and new pests and diseases will begin to appear. Tuatara eggs are also sensitive to temperature: fewer female tuatara will hatch, threatening the survival of our largest reptile.Research done in Wellington, New Zealand showed that the effects of climate change in conjunction with their rapid growth is affecting plant and animal life. Natural habitats are getting smaller and smaller, reducing the opportunity for certain plants to survive. Alongside this, researchers are noticing that with an increase in temperature, predation and invasive species are becoming more common. Researchers advise introducing more pest-free urban wildlife sanctuaries as they have seen success with them on the island in the past. Doing this would ensure that highly important native animals, like the kererū and tūī, are conserved while keeping invasive species out, ultimately preserving New Zealand's biodiversity in the face of climate change. Glaciers New Zealand has over 3,000 glaciers, most of which are in the South Island. Since 1977, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been using aerial surveys of late summer snowline to estimate the mass balance of 50 index glaciers. The snowline marks the equilibrium line of a glacier; above the line the glacier is accumulating snow and below the line the glacier is melting. The mass balance is the net gain or loss of snow and ice. A survey by NIWA in 2009 says the volume of ice in New Zealand's glaciers declined by about 50% in the last century, while New Zealand's average temperature increased by about 1 °C.In 2017, NIWA published new research in the scientific journal, Nature Communications, showing that between 1983 and 2008, regional climate variability caused more than 50 of New Zealand's glaciers to grow in contrast to international trends. Lead author Associate Professor Andrew Mackintosh from Victoria's Antarctic Research Centre said: "Glaciers advancing is very unusual—especially in this period when the vast majority of glaciers worldwide shrank in size as a result of our warming world." Mackintosh said glaciers grew because temperatures dropped as a result of variability in the climate system specific to New Zealand. He does not expect this unusual trend to continue saying: "If we get the two to four degrees of warming expected by the end of the century, our glaciers are going to mostly disappear."New Zealand's largest glacier, the Tasman Glacier, has retreated about 180 metres a year on average since the 1990s and the glacier's terminal lake, Tasman Lake, is expanding at the expense of the glacier. Massey University scientists expect that Lake Tasman will stabilise at a maximum size in about 10 to 19 years, and eventually the Tasman Glacier will disappear completely. In 1973 the Tasman Glacier had no terminal lake and by 2008 Tasman Lake was 7 km long, 2 km wide and 245 m deep. Between 1990 and 2015, Tasman Glacier retreated 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles), mostly from calving.Climate change has caused New Zealand's glaciers to shrink in total volume by one third in the last four decades. Some glaciers have already disappeared completely. As at 2017, the area covered by New Zealand's glaciers shrank from 1240sq km to 857sq km, a decrease of 31% since the late 1970s. This is a loss of just under 1% a year, although the rate is speeding up with the biggest melt occurring in a record-hot summer of 2017/18. Climate scientist, Jim Salinger said the decline will affect skiing and tourism, and cause problems for South Island farmers in particular. He also said: "This would mean that ice melt from our mountain glaciers will predominate during the 21st century with Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud, becoming Aoteapoto – the land of the short white cloud." Sea level rise Wildfires Summers are getting longer and hotter such that four of the last six years have been New Zealand's warmest on record. Scion Rural Fire Research Group fire scientist, Grant Pearce, says the number of days that the risk of dangerous fires breaking out in some parts of New Zealand could double by 2050. The Pigeon Valley fire in Nelson in 2019 was New Zealand's largest forest fire in 60 years. It covered more than 2,300 hectares prompting an independent review of fire risk which found wildfires would occur more frequently because of drier conditions. The risk will escalate due to increases in temperature, wind speed and lower rainfall associated with global warming. The Lancet reports that the health effects of wildfires range from burns and death, to the exacerbation of acute and chronic conditions. Impacts on people The combined effects of climate change will result in a multitude of irreversible impacts on New Zealand. By the end of this century New Zealand will experience higher rainfalls, more frequent extreme weather events, rising sea levels and higher temperatures. Such effects will significantly impact New Zealand, with higher temperatures resulting in dry summers, consequently limiting New Zealand's water supply and intensifying droughts. The Ministry for the Environment says the greatest effect of climate change is likely to be on New Zealand's water resources, with higher rainfall in the west and less in the east. Extreme climate events such as droughts could become more frequent in eastern areas, with increased flooding after major downpours.Higher temperatures are likely to increase problems such as heat stress in summer and mortality is expected to rise due to harsher living environments. Disease-transmitting insects such as mosquitoes could become established more easily as the climate warms. Rising temperatures will also have devastating effects on New Zealand's flora and fauna, with climate threatening both animal and plant chances of survival.Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, noted in 2013 that even "the magnitude of environmental changes (in New Zealand) will depend in part on the global trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions and land use change, (and that) effective risk management requires consideration of the possibility of experiencing more extreme components of the predictive range". Economic impacts Droughts and lack of water will not only affect the environment, this will also impact on the economy as New Zealand's agricultural export sector strongly relies on an environment conducive to growing crops and livestock. For instance, higher temperatures could cause problems for fruit growers in northern areas because plants such as kiwifruit require cold winters. Pests and diseases could spread more easily under warmer conditions and pasture composition may change with the spread of subtropical grasses. Increased costs will be incurred by farmers as land-use activities shift while adapting to changes in the climate. Loss of insurance cover The Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) says houses and buildings in vulnerable areas will eventually become uninsurable. In the Bay of Plenty some properties have already been declared “unliveable” due to severe flooding risk. The Hutt City Council has issued a report which says large parts Petone including Seaview, Alicetown and Moera could be under water before the end of the century and suggests home owners in these suburbs could find their homes uninsurable in as little as 30 years.Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) reports that over $5 billion in local government infrastructure is at risk of damage from a one-metre sea level rise. However, this does not include the exposure of houses, businesses or central government assets and ICNZ claims full exposure for a one-metre rise in sea level is likely to be closer to $40 billion affecting 125,000 buildings. Another $26 billion and a further 70,490 buildings would be at risk if seas rose between one and two metres. If the increase was up to three metres, which is projected in some scenarios, another 65,530 buildings would be at risk costing an additional $20 billion. So in the worst-case scenario, by the end of the century, over 260,000 buildings in coastal areas could be destroyed with projected losses of around $84 billion. Potential costs The economic loss associated with soil erosion and landslides is already estimated at up to $300 million a year. Freshwater scientist Mike Joy says that in the last 20 years or so, the loss of sediment into waterways has also had a significant detrimental effect on water quality.In April 2019 Judy Lawrence from Victoria University's Climate Change Research unit suggested a climate change fund similar to the Earthquake Commission needed to be set up to pay for climate change adaptation. She said that "Local Government New Zealand have done a recent assessment of the costs and they are talking of $14 billion" although "we think that is an underestimate of the real cost". James Palmer, chief executive of the Hawke's Bay Regional Councils, said local authorities were already facing up to the dangers from coastal erosion, but "What we don't know is what contribution the Crown would be willing to make, both to safeguard its own assets, but also, more broadly, on behalf of the wider communities." Agriculture As temperatures rise, more frequent and severe water extremes, including droughts and floods, will impact on agricultural production. Rising temperatures will also lead to increased water demand for farming and agriculture. Due to chronic water shortages and desertification in food growing regions, internationally, crop yields are predicted to drop by 20% by 2050 combined with a decline in nutritional content. Prices are likely to skyrocket, while job losses and reduced incomes will further reduce people's capacity to purchase food. New Zealand researcher, associate professor Carol Wham, says malnutrition is "associated with higher infection rates, loss of muscle mass, strength and function, longer hospital stays, as well as increasing morbidity and mortality." Health impacts In 2018, the American Psychological Association issued a report about the impact of climate change on mental health. It said that "gradual, long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion". The NZ Psychological Society reports similar findings. It says clients are presenting with "a lot of helplessness, a lot of anxiety and some depression" brought about by climate change. In 2014, the Psychological Society set up a 'Climate Psychology Taskforce'. Task force co-convener, Brian Dixon, said psychologists were seeing the effects of climate change showing up in people of all ages. However, young people are most at risk, including the risk of suicide because of climate change. Dr Margaret O'Brien says some young people are saying, "what's the use, if this is going to happen, why should I go ahead?" The society says taking action to address the issue is the best "antidote".A report titled The Human Health Impacts of Climate Change for New Zealand points out that the most vulnerable sectors are children, the elderly, those suffering with disabilities or chronic disease, and those on low-incomes. Also at risk are those have an economic base invested in primary industries, those who experience housing and economic inequalities, especially low income housing in areas vulnerable to flooding and sea level rise. Environmental concerns are even affecting New Zealanders' plans for the future leading some young women to decide not to have children. Those who make this decision believe any children they might bring into the world would face lives full of hardship and conflict due to lack of natural resources and, by adding to the population, would actually cause more harm to the planet. Heat related deaths If greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels, many places in New Zealand will see more than 80 days per year above 25 °C by 2100. Currently most parts of the country typically see between 20 and 40 days per year above 25 °C. The elderly populations are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves. In Auckland and Christchurch, a total of 14 heat-related deaths already occur each year amongst those over 65 when temperatures exceed 20 °C. Approximately a quarter of New Zealanders are projected to be 65 and over by 2043, so heat-related deaths are likely to rise. Impacts on indigenous peoples A report in 2017, Adapting to Climate Change in New Zealand, identifies Māori as among the most vulnerable groups to climate-change in New Zealand due to their "significant reliance on the environment as a cultural, social and economic resource". Māori tend to be involved in primary industries, and many Maori communities were near the coast. The report states that urupā (burial grounds) and marae are already being flooded or washed into the sea. Mike Smith, of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu, says the Government is failing in its duties under the Treaty of Waitangi to protect Māori, who are particularly vulnerable, from the "catastrophic effects of climate change". Smith has filed proceedings in the High Court "on behalf of my children, grandchildren and the future generations of Māori children, whose lives are threatened by the climate crisis". Impacts on migration If the atmosphere warms by two degrees Celsius, small island countries in the Pacific will be inundated by sea level rise. These islands do not have the populations or resources to deal with weather related disasters. Currently, 180,000 people living in low-lying islands like Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands are the most threatened. More extreme projections suggest that by 2050, 75 million people from the wider Asia-Pacific region will be forced to shift.Pacific islanders forced to relocate will be at higher risk of developing mental health problems because of losing their homes, their culture and the stress of climate-induced migration. The New Zealand Defence Force is predicting an increase in the number of humanitarian and disaster relief operations it will attend in the Pacific due to climate change.One analysis suggests that as one of the few habitable areas left on the planet, New Zealand "would likely become overcrowded, under constant threat of flood and cyclone, and increasingly infested by flies and other insects." Policies and legislation International commitments UNFCC and Kyoto Protocol New Zealand ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC) in September 1993. The purpose of this convention was to collectively bring countries together to discuss how to best address climate change and handle the impacts of it. The convention, which included 192 nations and came into force on 21 May 1994, recognised that climate change is a serious threat and that human (anthropogenic) impact on change in climate needs to be focused on and reduced. The convention also placed responsibility on developed countries to devise methods and systems to mitigate climate change and lead the way to addressing climate change for the developing world. The initial ratification to this convention sparked the beginning of formal commitment to climate change and the need to consider collective methods to address and adapt to the presence of the globally threatening issue.In July 1994, four months after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into force, the Fourth National Government announced a number of priorities related to New Zealand's emissions. Environment Minister, Simon Upton published the Environment 2010 Strategy laying out eleven undefined goals which didn't commit the Government to do anything.New Zealand ratified the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC in December 2002. The Protocol, acknowledged that, due to varying levels of economic development, countries have different capabilities in combating climate change. Kyoto Protocol First commitment period 2008–2012 Due to its status as a developed nation, New Zealand had a target to ensure that 'aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the greenhouse gases listed in Annex A do not exceed' 100% of 1990 gross emissions (the baseline). The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) believed New Zealand would actually be able to increase emissions and still comply with the Kyoto Protocol as long as more Removal Units were obtained from forest carbon sinks between 2008 and 2012. The chart (right) shows that New Zealand did emit more than 100% of greenhouse gasses (at the 1990 level) during this period. In June 2005, a financial liability under the Kyoto Protocol for a shortfall of emission units of 36.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent was first recognised in the Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand. It was estimated as a liability of $NZ310 million. New Zealand's net balance under the Kyoto Protocol remained in deficit from 2005 (a deficit of 36 million units) until May 2008 (a deficit of 21.7 million units). Doha Amendment 2013–2020 The second commitment period (2013–20) was established in Doha in 2012, although New Zealand refused to take on any new targets during this period. Instead, in November 2012, the New Zealand Government announced it would make climate pledges for the period from 2013 to 2020 under the UNFCCC process rather than agree to a second commitment under the Kyoto Protocol.This announcement angered environmentalists and was reported internationally as New Zealand avoiding legally binding obligations. Green Party climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham said the Government's announcement was about hot air at talks instead of legally binding measures to reduce emissions. The decision was also heavily criticised by the World Wildlife Fund. Prime Minister John Key said New Zealand should not lead the way on climate change, but instead be a "fast follower". The Alliance of Small Island States voiced disappointment at New Zealand's decision.In August 2013, the National Government announced a target to reduce New Zealand's emissions to 5% less than total emissions in 1990 by the year 2020. Tim Groser, the Minister for Climate Change issues noted that New Zealand would still honour its conditional offer made in 2009 to reduce emissions to 10 – 20% below 1990 levels – but only if other countries come on board.Labelling the National Government's commitment, to an emissions reduction of 5% below 1990 levels by 2020, as a 'failure', Global conservation organisation, WWF, pointed out that a 5% reduction is well below the level recommended by scientists in order reduce the damage of anthropogenic climate change. The changes to the scheme also allowed an influx of cheap, imported international emission units that collapsed the price of the New Zealand unit. This effectively undermined the whole scheme. Paris Climate Agreement The 2015 Paris Agreement is the successor to the 1998 Kyoto Protocol and has set a target to keep temperature rises within two degrees Celsius this century, with the hope of limiting it to 1.5 degrees. The Paris Agreement negotiations concluded on 12 December 2015 and the Agreement took effect in 2020.The key difference between the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol is that the latter prescribed goals that were to be achieved by each signatory country and offered monetary support for developing countries. The Paris Agreement allows each country to determine its own goals, defined as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The treaty uses the term ‘expectations’ in regard to reducing emissions and there are obligations on each signatory country to communicate and review their progress (NDCs) every 5 years. Countries are expected to meet their expectations, but there is no obligation to do so – and no mechanism describing how any country should go about achieving this. The Paris Agreement also has financial incentives available to support countries achieve their goals towards keeping the global temperature rises to below 2 degrees Celsius and down towards 1.5 degrees Celsius.In October 2015 New Zealand submitted its first international target to 2030 under the Paris Agreement (NDC), which was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. In October 2021 the Government announced a more ambitious target; "a 50 per cent reduction of net emissions below our gross 2005 level by 2030". Domestic initiatives In 1988, the same year as the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Fourth Labour Government of New Zealand started developing policy for climate change. This was coordinated between agencies by the Ministry for the Environment. The Government asked the Royal Society of New Zealand to report on the scientific basis of climate change. A short report, 'Climate Change in New Zealand', was published in 1988 and the full report 'New Zealand Climate Report 1990' was published in 1989. Carbon tax New Zealand Governments have unsuccessfully attempted to enact a carbon tax. In 2005, the Fifth Labour Government had proposed a carbon tax of NZ$15 per tonne of CO2 equivalent (US$14.47 after adjusting for inflation in 2021) to meet obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. The tax was scheduled to take effect from April 2007 and apply across most economic sectors, with an exemption for methane emissions from farming and provisions for special exemptions from carbon-intensive businesses if they adopted best-practice standards.After the 2005 election, two coalition parties supporting the Fifth Labour Government, NZ First and United Future, opposed the proposed tax, and it was abandoned in December 2005. The Green Party described the carbon tax backdown as "giving up on climate change" and "capitulating" to the anti-Kyoto lobby.The Environmental Defence Society described the withdrawal of the carbon tax as "pathetic" and a result of the NZ Government Climate Change Office being "captured" by vested interests such as energy intensive businesses and the Greenhouse Policy Coalition. Emissions trading scheme The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment also criticized the Scheme for its generous free allocations of emission units and the lack of a carbon price signal. Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand criticised it for its total ineffectiveness at reducing emissions. In May 2011, the climate scientist James Hansen visited New Zealand for a speaking tour. Hansen drew huge crowds for his public talks. He said he did not agree with schemes like the NZETS which included forestry offsets. "In my opinion you have to have the simplest, transparent scheme so I just say it should be a flat fee proportional to the amount of carbon in the fuel."In 2014, the New Zealand Climate Party stated the emissions trading scheme "degenerated into a farce because the current emissions charges are far too low to address our steadily climbing emissions levels or to cover the damage these emissions are causing". In June 2019, Peter Whitmore, executive member of Engineers for Social Responsibility and founder of the Climate Party said: " We need to rapidly phase out the provision of free emissions units to trade exposed industries" as, in practice, they incentivize these industry to continue polluting. Offshore oil & gas permits In 2018 when the Sixth Labour Government of New Zealand came to power, it ceased issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits and only permitted onshore permits in the Taranaki region. Currently Taranaki is the only oil and gas producing region in New Zealand's with more than 20 fields, on and offshore. The Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ) which lobbies on behalf of the industry has been highly critical of the exploration ban. PEPANZ points out that the oil and gas sector contributes $1.5bn to Taranaki's GDP and makes up 40% of the regional economy.The Government's decision does not affect the reserves or potential finds from these active exploration permits. Energy Minister Megan Woods said this will lead to a long-term, managed transition away from oil and gas production over the next 30 years. In 2018, Simon Bridges said the National Party "would bring back oil and gas exploration immediately if National was returned to government". He said: "[It's] no good us doing everything and no-one else doing anything. That will still mean the world gets warmer..." Tree planting The Labour led coalition has established a goal to plant one billion trees within ten years (by 2028) because trees absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere in a process known as carbon sequestration potentially helping New Zealand to become carbon neutral. According to the Forest Owners Association, in 2015 New Zealand forests held 283 million tonnes of carbon.Under the new scheme, $120 million has allocated for landowners to plant new areas and $58 million to establish Te Uru Rākau forestry service in Rotorua. The plan is also designed to encourage farmers and Maori land holders to include trees on their property. However, Bay of Plenty and Taupo contractors are struggling to find workers to do the planting, even though the pay is $300 to $400 a day. As at 27 July 2018, nine million trees, 13% of them native species had been planted.Concerns: New Zealand emits over 80 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (measured in CO2-equivalents) every year, approximately 45% of which (36 million tonnes) is CO2. Between 1990 and 2016, the net uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) decreased by nearly 23% (down to 23 million tonnes a year) due to more intensive harvesting of planted forests. On top of this, a typical hardwood tree takes about 40 years to remove approximately one ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Climate scientist Jim Salinger and anthropologist and environmentalist Dame Anne Salmond have criticised the plan to plant one billion trees because only 13% of the trees that have been planted are natives. Salmond says two thirds of the trees being planted are supposed to be natives. Salinger points out that pine forests store far less carbon than natives as they are harvested after a few decades; the trees end up as pulp and paper and the carbon goes back into the atmosphere. Natural (native) forests store 40 times more carbon than and plantations like pine trees. A report released by the Productivity Commission in August 2018 also found that one billion tree plan is only a fraction of what is required to offset the amount carbon being released in New Zealand. The Commission says the planting rate needs to double, from 50,000 hectares to 100,000ha per year and the length of the programme needs to be extended from 10 to 30 years. Conservation charity, Trees That Count, monitors the number of native trees planted throughout New Zealand. Zero Carbon Act In 2019, the Labour led coalition introduced the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act which sets a target of net zero carbon emissions (except biogenic methane) for New Zealand by 2050. The Bill passed into law in November 2019 with almost unanimous support. It establishes an independent Climate Change Commission to advise the Government of the day on emissions reduction pathways, progress towards targets and develop regular five-year emission budgets. The act sets a separate target for methane gas emissions which mostly come from the agricultural sector – requiring a 10% reduction in biological methane by 2030 and a provisional reduction between 24%–47% by 2050. The National Party said that they opposed the 24–47 per cent methane reduction target and that they would remove the methane target when they next form a government. Greenpeace New Zealand executive director, Russel Norman criticised the bill because the targets are voluntary and have no enforcement mechanisms. He says: “What we’ve got here is a reasonably ambitious piece of legislation that’s then had the teeth ripped out of it. There’s bark, but there’s no bite."Independent scientific analysis by Climate Action Tracker notes that "The Bill does not introduce any policies to actually cut emissions". It also rates New Zealand's emissions targets as "insufficient" meaning that our goals are not "consistent with holding warming below 2C, let alone with the Paris Agreement's stronger 1.5C limit". This is the sixth time in a row that New Zealand's response to the climate crisis has been ranked as "insufficient". Climate emergency declarations As at January 2020, 1,315 jurisdictions and local governments around the world covering 810 million citizens had declared climate emergencies. What this means varies for each community and country, but common themes include a commitment to be carbon neutral as quickly as possible, limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, and a willingness to share solutions and join global movements that encourage climate action. New Zealand city councils The following local bodies have declared a climate emergency: Nelson (16 May 2019), Environment Canterbury (23 May 2019), Kapiti (23 May 2019), Auckland, (11 June 2019), Wellington (20 June 2019), Dunedin, (25 June 2019), Hutt Valley (26 June 2019), the Hawkes Bay Regional Council 26 June 2019 and Whangarei (26 July 2019).Making the declaration for Auckland, Mayor Phil Goff said: “Our obligation is to avoid our children and grandchildren inheriting a world devastated by global heating. Scientists tell us that if we don’t take action, the effects of heating will be catastrophic, both environmentally and economically. In declaring an emergency, we are signalling the urgency of action needed to mitigate and adapt to the impact of rising world temperatures and extreme weather events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have only around 12 years to reduce global carbon emissions to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees. While international and national actions are critical, at a local and personal level we need to play our role in achieving that target.”The declaration by the Auckland City Council also obliges dozens of council committees to include a climate change impact statement in their reports. This has the advantage of keeping diverse teams working for the Council focused on the issue. Financial justification Financial liability for the damage caused by rising sea levels and climate related disasters will largely fall on city councils. In July 2019, a review of local government funding by the Productivity Commission has found more funding and support is required from central government because of the significant challenges councils are having to face adapting to sea level rise and flooding. The review found that many local councils are frustrated by the lack of leadership from Government; in particular councils want advice, guidance and legal frameworks to support decisions they need to make about land use in areas that are, or will become, prone to flooding."An example of the difficulties that will likely arise is the decision by National MP, Judith Collins and her husband David Wong-Tung to sue the Nelson City Council for $180,000 for remedial works and lost rental income after a slip damaged their property during heavy rain in Nelson in 2011. At the time the flooding which occurred that day was described as a one in 250 year event. Global warming increases the frequency of such events. Collins is claiming that omissions by the Council caused the landslide which damaged their property. The Council has accepted some of the claims and denied others.Media commentator, Greg Roughan, points out that as the frequency of such events increases, the cost to business, and councils will only get worse. He also points to the negative impact on property prices if, for example, a low stretch of motorway just north of the Auckland harbour bridge gets washed out multiple times each year, preventing thousands of people from getting to work; and to the legal and financial ramifications if a council grants consent for beachfront properties to be built in an area that a few years later insurers decide not to underwrite. Roughan argues that by declaring a climate emergency, forward-looking Councils are making the point – "this is going to get expensive". National government In May 2019, Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick requested leave to pass a motion in Parliament declaring a climate emergency. Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of parliament – but was blocked by the National Party. Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern said: "We're not opposed to the idea of declaring [a climate change] emergency in Parliament, because certainly I'd like to think our policies and our approach demonstrates that we do see it as an emergency." Radio New Zealand reports that "the climate change declaration has been signed by 90 percent of the country's mayors and council chairs around New Zealand, and it calls for the government to be ambitious with its climate change mitigation measures". However, on 18 July 2019, youth MPs demonstrated the importance of this issue to young people and "beat their actual MPs to the punch by declaring a climate change emergency at (the triennial) Youth Parliament 2019."Building on previous campaigning for the decarbonisation of public transport in Auckland a coalition of 17 groups, called All Aboard Aotearoa, was formed in 2020. Using a combination of public education, lobbying and legal action it persuaded Auckland's council to adopt an evidence-based policy to achieve an emissions reductions target for transport of 64% by 2030.On 14 May 2019, Wellington inhabitant Ollie Langridge began sitting on the lawn outside Parliament holding a sign calling on the Government to declare a climate change emergency. From 28 July, Langridge set a record as the longest running protest outside Parliament in New Zealand's history. Langridge's protest achieved international attention. After protesting outside Parliament every day for 100 days, Langridge cut back his presence to Fridays only, saying he wanted to spend more time with his wife and children.On 2 December 2020, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a climate change emergency in New Zealand and sponsored a parliamentary motion pledging that the New Zealand Government would aim to be "carbon neutral" by 2025 in line with the goals of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act. As part of the Government's "carbon neutral" goals, the public sector will be required to buy only electric or hybrid vehicles, government buildings will have to meet new building standards, and all 200 coal-fired boilers in public service buildings will be phased out. This motion was supported by the governing center-left Labour and left-wing Green parties and the opposition Māori Party but was opposed by the centre-right opposition National and libertarian ACT parties.On 14 December 2020, Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg criticised the Labour Government's climate change emergency declaration as "virtue signalling," stating that the Government had only committed to reducing less than one percent of New Zealand's carbon emissions by 2025. In response, Prime Minister Ardern defended her Government's climate change declaration, stating that New Zealand had bigger goals than one target. In addition, Climate Change Minister James Shaw responded that the climate change declaration was only just the "starting point" in New Zealand's climate change response measures. Opinion polls On 13 June 2019 a 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton poll found that a majority of New Zealanders (53%) believe the Government should declare a climate emergency. 39% said no, and eight % did not know. More than 50 of the country's top researchers have also called on New Zealand politicians to declare a climate emergency. Their appeal to government states: "The scientific consensus is that the world stands on the verge of unprecedented environmental and climate catastrophe for which we are little prepared, and which affords us only a few years for mitigating action. We, the undersigned, urge the New Zealand House of Representatives to declare a climate emergency, now." Support for national declaration The Labour Party Climate Change manifesto lists one of its goals as "[Making] New Zealand a leader in the international fight against climate change, and in ensuring that the 2015 Paris Agreement is successfully implemented." As at June 2019, four countries have formally declared a climate emergency: the UK, France, Canada and Ireland. (Despite these declarations, these countries still provide subsidies of $27.5bn annually which support fossil fuel industries.) If the Labour Party wants New Zealand to be a world leader in this area, the Government will need to follow or do better than the example set by these four. Tom Powell of Climate Karanga Marlborough argues that it is only when we recognise we are facing an actual emergency that our local and national governments get away from "business as usual". Greg Roughan agrees arguing that it takes time for 'out there ideas' (such as a climate crisis) to become mainstream so that political action can be implemented. A declaration that there is a climate emergency from a reputable source such as a city council or national government brings "mainstream cred to the need for urgent action – even if it doesn't spell out how that looks."Climate Change Minister, James Shaw, says "This is obviously not a civil defence emergency, but it creates civil defence emergencies and is increasing civil defence emergencies. It is a meta-emergency. It is quite weird not to call it an emergency, given its consequences." Introducing a "feebate" scheme for car imports in July 2019, associate transport minister, Julie Anne Genter, spoke about fronting up to climate change by comparing it to fighting World War II.At the Just Transition Community Conference sponsored by the New Plymouth District Council on 15 June 2019, Victoria University professor and keynote speaker, James Renwick, said the situation was dire. He continued: "Last year saw the highest emissions globally on record and emissions have been going up, up and up for the past 30 years. If the world continues to emit greenhouse gasses it will lock in a further 3C of global warming and 10m of sea level rise... There's been a lot of talk about a climate emergency lately and it really is an emergency situation." Opposed to national declaration The decision by local councils to declare climate emergencies has led to debate in the media about what a declaration of an emergency really means and whether or not such declarations will be backed up by significant action to address the problem.National MP, Paula Bennett, called the Prime Minister "ridiculous" because of her willingness to declare a "climate emergency". Bennett said declarations of emergency should only be used for "very serious events" such as the earthquakes which occurred in Christchurch in 2011. National's climate change spokesman, Todd Muller, says "This is a 30, 40, 50-year, multi-generational transition for the economy away from fossil fuels. It's not an emergency in that context – to say it's an emergency is absolutely ridiculous. When you call something from a government – central or local – an emergency, you are saying you are pursuing this above all else." National adaptation plan In August 2022, the Ministry for the Environment published Aotearoa New Zealand's first National Adaptation Plan, covering the years 2022– 2028, titled: "Adapt and thrive: Building a climate-resilient New Zealand". The plan includes a range of adaptation options: Avoid, Protect, Accommodate and Retreat. Society and culture Activism In March 2019, inspired by Greta Thunberg, tens of thousands of school students took to the streets across NZ calling for action on climate change. The main protests took place on 15 March 2019, however had to be abandoned for safety reasons due to the Christchurch mosque shootings on the same day. For many young people, it was the first time they felt compelled to become politically active. With the headline, We need to listen to young people about climate change, an editorial on Stuff in March 2019 noted that "Many decision-makers in the governments, businesses, community organisations and churches of the world won't be alive to experience the impact of climate change. But today's school students will be." Indeed, some teenagers are wondering "whether or not they will have a planet on which to live out their lives". A Stuff survey of 15,000 readers in July 2019 shows that New Zealanders aged between 10 and 19 rated climate change as a more important issue than any other age group. Those aged between 20 and 29 were also very concerned about the issue, with the level of concern decreasing with age. On 18 July, Radio New Zealand reported that youth MPs took a "bold stance" on the issue by declaring a climate change emergency at the triennial Youth Parliament for 2019. Media messaging The Climate Reality Project founded by Al Gore after the release of his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, appoints and trains 'Climate Reality Leaders' from around the world. At a conference in Brisbane in June 2019, Gore appointed 40 New Zealanders as "apprentices" of his global climate change movement. James Shaw, who is now Minister for Climate Change Issues attended a similar conference in 2013. Part of the messaging taught at these seminars is to use the terms 'climate emergency' and 'climate crisis' rather than 'climate change'. The Guardian newspaper has also decided to use the terms climate emergency, or crisis instead of climate change; and global heating instead of global warming.Media website Stuff has a dedicated section focused on the climate crisis called Quick! Save the Planet. When publishing climate related stories, Stuff includes this disclaimer: "Stuff accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by human activity. We welcome robust debate about the appropriate response to climate change, but do not intend to provide a venue for denialism or hoax advocacy. That applies equally to the stories we will publish in Quick! Save the Planet."Radio New Zealand points out that "Talk radio broadcasters are still happy to put hosts (such as Mike Hosking, Tim Wilson and Ryan Bridge) on the air who airily admit they don't understand the science of climate change." Opinion polls Surveys carried out on public attitudes to climate change show a dramatic shift in concern between 2007 and 2019. The %age of the public perceiving it to be an urgent problem has jumped by 35% – from 8 to 43%. The number seeing it as a problem already has gone up 10% – from 16 to 26%. In August 2012, a Horizons poll showed that 64.4% of respondents wanted Parliament to do more to respond to global warming. 67.5% of respondents wanted business to do more to address global warming. Horizons commented that the poll "makes a strong case for more political action".In 2014, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research surveyed 2200 New Zealanders (over the age of 18) and found that at least 87% of participants are “somewhat concerned” about the effects of climate change to society in general. 63% also believed that climate change would affect themselves and 58% believed that climate change would affect society. Political parties stance on climate change ACT Party The ACT Party promotes policies associated with climate change denial. They went into the 2008 election with a policy that in part stated "New Zealand is not warming" and that their policy goal was to ensure: "That no New Zealand government will ever impose needless and unjustified taxation or regulation on its citizens in a misguided attempt to reduce global warming or become a world leader in carbon neutrality" In September 2008, ACT Party Leader Rodney Hide stated "that the entire climate change – global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phoney and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle". In October 2012, in response to a speech on climate change by Green Party MP Kennedy Graham, ACT leader John Banks said he had "never heard such claptrap in this parliament... a bogeyman tirade, humbug." In 2016, ACT's only MP, David Seymour, deleted climate change policy from their website. Prior to that their website claimed New Zealand was not warming and pledged to withdraw the country from the Kyoto Protocol.However at the 2017 election, ACT did commit to replace petrol tax with a user-pays road pricing system to reduce congestion on the roads by only charging those who use them. In their transport policy, ACT argued this would make public transport faster and reduce carbon emissions. Under the leadership of David Seymour the ACT party has since toned back its anti-climate change stance in favour of committing to policies that combat climate change while doing the least amount of damage to the economy. ACT was the only political party to oppose the Zero Carbon Act. It is ACT's policy to repeal the ban on oil and gas exploration. Climate Change Party In August 2014, Peter Whitmore launched the NZ Climate Party, although it was never formally registered. Whitmore says there is "global scientific agreement that the world’s temperature increase must be limited to 2 degrees Celsius to avoid major catastrophe" and that current & past New Zealand Governments have not been taking the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions nearly seriously enough. In a NZ Herald opinion piece in 2017, Whitmore wrote: "It is clear from the above that New Zealand's current Paris commitment is pathetically feeble. We are not actually undertaking to make any reduction in our emissions by 2030, even compared to today's levels". Green Party Since 2014, Green Party policy has been to "establish a clear strategy, action plan and carbon budget for the transition to a net zero emissions, fossil-fuel free economy and support a 100% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels within New Zealand by 2050".At the 2017 general election the Green Party leader James Shaw also announced that the Green Party also wanted to establish an independent climate commission. The Green Party proposed a Kiwi Climate Fund to replace the Emissions Trading Scheme, charging individuals responsible for contributing to climate change pollution. Commitment was also made to New Zealand having 100% renewable energy by 2030, as well as planting 1.2 billion trees, allocating 40 million dollars to native forest regeneration and creating a 100 million dollar green infrastructure fund. Labour Party The New Zealand Labour Party under Jacinda Ardern set a target of net zero for greenhouse gases by the year 2050. Labour committed to creating an independent climate change commission to address carbon monitoring and budgeting, and also to provide comment and guidance when set targets or goals weren't met. Labour also committed to bringing agriculture into the emissions trading scheme to ensure that the agricultural sector operates with improved environmental practice. Overall, Labour pledged to create a sustainable low-carbon economy, and become a leading nation in addressing climate change, successfully achieving its commitments as made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Maori Party In 2017, the Maori Party committed to developing renewable energy and alternative fuels, including subsidised solar panels for all homes in New Zealand and championing their installation in schools, marae, hospitals and government agencies. It also wanted to set legally binding emission reduction targets, close all coal run power plants by 2025, support the development of renewable resources and plant 100,000 hectares of forest over the next 10 years. The Party also agreed to the establishment of an independent Climate Commission established to ensure this occurs, but also wanted subsidised electric vehicles for community groups. They also proposed a new visa category for Pacific climate change refugees. However, the Maori Party lost all its seats at this election. National Party According to Colin James, the National Party "herded with" the climate change skeptics up to 2006. In May 2007, National stopped opposing the Kyoto Protocol and adopted a policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. At the 2008 election, National's policy was to honour New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol obligations and the emissions target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050. National proposed changing the Labour Party's emissions trading scheme to align it with the Australian Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme so that consumers and small businesses would not be penalised.Prior to the 2017 election, the National Party made a commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. The National Party also committed to achieving 90% of New Zealand's energy as renewable, alongside investing 4 million dollars into New Zealand becoming closer to a low carbon economy. The National government also focused on transport, committing to invest in public transport, electric vehicles and cycleways to reduce use of non-renewable energy run vehicle use.In 2019, New Zealand Herald journalist Simon Wilson, argued that the National Party is New Zealand's biggest threat to addressing climate change. Writing for his newspaper, he said: "National's position on climate change will undermine our economy and damage us socially. Delays now will lead to crisis management later and the people worst affected will include farmers, coastal dwellers and the poor. As long as National holds to this position, to me it demonstrates it is unfit to govern." NZ First At the 2017 election, the NZ First Party committed to setting legally binding emission reduction targets; to require electricity retailers to purchase power generated by customers at retail price; to replace the ETS with carbon budgets; and to require all government vehicles to be electricity run by the year 2025/2026. Opportunities Party The Opportunity Party's policies were to set a legally binding target of carbon neutrality by 2050; reform the Emissions Trading Scheme to create a firm limit on emissions; require all large new investments take into account the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050; aim for 100% renewable electricity by 2035; and reforest all erosion-prone land by 2030. See also Agriculture in New Zealand Ara ake National New Energy Development Centre Climate Change Commission Energy in New Zealand Environment of New Zealand Generation Zero Lawyers for Climate Action NZ List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita New Zealand Climate Science Coalition Pollution in New Zealand References Further reading "Our Climate Your Say: Consultation on the Zero Carbon Bill". Ministry for the Environment. June 2018. Peterson, Dana Rachelle (5 September 2001). "The greenhouse effect and climate change: a resource document for New Zealand MPs" (PDF). Background paper no 24. NZ Parliamentary Library. Gray, Vincent (2002). The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001". Multi-Science Publishing Co. Ltd. ISBN 978-0-906522-14-1. Renowden, Gareth (2007). Hot Topic – Global Warming & The Future of New Zealand. AUT Media. ISBN 978-0-9582829-0-1. Dorfman, Eric, ed. (2008). Melting point: New Zealand and the climate change crisis. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-300868-2. Morgan, Gareth; John McCrystal (2009). Poles Apart: Beyond the shouting, who's right about climate change?. Random House. Wishart, Ian (2009). Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming. Howling At The Moon Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9582401-4-7. External links Climate Change Information New Zealand Climate change page at the Ministry for the Environment Climate page at (NIWA) New Zealand Climate Change centre Orataiao: New Zealand Climate & health Council Forest & Bird Archived 7 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine Climate Dashboard New Zealand provides visual tracking of NZ's Greenhouse Gas emissions The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi provides expert advice on important public issues to the Government and the community including climate change.Lobby groups 350.org Aotearoa Climate Realists Generation Zero School Strike 4 Climate NZ

climate change in the united kingdom

Climate change is impacting the environment and human population of the United Kingdom (UK). The country's climate is becoming warmer, with drier summers and wetter winters. The frequency and intensity of storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves is increasing, and sea level rise is impacting coastal areas. The UK is also a contributor to climate change, having emitted more greenhouse gas per person than the world average. Climate change is having economic impacts on the UK and presents risks to human health and ecosystems.The government has committed to reducing emissions by 50% of 1990 levels by 2025 and to net zero by 2050. In 2020, the UK set a target of 68% reduction in emissions by 2030 in its commitments in the Paris Agreement. The country will phase-out coal by 2024. Parliament passed Acts related to climate change in 2006 and 2008, the latter representing the first time a government legally mandated a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The UK Climate Change Programme was established in 2000 and the Climate Change Committee provides policy advice towards mitigation targets. In 2019, Parliament declared a 'climate change emergency'. The UK has been prominent in international cooperation on climate change, including through UN conferences and during its European Union membership. Climate change has been discussed by British politicians since the late 20th century, but it has attracted greater political, public and media attention in the UK from the 2000s. Public opinion polls show concern amongst the majority of Britons. The British royal family have also prioritised the issue, with King Charles III having been outspoken "about climate change, pollution and deforestation" for the "last 50 years." Various climate change activism initiatives have taken place in the UK. Greenhouse gas emissions Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes The Central England temperature series, recorded since 1659 in the Midlands, shows an observed increase in temperature, consistent with anthropogenic climate change rather than natural climate variability and change. According to the Met Office, climate change will affect the climate of the United Kingdom with warmer and wetter winters and hotter and drier summers. Spanish plumes will continue but bring more intense weather conditions such as hotter summer weather and summer thunderstorms.By 2014, the United Kingdom's seven warmest and 4 out of its 5 wettest years had occurred between the years of 2000–2014. Higher temperatures increase evaporation and consequently rainfall. In 2014, England recorded its wettest winter in over 250 years with widespread flooding.In parts of the south east of the UK, the temperature in the hottest days of the year increased by 1 °C per decade in the years 1960 - 2019. The highest ever recorded temperature in the United Kingdom was recorded in 2022 in Coningsby at 40.3 °C. In 2020, the chances of reaching a temperature above 40 °C were low, but they are 10 times higher than in a climate without human impact. In modest emissions scenario, by the end of the century, it will happen every 15 years and in high emissions scenario every 3 – 4 years. Summers with temperatures above 35 °C occur in the UK every 5 years, but will occur almost every other year in the high emission scenario by 2100. Extreme weather events The Met Office outlines that more frequent and intense extreme weather events will affect the UK due to climate change. Floods Due to increased rainfall from warmer and wetter winters, increased flooding is expected. An interactive map from the UK government shows areas at risk of flooding. Heat waves Heat waves are becoming more intense and more likely in the UK due to climate change. Of the UK's top ten hottest days on record, nine have been recorded between 1990 and 2022. The 2022 heatwave resulted in the first code red extreme heat warning in the country, instigating a declaration of national emergency, and causing wildfires and widespread infrastructure damage. Sea level rise Between 1900 and 2022, the UK's sea level rose by 16.5 centimetres (6.5 in). The rate of rise more than doubled between the early 20th and early 21st century to a rate of 3-5.2 millimetres per year. By 2050, it is predicted that around a third of England's coast will be impacted, leading to almost 200,000 homes needing to be abandoned. The most affected regions will be the South West, North West and East Anglia. Water and drought Droughts in the United Kingdom are expected to become more severe. Water quality in rivers and lakes may decline due to higher temperatures, reduced river flows and increased algal blooms in summer, and increased river flows in winter. Impacts on ecosystems Warming temperatures are impacting wildlife and plant life. Some species' ranges are shifting north, and Scottish alpine plants have declined. With spring coming earlier each year, many plant and animal species are unable to adapt quickly enough. Birds are impacted by climate change, with warm weather species like cattle egrets and purple herons observed breeding in the UK for the first time in the 2010s, while cold-adapted birds like lapwings have declined. More regular droughts also have cumulative implications for many British species and ecosystems. For example, in 2022, Ouse Washes wetlands was at risk of drying out.Climate change will also impact marine life around the British Isles, including some commercially valuable fish species. The distributions of many fish species are expected to shift, with cold adapted species declining and warm adapted species becoming established. Impacts on people Economic impacts According to the Government, the number of households in flood risk will be up to 970,000 homes in the 2020s, up from around 370,000 in January 2012. The effects of flooding and managing flood risk cost the country about £2.2bn a year, compared with the less than £1bn spent on flood protection and management. UK agriculture is also being impacted by drought and weather changes.In 2020 PricewaterhouseCoopers estimate that Storm Dennis damage to homes, businesses and cars could be between £175m and £225m and Storm Ciara cost up to £200m. Friends of the Earth criticised British government of the intended cuts to flood defence spending. The protection against increasing flood risk as a result of climate change requires rising investment. In 2009, the Environment Agency calculated that the UK needs to be spending £20m more compared to 2010 to 2011 as the baseline, each and every year out to 2035, just to keep pace with climate change.The British government and the economist Nicholas Stern published the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006. The report states that climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics. The Review provides prescriptions including environmental taxes to minimise economic and social disruptions. The Stern Review's main conclusion is that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change far outweigh the costs of not acting. The Review points to the potential impact of climate change on water resources, food production, health, and the environment. According to the Review, without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. Including a wider range of risks and impacts could increase this to 20% of GDP or more. The review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs. Health impacts Climate change has significant implications for health, healthcare and health inequality in the UK. The National Health Service describes climate change as a "health emergency", citing the health impacts of floods, storms and heat waves, as well as the increased risk of infectious diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis and vibriosis. It also suggests reduction of greenhouse gas emissions would also reduce deaths from air pollution.Climate change had made heat waves 30 times more likely in the UK and 3,400 people died from them in the years 2016–2019. Climate change-driven heatwaves in other countries important for crop production may also be more severe, which will have an indirect impact on the UK. UK heat waves have implications for human health and can drive excess deaths, particularly among the elderly. Mitigation and adaptation Mitigation In 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May announced the UK would strive to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, making the country the first major economy to do so. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced in 2020 that UK will set a target of 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030 and include this target in its commitments in the Paris Agreement.Calculations in 2021 indicated that, for giving the world a 50% chance of avoiding a temperature rise of 2 degrees or more, the United Kingdom should increase its climate commitments by 17%.: Table 1  For a 95% chance, it should increase the commitments by 58%. For giving a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees, the United Kingdom should increase its commitments by 97%. Energy Although not motivated by environmental concerns, under Margaret Thatcher, the UK's coal industry was reduced, with subsidies cut and the coal miner's union weakened following a miners' strike. In 2015, the government announced that all remaining coal-fired power stations would be closed by 2025. In 2021, it brought forward its coal phase-out target to 2024. Electric vehicles Policies and legislation The Climate Change Programme was launched in November 2000 by the British government in response to its commitment agreed at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. There is in place national legislation, international agreements and the EU directives. The EU directive 2001/77/EC promotes renewable energy in the electricity production.The Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which aims to boost the number of heat and electricity micro-generation installations in the United Kingdom, so helping to cut carbon emissions and reduce fuel poverty. The Climate Change Act 2008 makes it the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for all six Kyoto greenhouse gases for the year 2050 is at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline. It also created the independent Climate Change Committee to advise the government on policies to reach its goals. The Act made the UK the first country to legally mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.In May 2019, Parliament approved a motion declaring a national climate change emergency. This does not legally compel the government to act, however.The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill was tabled as an early day motion on 2 September 2020 and received its first reading the same day.The Health and Care Act 2022 includes a target of carbon neutrality for the National Health Service by 2040, and an 80% reduction in emissions by 2028 to 2032.The United Kingdom currently (2021) does not have a carbon tax. Instead, various fuel taxes and energy taxes have been implemented over the years, such as the fuel duty escalator (1993) and the Climate Change Levy (2001). The UK was also a member of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme until it left the EU. It has since implemented its own carbon trading scheme. Adaptation The UK's National Adaptation Programme seeks to create a "climate-ready society" and expects individual households to adapt to climate change. A systematic review in Climatic Change concluded many households in the UK struggled to achieve long-term adaptive capacity. Increased flood risk also has implications for the UK's fully privatised insurance sector and relevant governance of it. The Bank of England has outlined a policy of maintaining financial stability amid climate change impacts on the UK.The town of Happisburgh, where homes are being affected by coastal erosion and sea level rise, is the location of a "Pathfinder" project where owners of homes about to fall into the sea were offered market prices to relocate inland.The Wildlife Trusts have suggested reintroduction of Eurasian beavers improves resilience of British rivers and wetlands to droughts, create carbon sinks and prevent flooding. International cooperation Since the premiership of Tony Blair, climate change has been a high priority issue in the UK's foreign policy. The UK has raised the issue at meetings of international bodies of which it is a member, including the G8 and United Nations Security Council. The UK was also influential on the climate change policy of the European Union during its membership.British diplomats have been involved in the negotiation of international agreements in United Nations summits. Ahead of the 2009 conference while talks had been stalling, prime minister Gordon Brown launched a manifesto calling for an international agreement that would bring investment into climate change adaptation in developing countries. The UK hosted the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, during which the Glasgow Climate Pact was negotiated and agreed. In the lead-up to the conference, Richard Moore said the Secret Intelligence Service had begun monitoring the activities of major polluters to ensure they adhere to their commitments on mitigation and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it would put £290m towards climate change initiatives in developing countries. Society and culture Public opinion By 2021, YouGov recorded that 72% of Britons believe that climate change is caused by human activity, which had increased from 49% in 2013. According to the Office for National Statistics, as of October 2021, 75% of British adults said that they either very or somewhat worried about climate change, whilst 19% were neither worried or unworried. British women were more likely than men to be worried about the impact of climate change, as were younger compared to older age groups. Politics In 1989, Margaret Thatcher made two speeches that are considered among the earliest statements by a world leader on climate change.Climate change has been discussed by members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; in 2019, Carbon Brief analysed mention of climate change in the UK parliamentary record from Hansard. It found that mention of the "greenhouse effect" and "global warming" had appeared in British parliamentary records since the 1980s, with the term "climate change" used more since the late 1990s. The first mention was by Jestyn Philipps in 1969. It concluded that Labour MPs were the most vocal party on the issue, mentioning climate change 8,463 times, compared to 5,860 by Conservative MPs and 2,426 by Liberal Democrat MPs.Before 2005 and 2006, climate change received little political attention in the UK. However, between 2006 and 2010, campaigns by environmental non-governmental organization generated attention towards climate change in British media, and it became a bipartisan issue in UK politics. The Climate Change Act 2008 passed with the support of 463 MPs from several political parties, and only 5 against. Under David Cameron, the Conservative Party adopted environmental policies as a means to connect with younger voters, with Cameron's support of the Big Ask campaign being a critical turning point. The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition maintained political momentum on climate policy, but criticism from the political right later weakened Cameron's international leadership on the issue. The Conservatives prioritised the issue during the premiership of Boris Johnson.Despite shifts in public and political opinion in the 21st century, climate change denial exists in British politics. The Global Warming Policy Foundation is a prominent lobbying think tank founded by Conservative MP Nigel Lawson. Some members of the UK Independence Party have been characterised as deniers and have dismissed climate change risks and the party has opposed climate policies, with some claims within its 2013 energy policy document found to be based on documents from the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The Global Warming Policy Foundation and some members of the Conservative Party shifted to opposing the perceived cost of net zero rather than outright denying the occurrence of climate change in the 2020s. Activism and cultural responses Environmental direct action has occurred in the UK. Camps for Climate Action began in 2006 with the Drax Power Station, until their disbandment in 2011. School strikes took place from the 2010s, and groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain using tactics such as traffic obstruction in protest of climate change issues. Extinction Rebellion was founded by a group of UK activists in 2018, subsequently expanding to other countries and influencing the global climate movement.In February 2014 during major flooding the Church of England said that it will pull its investments from companies that fail to do enough to fight the "great demon" of climate change and ignore the church's theological, moral and social priorities. In 2007, a London Live Earth concert took place to raise awareness of climate change and in 2019, numerous musicians, record labels and venues in the British music industry formed environmental pressure group Music Declares Emergency to demand mitigation. Litigation Media coverage British tabloid newspaper reporting on climate change between 2000 and 2006 significantly diverged from the scientific consensus that climate change is driven by human activity. The political leaning of newspapers influenced their likelihood of covering climate change, with the left-leaning The Guardian paper covering the issue more than the more conservative Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail between 1997 and 2017. The BBC has faced criticism for inviting fringe views into coverage of climate change, and in 2018 admitted that it had covered climate change "wrong too often" and that it was false balance to invite deniers into its coverage. Media coverage of the July 2022 heat wave corresponded to different political viewpoints, particularly whether climate change was mentioned or the severity of the heat wave was downplayed. Monarchy The British royal family have advocated for climate change mitigation. Charles III has expressed concern over the impacts of climate change and called for action on the issue among world leaders, including advocating for a "Marshall-like plan" to address it. Elizabeth II called for action on climate change at COP26. Prince William and Prince Harry also adopted climate change causes, with The Royal Foundation funding the Earthshot Prize under William's patronage. Environmentalists have recognised their role in the cause, but have been critical of the ecological condition of the Crown Estate. By region London London is particularly vulnerable to climate change, with concern among hydrological experts that households in the city may run out of water before 2050. Scotland Wales See also References External links Climate change in the UK at the Met Office website UK Climate Change Committee United Kingdom Summary | World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal What will climate change look like near me? at BBC News Climate change insights at the Office for National StatisticsAdapting to climate change at the UK government website

great reset

The Great Reset Initiative is an economic recovery plan drawn up by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project was launched in June 2020, with a video featuring the then-Prince of Wales Charles released to mark its launch. The initiative's stated aim is to facilitate rebuilding from the global COVID-19 crisis in a way that prioritizes sustainable development.WEF chief executive officer Klaus Schwab described three core components of the Great Reset: creating conditions for a "stakeholder economy"; building in a more "resilient, equitable, and sustainable" way, utilising environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics; and "harness[ing] the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution." In a speech introducing the initiative, International Monetary Fund director Kristalina Georgieva listed three key aspects of a sustainable response to COVID-19: green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth."The Great Reset" was to be the theme of the 2021 World Economic Forum annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, scheduled for January 2021. Due to disruption from COVID-19, the summit was postponed to May 2021, and again to 2022. The Davos 2022 theme was "History at a Turning Point", and the summit was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.The Great Reset Initiative, and the World Economic Forum more generally, have been criticised by some commentators for promoting economic deregulation and a greater role in policy for unrepresentative private businesses, particularly large multinational corporations, at the expense of government institutions. Other commentators attacked the scheme for fixating on the concept of education, health and vastly overestimating the ability of a group of decision makers to bring about global change, or for promoting crony capitalism.The initiative triggered a range of diverse conspiracy theories spread by conservative commentators on social media such as YouTube, Tumblr, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Among the unsupported theories were the assertions that the COVID-19 pandemic was created by a secret group in order to seize control of the global economy, that lockdown restrictions were deliberately designed to induce economic meltdown, or that a global elite was attempting to abolish private property while using COVID-19 to enslave humanity with vaccines. Great Reset conspiracy theories increased in intensity when leaders such as U.S. president Joe Biden, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau incorporated ideas of a post-COVID-19 "reset" in their speeches. Key components By mid-April 2020, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-19 recession, the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war and the resulting "collapse in oil prices", the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, described possible fundamental changes in an article in The Economist. Carney said that in a post-COVID world "stakeholder capitalism" will be tested as "companies will be judged by "what they did during the war", how they treated their employees, suppliers and customers, by who shared and who hoarded." The "gulf between what markets value and what people value" will close. In a post-COVID world, it is reasonable to expect that more people will want improvements in risk management, in social and medical safety nets, and will want more attention paid to scientific experts. This new hierarchy of values will call for a reset on the way we deal with climate change, which, like the pandemic, is a global phenomenon. No one can "self-isolate" from climate change so we all need to "act in advance and in solidarity". In his 2020 BBC Reith Lectures, Carney developed his theme of value hierarchies as related to three crises—credit, COVID and climate.According to a 15 May 2020 WEF article, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to "reset and reshape" the world in a way that is more aligned with the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), as climate change, inequality and poverty gained even greater urgency during the pandemic. This includes resetting labour markets, as more people work remotely speeding up the process of the "future of work". The reset will advance work already begun to prepare for the transition to the Fourth Industrial Revolution by upskilling and reskilling workers. Another post-COVID concern raised by the WEF is food security including the "risk of disruptions to food supply chains", and the need for "global policy coordination" to prevent "food protectionism from becoming the post-pandemic new normal".In her 3 June 2020 keynote address opening the Great Reset forum, a joint initiative of the WEC and then Prince of Wales Charles, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that there has been a "massive injection of fiscal stimulus to help countries deal with this crisis" and that it was of "paramount importance that this growth should lead to a greener, smarter, fairer world in the future". Georgieva listed three aspects of the Great Reset; green growth, smarter growth and fairer growth. Government investments and government incentives for private investors could "support low-carbon and climate-resilient growth" such as "planting mangroves, land restoration, reforestation or insulating buildings". With low oil prices, the timing was right to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and introduce carbon pricing to incentivize future investments. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to shape an economic recovery and the future direction of global relations, economies and priorities.In June 2020, Klaus Schwab, who founded the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 1971 and is currently its CEO, described the three core components of the Great Reset. The first includes creating conditions for a "stakeholder economy"; improving policies and agreements on taxes, regulations, fiscal policies and trade to result in "fairer outcomes". The second component addresses how the large-scale pandemic spending programs with private investments and pension funds could improve on the old system by building one that is more "resilient, equitable and sustainable" over the long term by "building green urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics". The third component of a Great Reset agenda is to "harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution" for the public good. A July 2020 non-fiction by Schwab and economist Thierry Malleret develops the plan in more detail.In one of the Great Reset Dialogues, John Kerry and other members of a WEF dialogue discussed how to rebuild the "social contract" in a post-COVID world.In a comment according to Charles III (then Prince of Wales), the economic recovery must put the world on a path to sustainability, which would include carbon pricing. He emphasized that the private sector would be the main drivers of the plan. The market should adapt to the current reality by aiming for fairer results, ensuring that investments are aimed at mutual progress including accelerating ecologically friendly investments, and to start a fourth industrial revolution, creating digital economic and public infrastructure.According to Schwab, they would not change the economic system, but rather improve it to what he considers to be "responsible capitalism". The Brookings Institution described this three-point plan in response to the COVID-19 crisis; response, recovery and reset. For the near term it involves response. In the medium term this involves "rebuilding economic and social activity in a manner that protects public health, promotes societal healing and preserves the environment". The reset is for systems over the long term of establishing through our "collective imagination" a great reset; a "new equilibrium among political, economic, social and environmental systems toward common goals". Fourth Industrial Revolution Klaus Schwab used the concept of a "Fourth Industrial Revolution" in a 2015 article published by Foreign Affairs, and in 2016, the theme of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, was "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution". In his 2015 article, Schwab said that the first industrial revolution was powered by "water and steam" to "mechanize production". Through electrical power, the second industrial revolution introduced mass production. Electronics and information technologies automated the production process in the third industrial revolution. In the fourth industrial revolution the lines between "physical, digital and biological spheres" have become blurred and this current revolution, which began with the digital revolution in the mid-1990s, is "characterized by a fusion of technologies". This fusion of technologies included "fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing."Just before the 2016 annual WEF meeting of the Global Future Councils, Ida Auken, a Danish MP who was also a young global leader and a member of the Council on Cities and Urbanization, wrote an article that was uploaded to the official WEF website and later republished by Forbes in which she imagined how technology could improve our lives by 2030 if the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG) were realized through this fusion of technologies. In the scenario presented by Auken, the emergence and application of new digitized technologies to sectors such as communication, energy, transportation, and accommodation would result in greater access and decreased cost (ultimately leading to a complete elimination of cost), eventually leading to the end of "lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment" as well as other early 21st century crises. By the scenario's 2030 endpoint, anything that had once been a product was now a freely available service, obviating any need for personal ownership of goods or real estate. The article, originally titled "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better", has been criticized as portraying an unrealistic utopia at the cost of privacy. In response, Auken added an author's note in which she said that the article merely represented a potential future scenario rather than any personal utopia of her own and that it was intended to "start a discussion about some of the pros and cons of the current technological development" in a way that she claimed conventional reports could not, while the article itself was renamed to "Here's how life could change in my city by the year 2030". Both versions of the article describe the loss of privacy as undesirable.While the "interest in Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies" had "spiked" during the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer than 9% of companies were using machine learning, robotics, touch screens and other advanced technologies. An 21 October 2020 WEF virtual panel discussed how organizations could harness fourth revolution technologies. On 28 January 2021, Davos Agenda virtual panel discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) will "fundamentally change the world". 63% of CEOs believe that "AI will have a larger impact than the Internet."During 2020, the Great Reset Dialogues resulted in multi-year projects, such as the digital transformation programme where cross-industry stakeholders investigate how the 2020 "dislocative shock" had increased and "accelerated digital transformations". Their report said that, while "digital ecosystems will represent more than $60 trillion in revenue by 2025", "only 9% of executives [in July 2020] say their leaders have the right digital skills". Endorsements Political leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Joe Biden and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have endorsed the idea of "building back better", as has former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Canada In an 11 June 2020 meeting with the then Prince of Wales Charles III and Permanent Representatives to the United Nations from the Commonwealth of Nations, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke regarding the Great Reset initiative. Trudeau said that the Commonwealth, of which Canada is a member country, provides a space for "dialogue and collective action on global issues related to sustainable development" which includes how to "build back stronger, more resilient, and greener economies" in a post-COVID-19 world. This is in line with similar statements made on 28 May 2020, when Trudeau and Andrew Holness, Jamaica's Prime Minister, convened an online meeting of "world leaders and international organizations" to consult on a "global response to the significant economic and human impacts of COVID-19, and advance concrete solutions to the development emergency".In his August presentation entitled "The Great Reset", at the Victoria Forum 2020, the Governor of the Bank of Canada described how COVID-19 is resulting in a "structural shock with broad impact worldwide". He said that governments, investors in the corporate and financial sector—including central banks, and individuals households, need to evaluate risks and prepare for transitions. He recommended the use of scenario analysis, as a way of describing possible and plausible outcomes as we are faced with a "high degree of uncertainty" in terms of climate change, policy, "technological development", and "evolving consumer and investor preferences".In a 29 September 2020 six-minute virtual address to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Trudeau described how "[b]uilding back better" included supporting the most vulnerable, for example by ensuring "equitable access" to COVID-19 vaccine in developing countries, while also working towards reaching the UN's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.The media responded to accusations made by Conservative finance critic MP Pierre Poilievre that Trudeau, who had used the term "reset" in his September UN speech, was "harbouring a very ambitious hidden agenda — not just for Canada but for the world", by saying that the WEF agenda is published on its website. Erin O'Toole, who has been the Leader of the Opposition as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada since 24 August 2020, wrote in a 21 November tweet, "It's hard to believe anyone would look at the carnage caused by COVID-19 and see an opportunity". The message was that "Conservatives want to bring back economic certainty" while Liberals want to "reimagine the economy", which O'Toole described as "a massive and risky experiment". The Post said that Poilievre had launched a petition that gathered 70,000 signatures within three days on 20 November in which he cautioned that the Liberals were secretly planning on "re-engineer[ing] economies and societies to empower the elites at the expense of the people" to remodel Canada to Trudeau's alleged "socialist ideology". Poilievre used phrases from Trudeau's September speech to imply that Trudeau's statement that COVID-19 had "provided an opportunity for a reset" to "reimagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty inequality and climate change", was evidence that Trudeau was part of the great reset conspiracy theory, that had been circulating for some time. United States A 23 January 2021 Financial Times article said that policymakers around the world are anticipating President Biden's "reset on trade, tax and climate". Then President-elect Joe Biden had announced in November 2020, John Kerry would be appointed as U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and Kerry was confirmed in this position on inauguration day, 20 January 2021. Kerry had participated in one of the Great Reset Dialogues on how to rebuild the "social contract" in a post-COVID world. Kerry said that COVID-19 offered a "big moment" that opened the possibility for the Great Reset. He said the WEF would play a significant role in refining how to respond to climate change and inequalities that were "laid bare as a consequence of COVID-19." The Heartland Institute's editorial director expressed concerns that President Joe Biden, elected in November 2020, would "bring the Great Reset to the United States" and that "the country [would] never be the same." Netherlands In December 2021, the Dutch government published its past correspondence with representatives of the World Economic Forum. The documents, which among others called for the Netherlands to take the lead in implementing the Great Reset, were officially made available by the Dutch government. New Zealand In January 2019, at a World Economic Forum "Safeguarding Our Planet" panel discussion alongside world leaders and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern discussed her government's "Wellbeing Budget" and planned environmental changes. These initiatives have been linked to the World Economic Forum Great Reset in related news articles. In April 2020, the New Zealand Finance Minister Grant Robertson discussed a wellbeing focused post COVID "Recovery Budget" and an opportunity for an economical reset. Other initiatives promoted by the pair include an Artificial Intelligence drive in New Zealand related to the WEF "Globalization 4.0" initiatives to shape a global architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Commentary Naomi Klein, in a December 2020 article in The Intercept, described the WEF idea as a "Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie." She said that it was simply a "coronavirus-themed rebranding" of things that the WEF was already doing and that it was an attempt by the rich to make themselves look good. Klein wrote that Schwab had given each meeting at Davos a theme since 2003. "The Great Reset is merely the latest edition of this gilded tradition, barely distinguishable from earlier Davos Big Ideas."In his review of the 2020 book co-authored by Schwab and Malleret—and the Great Reset agenda in general—Ben Sixsmith, a contributor to The Spectator, said that the Great Reset was a set of "bad ideas...adopted internationally by some of the richest and most powerful people in the world". Sixsmith described sections of the book as "earnest", glum, dutiful and bland. Ending with "The Great Reset might be all the more terrifying for not being a sinister plot."Similarly, in his review in the Journal of Value Inquiry of COVID-19: The Great Reset, ethicist Steven Umbrello makes parallel critiques of the agenda. He says that the agenda amounts to nothing other than "a substantial (if not complete) socio-political-economic overhaul" and that such a proposal is a "false dilemma" and that "Schwab and Malleret whitewash a seemingly optimistic future post-Great Reset with buzz words like equity and sustainability even as they functionally jeopardize those admirable goals". 2021 WEF summit "The Great Reset" was scheduled to be the theme of 2021 World Economic Forum summit in Davos, but this was postponed repeatedly to 2022. The 2022 Davos summit theme was "History at a Turning Point", and it was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Conspiracy theories The term "Great Reset", also known as the "Liberal World Order" or "Global Liberal Order", can also refer to a conspiracy theory called the "New World Order". Schwab wrote the preface to a 2010 report of the World Economic Forum's "Global Redesign Initiative", which postulates that a globalized world is best managed by stronger multinational institutions.According to the Transnational Institute (TNI), the WEF is planning to replace a recognised democratic model with a model where a self-selected group of "stakeholders" make decisions on behalf of the people. The think tank summarises that we are increasingly entering a world where gatherings such as Davos are "a silent global coup d'état" to capture governance.In 2019, WEF conducted a simulated Global pandemic called "Event 201" where world leaders discussed what actions would be taken if such a situation were to occur. This initiative triggered a range of diverse conspiracy theories spread by the American right and conservative commentators on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Such theories include claims that the COVID-19 pandemic was created by a secret group in order to seize control of the global economy, that lockdown restrictions were deliberately designed to induce economic meltdown, or that a global elite was attempting to abolish private property while using COVID-19 to enslave humanity with vaccines.According to a 22 November 2020 article as part of BBC's "Reality Check" series debunking the theory, those spreading the Great Reset conspiracy theory claim, without evidence, that a "group of world leaders orchestrated the pandemic to take control of the global economy".A November 2020 article in The Daily Beast said that even before Biden became president, his "incoming White House already ha[d] its first conspiracy theory to deal with"—the Great Reset conspiracy theory. Mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, the BBC, and The Guardian traced the spread of the latest conspiracy theory on the Great Reset, which had integrated anti-lockdown conspiracies, to internet personalities and groups, including Candace Owens, Glenn Beck, Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, and Paul Joseph Watson, the UK-based editor of Alex Jones' website Infowars, where he advanced the New World Order conspiracy theory. Ben Sixsmith wrote that the conspiracy theory had been spread by "fringes of Right-Wing Twitter", as well as by Australia's One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson (a "socialist left Marxist view of the world") and UK conservative writer James Delingpole (a "global communist takeover plan"). However, Sixsmith observed the WEF's partners include such capitalist enterprises as Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, IKEA, Lockheed Martin, Ericsson and Deloitte.Many critics have coalesced other grievances with the WEF into allegations about the Great Reset, compounding both the conspiracy theory and more innocuous criticism. Many detractors commonly cite Ida Auken's article on a potential 2030, as well as a 2016 WEF video in which the article was presented alongside other predictions for 2030 and summarized as "You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy. Whatever you want you'll rent and it'll be delivered by drone", as evidence of the Great Reset having malicious intent.An October 2020 article by Snopes traced the origins of a chain email posted on conspiracy forums from a member of a non-existent committee within the Liberal Party of Canada that leaked Canada's secret "COVID Global Reset Plan" to the QAnon-dedicated "Q Research" board on 8chan.By 17 November 2020, a short video of Trudeau's speech in which he described key points of the concept of an economic "reset" had gone viral, as it reignited fervor over the Great Reset conspiracy theory that had taken on a new life with the launching of the forum in May. By November 2020, Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada lamented on his webpage on 17 November that he was the only Canadian politician along with Pierre Poilievre and Colin Carrie, an MP, speaking up against the globalist threat with Trudeau as the "world's most prominent defender" of this Great Reset. Other critics included Canadian conservative political commentators such as Ezra Levant and Alberta's Premier at that time Jason Kenney. They claimed that Trudeau's rhetoric resembled that of the Great Reset conspiracy. Conservative Spencer Fernando stated that, "We want our lives to get back to normal... Instead they offer only more fear, more control, more centralization, and a reshaping of our lives and our economy without even asking us." When Poilievre circulated a petition to "Stop the Reset", Le Devoir headlined an article saying that the Conservative Party was embracing conspiracy theories. The Toronto Star editorial board criticized Poilievre for "giving oxygen" to the conspiracy theory, with some suggesting his post was related to a possible federal election.A May 2022 article in The Globe and Mail said that "WEF conspiracy theory" was being spread to "Canada's main streets" and was brought up during the leadership race of the Conservative Party of Canada. When Schwab "brags" about Canadian politicians' connections to the WEF, this feeds into "theories of cabals". In 2021, when Schwab said that "half of Canada's cabinet were Young Global Leaders" —including Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner—conspiracy theorists interpreted that to mean that Canadian cabinet ministers are "minions" controlled by Schwab. The article called on politicians in Canada who had been "flirting" with the Great Reset conspiracy theories through Twitter—Conservative leadership candidates Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis quell the distrust by admitting that "there is no such cabal". In September 2022, CBC News tracked the spread of related disinformation and conspiracy theories in Canada.On 13 December 2020, Australian advertising executive Rowan Dean promoted the conspiracy theory on Sky News Australia, claiming that "This Great Reset is as serious and dangerous a threat to our prosperity – to your prosperity and your freedom – as we have faced in decades".The conspiracy theory has also been disseminated by Russian propaganda outlets. According to Oliver Kamm, in a 2020 article for the CapX website: "The propaganda apparatus of the Putin regime has for many months published wild allegations from obscure bloggers that the Great Reset is code for oligarchs to amass wealth and control populations." In 2021, the British anti-disinformation organization Logically reported that the website The Exposé has promoted Great Reset conspiracy theories framed as breaking news since its establishment in November 2020.Great Reset conspiracy theories were a theme in the 2022 anti-vaccine film Died Suddenly which appeared on the Stew Peters Network channel on the Rumble website. Books Series of books by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Mallaret published by WEF's imprint. See also Great Replacement Great Resignation Marshall Plan References External links World Economic Forum (2020). "Podcasts" (collection including "The Great Reset"). World Economic Forum (2020). "The Great Reset" (official initiative website).

climate change and cities

Climate change and cities are deeply connected. Cities are one of the greatest contributors and likely best opportunities for addressing climate change. Cities are also one of the most vulnerable parts of the human society to the effects of climate change, and likely one of the most important solutions for reducing the environmental impact of humans. More than half of the world's population is in cities, consuming a large portion of food and goods produced outside of cities. The increase of urban population growth is one of the main factors in air-quality problems. In the year 2016, 31 mega-cities reported having at least 10 million in their population, 8 of which surpassed 20 million people. However, secondary cities - small to medium size cities (500,000 to 1 million) are rapidly increasing in number and are some of the fastest growing urbanizing areas in the world further contributing to climate change impacts. The UN projects that 68% of the world population will live in urban areas by 2050. Hence, cities have a significant influence on construction and transportation—two of the key contributors to global warming emissions. Moreover, because of processes that create climate conflict and climate refugees, city areas are expected to grow during the next several decades, stressing infrastructure and concentrating more impoverished peoples in cities.Because of the high density and effects like the urban heat island affect, weather changes due to climate change are likely to greatly effect cities, exacerbating existing problems, such as air pollution, water scarcity, and heat illness in the metropolitan areas. Studies have shown that if body temperature exceeds 39 °C for a period of time, serious heat stroke may occur. Some of the other extreme weather conditions caused by climate change include extreme floods, deathly snowstorms, ice storms, heat waves, droughts, and hurricanes, which are often deathly and harmful. Studies have shown that heat waves are three times more likely to occur and have become more intense since the 1960s. According to World Health Organization, from 1998-2017, heatwaves cost the lives of over 166,000 people. Moreover, because most cities have been built on rivers or coastal areas, cities are frequently vulnerable to the subsequent effects of sea level rise, which cause flooding and erosion, and those effects are deeply connected with other urban environmental problems, like subsidence and aquifer depletion. A report by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group described consumption based emissions as having significantly more impact than production-based emissions within cities. The report estimates that 85% of the emissions associated with goods within a city is generated outside of that city. Climate change adaptation and mitigation investments in cities will be important in reducing the impacts of some of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions: for example, increased density allows for redistribution of land use for agriculture and reforestation, improving transportation efficiencies, and greening construction (largely due to cement's outsized role in climate change and improvements in sustainable construction practices and weatherization).In the most recent past, increasing urbanization has also been proposed as a phenomenon that has a reducing effect on the global rate of carbon emission primarily because with urbanization comes technical prowess which can help drive sustainability. Lists of high impact climate change solutions tend to include city-focused solutions; for example, Project Drawdown recommends several major urban investments, including improved bicycle infrastructure, building retrofitting, district heating, public transit, and walkable cities as important solutions. There are many cities that are attempting to reduce the effect of urban heat islands by painting the roads white. Temperatures on the roads with the coat were ~12 F less than roads without in Phoenix.Because of this, the international community has formed coalitions of cities (such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI) and policy goals, such as Sustainable Development Goal 11 ("sustainable cities and communities"), to activate and focus attention on these solutions. Currently, in 2022, there is a deterioration in the progress of the goal. There is limited progress on making cities and human settlements more appropriate to live in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pacific island countries. There is fair progress in Central and Southern Asia and Eastern and South-Eastern Asian. However, it has been achieved in Developed countries. Emissions Cities globally house half of the world's people, consume two-thirds of the world's energy and 70% of its natural resources, and contribute more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. Cities and regions are also particularly vulnerable to climate-related hazards and pollution. Climate danger and pollution also disproportionately affect the poor, increasing inequality. With half of the world population residing in urban areas, there will be an increase in energy usage that comes with Climate Change. One of these will be AC, since climate change comes with higher temperatures many people will start needed more cooling systems, so this results in more air conditioning and newer models of cooling systems. Although more people are living in cities which can result in shortages, cities actually emit less carbon than rural areas since house sizes are smaller, more gas heat over propane is used, less carbon fueled transportation is used, and more people share communal spaces such as laundry rooms and kitchens. While cities create some problems, it is important to realize that the denser population creates less carbon emissions which benefits climate change. New policies now focus on the reduction of emissions from coal-fired power plants as well as increasing motor vehicle efficiency.With regard to methods of emissions counting cities can be challenging as production of goods and services within their territory can be related either to domestic consumption or exports. Conversely the citizens also consume imported goods and services. To avoid double counting in any emissions calculation it should be made clear where the emissions are to be counted: at the site of production or consumption. This may be complicated given long production chains in a globalized economy. Moreover, the embodied energy and consequences of large-scale raw material extraction required for renewable energy systems and electric vehicle batteries is likely to represent its own complications – local emissions at the site of utilization are likely to be very small but life-cycle emissions can still be significant. Field of study The research perspective of cities and climate change, started in the 1990s as the international community became increasingly aware of the potential impacts of climate change. Urban studies scholars Michael Hebbert and Vladmir Jankovic argue that this field of research grew out of a larger body of research on the effects of urban development and living on the environment starting as early as the 1950s. Since then, research has indicated relationships between climate change and sustainable urbanization: increase employment cities reduces poverty and increases efficiencies.Two international assessments have been published by the Urban Climate Change Research Network at The Earth Institute at Columbia University. The first of which was published in, the first of which (ARC3.1) was published in 2011, and the second of which (ARC3.2) was published in 2018. These papers act as summaries of the scholarship for the field similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. A third report is being developed as of 2020. Cities as laboratories Cities are good subjects for study because they can invest heavily in large-scale experimental policies that could be scaled elsewhere (such as San Diego's advanced urban planning practices which could be applied elsewhere in the United States). Multiple scholars approach this in different ways, but describe this "urban laboratory" environment for testing a wide variety of practices. for example the book Life After Carbon documents a number of cities which act as "urban climate innovation laboratories". These cities as laboratories offer an efficient way to detect climate change by looking at the effects of the greenhouse effect on rooftops, street trees, and other environmental variables within a city setting. Though this method of looking at the heat waves effects in cities, it will offer a way of seeing the problem of the effect of heat that will be solved by cities within the future. Health impacts Climate change has been observed to have caused impact on human health and livelihoods in urban settings. Urbanization commonly occurs in cities with low and middle income communities that have high population density and a lack of understanding of how climate change, which degrades their environment, is affecting their health. Within urban settings, multiple climate and non-climate hazards impact cities which magnify the damages done to human health. For example, heatwaves have intensified in cities due to the combination of multiple factors adding to climate change. With heatwaves constantly increasing temperatures in cities, it has caused many illnesses such as heat stroke or heat cramps. The rise of temperatures due to climate change have also changed the distribution of diseases from mosquitoes, causing a rising rate of infectious diseases. Alongside infectious diseases and heatwaves, climate change can create natural hazards such as floods, droughts, and storms due to rising sea levels. It also harms those even more who have COVID-19, asthma, illnesses, etc. The impacts on human health in urban settings is more profound in economically and socially marginalized urban residents.: SPM-11  Low-income and remote populations are more vulnerable to physical hazards, undernutrition, diarrheal and other infectious diseases, and the health consequences of displacement. Urban resilience The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines resilience as "the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity of self-organization, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change." One of the most important notions emphasized in urban resiliency theory is the need for urban systems to increase their capacity to absorb environmental disturbances. By focusing on three generalizable elements of the resiliency movement, Tyler and Moench's urban resiliency framework serves as a model that can be implemented for local planning on an international scale. The first element of urban climate resiliency focuses on "systems' or the physical infrastructure embedded in urban systems. A critical concern of urban resiliency is linked to the idea of maintaining support systems that in turn enable the networks of provisioning and exchange for populations in urban areas. These systems concern both physical infrastructure in the city and ecosystems within or surrounding the urban center; while working to provide essential services like food production, flood control, or runoff management. For example, city electricity, a necessity of urban life, depends on the performance of generators, grids, and distant reservoirs. The failure of these core systems jeopardizes human well-being in these urban areas, with that being said, it is crucial to maintain them in the face of impending environmental disturbances. Societies need to build resiliency into these systems in order to achieve such a feat. Resilient systems work to "ensure that functionality is retained and can be re-instated through system linkages" despite some failures or operational disturbances. Ensuring the functionality of these important systems is achieved through instilling and maintaining flexibility in the presence of a "safe failure." Resilient systems achieve flexibility by making sure that key functions are distributed in a way that they would not all be affected by a given event at one time, what is often referred to as spatial diversity, and has multiple methods for meeting a given need, what is often referred to as functional diversity. The presence of safe failures also plays a critical role in maintaining these systems, which work by absorbing sudden shocks that may even exceed design thresholds. Environmental disturbances are certainly expected to challenge the dexterity of these systems, so the presence of safe failures almost certainly appears to be a necessity. Further, another important component of these systems is bounce-back ability. In the instance where dangerous climatic events affect these urban centers, recovering or "bouncing-back" is of great importance. In fact, in most disaster studies, urban resilience is often defined as "the capacity of a city to rebound from destruction." This idea of bounce-back for urban systems is also engrained in governmental literature of the same topic. For example, the former government's first Intelligence and Security Coordinator of the United States described urban resilience as "the capacity to absorb shocks and to bounce back into functioning shape, or at the least, sufficient resilience to prevent...system collapse." Keeping these quotations in mind, bounce-back discourse has been and should continue to be an important part of urban climate resiliency framework. Other theorists have critiqued this idea of bounce-back, citing this as privileging the status quo, rather advocating the notion of 'bouncing forward', permitting system evolution and improvement.The next element of urban climate resiliency focuses on the social agents (also described as social actors) present in urban centers. Many of these agents depend on the urban centers for their very existence, so they share a common interest of working towards protecting and maintaining their urban surroundings. Agents in urban centers have the capacity to deliberate and rationally make decisions, which plays an important role in climate resiliency theory. One cannot overlook the role of local governments and community organizations, which will be forced to make key decisions with regards to organizing and delivering key services and plans for combating the impending effects of climate change. Perhaps most importantly, these social agents must increase their capacities with regards to the notions of "resourcefulness and responsiveness. Responsiveness refers to the capacity of social actors and groups to organize and re-organize, as well as the ability to anticipate and plan for disruptive events. Resourcefulness refers to the capacity of social actors in urban centers to mobilize varying assets and resources in order to take action. Urban centers will be able to better fend for themselves in the heat of climatic disturbances when responsiveness and resourcefulness is collectively achieved in an effective manner. Regional and national differences Cities in different parts of the world face different, unique challenges and opportunities in the face of climate change. However, one linking factor is their inevitable adherence to "Dominant global patterns of urbanization and industrialization" which often catalyzes "large-scale modification of the drivers for hydrologic and biogeochemical processes". Urbanization and industrialization patterns are particularly evident for regions such as Asia, Africa, and South America, regions that are currently understood as experiencing related rapid shifts in population and economic prowess. Beginning in the 2020s, a number of cities worldwide began creating Chief Heat Officer positions to organize and manage work counteracting the urban heat island effect. Africa Africa is urbanizing faster than any other continent and it is estimated that by 2030, more than one billion Africans will live in cities. This rapid urbanization, coupled with the many interlinked and complex challenges as a result of climate change, pose a significant barrier to Africa's sustainable development. Much of this Urban Development is informal, with urban residents settling in informal settlements and slums often on the outskirts of cities. This phenomenon suggests that lower-income countries should be targeted in initiatives to increase infrastructural sustainability. A recent study found that in "countries with per capita incomes of below USD 15,000 per year (at PPP-adjusted 2011 USD) carbon pricing has, on average, progressive distributional effects" and that "carbon pricing tends to be regressive in countries with relatively higher income," indicating that carbon taxing and shifting carbon prices might incentivize governments to shift to green energy as the baseline energy consumption method for developing peri-urban areas. Although urbanization is seen in a positive light, the effects of it can be negative on those being urbanized. African cities are exposed to multiple climate threats including floods, drought, water stress, sea level rise, heat waves, storms and cyclones, and the related effects of food insecurity and disease outbreaks like Cholera and Malaria from floods and droughts.Climate impacts in rural areas, such as desertification, biodiversity loss, soil erosion and declines in agricultural productivity, are also driving rural-urban migration of poor rural communities to cities. To achieve sustainable development and climate resilience in cities in Africa, and elsewhere, it is important to consider these urban-rural interlinkages. Increasing attention is being paid to the important role of peri-urban areas in urban climate resilience, particularly regarding the ecosystem services that these areas provide and which are rapidly deteriorating in Sub-Saharan Africa. Peri-urban ecosystems can provide functions such as controlling floods, reducing the urban heat island effect, purifying air and water, supporting food and water security, and managing waste. Asia China China currently has one of the fastest-growing industrial economies in the world, and the effects of this rapid urbanization have not been without climate change implications. The country is one of the largest by land area, and so the most prominent region regarding urbanization is the Yangtze River Delta, or YRD, as it is considered "China's most developed, dynamic, densely populated and concentrated industrial area" and is allegedly "growing into an influential world-class metropolitan area and playing an important role in China's economic and social development". In this way urbanization in China could be understood as intimately related to not only the functionality of their economic system, but the society therein; something that makes climate change mitigation an intersectional issue concerning more than simply infrastructure.The data show that "[h]igh-administrative-level cities had stronger adaptation, lower vulnerability, and higher readiness than ordinary prefecture-level cities." China's large-scale population migration to the Yangtze River Delta and agglomeration due to rapid urbanization. Blind expansion in the construction of eastern coastal cities due to population pressure is even more unfavorable for urban climate governance. Historically, data has shown that "climate change has been shaping the Delta and its socio-economic development" and that such socio-economic development in the region "has shaped its geography and built environment, which, however, are not adaptable to future climate change". Thus, it has been stated that "It is imperative to adopt policies and programs to mitigate and adapt to climate change" in the YRD, specifically, policies that are aimed at reducing the impact of particular climate threats based on the YRD's geography. This includes the region's current infrastructure in the mitigation of flood disasters and promotion of efficient energy usage at the local level.A national-level policy analysis done on the drylands of northern China presents the notion of "sustainable urban landscape planning (SULP)" that specifically aims to "avoid occupying important natural habitats and corridors, prime croplands, and floodplains". The research indicates that adopting SULPs moving into the future can "effectively manage the impacts of climate change on water resource capacity and reduce water stress" not only within the northern China experimental model but for "drylands around the world". South Asia South Asia's urban population grew by 130 million between 2001 and 2011—more than the entire population of Japan—and is poised to rise by almost 250 million by 2030. But, urbanisation in South Asia is characterized by higher poverty, slums, pollution and crowding and congestion. At least 130 million South Asians—more than the entire population of Mexico—live in informal urban settlements characterized by poor construction, insecure tenure and underserviced plots. Despite being a water-rich zone, climate projection models suggest that by 2050, between 52 and 146 million people living in South Asia could face increased water scarcity due to climate change, accounting for 18% of the global population exposed to water scarcity. Urban water access is particularly critical in South Asia as it remains home to more than 40% of the world's poor (living on less than US$1.25 per day) and 35% of the world's undernourished. A study done of selected Himalayan cities in India and Nepal found that none of them have a robust system of water planning and governance to tackle the water challenges emerging from rapid urbanization and climate change. Khulna, Bangladesh is also facing many issues surrounding water insecurity as well. As sea levels begin to rise, due to climate change, salinity will move inwards, reducing the amount of safe drinking water available to the people of Khulna. There are plans being put in place to make the quality of water in cities better, but this decreases the availability to those in the informal urban areas. As of now they rely on using on as little water as possible, specifically for their crops. North and South America Brazil Areas of South America were also cited in recent studies that highlight the dangers of urbanization on both local and transnational climates, and for a country like Brazil, one of the highest populated nations in the world as well as the majority holder of the Amazon rainforest. The United Nations Development Programme highlights the Amazon rainforest as serving a "key function in the global climate systems," granted its profound usefulness in capturing CO2 emissions. UN research has indicated that because of Brazil's climate being so intimately reliant on the health of the rainforest, deforestation measures are currently seen as having adverse effects on the rainforest's "natural adaptive capacities" towards extreme climate shifts, thus predisposing Brazil to what are expected to be increased volatility in temperature and rainfall patterns. More specifically, it is expected that if global warming continues on its current path without vast mitigation strategies being put in place, what is currently predicted to be an average 2 °C increase in temperature at the global scale could look like a 4 °C within Brazil and the surrounding Amazon region. Rapid urbanization in other countries will also result in higher need for resources. This includes resources that will cause further deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest to obtain. This will inevitably create a lot more Climate issues, as we continue to lose more trees in the Amazon rainforest.Issues of climate change in Brazil do not start and end at what has already been done with regards to urbanization; it is very much an issue rooted in socioeconomic contexts. Factor analysis and multilevel regression models sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service revealed that for all of Brazil, "income inequality significantly predicts higher levels of a key component of vulnerability in urban Brazilian municipalities" to flood hazards.The future of Brazil's effect of climate is likely to change since though its NDC Brazil has made the commitment to lower their Greenhouse gas emissions by 37% below their 2005 levels by 2025. This will likely serve as a challenge within the cities of Brazil since 86% of the whole countries population lives in the urban areas, and this is likely to increase to 92% by 2050. As for deforestation, since Brazil is home to the Amazon rainforest, Brazil has always had a high deforestation rate. Brazils deforestation was at a high in 2004 with having 27.77 thousand kilometers of forest being destroyed, having a low in 2012 with only 4.57 thousand kilometers of forest being destroyed, and since then it has been back on the incline with 10.85 thousand kilometers of forest being destroyed. United States The United States, as one of the largest industrialized nations in the world, also has issues regarding infrastructural insufficiencies linked to climate change. Take a study of Las Vegas topology as an indicator. Research that created three Land use/land cover maps, or LULC maps, of Las Vegas in 1900 (albeit hypothetical), 1992, and 2006 found that "urbanization in Las Vegas produces a classic urban heat island (UHI) at night but a minor cooling trend during the day". In addition to temperature changes in the city, "increased surface roughness" caused by the addition of skyscrapers/closely packed buildings in its own way were found "to have a mechanical effect of slowing down the climatological wind Windfield over the urban area". Cities in the United States that are heavily industrialized, such as Los Angeles, are responsible for a large number of greenhouse emissions due to the amount of transportation needed for millions of people living in one city. Such unnatural environmental phenomena furthers the notion that urbanization has a role in determining local climate, although researchers acknowledge that more studies need to be conducted in the field. Cities play an important role in investing in climate innovation in the United States. Often local climate policies in cities, preempt larger policies pursued by the states or federal government. For example, following the United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement a coalition of cities, under the banner of Mayors National Climate Action Agenda. A 2020 study of US cities found that 45 of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. had made commitments by 2017, which led to a reduction of 6% of U.S. emissions by 2020. Clean Air Act Since the Clean Air Act's passing in 1963 as a landmark piece of legislation aimed at controlling air quality at the national level, research has indicated that "the mean wet deposition flux... has decreased in the U.S. over time" since its enactment. Even then, however, the same research indicated that measurements in the amounts of chemical pollutants contaminating rain, snow, and fog "follows an exponential probability density function at all sites". Such a finding suggests that alleged variability in rainfall patterns is the likely driving factor for the study's seemingly promising results, as opposed to there being a clear significance stemming from the policy change. It is within this context that while beneficial, the Clean Air Act alone cannot stand as the only firm rationale for climate policies in the United States moving forward. Mayors National Climate Action Agenda International policy Several major international communities of cities and policies have been formed to include more cities in climate action. C40 SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy See also List of most-polluted cities by particulate matter concentration Climate change in New York City Climate change in Washington, D.C. Climate change in Australia by city Climate change in London Incorporation of nature within a city Urban heat island Zero-carbon city References External links UN Climate Change Course on Cities and Climate Change

climate change in france

Climate change in France has caused some the greatest annual temperature increases registered in any country in Europe. The 2019 heat wave saw record temperatures of 46.0 °C. Heat waves and other extreme weather events are expected to increase with continued climate change. Other expected environmental impacts include increased floods due to both sea level rise and increased glacier melt. These environmental changes will lead to shifts in ecosystems and affect local organisms. Climate change will also cause economic losses in France, particularly in the agriculture and fisheries sectors.The Paris Agreement on climate change, under France's presidency, was negotiated and agreed in 2015 at COP21. France subsequently set a law to have a net zero atmospheric greenhouse gas emission (carbon neutrality) by 2050. Recently, the French government has received criticism for not doing enough to combat climate change, and in 2021 was found guilty in court for its insufficient efforts. Greenhouse gas emissions France strives to have reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below what it was in 1990 by 2030. The French government hopes to reach a net emission of zero by 2040.The table below shows the annual total emission of greenhouse gas in France in Megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2). Values for EU27 with the United Kingdom (previously EU28) as well as the values for the world are included to compare trends in emission. The four main emitting sectors in France are transport, agriculture, buildings and industry. In 2017, the French industry (including energy supply and other manufacturing) was responsible for 46% of the total CO2 emission, a number that has been fairly steady since around 2014. The industries and agriculture are responsible for just 20% each of France's CO2 emissions.For the total CO2 emission in 2018, France ranked number 19 in the world with a total of 330Mt CO2 emitted, just below Poland with 340Mt CO2 emitted and the United Kingdom with 370Mt CO2 emitted.The table below shows the annual emission of greenhouse gas in France in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita (tCO2/capita). The per capita emission of France in 2019 was just below the average for the world. In 2018, France ranked number 17 in the world with 5.19 tonnes CO2 emitted per capita. Its neighbouring countries the United Kingdom (5.62T CO2/capita) and Germany (9.12T CO2/capita) ranked 14 and 9, respectively. Impacts on the natural environment The current rise in temperature is changing the natural environment in France, from more precipitation during spring and winter to heat waves and fast melting glaciers. All these impacts are only expected to get worse with the increasing temperature. Temperature and weather changes During the 20th century, the average annual temperature in mainland France rose by 0.95 °C. Meanwhile, the average annual global temperature rose by 0.74 °C during that same time period. Meaning that France saw an average temperature increase that was around 30% higher compared to the average global temperature rise. If this trend continues by the time the average global temperature has reached 2 °C it would mean that the average temperature in France has increased with almost 3 °C. In present day, warmer summers and cooler winters are already getting more pronounced leading to an increase of 5–35% in autumn and winter rainfall as well as a decrease in summer rainfall, the latter combined with an increase in temperature, could increase the risk for more severe drought events. The Mediterranean part of the country saw an increase of around 0.5 °C per decade in the period of 1979–2005, making it the part of the country that is experiencing the highest increase in temperature and highest decrease in annual precipitation.Temperature rise in the French Alps is even more extensive than in the rest of the country, and by 2018 approached a 2 °C average increase compared to the industrial revolution with an accelerating increase in the past few decades. Temperature records The hottest year in France on record was in 2020 with an average temperature of 14.0 °C which beat the last record of 13.9 °C in 2018. The all-time hottest day was recorded on the 28th of June 2019, a day that saw a lot of new records during the 2019 European heat wave. With the hottest place being in Gallargues-le-Monteux in Southern France with a staggering 45.9 °C. Due to an increase in global average temperature France has been hit by several extreme heat waves over the past few years, this is because of hot air passing over Europe from North Africa. Heat waves With a decrease in summer precipitation and a global increase of average temperature, heat wave events like the 2018 European heat wave and the 2019 European heat wave set new summer temperature records and are only expected to get more intense and common due to climate change. Sea-level rise With an increase in glacier and polar ice cap melting, sea level rise is expected to increase, affecting both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts. Future climate projections predict that sea levels around France will increase by at least 1 meter by the year 2100. Low coasts will be in danger of erosion and being permanently submerged, heavily threatening coastal infrastructure, new coasts will be under threat from temporal flooding, an estimated 140,000 homes and 80,000 people are located in the zone that is at risk for permanent submersion by 2100. Glaciers An increase in mean annual temperature causes glacial retreat. In the European Alps it is estimated that around half of glacial ice had disappeared between 1850 and 1975. Another 30–40% from what remained was estimated to have disappeared between the time period 1980–2005. According to future climate models, what remains of the glaciers in the Alps as of the year 2100 compared to 2017, could be nothing more than one-third in a best case scenario regardless if the global carbon emission hits zero. If these emissions continue to rise those glaciers will be gone by 2100. At the Mont Blanc altitudes between 1500 and 2500 meters saw a total of 25 more snow-free days when comparing the years 1964–75 and 2005–2015. An increasing temperature is the primary cause of this rapid snow melting from glaciers, making more ground become exposed to sunlight which changes the albedo of the surrounding area. This secondary cause creates in its turn a positive feedback effect of more extensive heat and therefore promoting even more glacial and snow melt. A rapid rise in melting glaciers increases the risk of avalanches, floods, mudslides and landslides. A reduction in melting glacial water causes problems for local water reservoirs used for energy, agriculture and daily use of water. This causes high risk as parts of the Alps are densely populated. Flooding France is in present-day not under serious threat of flooding because of climate change. However, with an expected sea-level rise, coastal regions are likely to get effect by coastal flooding. Other than that future climate projections have difficulties estimating where and when an increase in flooding events might occur due to high uncertainties in weather patterns. High altitude areas, like the French Alps, are most likely to see more flooding events due to melting glaciers and because of mountains being good at capturing rain from the air. Ecosystems More than half of all land in France belongs to agriculture or urban areas, both of which are generally biodiverse poor ecosystems. The most numerous naturally occurring ecosystem is forests. In France around 27% of land and 36% of marine environments fall under some form of protection, like Natura 2000 or the Habitats directive. Current conservation plans to help existing organisms and ecosystems cope with a changing climate is to reduce any other forms of pressure like human interference in order to promote the resilience in those ecosystems as well as more protected areas and stricter rules, legislation and management. Biodiversity Plant communities affect the biophysical properties of their surrounding soil through interactions with both microbial communities and animals as well as through adding soil from decaying plant matter and root growth which holds both water and soil in place. With a shift in climate these communities will have to move as well. For plant communities living in the Alps, this is more problematic as according to one source a roughly 100 meter change in altitude corresponds to a difference of 0.5 °C.A higher winter temperature could also be devastating for many forms of hibernating wildlife, as an early spike in temperature would promote hibernating organisms like cold-blooded reptiles and amphibians to wake up, as well as cause plants to flower early. Most of these organisms would not survive if a late winter cold snap were to hit the area. An example is the blueberry, which is sensitive to frost and can therefore become severely damaged if its productivity starts to early. Impacts on people Economic impacts Agriculture Climate change is expected to bring longer, warmer summers and less precipitation to France, which will severely affect many of the crops used in agriculture. Due to the warmer weather, the evaporation will be higher and less rain is expected. As most crops currently grown in France are to some extent sensitive to drought, there will likely be a higher need for irrigation, leading to a higher cost of crop production. Extreme weather events and droughts can also eliminate crop yields for some years. The warm weather, although it will prolong the growing season, will also shorten the crop growth phases and crops such as oilseed and cereal will hence experience a shorter grain filling phase, resulting in smaller size. The smaller size also means a smaller yield volume, resulting in the need to expand current agriculture or import additional crop. Livestock will also be affected by the warmer climate. Animals kept indoors will have a higher need for ventilation and cooling systems, and animals let outdoors will need shelter to protect from the sun during grazing, and likely need a higher water supply available, increasing the cost of production. The biggest impact on livestock production will possibly be through fodder yield reduction. The warmer weather will alter the seasonal growth, decreasing the summer yields, while likely giving an increase in spring and autumn yields, resulting in a skewed and variable fodder availability. Due to the effects of climate change on livestock, and the effect of livestock on climate change, it is likely necessary to rethink the livestock system. Vineyards Along with Italy and Spain, France is one of the largest wine producers in the world, with vineyards found in all regions of France. Wine production is the second largest trade in France, after aeronautics. In 2017, French wine production had a profit of 8.24 billion Euros (9.97bn USD).High temperatures during the grape maturation period can lead to a reduced quality of the grapes. Drier weather also causes a decreased annual yield, unless more efficient irrigation systems are implemented on vineyards, with the effect of increasing the production costs. The quality of the wine may also decrease, as the warmer temperature-effects on the grapes gives it a higher sugar content, and hence higher alcohol degree, but also a lower acid content.But the warmer climate also allows for new opportunities, for example moving wine production further north. Existing vineyards located in the north of France, such as those in Champagne, are expected to experience optimal conditions for wine production. Fisheries There are a lot of uncertainties about how the future fish stocks along the French coasts will behave. Changes in migratory patterns, trophic interactions, vulnerability to fishing pressure and general fish stock production are difficult to predict as they depend on more factors than just the changing climate. More recent observations report variable effects on different species. In the Bay of Biscay, for example, the anchovy catches are increasing due to a warmer climate, whereas catches of pollack and monkfish are declining. Conversely, France has a fish consumption that exceeds their catch volumes, and already import fish to sustain their demand. With altered future catches, the need for imported fish may increase, imposing a bigger expense than currently. France is one of the biggest producers of marine molluscs in Europe, farming both oysters and mussels. With climate change, the ocean will take up increased quantities of CO2, resulting in ocean acidification. Calcifying organisms, such as shellfish, will have a harder time producing their skeletal structures, hence decreasing growth rates and potentially increasing mortality. This could lead to significant economic loss for France. For all of Europe, the predicted economic losses due to mollusc production damage is calculated to annually be almost 0.9 billion Euro (1bn USD) by 2100. Infrastructure Climate change, bringing increased temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, will highly impact the French infrastructure. Temperature increases the degradation of asphalt, and flooding and big rain events cause the risk of dislodging parts of the road. Railways may also be dislodged, and high temperatures may further make the tracks expand and buckle, causing the need for reparation. Tunnels and other low infrastructures will also be severely affected by extreme rain events and flooding. All together, this will slow down transports while increasing operating maintenance and costs. Flooding due to sea-level rise will further affect infrastructure in coastal areas. The water rise will cause loss of roads and buildings, and further cause people to lose their houses and jobs. Increased expenses will come either from building structures to increase flood protection, or from redeveloping and rebuilding transport infrastructures and relocating people in the affected areas. Health impacts France is one of the countries worst affected by European heat waves. During the heat wave of 2003, where big parts of France measured over 40 °C (104 °F), closer to 15,000 people died due to the elevated temperatures. Up until that year, heat wave events had been underestimated as a threat to the French public health. Since then, local authorities have undertaken measures to be more prepared. During the heat waves of 2018 and 2019, despite the latter reaching record high temperatures of 45.9 °C (114.6 °F), fatalities reached approximately 1,500 people each year. With climate change, heat waves are expected to get more intense and frequent in France, and the number of fatalities with it. Deaths due to air pollution has likely been undervalued in France. Premature deaths due to pulmonary diseases and stroke were previously estimated to 16,000 fatalities annually. More recently, the premature deaths due to the levels of particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrous oxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) were calculated to be over 40,000 people annually. Climate change affects the flow and development of air pollutants and is likely to decrease the over-all health of the population, though it is very difficult to predict what the exact effects will be.With a warmer climate, like that brought about by climate change, there is a risk of an increase in vector- borne diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever and malaria. Leishmaniasis, a disease transmitted by sandflies, is currently found only in the Mediterranean area, but could spread northwards with a warmer climate. While a warmer climate will likely bring more favourable conditions for the vectors, the exact effects or the extent of the spread also depend on factors such as socioeconomic status and land-use as well as available treatments. Mitigation Energy transition In 2017, the industrial sectors were responsible for 17.6% of the French total energy consumption, with the non industrial sectors standing for the remaining 82.4% of the total energy consumption.The total energy supply of France in 2019 relied mainly on nuclear power (just over 40%) and oil (30%). The use of coal accounted for only 5% of the total energy supply and natural gas for just over 15%. The rest came from renewable sources, such as biofuel and hydropower.The Energy Transition Ministry is increasing wind power. Solar power is also being increased so the country will depend on both nuclear and renewables.France has set a goal to get 32% of its total consumed energy from renewable sources by 2030. They also hope to reduce the share of nuclear power for generating electricity from 70% to 50% until 2030 (in 2020, it is still approximately 70%). France further intends to close its last coal plant by 2022, which would make them the fourth coal-free state in Europe, following after Belgium, Austria and Sweden. All efforts are in line with a target of carbon neutrality law, which France hopes to reach by 2050.France has made an effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the power and transport sector, where they have almost phased out their coal usage and reduced the number of gas cars. Unfortunately, about 90% of all road traffic still runs on oil products, and they have not managed to reduce the number of vehicles in favour of public transportation, or biking. Within the building sector, new houses are built to be low-consuming of energy, and France hopes that the construction of energy-plus houses will be standard after 2021. The industry sector is doing a good job in reducing its carbon emissions, but are still not able to keep their limit when it comes to for example energy usage in installations for metals, minerals and the waste management industry. Policies and legislation The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) are set by the European Union, as an implementation of the Paris Agreement. The overall goal is to reach a 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 2005. According to this, France should carry out adaptive measures to reduce its emissions by 37% until 2030, compared to 2005. Further, France has set a law to achieve climate neutrality in 2050.France is currently insufficient in its efforts to reach the goal, which led to a government lawsuit in 2021.In December 2022 the European Commission approved a law forbidding short-haul flights in France, if people can pass the distance on a train in 2.5 hours. Greenpeace demanded to extend the law, by following the advice of the European Commission to include connecting flights. Greenpeace cited a report according to which, if it will be 6 hours instead of 2.5, it will cut global greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to 3.5 million tonnes CO2 annually.According to the French president Emmanuel Macron France will end sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 to meet its targets under the Paris climate accord. The Netherlands is expected to have the same ban by 2025 and some parts of Germany will have a phase-out by 2030. In 2021, French lawmakers also set out to ban domestic flights where train rides taking under two and a half hours are available, in an effort to reduce CO2 emissions. International cooperation France hosted the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, where the landmark Paris Agreement was negotiated and agreed. The agreement forms a key international framework for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Adaptation To adapt to climate change, France has made a National Adaptation Plan. They are currently on the second one, called The Second National Adaptation Plan for Climate Change (NAP-2 or PNACC-2), which is in place from 2018 until 2022. The plan is based on the first plan that was in place from 2011 to 2015, and was revised with a national consultation involving 300 representatives and experts. The plan includes adaption strategies for the main economic and social sectors in the country as well as for the different territories in France. Society and culture Lawsuits In 2021 the French government was found guilty of not keeping its pledges to reduce greenhouse gases. A court in France convicted the government after four non-governmental organizations (NGO's) had collected 2.3 million signatures from the French people for their petition, which is the largest amount of collected signatures in history. NGO's include Greenpeace France and Oxfam France. The petition was created to counteract the current lack of action the French government was doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite having promised to reduce its GHG emission with 40% by the year 2030 and going carbon neutral by 2050. The NGO's accused the government of currently dealing with the climate problem in a pace that is going twice as slow. Between the years 2018-19 the GHG emission in France dropped by 0.9% instead of the annual target of 1.5% until the year 2025. Each organisation was awarded a symbolic €1 by the French government. Activism In August 2019 a summit of the G7 members convened in Biarritz, France. In protest of the country doing too little to stop their carbon emissions, protesters marched in the nearby city of Bayonne, as Biarritz had been under lockdown due to the summit. The protesters held portraits of Emmanuel Macron upside down to highlight the gap between the president's climate goals and the lack of action thereof. The more than 100 portraits of the president had been stolen from French town halls all over the country, many activists were held responsible for "group theft by deceit". Despite the trials, more than 9,000 protesters showed up and marched with the inverted portraits. The protests were eventually broken up with tear gas and water cannons and around 70 people were arrested.The Yellow vest movement was initially started in France due to a public wide outrage over the increase in fuel prices. In 2018 the price of diesel saw an increase by 20%, the added on carbon tax and the overall increase of the price of fuel was done by the government to take climate action and reduce the number of times people would use cars or other forms of personal transportation. The only problem was that the people who got affected the most by this were also the once that could not afford it and only had their cars as means of transportation. The increased price was done in favour of people living in the city where public transportation is plentiful, but this is not the case in rural regions and on the countryside, thus starting the movement. Public perception of climate change A nationwide survey in 2017 containing answers from 3,480 French citizens looked at how the general public perceived climate change. According to the study 85% of people believe climate change is happening with only 1.9% being absolutely not sure. A total of 90% of participants believed that human activity is completely or partly responsible for climate change and only 2.5% were found to be climate change deniers. Around 85% showed concern about the effects of climate change. Most concerned were younger people, students and those who are full-time employed. On the other hand, the number of people that believed that their actions could mitigate climate change was found to only be moderate. With many people not knowing what actions to take or believing that their actions would not make any difference. The survey also found that the public's knowledge about climate change was low to moderate, while being high in mid-range educational qualifications, students, the full-time employed and those that had experienced the direct effects of climate change through droughts, floods or extreme storms. Information about climate change in weather forecasts In February 2023, 2 state TV channels, France 2 and France 3 have begun to enter information regarding climate change in their weather forecasts. This will make the forecasts 1.5-2 minutes longer. The climate related information will rely on experts. The channels will also provide information about climate change and the ways stopping it to their workers. In France, except in case of breaking news they will ask reporters to take the train instead of a plane. See also Climate change in the European Union Plug-in electric vehicles in France References External links Media related to Climate change in France at Wikimedia Commons

individual action on climate change

Individual action on climate change can include personal choices in many areas, such as diet, travel, household energy use, consumption of goods and services, and family size. Individuals can also engage in local and political advocacy around issues of climate change. People who wish to reduce their carbon footprint (particularly those in high income countries with high consumption lifestyles), can take "high-impact" actions, such as avoiding frequent flying and petrol fuelled cars, eating mainly a plant-based diet, having fewer children, using clothes and electrical products for longer, and electrifying homes. Avoiding meat and dairy foods has been called "the single biggest way" an individual can reduce their environmental impact. Excessive consumption is more to blame for climate change than population increase. High consumption lifestyles have a greater environmental impact, with the richest 10% of people emitting about half the total lifestyle emissions.Some commentators have argued that individual actions as consumers and "greening personal lives" are insignificant in comparison to collective action. Others say that individual action leads to collective action, and emphasize that "research on social behavior suggests lifestyle change can build momentum for systemic change." According to respondents to a 2022 survey, climate change is the second most pressing issue confronting Europeans. Over three-quarters of respondents (72%) believe that their individual actions can make a difference in tackling the climate issue. Suggested individual target amount As of 2021 the remaining carbon budget for a 50-50 chance of staying below 1.5 degrees of warming is 460 bn tonnes of CO2 or 11+1⁄2 years at 2020 emission rates. Global average greenhouse gas per person per year in the late 2010s was about 7 tonnes - including 0.7 tonnes CO2eq food, 1.1 tonnes from the home, and 0.8 tonnes from transport. Of this about 5 tonnes was actual carbon dioxide. To meet the Paris Agreement target of under 1.5 degrees warming by the end of the century, it is estimated that the annual carbon footprint per person required by 2030 is 2.3 tonnes. As of 2020 the average Indian almost meets this target, the average person in France or China overshoots it, and the average person in the US and Australia vastly overshoots it. Per capita emissions also vary significantly within countries, with wealthier individuals creating more emissions. A 2015 Oxfam report calculated that the wealthiest 10% of the global population were responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions. According to a 2021 report by the UN, the wealthiest 5% contributed nearly 40% of emissions growth from 1990 to 2015.The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report pointed out in 2022: "To enhance well-being, people demand services and not primary energy and physical resources per se. Focusing on demand for services and the different social and political roles people play broadens the participation in climate action.": TS-98  The report explains that behavior, lifestyle, and cultural change have a high climate change mitigation potential in some sectors, particularly when complementing technological and structural change.: 5–3 Meaning of "lifestyle carbon footprint" The carbon footprint was originally coined & popularized by the ad campaign Beyond Petroleum in 2004-2006, funded by British Petroleum (BP), for which other have accused them of popularizing to downplay their own culpability.In 2008 the World Health Organization wrote that "Your 'carbon footprint' is a measure of the impact your activities have on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced through the burning of fossil fuels". In 2019 the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan defined "lifestyle carbon footprint" as "GHG emissions directly emitted and indirectly induced from the final consumption of households, excluding those induced by government consumption and capital formation such as infrastructure.": v  However an Oxfam and SEI study in 2020 estimated per capita CO2 emissions rather than CO2-equivalent, and allocated all consumption emissions to individuals rather than just household consumption. According to a 2020 review many academic studies do not properly explain the scope of the "personal carbon footprint" they study. Travel and commuting A comparison of travel options shows: Walking and running are among the least environmentally harmful modes of transportation. Cycling follows walking and running as having a low impact on the environment. Public transport such as electric buses, metro and electric trains generally emit less greenhouse gases than cars per passenger. Escooters can also be a low-impact form of transportation if they have long lifetimes. Cars: Using an electric car instead of a gasoline or diesel car helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Walking and biking Walking and biking emit little to no greenhouse gases and are healthy alternatives to driving or riding public transportation. There are also increasing numbers of bike-sharing services in urban environments. An individual can rent a bike for a period of time, reducing the financial burden of buying a personal bike and its associated environmental impact. Public transport Reliable public transportation is one of the most viable alternatives to driving personal vehicles. While there are efficiency problems associated with public transportation (waiting times, missed transfers, unreliable schedules, energy consumption), they can be improved as funding and public interest increases and technology advances. A case study from Auckland, New Zealand found that the global warming potential (GWP) of a bus system decreased by 5.6% when a system used increased efficiency methods compared to a system with no controls implemented. In the early 21st century perception towards climate change influenced some people in rich countries to change their travel lifestyle.A 2022 survey found that 33% of car buyers in Europe will opt for a petrol or diesel car when purchasing a new vehicle. 67% of the respondents mentioned opting for the hybrid or electric version. More specifically, it found that electric cars are only preferred by 28% of Europeans, making them the least preferred type of vehicle. 39% of Europeans tend to prefer hybrid vehicles, while 33% prefer petrol or diesel vehicles. In the EU, only 13% of the total population do not plan on owning a vehicle at all.44% Chinese car buyers, on the other hand, are the most likely to buy an electric car, while 38% of Americans would opt for a hybrid car. 33% would prefer petrol or diesel, while only 29% would go for an electric car. Electric cars There are many options to choose from when considering alternatives to personal car use, but the use of a personal vehicle may be necessary due to location and accessibility reasons. The life cycle assessment of a vehicle evaluates the environmental impact of the production of the vehicle and its spare parts, the fuel consumption of the vehicle, and what happens to the vehicle at the end of its lifespan. These environmental impacts can be measured in greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste produced, and consumption of energy resources among other factors. Increasingly common alternatives to internal-combustion engines vehicles are electric vehicles (EVs), and hybrid-electric vehicles. Electric cars emit less than gasoline cars.Some other alternatives to reducing emissions while driving a personal vehicle are planning out trips beforehand so they follow the shortest route and/or the route with the least amount of traffic. Following a route with less traffic can reduce idling and waste less fuel. Carpooling and ride-sharing services Carpooling and ride-sharing services are also alternatives to personal transportation. Carpooling reduces the number of cars on the road, in turn reducing the amount of traffic and energy consumption. A 2009 study estimated that 7.2 million tons of green-house gas emissions could be avoided if one out of 100 vehicles carried one extra passenger. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft could be viable options for transportation, but according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, ride-share service trips currently result in an estimated 69% increase in climate pollution on average. More pollution is generated as the amount of time and energy a ride-share driver spends between customers with no passengers increases. There are also more vehicles on the road as a result of passengers who would have otherwise taken public transportation, walked, or biked to their destination. Ride-sharing services can reduce emissions if they implement strategies like electrifying vehicles and increase carpooling trips. In some cities, there are car-sharing services where the user can gain short-term access to a vehicle when other options are not available. Air transport Air travel is one of the most emission-intensive modes of transportation. The current most effective way to reduce personal emissions from air travel is to fly less. New technologies are being developed to allow for more efficient fuel consumption and planes powered by electricity.Avoiding air travel and particularly frequent flyer programs has a high benefit because the convenience makes frequent, long-distance travel easy, and high-altitude emissions are more potent for the climate than the same emissions made at ground level. Aviation is much more difficult to fix technically than surface transport, so will need more individual action in future if the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation cannot be made to work properly.Flying is responsible for 5 percent of global warming. Compared to longer flight routes, shorter flights actually produce larger amounts of greenhouse gas emissions per passenger they carry and mile covered, so individuals may consider train travel instead but this can be more expensive due to aviation subsidies. Airplanes contribute to damaging our environment since airplanes cause greater air pollution as they release carbon dioxide along with nitrogen oxides, which is an atmospheric pollutant. Tailpipe emissions lead to changes in the amounts of the greenhouse gases ozone and methane. Avoiding night-flights may help, as contrails may account for over half of aviation's climate change impact.Climate change is a factor that 67% of Europeans consider when choosing where to go on holiday. 52% of Europeans, specifically 37% of people ages 30–64 and 25% of people aged above 65, state that in 2022 they will choose to travel by plane. 27% of young people claim they will travel to a faraway destination. More specifically, people under the age of 30 are more likely to consider climate implications of vacation spots and air travel. Home energy and landscaping Reducing home energy use through measures such as insulation, better energy efficiency of appliances, cool roofs, heat reflective paints, lowering water heater temperature, and improving heating and cooling efficiency can significantly reduce an individual's carbon footprint. After home insulation and ventilation has been checked, replacing a failed gas boiler with a heat pump can be considered, especially in climates where both heating and cooling are required.In addition, the choice of energy used to heat, cool, and power homes makes a difference in the carbon footprint of individual homes. Many energy suppliers in various countries worldwide have options to purchase part or pure "green energy" (usually electricity but occasionally also gas). These methods of energy production emit almost no greenhouse gases once they are up and running. Installing rooftop solar, both on a household and community scale, also drastically reduces household emissions, and at scale could be a major contributor to greenhouse gas abatement. Low energy products and consumption Labels, such as Energy Star in the US, can be seen on many household appliances, home electronics, office equipment, heating and cooling equipment, windows, residential light fixtures, and other products. Energy star is a program in the U.S. that promotes energy efficiency. When buying air conditioning the choice of coolant is important.Carbon emission labels describe the carbon dioxide emissions created as a by-product of manufacturing, transporting, or disposing of a consumer product. Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) "present transparent, verified and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of products." These labels may help consumers choose lower energy products. Converting appliances such as stoves, water heaters and furnaces from gas to electric reduces emissions of CO2 and methane. Landscape and gardens Plants process carbon dioxide to make organic molecules like cellulose, sugars, starches, plant proteins, and oils. Perennials keep a large proportion of those organic molecules for as long as they live, not releasing them until microorganisms decompose them after they die. Perennial plants like trees and shrubs contribute to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the air.Annual plants that die each year release almost all of the CO2 that they take in. Grass lawns that live over the winter but die back above ground can also soak up a share of carbon dioxide, reducing that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. However, both organic and synthetic fertilizers are sources of NOx, and turfgrass lawns use 3 million tons of nitrogen-based fertilizer each year. That adds four to five tons of carbon to the atmosphere for every ton of nitrogen (660,000 tons of carbon dioxide/year). NOx is about 300 times more heat-absorbing than carbon dioxide.Soil microbes break down organic carbon into carbon dioxide. Reducing irrigation would slow the microbial activity of the soil and its production of carbon dioxide. However, increased irrigation is required for lawn maintenance in areas that are becoming more arid due to climate change. Turf grass lawns require herbicides that reduce ecological diversity while also polluting air, soil, and land. Gas-powered lawnmowers and other power tools used for lawn maintenance produce carbon dioxide and methane, which are greenhouse gases.Lawns management methods like fertilizers and fossil fuel-powered lawn equipment may outweigh any carbon sequestration from the perennial grass lawn. Reducing irrigation, nitrogen fertilizer, chemical pesticides, and using hand tools instead of power tools that use fossil fuels can all reduce the climate impact of lawns.Natural lawns promote pollination, require no fertilization, require less frequent mowing, promote diversity, and use less water. There are many opportunities to plant trees and shrubs in the yard, along roads, in parks, and in public gardens. In addition, some charities plant fast-growing trees to help people in places with less tree coverage to restore the productivity of their lands.Individuals can also plant home vegetable gardens that provide locally grown food, native plant gardens that provide a diversity of species, and perennial trees and shrubs that develop sustainable carbon sequestration. Laundry and choice of clothing Hanging laundry to dry saves energy that would have been used for heating, reducing clothing's carbon footprint. Additionally, using a shorter, cold water wash cycle can conserve energy by as much as 66%.Purchasing well-made, durable clothing, and avoiding "fast fashion" is critical for reducing climate impact. Some clothing is donated and/or recycled, meanwhile, the rest of the waste heads to landfills where they release "greenhouse gases". Hot water consumption Domestic heated water using non-renewable resources such as gas contributes to significant global carbon dioxide emissions. As of 2020, most homes use gas or electric boilers to heat their water. Powering these boilers with renewable energy would reduce these emissions, although the cost of installation means this is not a universally viable option. Turning off the water heater and using unheated water for laundry, bathing (weather permitting), dishes, and cleaning eliminates those emissions. Demand reduction Less consumption of goods and services The production of many goods and services results in the emission of greenhouse gases as well as pollution. One way for individuals to decrease their environmental footprint is by consuming less goods and services. Decreasing the consumption of goods and services results in a lower demand, and lower supply (production) follows. Individuals can prioritize shrinking the consumption of those goods and services whose production results in relatively high pollution levels. Individuals can also prioritize discontinuing the use of those goods and services that offer little to no real utility by "speaking with their money", since unpopular products neither satisfy consumer wants/needs nor the environment's; however, government subsidies may prove "boycott buying" to be futile in some cases, enabling the producer.A climate survey found that in 2021 42% of Europeans, specifically 48% of women and 34% of men, already invest in second-hand clothing rather than buying new ones. Populations aged 15 to 29, are found more likely to do so. Education on sustainable consumption, specifically targeting children, is seen as a priority by 93% of Chinese citizens, 92% of EU, 88% of British citizens and 81% of Americans.The National Geographic Society has concluded that city dwellers can help with climate change if they (or we) simply "buy less stuff."Lloyd Alter suggests that one way to get a practical sense of embodied carbon is to ask, "How much does your household weigh?"For-profit companies usually promote and market their products as useful or needed to potential consumers, even when they in reality are harmful or wasteful to them and/or the environment. Individuals should be diligent in self-assessing and/or researching whether or not each product they purchase and consume is really of value to decrease consumption. If a gas stove or other type of stove needs to be replaced in a new house, then an electric stove is preferable. However, as cooking is usually a small part of household GHG emissions, it is generally not worth changing a stove simply for climate reasons.Using durable reusable containers such as lunchboxes, "single-use" grocery and produce bags (can be used as light-duty trash bags), Tupperware, as well as buying local produce, minimally packaged foods and general items, all reduce carbon emissions and pollution from the production of single use containers and packaging. These tactics mitigate GHG production by reducing demand for extra packaging and shipping of products. Reducing food loss The world's food production is responsible for approximately a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by humanity each year, with livestock alone accounting for 14.5% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon dioxide emissions associated with food are estimated to be 2.2 tons per person annually, from production to consumption. If this is correct, it would mean that just the food aspect of daily life would nearly exhaust the entire Paris Agreement compliance goal of 2.3 tons per person per year. Therefore, reducing food loss is absolutely essential, and in the 2020 Project Drawdown, it was identified as the top priority solution to address climate change. Fortunately, out of the 2.2 tons mentioned, 1.9 tons are considered reducible.According to a 2023 study published in Nature Food, carbon dioxide emissions resulting from food waste make up half of the total emissions in the entire food system. In the United States, it is estimated that 31% of food delivered to retail stores is discarded by either retailers or consumers. Furthermore, the carbon dioxide emissions from food waste that decomposes in landfills, etc., amount to 2.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilogram of food and also produce methane, a greenhouse gas with 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.Food waste also represents a loss of the energy to transport foods from producers to consumers. According to a study published in Nature Food in 2022, transportation-related emissions for food from producers to retail stores represent around 20% of the total emissions for vegetables and fruits, while for refrigerated transport of items like meat, fresh fish, and dairy, it increases by an additional 20-30%.In addition to the waste of food itself, the disposal of packaging materials is also a significant concern. Reducing food waste contributes to reducing both global warming and environmental pollution caused by plastic packaging materials. It is estimated that approximately 5% of the energy used to manufacture and distribute food products is attributed to packaging materials. Plastic food packaging materials are known for their significant environmental pollution, therefore they contribute not only to carbon dioxide emissions associated with plastic production but also to overall adverse environmental impacts. Japan's excessive packaging culture in the context of food, has been criticized internationally in relation to Japanese plastic waste. Eating less meat The world's food system is responsible for about one-quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse gases that humans generate each year with the livestock sector alone contributing 14.5% of all anthropogenic GHG emissions. The 2019 World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, endorsed by over 11,000 scientists from more than 150 countries, stated that "eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions." The most common ruminant livestock are cattle and sheep. Agriculture is very difficult to fix technically so will need more individual action or carbon offsetting than all other sectors except perhaps aviation.Eating less meat, especially beef and lamb, reduces emissions. A diet which is part of individual action on climate change is also good for health, averaging less than 15g (about half an ounce) of red meat and 250g dairy (about one glass of milk) per day. The World Health Organization recommends trans-fats make up less than 1% of total energy intake: ruminant trans-fats are found in beef, lamb, milk and cheese. In 2019, the IPCC released a summary of the 2019 special report which asserted that a shift towards plant-based diets would help to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Ecologist Hans-Otto Pörtner, who contributed to the report, said "We don't want to tell people what to eat, but it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect."Meats such as beef have a higher climate impact since cows release methane, a greenhouse gas that is more harmful in the short-term than carbon dioxide.Eating a plant-rich diet is listed as the #1 individual solution for climate change as modeled by Project Drawdown, based on avoided emissions from the production of animals and avoided emissions from additional deforestation for grazing land.A 2018 study indicated that one fifth of Americans are responsible for about half of the country's diet-related carbon emissions, due mostly to eating high levels of meat, especially beef.A 2022 study published in Nature Food found that if high-income nations switched to a plant-based diet, vast amounts of land used for animal agriculture could be allowed to return to their natural state, which in turn has the potential to sequester 100 billion tons of CO2 by 2100. In addition to mitigating climate change, other benefits of this transition would include improved water quality, restoration of biodiversity, and reductions in air pollution.A 2022 survey found that 62% of Europeans say they would be ready to pay somewhat more for food produced locally and sustainably - similar to Americans, at 60%, but 21% lower than Chinese respondents, at 83%. All income categories indicated being prepared to spend extra for food (60% of lower-income respondents, 61% of middle-income respondents, and 65% of higher-income respondents).Slightly over half of Europeans (51%) support reducing the amount of meat and dairy products people may buy to combat climate change (11% more than Americans, who support it at 40%, but far lower than Chinese people, who support it at 73%).A survey in 2022 found that to assist individuals make more sustainable food decisions, 79% of Europeans support labelling all food with their climate footprint (Americans support it at 62%, but Chinese respondents support it at 88%). 62% of Europeans surveyed claim they would be willing to pay more for sustainable food.A 2023 paper published in Nature Food found that vegan diets reduce emissions, water pollution and land use by 75%, while also significantly reducing the destruction of wildlife and water usage. Family size Worldwide population growth is considered as a challenge for climate change mitigation. Proposed measures include an improved access to family planning and access of women to education and economic opportunities. Targeting natalistic politics involves cultural, ethical and societal issues. Various religions discourage or prohibit some or all forms of birth control. Although having fewer children is arguably the individual action that most effectively reduces a person's climate impact, the issue is rarely raised, and it is arguably controversial due to its private nature. Even so, ethicists, some politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others have started discussing the climate implications associated with reproduction. Researchers have found that some people (in wealthy countries) are having fewer children due to their beliefs that they can do more to slow climate change if they do not have children.An April 2020 study published in PLOS One found that, among two-adult Swedish households, those with children increased carbon emission in two ways, by adding to the population and by increasing their own carbon emissions by consuming greater quantities of meat and gasoline for transportation than their counterparts without children; an increase of some 25% more than the latter. According to one of the contributors to the study, University of Wyoming economist Linda Thunstrom, "If we're finding these results in Sweden, it's pretty safe to assume that the disparity in carbon footprints between parents and non-parents is even bigger in most other Western countries."Two interrelated aspects of this action, family planning and women and girl's education, are modeled by Project Drawdown as the #6 and #7 top potential solutions for climate change, based on the ability of family planning and education to reduce the growth of the overall global population. In 2019, a warning on climate change signed by 11,000 scientists from 153 nations said that human population growth adds 80 million humans annually, and "the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity" to reduce the impact of "population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss." The policies they promote, which "are proven and effective policies that strengthen human rights while lowering fertility rates," would include removing barriers to gender equality, especially in education, and ensuring family planning services are available to all.In a 2021 paper it was said that "human population has been mostly ignored with regard to climate policy" and attribute this to the taboo nature of the issue given its association with population policies of the past, including forced sterilization campaigns and China's one-child policy. They take a different approach and argue that population policies can both advance social justice (such as by abolishing child marriage, expanding family planning services and reforms that improve education for women and girls) while at the same time mitigating the human impact on the climate and the earth system. They say that while overconsumption by the world's wealthy is responsible for 90% of GHG emissions, which can be redressed through eco-taxes, carbon pricing and other policies, the global human population of 7.7 billion contributes to climate change in many ways, including the consumption of natural resources and GHG emissions from transportation. In 2022, a group of scientists urged families around the world to have no more than one child as part of the transformative changes needed to mitigate both climate change and biodiversity loss.However, older populations are sometimes less concerned about climate change. Because climate change needs to be limited within the next few decades, having fewer children now might not make much difference. Others Personal finance Individuals can check whether the financial companies they are using are part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, and consider switching pensions, insurance and investments. Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrencies which are made by proof-of-work such as Bitcoin, are high carbon both because they use dirty electricity, such as electricity from Kazakhstan (some electricity in the United States used for Bitcoin mining is also dirty but the gas might be burned anyway) and because cryptocurrency mining uses hardware for only a short time before it becomes ewaste. Individuals with such cryptocurrency can switch to proof of stake crypto such as Tezos or ethereum. Digital services Political advocacy Impactful ways in the area of political advocacy that an individual can take include: individual citizen participation in groups advocating for collective action in the form of political solutions, such as carbon pricing, meat pricing, ending subsidies for fossil fuels and animal husbandry, and ending laws encouraging car use. Activist movements Climate change is a prevalent issue in many societies. Some believe that some of the long-term negative effects of climate change can be ameliorated through individual and community actions to reduce resource consumption. Thus, many environmental advocacy organizations associated with the climate movement (such as the Earth Day Network) focus on encouraging such individual conservation and grassroots organizing around environmental issues.Many environmental, economic, and social issues find common ground in mitigation of climate change. In the United States Citizens' Climate Lobby provides climate change solutions through bipartisan and national policy which aims to set a price on carbon at the national level. To raise awareness of climate issues, activists organized a series of international labor and school strikes in late September 2019, with estimates of total participants ranging between 6 and 7.3 million.A number of groups from around the world have come together to work on the issue of global warming. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from diverse fields of work have united on this issue. A coalition of 50 NGOs called Stop Climate Chaos launched in Britain in 2005 to highlight the issue of climate change. The Campaign against Climate Change was created to focus purely on the issue of climate change and to pressure governments into action by building a protest movement of sufficient magnitude to effect political change. Critical Mass is an event typically held on the last Friday of every month in various cities around the world wherein bicyclists and, less frequently, unicyclists, skateboarders, inline skaters, roller skaters and other self-propelled commuters take to the streets en masse. While the ride was founded in San Francisco with the idea of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to bicyclists, the leaderless structure of Critical Mass makes it impossible to assign it any one specific goal. In fact, the purpose of Critical Mass is not formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city or town streets. One of the elements of the Occupy movement is global warming action. Following environmentalist Bill McKibben's mantra that "if it's wrong to wreck the climate, it's wrong to profit from that wreckage," fossil fuel divestment campaigns attempt to get public institutions, such as universities and churches, to remove investment assets from fossil fuel companies. By December 2016, a total of 688 institutions and over 58,000 individuals representing $5.5 trillion in assets worldwide had been divested from fossil fuels.Groups such as NextGen America and Climate Hawks Vote are working in the United States to elect officials who will make action on climate change a high priority. On 20 July 2020, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was awarded a Portuguese rights award, pledged to donate the Gulbenkian Prize money of 1 million euros to organizations focused on the environment and climate change.A 2023 review study published in One Earth stated that opinion polls show that most people perceive climate change as occurring now and close by. The study concluded that seeing climate change as more distant does not necessarily result in less climate action, and reducing psychological distancing does not reliably increase climate action. Reform of subsidies and taxes Political advocacy can focus on removing those fossil fuel and other subsidies, and taxes which discourage individual action on climate change, for example: Abolish a subsidy of kerosene because this subsidy discourages individuals switching to other fuels. Cutting farm subsidies for livestock because these subsidies could discourage individuals shifting to a plant based diet (as those subsidies artificially lowers the price of meat and dairy products): Rebalance the taxes and regulatory costs, which are currently higher for electricity than gas and thus discourage individuals from switching from gas boilers to heat pumps Abolish Turkey's free coal for poor families at such a program discourages people from switching to natural gas in cities. Redirecting the money which would have been spent as subsidies, together with any carbon tax, to form a carbon dividend in equal shares for everyone or for poor people to encourage individuals to take action as part of a just transition away from a high carbon lifestyle.However, sudden removal of a subsidy by governments not trusted to redirect it, or without providing good alternatives for individuals, can lead to civil unrest. An example of this took place in 2019, when Ecuador removed its gasoline and diesel subsidies without providing enough electric buses to maintain service. The result was overnight fuel price hikes of 25–75 percent. The corresponding fare hikes for Ecuador's existing gas and diesel powered bus fleet were met with violent protests. Climate conversations "Discussing global warming leads to greater acceptance of climate science". The Yale Climate Communication Program recommends initiating "climate conversations" with more moderate individuals. Once personal climate impacts and core values are understood, it may become possible to open a discussion of potential climate solutions which are consistent with those core values.Carbon Conversations is a "psychosocial project that addresses the practicalities of carbon reduction while taking account of the complex emotions and social pressures that make this difficult". It was cited in The Guardian newspaper as one of the 20 best ideas to tackle climate change. Comparison of impacts of individual actions Public discourse on reducing one's carbon footprint overwhelmingly focuses on low-impact behaviors, and as of 2017, the mention of high-impact individual behaviors to impact climate was almost non-existent in mainstream media, government publications, K-12 school textbooks, etc.Media focus on low impact rather than high impact behaviors is concerning for scientists. The most impactful actions for individuals may differ significantly from the popular advice for "greening" one's lifestyle. For instance, popular suggestions for individual actions include replacing a typical car with a hybrid, washing clothes in cold water, recycling, upgrading light bulbs which are all regarded as lower impact behaviors. A few researchers have stated that some "recommended high-impact actions are more effective than many more commonly discussed options. For example, eating a plant-based diet saves eight times more emissions than upgrading light bulbs." Recommended high-impact actions are around having fewer children, living car-free, avoiding long distance flights and eating a plant-based diet. However, other publications state that "population is actually irrelevant to solving the climate crisis"Other researchers say that decarbonization need not mean a more austere lifestyle, and that the individual actions with the most impact are to electrify households, with for example electric cars and heating.Scientists argue that piecemeal behavioral changes like re-using plastic bags are not a proportionate response to climate change. Though being beneficial, these debates would drive public focus away from the requirement for an energy system change of unprecedented scale to decarbonise rapidly. Moreover, policy measures such as targeted subsidies, eco-tariffs, effective sustainability certificates, legal product information requirements, CO2 pricing, emissions allowances rationing, budget-allocations/labelling, targeted product-range exclusions, advertising bans, and feedback mechanisms are examples of measures that could have a more substantial positive impact on consumption behavior than changes exclusively carried out by consumers and could address social issues such as consumers' inhibitive constraints of budgets, awareness and time. Controversies around significance It has been argued that climate change is a collective action problem, specifically a tragedy of the commons, which is a political and not individual category of problem.Some commentators have argued that individual actions as consumers and "greening personal lives" are insignificant in comparison to collective action, especially actions that hold the fossil fuel corporationsaccountable for producing 71% of carbon emissions since 1988. The concept of a personal carbon footprint and calculating one's footprint was popularized by oil producer BP as "effective propaganda" as a way to shift their responsibility to "linguistically... remove itself as a contributor to the problem of climate change". Others have shown that sometimes individual measures may effectively undermine political support for structural measures. In one example researchers found that "a green energy default nudge diminishes support for a carbon tax."Others say that individual action leads to collective action, and emphasize that "research on social behavior suggests lifestyle change can build momentum for systemic change." Furthermore, if individuals shrink their consumption of fossil fuel products, fossil fuel corporations are incentivized to produce less, as the demand for their product would decrease. In other words, each individual's consumption plays a role in the total supply of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases. Misleading information on individual actions In some countries media coverage of climate change reports only about the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather, but makes no mention of either individual or government actions which can be taken.The suggestion that eating a plant-based diet requires a person to become strictly vegetarian is also misinformation. A plant-based diet focuses on consuming foods primarily from plants but does not eliminate all animal products like a vegan diet does.Climate change education, which became mandatory in Italy in 2019, is completely absent in some countries, or fails to provide information on action that individuals can take. See also References External links 52 Climate Actions themed suggestions for personal actions What we all can do at Climatesafety.info "Climate change food calculator: What's your diet's carbon footprint?". BBC.

climate change in brazil

Climate change in Brazil is mainly the climate of Brazil getting hotter and drier. The greenhouse effect of excess carbon dioxide and methane emissions makes the Amazon rainforest hotter and drier, resulting in more wildfires in Brazil. Parts of the rainforest risk becoming savanna. Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions per person are higher than the global average, and Brazil is among countries which emit a large amount of greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gas emissions by Brazil are almost 3% of the annual world total. Firstly due to cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest, which emitted more carbon dioxide in the 2010s than it absorbed. And secondly from large cattle farms, where cows belch methane. In the Paris Agreement Brazil promised to reduce its emissions, but the incumbent Bolsonaro government has been criticized for doing too little to limit climate change or adapt to climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions In 2020 official figures were reported for 2016: agriculture 33.2%, energy sector 28.9%, land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) 27.1%. Industrial Processes and Product Use (IPPU) and waste contributed 6.4% and 4.5%, respectively.According to the Brazilian Climate Observatory the country emitted 2.17 billion gross tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in 2019. Deforestation accounted for 968 million tCO2e, which was 44% of the total, agriculture emitted 598.7 million tons of CO2e (28%) and the energy sector 413.6 million tCO2e (19%), industry 99 million tCO2e (5%) and waste 96 million tCO2e (4%).Emissions for 2019 are estimated at 2.8% of the world total. As of 2021 Brazil is the 4th heaviest cumulative emitter at 110 Gt. In 2019, on average, Brazilians emitted 10 gross tons of CO2e each, compared to the global average of 7 tons per person.Although the government has pledged net zero emissions by 2050, critics complain that immediate action is not being taken. Researcher Emilio La Rovere, one of the coordinators of a report from 2013, said: "if nothing is done to restrict post-2020 emissions, Brazil may emit 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide as early as 2030. To give you an idea, the number exceeds the total for 2005, when emissions totaled around 2 billion tons ". Agriculture Cattle In 2012, Brazil had the second largest number of cattle in the world, with 205 million head. Cows are ruminants that emit greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. Deforestation Trees are cut down to create fields for cattle and soya. Deforestation peaked in 2004 then decreased until the early 2010s. Since then, deforestation has tended to increase through 2020. Fossil fuels The largest single emitter in the energy sector is oil products used as fuel for transport in Brazil, but some natural gas and coal is burnt by the electricity sector in Brazil. In 2016/17 coal-fired power stations in Brazil received over 1 billion reals in subsidies. In the Convention on Biological Diversity Brazil committed to phasing out environmentally harmful subsidies by 2020. But the government said in 2022 that coal power would be subsidized until 2040. Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes According to José Marengo, of the National Institute for Space Research, recent studies show that, with the exception of stretches of the coast of Chile, where there has been a slight cooling in recent decades, in all other areas of South America, forecasts indicate an increase in temperature.The Amazon has a prominent role in regulating the climate throughout Brazil and other regions in South America. Its forest is a major carbon sink and is essential for the formation of the rains that irrigate much of the country. According to Marengo et al., 30% to 50% of the rainfall in the Amazon Basin originates in the forest itself through evaporation. "In addition, the humidity originated in the Amazon Basin is carried by the winds to other parts of the continent and is considered important in the formation of precipitation in regions distant from the Amazon itself". Naturally, if the forest disappears, the rains will disappear. A vicious circle is created in which if deforestation exceeds a certain critical level, estimated at 40% of losses, the forest will be unable to generate enough rain to maintain itself: the less forest, the less precipitation, and the less precipitation, the less forest. About 19% of the Amazon forest has already been lost, and recent studies indicate that it is close to passing the critical point, beyond which its degradation will become irreversible. In addition to the problems in the Amazon, all other national biomes – the Cerrado, the Semi-Arid, the Pantanal, the Atlantic Forest and the Pampa – also suffer important effects, most of them with an increasing tendency, contributing to amplify the cascading effects.Another important part of the Brazilian rains comes from the circulation of ocean moisture. Global warming also has an impact on ocean currents that influence the Brazilian climate, and the winds that carry the humidity that reaches Brazil are having their patterns modified, with the effect of reducing the level of atmospheric humidity and disturbing the formation of clouds, reducing precipitation. Reducing rainfall, in turn, can dry underground aquifers. These combined factors mean, in total, a generalized reduction in the availability of water and drier environments in most of the nation. In some regions, however, due to different mechanisms, rainfall is expected to increase, also bringing adverse effects. According to the PBMC, "the change with the greatest impact will be a change in rainfall patterns. Research shows that in the south and southeast, regions that suffer from floods and landslides, rains will become stronger and more frequent. In the northeast, the trend is the opposite. Projections of the First National Assessment Report on Climate Change (2012) In the executive summary of the 1st PBMC Report, the limitations of the study are highlighted. Because some projections were made based on incomplete data, there is some uncertainty about the conclusions. Despite this, "In general, the results of the models managed to capture the behavior of the present climate very well and, thus, despite the uncertainties, the projections of future climate changes throughout the 21st century are plausible. Therefore, such projections constitute innovative and valuable information both for the purpose of mitigation, as well as the planning of adaptation and minimization of impacts and vulnerability actions with the set of inhabiting society in different Brazilian biomes. Taking into account the different projections that imply potential impacts on natural and human systems (socioeconomic and environmental), it is already possible to analyze the expected impacts of climate change in the various sectors of Brazil, and the planning and decision making to define adaptation strategies and mitigation policies ".For the Semi-Arid-Caatinga, an increase of up to 4.5 °C in air temperature and a reduction of up to 50% in rainfall. The environment, naturally very dry and with sparse vegetation, can partially become desert. For the Cerrado the disturbances would be similar, with an increase in temperature of up to 5.5 °C and a decrease of up to 45% in rainfall. The Cerrado today concentrates most of the agricultural activities in Brazil. The Pantanal would also be very affected, with up to 4.5 °C more in temperature and up to 45% less rain. In the Atlantic Forest the climate would stay up to 3 °C warmer and up to 30% rainier. For Pampa there would be, up to 3 °C increase in temperature averages, and rains up to 40% above normal.Not only will precipitation totals change, it may start to occur in more erratic and violent patterns, with more intense and prolonged droughts and more severe and frequent flooding episodes, varying in different regions. According to the report, "the scenarios point to a decrease in rainfall in the winter months across the country, as well as in the summer in eastern Amazonia and the Northeast. [...] In contrast, the country could experience an increase in the frequency and intensity of intense rain in the subtropical region (South region and part of the Southeast) and in the extreme west of the Amazon ". Changes in the levels and availability of groundwater are also foreseen. Sea level rise Measurements on the coast of São Paulo indicate that sea level has risen 30 cm in the last century, surpassing the world average, and there are already many signs of coastal erosion, groundwater is gradually salted, the hangovers become higher, causing damage to the infrastructure of coastal cities. Twenty beaches are in danger of disappearing. In Recife, the famous Boa Viagem beach lost some sections swallowed by the sea, and Olinda lost 59% of its strip of sand between 1995 and 2010. Ecosystems Brazil's ecosystems will be impacted by temperature changes and rainfall changes. In the projections of the 1st Report, by the end of the 21st century, the Amazon may experience a reduction of up to 45% in rainfall, and an increase in the average temperature of up to 6 °C. This comes close to the worst scenarios foreseen by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted important changes in most of the biome. However, the impact of deforestation was not considered in the assessment, which will certainly increase the levels of variation to some extent. The evolution of the future scenario will depend on the country's success in managing the serious threats to the biome. After a decade-long trend of reduced deforestation rates, recent years have documented a rapid increase in destruction of trees. A report estimated that if 40% of the forest disappears, droughts will increase and turn much of the forest into savannah. This will result in a drastic reduction in biodiversity and will also have a negative effect on the amount of rain Brazil can expect. Impacts on people Economic impacts There are multiple impacts of climate change on basic Brazilian production systems, such as increasing existing shortages and increasing production costs. It is also expected that more and more serious natural disasters will occur. This will likely result in major problems for food supply, public health, industrial production, trade, installed infrastructure, the general quality of life of the population and national security as a whole, with the poor suffering the most serious consequences. The areas most vulnerable to major impacts are the Northeast and Southeast regions, exactly where most of the Brazilian people are concentrated, and large cities, which in general are poorly prepared to face the challenge. Agriculture In the agricultural sector, the impacts of climate change in Brazil would be multiple and significant. About 11 million hectares of arable land could be lost by 2030 due to warming. As global warming also produces several chemical and physical changes in the ocean, interfering with aquatic life, problems are foreseen for national fishing, both by reducing stocks and by geographic redistribution of economically valuable species.A 2008 study, directly inspired by the work of the IPCC, especially in the Fourth Report, was produced by Embrapa focusing on agribusiness and food security. Its main conclusions are: Global warming can jeopardize Brazilian food production, leading to losses that can reach 7.4 billion reals in 2020 and up to 14 billion in 2070; Soy, whose explosive growth in the last 30 years has triggered an unprecedented change in the country's economic structure, is likely to be the crop most affected. In the worst-case scenario, losses could reach 40% in 2070, leading to a loss of up to 7.6 billion reals; Coffee is expected to lose up to 33% of the low-risk area in the main producing states, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, although it may have gains in the south of the country; Corn, rice, beans, cotton and sunflower will suffer a strong reduction of low risk area in the Northeast, with significant loss of production. Cassava will have a general gain in low risk area, but will likely suffer severe losses in the Northeast; Sugarcane, one of the few favored crops, could double its area in the coming decades."From one of the villains of global warming (See note:), agriculture can become a victim. Throughout the world, warming will only benefit agriculture practiced in high-latitude regions. ... The configuration of Brazilian agricultural production, as it is known today, can change significantly due to global warming. ... Regions that are currently the largest grain producers may not be able to plant well before the end of the century. ... Despite the losses, agriculture can be part of the solution to the problem. A more appropriate use of the soil, with the adoption, for example, of agropastoral, agro-forestry and no- tillage systems, besides reducing the use of fertilizers, can prevent new deforestation, increase the capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and recover the soil. Some new techniques for growing rice and raising livestock are also being tested to decrease methane emissions".In 2022 study found that 28% of the agricultural land in Brazil is no more climatically optimal due to climate change and to change in local climate as a result of deforestation. The number will go to 51% by 2030 and 74% by 2060 if the change in climate will continue in the same way. Cattle Industry The 2012 drought in the Northeast affected more than ten million people and generated a loss of more than R$16 billion. In 2013 the phenomenon was repeated with even greater intensity, being considered by the UN the worst of the last 50 years, leaving 1,200 municipalities in a state of emergency. In Paraíba alone, 360,000 heads of cattle died. Energy sector Climate change in Brazil may also result in an energy crisis, since the largest percentage of national electricity is generated by hydroelectric plants. It is expected that there will be an important drop in the flow of most of the great national hydrographic basins. According to the Climate Observatory, "The result is dramatic for those who think that the Southeast of Brazil has suffered enough from lack of water and the threat of energy rationing in the last three years: in the best scenario, several rivers in Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Goiás, Tocantins, Bahia and Pará will have flow reductions of 10% to 30%. Transposed to hydroelectric plants, the flow data presents a challenge for the energy sector in Brazil: the most important plants in the country – Furnas, Itaipu, Sobradinho and Tucuruí – would have flow reductions of 38% to 57% in the worst case scenario. In the Amazon, a region elected by the government as the new frontier for hydroelectricity in the country, the falls would also be significant, as the Climate Observatory said in April: the flow of Belo Monte would fall from 25% to 55%, that of Santo Antônio, from 40 % to 65%, and that of the planned plant in São Luís do Tapajós, from 20% to 30%. With the exception of São Luís, most of the new plants in the Amazon are run-of-river, that is, they do not have a large reservoir. This means that its capacity factor, that is, the amount of constant energy generated throughout the year, is reduced, since the flow of Amazonian rivers varies enormously between the dry and the rainy seasons. Belo Monte, for example, has a capacity factor of around 40%, which, reduced by half, would give the R$ 30 billion hydroelectric power plant a smaller capacity factor than that of wind farms – at which Brazilian energy planners and President Dilma Rousseff turn up their noses, as these plants are not capable of generating 'firm power' in periods without wind. In total, hydroelectric generation falls from 8% to 20% in the country. ..."The researchers' analysis shows that, in all the scenarios analyzed, there is a drop in the flow of the main Brazilian hydrographic basins, which pushes the electrical system into a situation of structural imbalance: the system is unable to meet demand, causing load shedding – that is blackouts. Without measures to cut emissions, in the worst case scenario, the flow of reservoirs drops by 30% and the risk of deficit in some years approaches 100% – the margin considered 'safe' by the government to prevent blackouts is 5%. In the best scenario, the drop in flow from hydroelectric plants reaches 10%, and the risk of deficit, 60% in some years. The cost of operating the system, which takes into account even the activation of thermal plants, rises eight times in the best scenario and 16.7 times in the worst ".This would have negative consequences in other ways, as it would encourage the use of coal and natural gas-fired power plants, which are major emitters of greenhouse gases. Health impacts Heat waves A special alert was given in a 2015 report for the increased risk of extreme heat waves, mainly affecting the elderly and the North and Northeast regions, further aggravating pre-existing diseases, such as respiratory problems. José Feres, from the Institute of Applied Economic Research, said that Brazil's ageing population is particularly at risk. The report also pointed to the tendency towards an increase in endemic infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue and leptospirosis, the tendency towards an increase in the problems of conservation of the road network, and showed concern about Brazil's little preparation in the management of climatic disasters and the scarce information available on the future impacts of rising sea levels. Floods and landslides In the city of São Paulo alone, where rain is forecast to increase, flooding causes a loss of 762 million reals per year. In the floods and landslides in Rio de Janeiro in 2011, the greatest natural tragedy ever experienced in the country, 906 people died, 400 were reported missing, 30,000 had to leave their homes, 770 hillsides had their stability compromised, and will need to be reconsolidated at an estimated cost of 3.3 billion reals. The loss for companies reached R$470 million. In 2011, according to the UN calculation, floods throughout Brazil totaled 10 billion reals in material losses and claimed more than a thousand lives, in addition to leaving homeless crowds and producing disorders of various orders that will take years to be balanced.A report from 2013 found that the coastal region, where the vast majority of the country's population lives, should receive special attention, in view of a likely increase in floods, landslides, severe weather, coastal erosion, rising sea levels and other natural disasters caused by warming: "It is no longer possible, as a Brazilian, to accept more disasters that kill more than a thousand Brazilians at once. Protective and preventive measures have to be taken urgently. Extreme events are happening more often. The population that is not prepared, will suffer from it". Impacts on housing Researcher Andrea Santos, executive secretary of PBMC, warned in 2013 about the likely impact on megacities such as Rio and São Paulo, stating that the current infrastructure, especially in transport and urban mobility, was not designed to face rising temperatures and more intense rainfall."Between 1991 and 2012, more than half of the Brazilian population had their lives affected by extreme weather events. Droughts, floods and landslides affected 127 million people. The number of records has grown 40% in the past decade compared to the previous one, according to the Brazilian Atlas of Natural Disasters. Recent tragedies include that of Santa Catarina, in 2008, and that of serra fluminense, in 2011. This year, a fifth of the country's municipalities entered an emergency or public calamity situation. Global warming, combined with urban expansion and the development problems that Brazil already has, allows us to project a gloomy scenario for this century, in which the number of people affected and the cost of tragedies for the economy only increase. And no one will be spared. " Impacts on indigenous peoples Indigenous people consist of 40 million of the Latin American-Caribbean populations. They populate most of the rural poor areas in countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and Paraguay. This makes these populations extremely susceptible to threats of climate change due to socioeconomic, geographic, and political factors. Mitigation and adaptation Policies and legislation Suzana Bustamante, one of the coordinators of Working Group 3 of the 5th IPCC Report, considers that the greatest threats hanging over Brazil stem from the expected reduction in rainfall in most of the area of food production and capture for hydroelectric and consumption, the country's strategy, both adaptive and mitigating, of investing in reducing deforestation must be a priority for the country, as forests are major producers and conservators of water resources, in addition to all the other essential environmental services they provide and all the biodiversity they harbor. Brazil is the most biodiverse country in the world, an invaluable wealth that is at great risk and is suffering continuous losses.Jair Bolsonaro has said that foreigners should stop complaining about fires in the Amazon, and the country's environmental policies and in 2020 accused them of a "brutal disinformation campaign"'. In 2021 Brazil announced that it will not block carbon market agreements in COP26 what has significant importance. Brazil 2040: scenarios and alternatives for adapting to climate change Published in 2015 by the Secretariat for Sustainable Development of the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency of the Republic, the Brazil 2040 report was considered by the Climate Observatory to be the largest study carried out to date on climate change in Brazil. It had the main objective of giving guidance to the government for the establishment of a more coherent and solid climate policy, focusing on the areas of health, water resources, energy, agriculture and infrastructure (coastal and transport), and using two theoretical models that were used by the IPCC. The report obtained results that are broadly consistent with other studies, pointing to a country that is mostly drier and warmer in the future. Brazil 2040 emphasized the country's lack of preparedness to face the expected climatic disasters that are expected to worsen with the progress of climate change, such as major droughts and floods, storms, rising levels sea and landslides caused by torrential rains. It was also identified that despite the numerous mitigation and adaptation programs already approved by the Union, States and Municipalities, they typically do not leave the paper, or produce timid or marginal results. Analyzing the case of the emergency support structure in the city of Rio de Janeiro, it was pointed out that the majority of the resources for assisting the population (hospitals, military and police facilities, fire departments, etc.) are located in medium or high areas. vulnerability to natural disasters, along rivers and canals or in low-lying regions, which can easily flood, or at the seaside, subject to rising levels and coastal storms, and can be compromised even in small climatic events, harming their functionality and increasing impacts on society. The majority of water and sewage treatment plants are located in the same regions, as well as many points on the main highways and streets, including some major road junctions, offering increased risks in the event of a disaster in terms of sanitation, supply and transportation of flagellates. Even worse is the situation of transportation by the subway, which is mostly in regions of high vulnerability. Citing the threat of sea level rise, it was pointed out that there is real estate value in the order of 124 billion reals located in areas of high vulnerability, and 2.7 trillion reals in areas of medium vulnerability. In the case of the city of Santos, most of the urban area is in an area of high vulnerability and many in areas of very high vulnerability, which puts the entire city at high risk, with more than R$100 billion in real estate values in regions of high vulnerability. The report stated that these examples can be extrapolated to many other regions of Brazil with a high demographic density, since most cities are in low coastal regions or next to rivers, lakes and fragile hillsides. Port areas also present increased risks of deterioration or destruction of structures, flooding, silting of channels and estuarine bars and others, and a large part of Brazil's national and international trade depends on them.Suzana Kahn Ribeiro, president of the Scientific Committee of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change, has a very similar opinion: "Brazil needs to find a direction, define what it wants to be when it grows up. ... Brazil is showing mixed signals all the time. We reduce IPI tax on car so that everyone gets bottled up in traffic. We are experiencing a blackout of climate coordination ". André Ferretti, general coordinator of the Climate Observatory, says the same: "Today we have trillions of resources to be invested in infrastructure, plans to expand energy generation mainly from fossil sources (about 70% of the country's investments), annual harvest plans and industry incentives, without any connection with the logic of development. low carbon. We have a set of disconnected climate policies, without coordination and that do not even have their potential positive impacts monitored; and the Climate Fund is completely threatened and with limited resources. ... The great message of the IPCC's fifth report is that the situation is increasingly critical, and that if nothing or very little is done, we will enter a very dangerous path. The window of opportunity for us to prevent the collapse of the climate system is narrow ".Even some sectors of government agree that there are problems in this area: Carlos Nobre, secretary of Research and Development Policies and Programs at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, said that "the Ministry of Science and Technology is playing its part, investing in research development and knowledge generation, but there is still a lack of integration between research and policy making ". Society and culture Activism Calculations in 2021 showed that, for giving the world a 50% chance of avoiding a temperature rise of 2 degrees or more Brazil should increase its climate commitments by 90%.: Table 1  For a 95% chance it should increase the commitments by 165%. For giving a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees Brazil should increase its commitments by 170%. A report from 2013 aimed to dispel some ingrained myths that represent major obstacles to the general acceptance of mitigation projects, such as that progress and nature conservation are opposed, or that the consequence of reducing emissions will be economic recession. See also Environmental issues in Brazil Plug-in electric vehicles in Brazil References External links UNFCCC Brazil documents Brazilian Panel on Climate Change (PBMC) National Institute for Space Research Climate Observatory Greenhouse Gas Emission and Removal Estimating System

climate movement

The climate movement is a global social movement focused on pressuring governments and industry to take action (also called "climate action") addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. Environmental non-profit organizations have engaged in significant climate activism since the late 1980s and early 1990s, as they sought to influence the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate activism has become increasingly prominent over time, gaining significant momentum during the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and particularly following the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016.Environmental organizations take various actions such as Peoples Climate Marches. A major event was the global climate strike in September 2019 organized by Fridays For Future and Earth Strike. The target was to influence the climate action summit organized by the UN on 23 September. According to the organizers four million people participated in the strike on 20 September. Youth activism and involvement has played an important part in the evolution of the movement after the growth of the Fridays For Future strikes started by Greta Thunberg in 2019. In 2019, Extinction Rebellion organized large protests demanding to "reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025, and create a citizens' assembly to oversee progress", including blocking roads. History Since the early 1970s, climate activists have called for more effective political action regarding climate change and other environmental issues. In 1970, Earth Day was the first large-scale environmental movement that called for the protection of all life on earth. The Friends of Earth organisation was also founded in 1970.Activism related to climate change continued in the late 1980s, when major environmental organizations became involved in the discussions about climate, mainly in the UNFCCC framework. Whereas environmental organizations had previously primarily been engaged at the domestic level, they began to increasingly engage in international campaigning.The largest transnational climate change coalition, Climate Action Network, was founded in 1992. Its major members include Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth. Climate Justice Now! and Climate Justice Action, two major coalitions, were founded in the lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen Summit.Between 2006 and 2009, the Campaign against Climate Change and other British organisations staged a series of demonstrations to encourage governments to make more serious attempts to address climate change.The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was the first UNFCCC summit in which the climate movement started showing its mobilization power at a large scale. According to Jennifer Hadden, the number of new NGOs registered with the UNFCCC surged in 2009 in the lead-up to the Copenhagen summit. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people attended a march in Copenhagen on December 12 calling for a global agreement on climate. Activism went beyond Copenhagen, with more than 5,400 rallies and demonstrations took place around the world simultaneously.In 2019, activists, most of whom were young people, participated in a global climate strike to criticise the lack of international and political action to address the worsening impacts of climate change. Greta Thunberg, a 19-year-old activist from Sweden, became a figurehead for the movement. Methods These are several approaches that have been used in the past by climate advocates and advocacy campaigns: the provision of information, framing of information about aspects of global climate change, and challenging the terms of political debates.All three of these methods have been implemented in climate campaigns aimed at the general public. The information about the impacts of global climate change plays a role in forming climatic beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, while the effects of other approaches (e.g. provision of information about solutions to GCC, consensus framing, use of mechanistic information) is yet mostly unknown. The third approach is to create space for discussions that move beyond questions of economic interests that often dominate political debates to emphasize ecological values and grass-roots democracy. This has been argued to be crucial to bringing about more significant structural change. Some politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger with the slogan "terminate pollution", say that activists should generate optimism by focusing on the health co-benefits of climate action. Climate disobedience Climate disobedience is a form of civil disobedience, deliberate action intended to critique government climate policy. In 2008, American climate activist Tim DeChristopher posed as a bidder at an auction of US Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leases of public land in Utah, won the auction, reneged on payment, and was imprisoned for 21 months. In September 2015, five climate activists known as the Delta 5 obstructed an oil train in Everett, Washington. At trial, the Delta 5 were allowed the necessity defense, that is, breaking a law in the service of preventing a greater harm. After testimony, the judge determined the grounds for the necessity defense were not met and instructed the jury to disregard testimony admitted under the necessity defense. The Delta 5 were fined for trespassing but were acquitted of more serious charges.The first example of a judge accepting the climate necessity defense was on March 27, 2018 when Judge Mary Ann Driscoll acquitted all 13 defendants of civil charges from a protest held in 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts. Declaring emergency state Enacting a state of emergency may be composed of two elements: declaring a state of emergency that has formulated real-world i.e. legal effects and the associated enabling or ensuring of rapid complementary large-scale changes in human activity for the articulated purposes. To date, many governments have acknowledged, sometimes in the form of tentative text-form "declarations", that humanity is essentially in a state of climate emergency. In November 2021 Greta Thunberg with other climate activists begun filing a petition to the United Nation calling it to declare a level 3 global climate emergency. This should lead to the creation of a special team that will coordinate the response to the climate crisis in the international level. The response should be at least as strong as the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.It has been proposed that the national security sector could play a unique role in the development of a global climate-emergency mobilisation of labour and resources to build a zero-emission economy and enact decarbonization.Commentators and The Climate Mobilization have suggested mobilisation of resources on the scale of a war economy and other related exceptional or effective measures. Focus on climate justice Shifting away from a focus on impacts on the natural environment, in recent years people have called on decision makers to move towards equitable mitigation strategies for all people. Climate justice acknowledges that some regions and populations are more vulnerable to climate change than others, and that in addressing climate solutions we must consider "existing vulnerabilities, resources and capabilities."In the United States, organizations such as the Climate Justice Alliance work towards the goal of resilient economies and communities, placing "race, gender and class at the center of the solutions" by working to unite the voices of frontline communities. Legal action In some countries, those affected by climate change may be able to sue major greenhouse gas emitters. Litigation has been attempted by entire countries and peoples, such as Palau and the Inuit, as well as non-governmental organizations such as the Sierra Club. Investor-owned coal, oil, and gas corporations could be legally and morally liable for climate-related human rights violations. Litigations are often carried out via collective pooling of effort and resources such as via organizations like Greenpeace, which sued a Polish coal utility and a German car manufacturer.Proving that some weather events are due specifically to global warming is now possible, and methodologies have been developed to show the increased risk of other events caused by global warming.For a legal action for negligence (or similar) to succeed, "Plaintiffs ... must show that, more probably than not, their individual injuries were caused by the risk factor in question, as opposed to any other cause. This has sometimes been translated to a requirement of a relative risk of at least two." Another route (though with little legal bite) is the World Heritage Convention, if it can be shown that climate change is affecting World Heritage Sites like Mount Everest. Of countries' governments Besides countries suing one another, there are also cases where people in a country have taken legal steps against their own government.In the Netherlands and Belgium, organisations such as the foundation Urgenda and the Klimaatzaak in Belgium have also sued their governments as they believe their governments are not meeting the emission reductions they agreed to. Urgenda have already won their case against the Dutch government.In 2021, Germany's supreme constitutional court ruled that the government's climate protection measures are insufficient to protect future generations and that the government had until the end of 2022 to improve its Climate Protection Act.Held v. Montana was the first constitutional law climate lawsuit to go to trial in the United States, on June 12, 2023. The case was filed in March 2020 by sixteen youth residents of Montana, then aged 2 through 18, who argued that the state's support of the fossil fuel industry had worsened the effects of climate change on the their lives, thus denying their right to a "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations":Art. IX, § 1 as required by the Constitution of Montana. On August 14, 2023, the trial court judge ruled in the youth plaintiffs' favor, though the state indicated it would appeal the decision. Of companies In May 2021, in Milieudefensie et al v Royal Dutch Shell, the district court of The Hague ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030 compared to 2019 levels. Fossil fuel divestment The divestment movement against fossil fuels has shed a different light on conversations surrounding fossil fuel finance. Banks and investors have been increasingly questioning the viability of the fossil fuel sector in the long-term. This is because this disinvestment movement is stigmatizing fossil fuels and is raising uncertainty around continued use of fossil fuels, thus reducing the financial desirability of fossil fuel assets. Because the extraction, exploration, and mining of fossil fuels are all capital-intensive activities, uncertainty around their financial risks can reduce investment. If there is a reduction in the supply of capital or a rise in the costs of capital, fossil fuel projects will end up being uneconomical. This will make the valuation of fossil fuel companies go down making them to go out of the market. The main argument behind fossil fuel divestment campaigns is that earning profits from investments in activities associated with fossil fuels is unethical owing to the fact that fossil fuel emissions are the primary drivers responsible for global climate change. Fossil Fuel divestment campaigns such as the Go Fossil Free campaign by 350.org are pleading with the investors to divest by immediately freezing any new investments that they might make in any fossil fuel companies and to divest from any direct ownership and commingled funds, such as fossil fuels public equities together with corporate bonds, in the next five years.Fossil fuel divestment campaign have three primary aims. One of them is to pressure government across the globe to put legislation in place including carbon tax or banning any further drilling of fossil fuels. The second aim is to pressure fossil fuel companies to enact transformative change in their companies by switching to forms of energy supply that are less carbon-intensive in nature. The third aim is to ensure transparency when it comes to the carbon exposure that is caused by fossil fuel companies and also to put pressure on governments across the globe to play an active role in restricting the extraction of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns thus seek to cut everything that would be required for the growth and survival of the fossil fuel industry. These include the social license that this industry requires to operate, the political license that the fossil fuel industry needs to grow and to survive, and the financial investments that support its existence, survival, and growth. These campaigns also seek to pressure governments to play their role in trying to limit emissions. In these campaigns, campaigners demand so see that the public institutions server their ties that they have always had with this fossil fuel industry for the main purpose of tarnishing the reputation of the fossil fuel industry and to challenge the power that the industry has. By doing these, these campaigners thus want to starve fossil fuel companies of the badly needed capital and to remove both the infrastructure and the influence that this industry has.Divestment campaigns have been used for a variety of social justice issues in the past. For example, divestment campaigns have been launched to end investment in South Africa during apartheid, Israel, and Sudan, and against the tobacco industry. Most recently, divestment campaigns have focused on private prisons and the fossil fuel industry. These divestment calls have received a lot of attention with varying outcomes. The good news for the fossil fuel divestment campaigns is that their strategy could be effective. This owes to the fact that there has been an increase in the fossil fuel divestment commitments since 2000. These divestment commitments have resulted in reductions in the flow of capital into the gas and oil sector, as experienced in 33 countries across the globe between the years 2000 and 2015. Research has found that increasing gas and oil divestment pledges in various countries has also been influenced by divestment campaigns. More stringent environmental policies have also been enacted by regimes that recognize climate change as a threat to their country.Fossil fuel divestment has indeed gained remarkable traction over the last few years. It has transformed from being a fringe idea to becoming a movement currently valued at around $14.5 trillion. It has over one thousand endowments, pension plans, and major investors committed. It has made many of today’s retail investors and institutional investors channeling their money towards environmentally conscious funds. Public environmental activism This type of citizen activism is important to creating a path to systemic change that will benefit the environment. This change can be assisted through government involvement by way of making more environmentally-conscious policies and all-encompassing changes that will be needed to make substantial environmental change. Different strategies, actions, and systems are used by citizen environmental activists for the purpose of supporting and in some cases demanding these environmental changes. There are however, issues that this type of activism faces. Issues such as potential decline in favorability and participation in environmental movements in BRIC countries, barriers to environmental citizen involvement and mobilization, and divergence in goals between environmental movements. Creating change Individual, voluntary activism is not enough to make a substantial difference in prominent climate change issues, systematic change is. Carol Booth puts forward that the harm in "bystanding to inadequate laws, policies and programs warrant greater moral concern" than individual harm by way of personal emissions and similar negative actions contributing to climate change (pg. 412). In order for emissions reduction, one of many climate change issues, to occur at a scale that has positive environmental effects government action will be needed. Overall, environmental reform is best supported and advanced by activism and movements. Frederick Buttel theorizes that the reasons for this are that environmental activism and movements fight back against countermovement groups and that they ensure responsibility in regards to environmental protection.Government systems can both shape and constrain what public activists are able to do, particularly systems found in countries like the U.S and European Union. Constraints come from institutional aspects of the government systems that make it difficult to produce legislation and other prominent changes that fight against climate change issues. The progression of mobilization in some cases depends on activists to find ways to move past barriers found in these government systems. The general public has influence over certain outcomes. "...[L]atent civic behavior, attitudes towards society, and historical patterns of expectations for institutional performance can exert surprisingly important influence on political, and even economic outcomes(pg. 33). When looking at Californian policy, it was found that the influence of citizen activism leads to systematic choices that are favorable to the environment from influential and powerful members, like policy and community figureheads.A 2023 review study published in One Earth stated that opinion polls show that most people perceive climate change as occurring now and close by. The study concluded that seeing climate change as more distant does not necessarily result in less climate action, and reducing psychological distancing does not reliably increase climate action. Systems and actions in public activism Different strategies, systems, and actions are utilized in public environmental activism. Certain actions may be unavailable to different types of public activists depending on economic standpoint. Erik Wright's theories of social transformation were used to analyze environmental movements and in part the actions that these movements took in their activism that connected to Wright's "transformational strategies". This includes "interstitial strategies", which are strategies that try to alter or challenge the current system, are seen in citizens actions like buying more efficient appliances and other environmentally-friendly focused consumer actions. "Ruptural strategies" "smash the current system through confrontation". Strategies like these connect to the practice in environmental movement to hold protests and resistance demonstrations. Lastly, "symbiotic strategies" are focused on collaboration through social reformation such as promoting and reforming policy to prioritize the climate's health as opposed to profit. Other types of strategies that citizen activists take are "awareness building, alliance building, and network foundation." "Conservation behavior", the public's willingness to life more environmentally-sustainable lifestyles, has been seen to become increasingly more popular both in developed and "developing democracies." In an examination of the BRIC countries, of which they are still considered developing, it is posited that if work being done by environmentalists in these countries is seen as not enough, citizens may take it upon themselves to "turn their efforts to lifestyle adjustments as an alternative form of contribution."The United States' "citizen suit provision" is a type of system that is accessible for the use in public environmental activism. These are used in many major U.S environmental laws, are important to environmental enforcement, and deter noncompliance from agencies at fault as well as demonstrate public interest and demand. Another environmental system is "China's environmental complaint system". This system takes in citizen's reports of violations in regards to environmental issues and is used typically for the public to voice "concerns and frustrations with environmental problems and has been successful in promoting environmental awareness and engaging the public"(pg 330). The study suggested that "the role of public participation is greatly dependent on the broader governance [system] within which it is embedded, and that channeling environmental activism into [government] can significantly influence its effectiveness"(pg 326). Obstacles Public activism faces challenges due to differences in economic development as well as differences in government and law. There have been "signs of declining confidence and membership in environmental [organizations]" in the BRIC countries as well as "barriers to public involvement and social [mobilization] due to close monitoring and censorship, notably in China and Russia. Issues facing more long-term environmental discourse are feelings of unconcern and helplessness are cited as obstacles that public activist groups face in trying to promote change. In addition, mainstream environmental movements are "increasingly being challenged by environmental counter-movements"(pg 309). There are also many different goals and gaps between these types of movements, as well as barriers to producing an effective, influential message to inspire other to enact change. This prevents a solid, widespread message and specific goal from all environmental groups being produced. Targeting of activists The United States government through its domestic intelligence services targeted, as "domestic terrorists," environmental activists and climate change organizations, including by investigating them, questioning them, and placing them on national "watchlists" that makes it more difficult for them to board airplanes and that could instigate local law enforcement monitoring. Unknown actors also secretly hired professional hackers to launch phishing hacking attacks against climate activists who were organizing the #ExxonKnew campaign. On September 16, 2022, over fifty climate protesters were arrested and jailed in the U.K. for blocking roads, with many of them going through court hearings, and some being released on bail. Alice Reid, a spokesperson for the group Rebels in Prison Support, claims that many of these protestors are young adults with no connection to the judicial system before becoming activists. Activities 2014 People’s Climate March The climate movement convened its largest single event on 21 September 2014, when it mobilized 400,000 activists in New York during the People’s Climate March (plus several thousand more in other cities), organized by the People's Climate Movement, to demand climate action from the global leaders gathered for the 2014 UN Climate Summit. Institutional Climate Activism There have been coalitions of institutional investors that have promulgated climate activism. These initiatives have sometimes included expansive group efforts, such as Climate Action 100+ - a coalition over 300 institutional investors (including some of the largest greenhouse emitters). Institutional activism is not uncommon, despite the common assumption that shareholder interests would be averse to such action. However, industry-wide efforts to mitigate climate risks is often in the interest of heavily diversified firms, as climate change can have a strong effect on the global economy. Climate Mobilization Since 2014, growing portions of the climate movement, especially in the United States have been organizing for an international economic response to climate change on the scale of the mobilization of the American home front during World War II, with the goal of rapidly slashing carbon emissions and transitioning to 100% clean energy faster than the free market is likely to allow. Throughout 2015 and 2016, The Climate Mobilization led grassroots campaigns in the U.S. for this scale of ambition, and in July 2016, activists succeeded in getting text adopted into the Democratic Party's national platform calling for WWII-scale climate mobilization. In August 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben published an article in the New Republic rallying Americans to "declare war on climate change." School strikes for climate Youth Climate Movement Youth all over the world have been striking, advocating, and volunteering for climate solutions. Youth climate action groups such as SustainUS, Fridays for Future, and the Sunrise Movement have called on young people to hold leaders accountable, whether through attending conferences, striking from school and pressuring politicians to listen to scientists, or calling for greater green jobs and consolidating voting power.In 2020 the United Nations Secretary General launched the global Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, selecting seven members who meet to represent the changes youth are demanding globally.Youth involvement in pro-climate action movements has increased significantly in the 21st century, and has intensified over the past few years. Youth climate activists have used social media platforms as a vehicle to engage and protest with the current environmental issue. After Greta Thunberg started the youth movement "Strikes for Climate" by protesting outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018, she documented her journey on Twitter, where she built a network to promote her cause and call people to action. The youth climate movement starts shifting from the traditional way to the social media platforms and it will continue in the future. Younger generations are paying more attention to global events, particularly climate change. Research shows that climate change is of greater concern among younger people than older people. Over 70% of Americans aged 18 to 34 worry about global warming compared with 62% of those 35 to 54 and 56% who are 55 or older. Corner claims that across European countries, young people tend to have similar or higher levels of concern than adults and have a higher sense of risk perception. Younger generations are more likely to have learned through general education about climate change in their schooling, and to be aware of the negative effects that climate change has brought to the Earth. In addition, they also see climate change as a more serious global event that is relevant to themselves because they will be more impacted, and thus should take the lead on addressing climate change. When the pandemic hit, most school strikes movements around the world continued to be held, but moved more onto social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc), resulting in lower participation rates. However, participation in youth climate movement on social media continued to rise. Social media provided an outlet for youth to share their concerns, generate knowledge, and be more politically active since they are not yet able to vote and face logistical limitations in face-to-face participation. The research found that activists in their study created a sense of connection to other young people and other climate change activists. They usually post their activist identities on their social media account profile. (For example, @GretaThunberg, a young climate activist #climatechange#climatestrike #youthmovement). What they share in common is that they try to inspire others to do the same in their communities by showcasing themselves as climate activists with a strong voice. The strategy for younger activists is to situate themselves within a specific role to create a relevant identity to others and make connections with other people on the internet. Thus, regardless of which side the activists are going to support, they are utilizing their social media as a medium to communicate with others in a shared way. They are playing an important role focused on engaging a range of supporters worldwide to join in the youth climate movement.YOUNGO is the official children and youth Constituency of the UNFCCC, with members up to 35 years old. One of the main tasks of this group is to draft a Global Youth Position Statement to hand officials at the annual UNFCCC Conference of Parties. 2019 Global Climate Strike 2023 Climate Protests In November 2023 around 70,000 people participated in a climate march in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 10 days before the elections in the country. This was the biggest climate march in the history of the Netherlands.Many climate protests are scheduled for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference including a climate march in London. The conference has created many protests, as the head of the conference is at the same time the head of the oil company ADNOC which according to one research "is planning the largest expansion of oil and gas production of any company in the world." See also Business action on climate change Climate action Effects of climate change Environmental movement Ecological movement Environmental racism List of environmental protests List of women climate scientists and activists == References ==

gen-z for change

Gen-Z for Change, formerly called TikTok for Biden, is an American non-profit advocacy organization founded in 2020 that uses social media to promote civil discourse and civil action among members of Generation Z. It consists of a core team of 15–20 people and a coalition of over 500 content creators and activists, and partners with influencers, activists and celebrities to produce multimedia content. Its advocacy addresses a wide range of topics such as abortion rights, COVID-19, student debt cancellation, climate change, income inequality, social inequality, foreign policy, voting rights, and LGBT issues. Collectively, Gen-Z for Change's members have 540 million followers and receive 1.5 billion monthly views on social media.Gen-Z for Change has received significant news coverage for its activities, including a one-hour briefing with the White House for 30 prominent TikTok content creators about the United States’ strategic goals regarding the war in Ukraine (which was parodied by Saturday Night Live), protests against companies such as Starbucks and Kroger for anti-union firings, and abortion-rights advocacy following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Olivia Julianna, one of Gen-Z for Change's political strategists, raised more than $2 million in donations to abortion funds across the country through the organization after U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz ridiculed her appearance in July 2022. History The organization's account on TikTok was created in October 2020 under the name TikTok for Biden, to support Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election in the United States. The organization was renamed Gen-Z for Change in January 2021.In early March 2022, the presidency of Joe Biden enlisted Gen-Z for Change to help organize a briefing between senior administration officials and prominent social media influencers about the Russo-Ukrainian War. The briefing was leaked to The Washington Post, which later inspired a sketch on NBC's comedy show Saturday Night Live. Prior to that, Gen-Z for Change partnered with the White House and United States Department of Health and Human Services to combat COVID-19 misinformation and promote vaccination efforts. Although the organization has regularly criticized the Biden administration, some have worried about their close ties to each other. Members and associates Aidan Kohn-Murphy Jack Petocz Elise Joshi Victoria Hammett Claire Simon Sam Shlafstein Connor Hesse Nandi Perry Sofia Ongele Anish Mohanty Jaeden Clark Zoe Shipley Dominique Demetz Anthony Guevara See also Political views of Generation Z Generation Z in the United States Social media use in politics Youth activism Youth politics == References ==

climate change in botswana

Climate change in Botswana refers to changes in the climate in Botswana and the subsequent response, adaptation and mitigation strategies of the country. It is expected to lead to increased intensity of droughts and increased frequencies this is due to shorter rainy seasons and fewer rainy days. Due to fluctuation on climate and weather the country may sometimes experience heavy destructive rains. Climate of Botswana The climate of Botswana is arid to semi-arid with warm winters and hot summers and the rainfalls are highly unpredictable. Rains mostly occur from October to April. The winter season is mostly dry and sunny, mild during the day but cold at night, especially in the center and south of the country. This is normally around the months of May to August. The summer season which is normally from November to March, is hot and moderately rainy. There is plenty of sunshine during this season, especially in the mornings. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from 41 °F to 89 °F and is rarely below 34 °F or above 97 °F. The heat is often intense in spring around September and October, especially in the northern part of the country, however, hot days are possible throughout the country from September to April.The south-west region is the driest area, this is where the Kalahari desert is found and precipitation drops below 300 millimeters (12 inches) per year. The wettest areas, where more than 500 mm (20 in) of rainfall per year, are the north and the south-east, where Gaborone is located. The country is landlocked and has a subtropical desert climate characterized by a great difference between day and night temperatures and overall humidity.Botswana is considered very vulnerable to climate change and variability due to its low rainfall as well as the high rate of poverty that affects mostly rural areas.. Botswana experiences low rainfall and the rainfall patterns change which negatively affects the agricultural sector. Due to the state of rainfall in Botswana, which is very unreliable, there has been a reduction in hectares ploughed. Heavy rains wash away the topsoil and seeds during the ploughing season and this results in very low yields.Botswana's vulnerability to climate change is affected mostly by its dependence on the sectors that are easily affected by climate change; tourism, agriculture, water and health. Poverty is also another aspect that is mostly brought along by the dependence on these sectors. Key trends Average temperatures have increased at 1.5 °C since the 1900s. The image on the right shows the Botswana's temperature trends between the year 1901 and the year 2020. The largest changes are in November and March. Botswana experience very hot temperatures during summer which ranges from November to March of which they can go as high as 38 °C in some parts of the country while winter which ranges from March to August are very cold at night and mild during the day, sometimes with common bitterly so-frost which can freeze small quantity of water. In spring which is from September to October the country experiences very high temperatures which can go as high as 44 °C in most parts of the country.Botswana has received below-normal rainfall and more frequent droughts. Wet days in Botswana varies throughout the year. A wet day is measured at 0.04 inches of liquid precipitation. The wetter season last from October to April with 21% chance of a day being a wet day while the winter season last from April to October, July being a month with the fewest wet days with an average of 0.2 days with at least an average of 0.04 inches of precipitation. December is recorded as a month with the highest rainfall.Botswana's annual greenhouse gas emissions as at 2019 stand at 11,000.00 kt of CO2, which was a 13.25% decline from the previous year, 2018. The carbon dioxide emissions are mostly from fossil fuels; natural gas, oil, transport and buildings, the power industry also contribute to these emissions. Impacts of climate change Climate change is already having visible effects on the world, the earth is warming, the rainfall patterns are always changing, and sea levels are rising and these changes increase the risk of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires. Climate change and its interactions with other stressors have affected biodiversity and the species with small distribution, low abundance and specialised habitats are predominantly vulnerable. Climate change, which comes with higher temperatures, land and water scarcity, flooding, drought and displacement, has negatively impacted the agricultural production and caused a lot of food insecurity. These has mostly affected vulnerable people putting them at the risk of hunger and food insecurity.Currently, about 30% of the population of Botswana is exposed to the risk of malaria infection each and every year and the majority of cases occur in the northern districts with Bobonong, Tutume, Serowe, Phalapye and Boteti being in transition zone of malaria. During the years of heavy rain for the risk of malaria shift westwards and Southwards. Diarrheal case incidence comes with a bimodal cyclical pattern with peaks in March (ANOVA p < 0.001) and October (ANOVA p < 0.001) in the wet and dry season respectively. There is a strong positive auto-correlation (p < 0.001) in the number of reported diarrhea cases at the one-month lag level. Climatic variables (rainfall, minimum temperature, and vapor pressure) predicted seasonal diarrheal with a one-month lag in variables (p < 0.001). Diarrheal case incidence was highest in the dry season after accounting for other variables, exhibiting on average a 20% increase over the yearly mean (p < 0.001)There are many causes for the differences in the impacts of climate change being experienced by both men and women this difference is range from psychological political economic and societal differences. Most sustainable arable farmers however are women who farmed to improve their household food security despite the increased role and agricultural production most women do not have control over land and lack access to agricultural extensions and credit. The numerous pages of the HIV pandemic have contributed to the limited access to productive resources services and skills all these factors make women particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Across the cities the impacts of climate change affect women and men differently. Women and girls experience the greatest impacts of climate change, which amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, health, and safety. Climate finance Botswana intends to reduce overall emissions by 15% from the base year of 2010 by 2038 at an anticipated cost of 18.4 billion US dollars. This emissions reduction target was estimated based on baseline GHGs inventory for the three GHGs being CO2, CH4 and N2O. Covering energy, waste, and agriculture sectors. This calculation does not include CH4 emissions from livestock farming, mostly from enteric fermentation, however, the country aims to implement mitigation measures for this sector. References == External links ==

doomer

Doomer and, by extension, doomerism are terms which arose primarily on the Internet to describe people who are extremely pessimistic or fatalistic about global problems such as overpopulation, peak oil, climate change, pollution, nuclear weapons, and runaway artificial intelligence. Some doomers assert there is a possibility these problems will bring about human extinction.Malthusians like Paul R. Ehrlich, Guy McPherson and Michael Ruppert have related doomerism to Malthusianism, an economic philosophy holding that human resource use will eventually exceed resource availability, leading to societal collapse, social unrest or population decline. History Peaknik subculture The term "doomer" was reported in 2008 as being used in early internet peaknik communities, as on internet forums where members discussed the theorized point in time when oil extraction would stop due to lack of resources, followed by societal collapse. Doomers of the mid-aughts subscribed to various ideas on how to face this impending collapse, including doomsday prepping, as well as more contemporary feelings of resignation and defeat.Canadian self-identified doomer Paul Chefurka hosted a website where he encouraged his readers to eat lower on the food chain, modify their homes for the apocalypse, and to consider not having children. Not all "peakniks" subscribed to a fatalist outlook. U.S. Army Ranger Chris Lisle, when writing recommendations on how to survive the societal collapse, suggested that his fellow doomers "adopt a positive attitude," because, as he put it, "Hard times don't last, hard people do." Internet meme By 2018, 4chan users had begun creating Wojak caricatures with the -oomer suffix, derived from "boomer", to mock various groups online. One of these caricatures was "Doomers", 20-somethings who had "simply stopped trying". The meme first appeared on 4chan's /r9k/ board in September 2018. The image typically depicts the Wojak character in dark clothing, including a dark beanie, smoking a cigarette. "Doomer" themed playlists, featuring this wojak along with slowed down music edits (often involving post-punk or rock) reached popularity on YouTube, especially during the Covid-19 lockdowns. The archetype often embodies nihilism and despair, with a belief in the incipient end of the world to causes ranging from climate apocalypse to peak oil to (more locally) opioid addiction. Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in The Atlantic that the doomer meme depicts young men who "are no longer pursuing friendships or relationships, and get no joy from anything because they know that the world is coming to an end."A related meme format, "doomer girl", began appearing on 4chan in January 2020, and it soon moved to other online communities, including Reddit, Twitter, and Tumblr, often by women claiming it from its 4chan origins. This format is described by The Atlantic as "a quickly sketched cartoon woman with black hair, black clothes, and sad eyes ringed with red makeup". The doomer girl character often appears in image macros interacting with the original doomer character. The format is often compared to rage comics. In media The term "doomer" was popularized in commentary surrounding Jonathan Franzen's 2019 essay in The New Yorker titled "What if We Stopped Pretending?". The piece made an argument against the possibility of averting climatic catastrophe. In addition to popularizing the term among general audiences, Franzen's piece was highly popular among online Doomer communities, including the Facebook groups Near Term Human Extinction Support Group and Abrupt Climate Change.The BBC describes sustainability professor Jem Bendell's self-published paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy as "the closest thing to a manifesto for a generation of self-described 'climate doomers'". As of March 2020, the paper had been downloaded more than a half-million times. In it, Bendell claims there is no chance to avert a near-term breakdown in human civilization, but that people must instead prepare to live with and prepare for the effects of climate change.Climate scientist Michael E. Mann described Bendell's paper as "pseudo-scientific nonsense", saying Bendell's "doomist framing" was a "dangerous new strain of crypto-denialism" that would "lead us down the very same path of inaction as outright climate change denial". An essay published on OpenDemocracy argues that the paper is an example of "climate doomism" that "relies heavily on misinterpreted climate science".Michael Mann has also listed David Wallace Wells's framing of the climate crisis, which he presents in "The Uninhabitable Earth" and The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, as being among "the prominent doomist narratives."Uncivilization: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, published in 2009 by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine to signal the beginning of the artists' group the Dark Mountain Project, critiques the idea of progress. According to The New York Times, critics called Kingsnorth and his sympathizers "doomers", "nihilists", and "crazy collapsitarians".Kate Knibbs, writing in Wired, described the development of a popular and growing strain of "doomer" climate fiction, in contrast to the typically optimistic undertones of the genre. Amy Brady, a climate fiction columnist for the Chicago Review of Books, says the genre has moved from future scenarios to near-past and present stories.Music has been made to depict the overall feel of the Doomer mindset and/or its alternative Bloomer. British musician, DJ, producer, and YouTuber Akira the Don has produced various Doomer to Bloomer playlists using remixed speeches/talks of various famous and/or intellectual figures. Another example would be of Russian Doomer music. For instance, post-punk Russian playlists created by YouTuber JustMyFavStrangeMusic. Statistics A 2021 survey of 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25 from the UK, Australia, USA, India, Philippines, Nigeria, France, Finland, Portugal and Brazil asked whether participants agreed with the statement "humanity is doomed." 55.7% answered yes, 40.7% answered no, and 3.7% preferred not to state. 45% of participants also indicated that climate anxiety was impacting their day-to-day functioning. Alternatives Alternatives to doomerism include radical hope and solarpunk, which reject the hopeless view of the future. Solarpunk rejects the tropes of doomerist media present in television shows like Black Mirror and The Handmaid's Tale by instead imagining and working toward a sustainable future where climate change, income inequality, and discrimination have been overcome. Within internet circles where the Doomer is present, the opposite character is the Bloomer. Depicted as a smiling and hopeful Wojak, with a positive outlook on life. Unlike the Doomer, the Bloomer rejects nihilism and remains optimistic about the future, often pursuing deeper meaning in life. See also References External links Doomsters(sic) – A journal article discussing peak oil and "Doomsters"

shared socioeconomic pathways

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are climate change scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes up to 2100 as defined in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on climate change in 2021. They are used to derive greenhouse gas emissions scenarios with different climate policies. The SSPs provide narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments. These storylines are a qualitative description of logic relating elements of the narratives to each other. In terms of quantitative elements, they provide data accompanying the scenarios on national population, urbanization and GDP (per capita). The SSPs can be quantified with various Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to explore possible future pathways both with regards to socioeconomic and climate pathways.The five scenarios are: SSP1: Sustainability ("Taking the Green Road") SSP2: "Middle of the Road" SSP3: Regional Rivalry ("A Rocky Road") SSP4: Inequality ("A Road Divided") SSP5: Fossil-fueled Development ("Taking the Highway") Descriptions of the SSPs SSP1: Sustainability (Taking the Green Road) "The world shifts gradually, but pervasively, toward a more sustainable path, emphasizing more inclusive development that respects predicted environmental boundaries. Management of the global commons slowly improves, educational and health investments accelerate the demographic transition, and the emphasis on economic growth shifts toward a broader emphasis on human well-being. Driven by an increasing commitment to achieving development goals, inequality is reduced both across and within countries. Consumption is oriented toward low material growth and lower resource and energy intensity." SSP2: Middle of the road "The world follows a path in which social, economic, and technological trends do not shift markedly from historical patterns. Development and income growth proceeds unevenly, with some countries making relatively good progress while others fall short of expectations. Global and national institutions work toward but make slow progress in achieving sustainable development goals. Environmental systems experience degradation, although there are some improvements and overall the intensity of resource and energy use declines. Global population growth is moderate and levels off in the second half of the century. Income inequality persists or improves only slowly and challenges to reducing vulnerability to societal and environmental changes remain." SSP3: Regional rivalry (A Rocky Road) "A resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at most, regional issues. Policies shift over time to become increasingly oriented toward national and regional security issues. Countries focus on achieving energy and food security goals within their own regions at the expense of broader-based development. Investments in education and technological development decline. Economic development is slow, consumption is material-intensive, and inequalities persist or worsen over time. Population growth is low in industrialized and high in developing countries. A low international priority for addressing environmental concerns leads to strong environmental degradation in some regions." SSP4: Inequality (A Road Divided) "Highly unequal investments in human capital, combined with increasing disparities in economic opportunity and political power, lead to increasing inequalities and stratification both across and within countries. Over time, a gap widens between an internationally-connected society that contributes to knowledge- and capital-intensive sectors of the global economy, and a fragmented collection of lower-income, poorly educated societies that work in a labor intensive, low-tech economy. Social cohesion degrades and conflict and unrest become increasingly common. Technology development is high in the high-tech economy and sectors. The globally connected energy sector diversifies, with investments in both carbon-intensive fuels like coal and unconventional oil, but also low-carbon energy sources. Environmental policies focus on local issues around middle and high income areas." SSP5: Fossil-Fueled Development (Taking the Highway) "This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. Global markets are increasingly integrated. There are also strong investments in health, education, and institutions to enhance human and social capital. At the same time, the push for economic and social development is coupled with the exploitation of abundant fossil fuel resources and the adoption of resource and energy intensive lifestyles around the world. All these factors lead to rapid growth of the global economy, while global population peaks and declines in the 21st century. Local environmental problems like air pollution are successfully managed. There is faith in the ability to effectively manage social and ecological systems, including by geo-engineering if necessary." SSP temperature projections from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report assessed the projected temperature outcomes of a set of five scenarios that are based on the framework of the SSPs. The names of these scenarios consist of the SSP on which they are based (SSP1-SSP5), combined with the expected level of radiative forcing in the year 2100 (1.9 to 8.5 W/m2). This results in scenario names SSPx-y.z as listed below. The IPCC Sixth report did not estimate the likelihoods of the scenarios: 12  but a 2020 commentary described SSP5–8.5 as highly unlikely, SSP3–7.0 as unlikely, and SSP2–4.5 as likely.However, a report citing the above commentary shows that RCP8.5 is the best match to the cumulative emissions from 2005 to 2020. See also Climate change scenario Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Representative Concentration Pathway Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (published in 2000) References Sources Meinshausen, Malte (2019). "Implications of the Developed Scenarios for Climate Change". In Teske, Sven (ed.). Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals. pp. 459–469. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-05843-2_12. ISBN 9783030058432. S2CID 133868222. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help) Hausfather, Zeke (2018-04-19). "Explainer: How 'Shared Socioeconomic Pathways' explore future climate change". Carbon Brief. Retrieved 2019-09-13. Riahi et al., The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview. Global Environmental Change, 42, 153-168. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.009

climate change in italy

In Italy, widespread impacts of climate change are currently being felt. With an increase in extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts and more frequent flooding, Italy faces many challenges adapting to climate change.One such case of the impact of sea level rise is the need for the preservation of the coastal city of Venice, which is facing increasing issues due to the rising sea levels. The economic, social, and environmental impacts that climate change creates, and an increasingly problematic death toll from the health risks that come with climate change, is a great challenge for Italy.Italy was the first country to make education on climate change compulsory, and has included "protection of the environment, biodiversity and ecosystems" in the constitution in order to "protect future generations". Italy is part of the Paris Agreement, the EU Adaptation Strategy and a treaty with France for a reinforced bilateral cooperation which includes a common commitment to sustainable development, the defense of the climate and biodiversity, and the protection of the Mediterranean and the Alpine Arc.Italy is trying to adapt its consumption into a more sustainable model by turning to renewable energy and gradually eliminating fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas emissions Energy consumption Italy is the 3rd largest consumer of energy in the European Union after Germany and France. Italy's most used sources of energy are petroleum products such as petrol, and natural gas. Due to climate change, Italy has been increasing efforts to produce and consume more renewable or "green" energy to reduce their carbon emissions. Italy is highly dependent on imported energy; and is the second largest importer of natural gas in Europe which comes from Russia. Some electricity is also imported, including nuclear power from France. Transportation Transportation is the sector most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions in Italy. In 1990 Italy emitted about 100 million tonnes of CO2, emitting steadily more annually over the following 15 years, to almost 130 million tonnes in 2005. Emission levels drop drastically in 2010 and 2015, settling between 100 and 106 million tonnes of CO2 until 2019. In 2022, Forza Italia unsuccessfully attempted to weaken EU rules on car emissions. Fossil fuels Industrial emissions Emissions in Italy has increased throughout the industrial age, however due to the demands of climate change and the effort to switch over to more renewable energy sources, Italy has managed to be on a downward curve for their emissions. From 1989 to about 2008, Italy was on the rise for emissions to about 600 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2, but has since decreased to under 500 Mt to around 450 Mt of CO2 in 2019. Most of their air pollution when it comes to CO2 emissions has come from their energy supply for electricity and second to that is from manufacturing. Forests Some forest has regrown on abandoned farmland. A new forestry strategy has been agreed and was published in 2022. Wildfires in Italy can be a problem. Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes The climate of Italy is experiencing rising temperatures, melting glaciers, an increase in the number of extreme floods due to sea rise and high rainfall, and more frequent and prolonged periods of drought.These climatic variations could be noticed in July 2021, when heavy rains were seen causing a lot of damage, while a month later the country experienced a record temperature, with a maximum temperature of 48.8 degrees, in Sicily putting 26 cities under red alert. These two phenomena reflect a changing climate in recent years.In addition to the increase in these extreme events, the changing Italian climate has seen a decrease in precipitation, such as the winter of 2022 which left Italy with one third less rain. The average temperature, meanwhile, has increased, both in winter and summer.The Italian climate is tending towards tropicalisation, and is facing the consequences of climate change.These changes are visible, at a regional level, as temperature changes in the Lazio region, where the capital, Rome, is located. This region is one of the warmest in Italy.The Italian capital has not been spared from global warming, as the city's average temperature has risen between 1979 and 2022, from an annual average of 14.6 °C in 1980 to an average of 16.3 °C 40 years later. So it is getting hotter in the Rome area.If we detail this increase a little more, and take the months of July and January between 1900 and 2018, the temperature has increased by 1.4 °C for July and 1.2 °C for January, and this increase is still rising.For the future, two scenarios have been developed for Italy based on the IPCC reports. Each scenario gives a probable climate variant resulting from the emission level chosen as a working hypothesis.The first scenario (RCP4.5) envisages an increase in greenhouse gas emissions for several more decades, before stabilising and then decreasing before the end of the century. The RCP8.5 scenario models the most extreme case, with no regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.The CMCC (Euro-Mediterranean Climate Change Centre Foundation) and the 2 scenarios seen above study the climate evolution between 2021 – 2100, based on a 1981 – 2010 reference. In Italy, we can see an increase in temperature, a decrease in the number of cold days, an increase in the number of consecutive days without rain and a decrease in summer rainfall for both scenarios. The number of days with winter precipitation increases in the north of the country while it decreases in the south. A difference is noticeable for the scenario with no CO2 reduction (RCP8.5), which follows the same projections as the first scenario, but with much higher percentages of change.Short term projections have been made from 2021 to 2050, we can see that the projections predict a global warming of temperatures, up to +2 °C for southern Italy, in the months of June, July and August for the 8.5 scenario.The year 2022 has been classified as the 5th hottest year ever in Italy, making the impacts more and more visible. Indeed, not only the temperature and climate have been affected by climate change, but we can see that the sea level has also been modified. Sea level rise With the ongoing climate change, and thus the global increase in temperature, the polar ice caps and glaciers will continue to melt. Sea level rise is therefore expected and the Mediterranean coastline will be affected. According to the IPCC's CMIP6 model projection for the Mediterranean sea, under the SSP3-7.0 scenario, the sea level will rise by 0.6±0.3 m (spread P5-P95) by year 2100. An alarming estimate was published by Strauss et al. in 2021. Their prediction was a global 8.9 m sea level rise following a 4 °C warming by year 2300, which in turn would require the reallocation of the 8.9% of the Italian population in the affected regions, as of today.In 2007, the then active Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea stated that plains and coastal areas of about 4500 km2 are at high risk of flooding in year 2100. Their flood vulnerability assessment raised concern for the increased human activity along the coastlines, causing further erosion and damage to the environment. The anthropogenic stress in forms of industrial processes, growing urbanization and tourism, has reduced the coastal fringe resilience to sea level rise, as dunes have become fragmented or destroyed, or beaches narrowing to only a few meters or less. This could lead to consequences for human health and infrastructure in the case of flooding induced by sea level rise. Water resources The expected sea level rise and risk of flooding along the Italian coastlines, constitutes a risk of groundwater contamination. The coastal fresh water beds might experience salt water intrusion of which may result in soil dryness in response to a lowered fresh water supply.The local effects of sea level rise in coastal regions have been studied in Murgia and Salento in southern Italy. These, as well as other regions, use groundwater as their primary supply of water for irrigation and drinking. The natural rate of refilling the groundwater aquifers by freshwater is too slow, making them sensitive to overexploitation (by e.g. illegal wells) as well as the seawater intrusions. This has led to the observed salinity of up to 7 g/L in certain locations along Salento's coast. As this salination proceeds, the groundwater discharge is expected to decrease significantly, in some cases resulting in a 16% reduction in water supply aimed for household use.In summer 2022 the government declared the drought on the River Po an emergency. Ecosystems All ecosystems throughout Italy are being affected by climate change as a result of warming temperatures and increased precipitation. Droughts and wildfires caused by increased temperatures damage ecosystems leading to a cycle of destruction every warm season.Karst landscapes are very sensitive ecosystems that consist of bedrock that is dissolving and is creating caves, sinkholes, streams, etc. Many different kinds of soluble types of rocks exist in karst landscapes, such as limestone and marble, resulting in water eroding and dissolving rocks away and creating the characteristic karst land formation. Karst environments are so sensitive because of their close relationship with water and fragile rock. Anything that happens above will most likely affect the karst ecosystem below as well. Research has been carried out on the human threats to karst ecosystems throughout southern-eastern Italy in the region of Apulia. The biggest threat to karst ecosystems in Apulia is stone clearing and quarrying, which completely changes the landscape of the karst environment and results in the collapse of cave systems. The decline in karst environments in Italy (specifically in Apulia) is negative in the sense that it reduces not only biodiversity but karst environments also have the capacity to bind carbon dioxide within their underwater cave systems meaning Italy will lose this natural capability over time. Karst environments also provide drinking water due to the filtrating abilities of the characteristic porous rocks of karst environments, leading to less drinking water for Italy as well. Other actions by humans that can damage and degrade Karst environments can include mineral extraction, agriculture, cave tourism, runoff, pollution, decline of resources in water or animal species, deforestation, and so on. There are many coasts in Italy bringing a lot of tourism and people to its ecosystems. Railways are often hailed as one of the better modes of transportation but even they can create a great impact on the surrounding nature. Railways demand flat and even land which is typically not the case by shorelines in Italy, so explosives have been used in the past to even out land for tracks. This is understandably quite impactful to the surrounding ecosystems. These railways near shorelines also suffer stability issues due to the constant erosion from the water nearby, so there is a constant need for protection from the shore with sea walls. The constant need for reconstruction of sea walls with the use of mined resources and sediments from the shoreline has created an issue with coastal squeeze in areas of Italy. Coastal squeeze is the degradation and eventual loss of ecosystems and habitats due to structures made by humans specifically on coasts where the natural process of "landward transgression" spurred on by the rise of the sea level is prevented.The 2022 Marmolada serac collapse was caused by climate change. Biodiversity Increased temperatures and higher precipitation is a huge threat to certain species all over the world. In Italy Increased temperature, particularly in the summers, has brought more frequent droughts which threatens biodiversity in different ecosystems. Droughts reduce water quality, flow, and availability which can be an issue for freshwater species and amphibians. Droughts also increase the risk of wildfires which can lead to the destruction of ecosystems and also lead to a decrease in biodiversity. Due to anthropogenic reasons all over the world there has been a decline in ecosystem and environmental quality sometimes resulting in an alarming decrease in biodiversity. In Italy's case biodiversity is threatened but not in the worst-case scenario. Italy has around 67,500 different animal and plant species which makes up about 43% of all of Europe's species. About 0.1% of Italy's species are extinct, 2% are critically endangered, 3% endangered, and 5% vulnerable as of 2013. Loss of habitat, ecosystem fragmentation, and the degradation of the environment are all the biggest threats to biodiversity in Italy and throughout Europe. The habitats that are at greatest risk in Italy are wetlands, shrublands, rocky areas, and forests. Urbanization is one of the biggest worries for biodiversity as it fragments and destroys ecosystems. Italy has been growing considerably and has been recently converting agricultural land to urban land. There was a law passed (Contenimento del consumo del suolo) in 2016 however that has the goal of decreasing the urbanization of land and attempting to get that conversion rate down to 0% by 2050. Impacts on people In Italy, the effects of climate change are already being felt, with numerous impacts on the economy, infrastructure, health and climate migration. Economic impacts A 15% drop in wine production has been noted for the year 2018, even though the country is the world's largest wine producer.Extreme phenomena such as floods and fires have caused colossal losses to agriculture, and have caused 1⁄4 of the cultivable land to disappear in 25 years. In 2021, a loss of 25% of rice, 10% of wheat and 15% of fruit was recorded. This loss is estimated at nearly 14 billion euros in 2018 and forecasts for some regions a 25% drop in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by 2080.Fires have an impact on crops, but also on the timber sector, increasing the trade deficit of the timber sector. The losses do not stop there, if we take into account the immediate costs of extinction and rehabilitation as well as the long-term costs of reconstruction, a fire would cost Italians about ten thousand euros per hectare.Due to extreme events, Italian cities are increasingly threatened by floods and would cause damages, material and human, of about 1.6 billion euros per year by 2050.According to the European Environment Agency, the economic damage caused by extreme events between 1980 and 2020 has caused the loss of 90 billion euros to Italy, and reinforces the economic inequalities present in the country. Future projections estimate the costs of climate change impacts from 0.5% to 8% of GDP by the end of the century. Health impacts Indeed, increases in temperature, ozone concentration or fine dust, particularly in urban areas, would increase deaths from ischaemic heart disease, stroke, metabolic disorders and nephropathy, due to heat stress. This impact is most likely to affect vulnerable people such as the elderly, children, pregnant women and people with chronic diseases, and widens the inequality gap in health care.Rising temperatures and heat waves are one of the causes of death every year in Italy, which has prompted Italy to create the Heat Wave Forecasting and Warning System bulletins. The Ministry of Health set up Heat Wave Warning and Forecasting System (HHWWS) bulletins, some time before the 2022 European heat wave.Climate change has caused many impacts, and this can be shown through the Climate Risk Index 2020 ranking which reports events between 1999 and 2018. The studies rank the impacts of climate change in terms of economic losses, GDP losses and deaths.In the ranking that records the highest number of deaths related to extreme weather events, Italy is the 6th country in the world and the first in Europe with almost 20,000 people dying due to floods and heat waves. Impacts on housing The most common causes of damage are floods such as the Acqua alta in 2019, which submerged the city of Venice under water, flooding homes and leaving them without electricity. Historical monuments were also impacted, such as St Mark's Basilica, which was flooded for the second time in less than a year and a half, whereas this had only happened four times in the last 1,200 years. These floods have made the ground and ground floors of Venice's homes too wet to live in.In 2021, near Lake Como in northern Italy, severe weather caused serious damage to nearby towns. The rainfall caused the lake to overflow its banks, which in turn led to a great deal of damage, such as flooding, landslides and the transport of rocks, trees and even cars by the force of the muddy torrent, destroying everything in its path. Impacts on migration Venice, which is one of the Italian cities most affected by the impacts of climate change, has seen its population decrease over the years. In 1966, the population was 121,000, while predictions for the end of 2022 show that the city may well fall below 50,000 inhabitants.The Planpincieux glacier is also in the news, with 500,000 cubic meters of the glacier threatening to collapse due to the scorching temperatures hitting the Valle d'Aosta region in 2020, a year after a similar warning. 75 people had to be evacuated by the Italian civil protection, including dozens of residents.According to the authorities, 1⁄5 of the country is becoming desertified, and by 2100, 5,000 km2 will end up under water due to rising sea levels causing more and more climate migration. Mitigation and adaptation Policies and legislation Like almost every other country Italy is part of the Paris Agreement to limit climate change. Italy's nationally determined contribution is to decrease its emissions by 33% by 2030, and to be carbon-neutral by 2050.Italy currently generates 11% of the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions, but have had the most rapid decrease of the member countries since 2005. All economic sectors decreased their contribution to the emissions, but with agriculture showing the smallest reduction. Italy has of year 2020 decreased its emissions by 13% compared to 2005.The Italian legislative framework for forestry was updated in 2018, which put in place new guidelines and arrangements to coordinate regional administrations, to establish a uniform national policy. The aim is to increase the ecosystem functions of forests as carbon sinks, and simultaneously obtain valuable timber products. The decree therefore emphasizes on sustainable forestry management. Beginning from recent decades, the instigated land-use changes in Italy is aimed to increase the current forested area covering about 31% of Italy's terrestrial land area.In 2020 Italy was the first country to make education on climate change compulsory, but schools struggled to implement it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Approaches To mitigate climate change, Italy has focused on the implementation of renewables and improved energy efficiency. Coal as an energy source is set to be phased out by 2025.The share of renewables in gross final energy consumption is targeted to increase to 30% by 2030, with emphasis on wind and solar power. Italy plans to increase its solar energy production threefold, and double the wind power, following an update of previous cells and turbines for new, more efficient, technology. Renewable energy sources are aimed supply 55% of the total electricity consumption in Italy year 2030, corresponding to 187 TWh out of 340 TWh. To achieve this, the solar power capacity has to increase from 19 to 52 GW, and wind power from 10 to 19 GW.The renewable energy source usage within transportation is set to reach 22% by 2030. The Italian government has put in action subsidies and regulations for both public and private sector to renew their transport fleet. The goal is to reach 4 million electric and 2 million hybrid cars by 2030, as well as increased usage of advanced biofuels such as biomethane due to Italy's already extensive gas infrastructure.According to Italy's national recovery and resilience plan, about 62 billion euros are earmarked for projects in development of the infrastructure such as improved railroad networks and other public transport, as well as an overall digitalization of society and low-emission housing. Litigation See also Plug-in electric vehicles in Italy == References ==

climate change and indigenous peoples

Climate change and Indigenous peoples describes how climate change disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples around the world when compared to non-indigenous peoples. These impacts are particularly felt in relation to health, environments, and communities. Some indigenous scholars of climate change argue that these disproportionately felt impacts are linked to ongoing forms of colonialism. Indigenous peoples found throughout the world have strategies and traditional knowledge to adapt to climate change. These knowledge systems can be beneficial for their own community's adaptation to climate change as expressions of self-determination as well as to non-Indigenous communities. The majority of the world's biodiversity is located within Indigenous territories. There are over 370 million Indigenous peoples found across 90+ countries. Approximately 22% of the planet's land is Indigenous territories, with this figure varying slightly depending on how both indigeneity and land-use are defined. Indigenous peoples play a crucial role as the main knowledge keepers within their communities. This knowledge includes that which relates to the maintenance of social-ecological systems. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People recognizes that indigenous people have specific knowledge, traditional practices, and cultural customs that can contribute to the proper and sustainable management of ecological resources.Indigenous peoples have myriad experiences with the effects of climate change because of the wide-ranging geographical areas they inhabit across the globe and because their cultures and livelihoods tend to be tied to land-based practices and relations that challenge Western perceptions of nature as property or as a resource. Indigenous peoples have a wide variety of experiences that science is beginning to include in its research of climate change and its potential solutions. As a result of this inclusion, the concepts of traditional knowledge and traditional practices are increasingly respected and considered in scientific research. Background Reports show that millions of people across the world will have to relocate due to rising seas, floods, droughts, and storms. While these conditions will affect people all over the world, the impact will disproportionately affect indigenous peoples.Many Indigenous farmers are noticing obvious changes in climate and nature, even though they're often not really familiar with the concept. Indigenous peoples have often relied on their own crop calendar depending on wind direction, blooming seasons, bird migrations, and other observable environmental factors for thousands of years. But after the global warming, farmers counting on traditional forecasting are feeling defenceless in front of nature's cycle changing. In addition, farmers with limited access to technology and modern forecast news won't be able to face unexpected weather changes like temperature variations or sudden precipitations.All of these conditions are putting Indigenous peoples under psychological and physical pressure. With regards to farming: "practices and traditions that have withstood thousands of years of civilizations rise and fall are becoming obsolete". This can carry a psychological toll for people who were using growing patterns in their farming methods that are often closely connected with local religious and cultural rites.Indigenous peoples will be more acutely impacted by climate change than non-Indigenous peoples for several reasons: Indigenous communities geographically tend to be located in regions more vulnerable to climate change such as native rainforests, the Arctic, and coastal areas. Many indigenous cultures and lifestyles are linked directly to the environment, therefore the health of the environment in which they live is extremely important for their physical and spiritual well-being. Changing climates that alter the environment will have greater effects on people who depend on the environment directly, both spiritually and physically. Indigenous people will suffer more because of their deep connection to the land. The increased negative effects of climate change are also directly related to oppression and poverty and other issues caused by colonialism. This is because Indigenous peoples have experienced a series of traumatic invasions. For example, "massacres, genocidal policies, disease pandemics, forced removal and relocation, Indian boarding school assimilation policies, and prohibition of spiritual and cultural practices have produced a history of ethnic and cultural genocide". Indigenous communities across the globe generally have economic disadvantages that are not as prevalent in non-Indigenous communities due to the ongoing oppression they have experienced. These disadvantages include lower education levels and higher rates of poverty and unemployment, which add to their vulnerability to climate change.Many studies suggest, however, that while they experience the effects at disproportionate levels, Indigenous peoples have a strong ability to adapt when it comes to the environmental changes caused by climate change, and there are many instances in which indigenous people are adapting. Their adaptability lies in the traditional knowledge within their cultures, which through "traumatic invasions" have been lost. The loss of traditional knowledge and oppression that Indigenous people face pose a greater threat than the changing of the environment itself. Climate action of indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are working to prevent and combat the effects of climate change in a variety of ways, including through climate activism. Some examples of Indigenous climate activists include Autumn Peltier, from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario and Nina Gualinga from the Kichwa-speaking community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon.Autumn Peltier, from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, has been a driving force in the fight to protect water in Canada's Indigenous communities. Peltier is the chief water commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation, which advocates for 40 First Nations in Ontario. Peltier, who became water commissioner in 2019 at the age of 14, is rallying for action to protect Indigenous waters and has become a part of the climate action movement.Nina Gualinga has spent most of her life working to protect the nature and communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon. At 18, she represented Indigenous youth before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, helping to win a landmark case against the Ecuadorian government for allowing oil drilling on indigenous lands. She now advocates on the international stage for indigenous rights and a fossil-fuel-free economy. Gualinga recently received the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International President's Youth Award, which acknowledges outstanding achievements by conservationists under the age of 30.Indigenous communities are also working to combat the impacts of climate change on their communities through community initiatives. For example, Canadian Inuit community members of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut in Labrador are working to combat feelings of cultural disconnect through organizing the teaching of traditional skills in community classes, allowing people to feel more connected with their culture and each other. Additionally, Rigolet community members worked with researchers from the University of Guelph, to develop an app that allows community members to share their findings regarding the safety of local sea ice, as a way to reduce the anxiety surrounding the uncertainty of environmental conditions. Community members have identified these resources as valuable tools in coping with the ecological grief they feel as a result of climate change. Additionally, indigenous communities and groups are working with governmental programs to adapt to the impacts climate change is having on their communities. An example of such a governmental program is the Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program (CCHAP) within the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Indigenous Services Canada. The Selkirk First Nation in Yukon worked with the CCHAP to undertake a project that focused on the relationship between the land, water and the people who rely on the fish camps for food security and to continue cultural practices that support the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of their people. The Confederacy of Mainland Miꞌkmaq's Mi'kmaw Conservation Group in Nova Scotia also worked with the CCHAP on a project involving conducting climate-related research, engaging community members, developing needs assessments and reporting on the state of climate change-related emergency plans. The Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) is also an organization that is the only indigenous climate justice organization in Canada. They implement "tools, education, and capacity needed to ensure Indigenous knowledge is a driving force in climate solutions." Specifically, they held many demonstrations helping Teck withdraw from the Frontier tar sands project. Benefits of indigenous peoples' participation in climate change research and governance Historically, indigenous persons have not been included in conversations about climate change and frameworks for them to participate in research have not existed. For example, indigenous people in the Ecuadorian rainforest who had suffered a sharp decrease in biodiversity and an increase of greenhouse gas emissions due to the deforestation of the Amazon were not included in the 2005 Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) project. This is especially difficult for indigenous people because many can perceive changes in their local climate, but struggle with giving reasons for their observed change. Indigenous knowledge Critics of the program insist that their participation is necessary not only because they believe that it is necessary for social justice reasons but also because indigenous groups are better at protecting their forests than national parks. This place-based knowledge rooted in local cultures, indigenous knowledge (IK), is useful in determining impacts of climate change, especially at the local level where scientific models often fail. Furthermore, IK plays a crucial part in the rolling-out of new environmental programs because these programs have a higher participation rate and are more effective when indigenous peoples have a say in how the programs themselves are shaped. Within IK there is a subset of knowledge referred to as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). TEK is the knowledge that indigenous peoples have accumulated through the passing of lessons and experiences from generation to generation. TEK is specifically knowledge about the group's relationship with and their classifications of other living beings and the environment around them. Climate change and governance By extension, governance, especially climate governance, would benefit from an institutional linking to IK because it would hypothetically lead to increased food security. Such a linkage would also foster a shared sense of responsibility for the usage of the environment's natural resources in a way that is in line with sustainable development as a whole, but especially with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, taking governance issues to indigenous people, those who are most exposed and disproportionately vulnerable to climate issues, would build community resilience and increase local sustainability, which would in turn lead to positive ramifications at higher levels. It is theorized that harnessing the knowledge of indigenous persons on the local level is the most effective way of moving towards global sustainability. Indigenous communities in Northern Australia have specific generational traditional knowledge about weather patterns and climatic changes. These communities have adapted to climate change in the past and have knowledge that non-indigenous people can utilize to adapt to climate change in the future. More recently, an increasing number of climate scientists and Indigenous activists advocate for the inclusion of TEK into research regarding climate change policy and adaptation efforts for both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized their support for the inclusion of IK in their Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 °C saying:There is medium evidence and high agreement that indigenous knowledge is critical for adaptation, underpinning adaptive capacity through the diversity of indigenous agro-ecological and forest management systems, collective social memory, repository of accumulated experience and social networks...Many scholars argue that recognition of indigenous rights, governance systems and laws is central to adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development. By region Africa Climate change in Africa will lead to food insecurity, displacement of indigenous persons, as well as increased famine, drought, and floods. The impact of climate change in Africa falls disproportionately on indigenous people because they have limitations on their migration and mobility, are more negatively affected by decreased biodiversity, and have their agricultural land disproportionately degraded by climate change.In Nigeria, the Niger Delta has been reported to be the most climate-vulnerable region in Nigeria. Incidences of flooding have been recorded annually especially in settlements along the Niger River and its tributaries and this overwhelmed many towns and resulted into the displacement of people from their homes.In southern Egypt and northern Sudan, indigenous people still follow the Coptic calendar, which is an ancient pharaonic calendar used by farming populace. But nowadays, farmers are finding it hard to stand in front of climate change and its harsh impacts on nature. Normally, farmers in these regions would plant wheat at the end of August. But due to new high temperatures in this period, planting will be delayed and will affect the whole crop cycle. According to Ismail El Gizouli, a Sudanese scientist and former acting chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): "Until 20 years ago, this calendar was almost perfect," but now "due to climate change there is variability from one year to another."The northernmost and southernmost countries within the continent of Africa are considered subtropical. Drought is one of the most significant threats posed by climate change to subtropical regions. Drought leads to subsequent issues regarding the agricultural sector which has significant effects on the livelihoods of populations within those areas. Pastoralists throughout the continent have coped with the aridity of the land through the adoption of a nomadic lifestyle to find different sources of water for their livestock. The Arctic Climate change is having the most dramatic impact on the Arctic region. When compared to the rest of the world, temperatures are increasing at twice the magnitude. As a result, indigenous nations which exist in this region are facing unprecedented challenges. The eight Arctic nations in total are responsible for 22% of total global carbon dioxide emissions. While these indigenous peoples exist within these Arctic nations, emissions are largely from oil and gas companies and other non-indigenous actors. Although indigenous nations in the Arctic have minimal responsibility in causing climate change, they cannot escape the effects. Many organizations who advocate for environmental justice, such as the Native Movement and the Environmental Justice Foundation, have brought attention to this disparity, ultimately arguing countries and corporations who are more responsible for climate change must take financial and ethical liability for existing damages.According to the Kaya identity, four factors influence the aggregate global emission levels of carbon dioxide. These factors are increasing global population, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, energy intensity, and carbon intensity. Before COVID-19 spread across the world, global population, GDP per capita, and carbon intensity were all increasing, while energy intensity was decreasing at a magnitude making global emission levels of carbon dioxide rise. However, COVID-19 has led to a decrease in carbon intensity and GDP per capita. Although carbon emissions have declined in 2020, the comprehensive long-term effect on reducing the increase of carbon dioxide concentration the atmosphere is minimal unless there are significant improvements in energy efficiency.An increase in the global emission levels of carbon dioxide means significant arctic sea ice decline. The reduction of sea ice is currently not just impacting global temperature and the climate crisis. It is also significantly harming indigenous nations in unprecedented ways. Indigenous peoples in the Arctic include indigenous people who live in Canada, Greenland, the United States, Norway, and Russia. In Canada, there are nine major Inuit groups. They are the Labradormiut (Labrador Inuit), Nunavimmiut (Nunavik Inuit or Ungava Inuit), Nunatsiarmiut (Baffin Island Inuit), Iglulingmiut (Iglulik Inuit), Kivallirmiut (Caribou Inuit), Netsilingmiut (Netsilik), Inuinnait (Copper Inuit), Qikirtamiut (Sanikiluaq Inuit), and Inuvialuit (Western Arctic Inuit or Mackenzie Delta Inuit). While smaller in number, there are additionally non-Inuit indigenous nations in the northern regions of Canada, such as the Cree, Dene, and Innu peoples. In Greenland, indigenous people are Inuit. They comprise most of the population on the island. In the United States, Arctic indigenous peoples reside in Alaska. While there are many different ways to categorize them, they are often grouped regionally. In the south, there are the Yup'ik (Cup'ik), Eyak, Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian peoples. In the north, there are the St. Lawrence Island Yupik and Iñupiat peoples. The interior of Alaska is home to Athabascan peoples. The Alutiiq and Aleut (Unangax) peoples reside in the Aleutian Islands and south-central Alaska. The Sámi people exist in Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia, and are the only indigenous group within the European Union. There are more than 180 indigenous peoples who reside in the land currently known as Russia. These include the Buryats, Enets, Evenks, Khakas, Komi, Oroks, Nenets, and Yakuts. Iceland is the sole Arctic country which does not have any indigenous nations as its citizens are mostly descended from northern Europeans. Because of melting ice, rising sea level, increased erosion, and loss of traditional food and hunting due to climate change, all of these indigenous groups are at great risk. For the Sámi people, their relationship with reindeer is also at risk. Reindeer pastoralism has helped the Sámi people survive for centuries. The Sámi who reside in Finnmark, a geographical area in Northern Norway, may seeing changes to this process due to climate change. Climate projections reveal many scenarios over the 21st century in which regional and local areas may no longer have proper conditions to raise and profit off of reindeer. Traditionally, Sámi herders would react to environmental changes by moving to a more advantageous area with ideal snow conditions, temperatures, and other ecological resources. However, in modern times, resilience is no longer an option. Economic and legal barriers imposed on the Sámi by Norway, loss of habitat, and significant loss of snow all hamper the Sámi nation's ability to respond to these changes. There is also much uncertainty regarding climate change. Climate change may lead to even more unexpected difficulties in sustaining this traditional practice. Reindeer are not only economically important to the Sámi, but they are also a core part of their culture. Reindeer inspired and continue to inspire sounds, festivals, language, and storytelling. In order to help the Sámi as much as possible, Scandinavian countries and the international community must acknowledge both their traditional knowledge systems and ways of life and their right to be present at the decision-making table. Canada Alaska, United States Asia Indigenous people in Asia are plagued with a wide variety of problems due to climate change, including but not limited to, lengthy droughts, floods, irregular seasonal cycles, typhoons and cyclones with unprecedented strength, and highly unpredictable weather. This has led to worsening food and water security, which in turn factor into an increase in water-borne diseases, heat strokes, and malnutrition. Indigenous lifestyles in Asia have been completely uprooted and disrupted due to the above factors, but also due to the increased expansion of mono-culture plantations, hydroelectric dams, and the extraction of uranium on their lands and territories prior to their free and informed consent.In southern Iraq, indigenous farmers still follow the steps of the Sumerians, agriculture pioneers since 6000 B.C. But recently, global warming affected crop cycle due to longer hotter summers. For example, August is the month of reducing grapes and producing grapes. But recently fruits are not appearing in their usual times. Also due to higher temperatures in September, farmers won't be able to move their buffalos from the water to avoid overheating them. Older indigenous farmers who are using traditional farming methods may be confused by the changing climate and be unsure what and when to grow crops. Latin America and Caribbean Indigenous peoples' backgrounds Although some cultures thrive in urban settings like Mexico City or Quito, indigenous peoples in Latin America populate most of the rural poor areas in countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and Paraguay. Indigenous people consist of 40 million of the Latin American-Caribbean populations. This makes these populations extremely susceptible to threats of climate change due to socioeconomic, geographic, cultural, and political factors. Formal education is limited in these areas which caps contributions of skills to the market economy. Mostly living in the Amazon rainforest, there are more than 600 ethnographic-linguistic identities living in the Latin American region. This distinction of cultures provides different languages, world-views, and practices that contribute to indigenous livelihoods. Impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples Humans have impacted climate change through land use, extractive practices, and resource use. Not only have humans exacerbated climate change, our actions are threatening the livelihoods of indigenous peoples in targeted and susceptible areas. Specifically, extractive industries in the Amazon and the Amazon basin are threatening the livelihood of indigenous persons by land use and exacerbating climate change. These extractive policies were originally implemented without the consent of indigenous people are now being implemented without respect to the rights of indigenous people, specifically in the case of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Not only do deforestation and fragmentation of forests negatively affect the areas and livelihoods of inhabitants, but contributes to the release of more carbon into the atmosphere, as the trees provided as carbon sinks, which exacerbates climate change even more. Thus, deforestation has and will continue to have disproportionate effects on indigenous people in Latin American tropical forests, including the displacement of these communities from their native lands. Also, in the Amazon Basin where fish are a main resource, precipitation and flooding greatly impact fish reproduction drastically. Likewise, this inconsistency in precipitation and flooding has affected, and decreased the reproduction of fish and turtles in the Amazon River. Furthermore, climate change has altered the patterns of migratory birds and changed the start and end times of wet and dry seasons, further increasing the disorientation of the daily lives of indigenous people in Latin America. Climate changed caused by humans will likely have a devastating effect on indigenous languages in the Amazon rainforest basin. Approximately 20% of global endangered languages are found in the region and the loss of ancestral lands will likely hinder the preservation of indigenous languages, leading to a cultural crisis which could threaten "ancient knowledge, cultural heritage, and an entire sense of community."As most of the contributions and the roles of combating climate change, the rights and resources of indigenous peoples often go unrecognized, these communities face disproportionate and the most negative repercussions of climate change and from conservation programs. Due to the close relationship with nature and indigenous peoples, they are among the first to face the repercussions of climate change and at a large devastating degree. Gender inequality Indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change, women even more so. Discrimination and some customary laws hinder political involvement, making numbers for indigenous women extremely low. Although indigenous women's involvement still lag behind, countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru have improved their political participation of indigenous peoples. Furthermore, women often face strenuous physical labor. To reduce harm, improve health of humans and the environment, a nongovernmental organization in Brazil introduced an eco-stove that eliminates the need for heavy fuelwood for energy and to cook. This has empowered indigenous women in Brazil and surrounding areas as around 53,000 people have the opportunity to live healthier and easier lives. Adaptation strategies Due to indigenous peoples' extensive knowledge and ability to predict and interpret weather patterns and conditions, these populations are vital to adaptation and survival of posed climate threats. From hundreds of years experimenting with nature and developing inherently sustainable cultural strategies has allowed indigenous peoples to pass on their knowledge to future generations. This has made indigenous peoples crucial to understanding the relationship between nature, people, and conserving the environment. In Latin America and the Caribbean, indigenous peoples are restructuring and changing agricultural practices in adaptation to climate changes. They are also moving and relocating agriculture activities from drought inflicted areas to areas with more suitable, wetter areas. It is imperative for the Americas and the Caribbean to continue pursuing conservation of the environment as 65% of indigenous land has not been developed intensely. Policy and global action After the Zapatista movement in Mexico in the mid-1990s, indigenous issues were recognized internationally and the start of progress for indigenous political involvement and recognition. Bearing the best political representation, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have the largest political representation, Mexico being recognized as having the largest gap in proportion to representation and population. International treaties and goals like the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda have recognized the rights of indigenous peoples.Women play a crucial role in combating climate change especially in indigenous culture, and it is imperative to recognize strong leadership and their successes. Despite the threats of climate change, indigenous women have risen up and pushed for sustainable solutions at local and global scales. Caribbean The impacts of climate change are taking a disproportionate toll on indigenous peoples, when indigenous peoples contribute least to climate change. The main effect of climate change in the Caribbean region is the increased occurrence of extreme weather events. There have been an influx of flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, extreme winds, and landslides in the region. These events have led to wide-ranging infrastructural damage to both public and private property for all. For example, Hurricane Ivan inflicted damage totalling 135% of Grenada's GDP to Grenada, setting the country back an estimated ten years in development. The effects of these events are most strongly felt, however, by indigenous persons, who have been forced to move to the most extreme areas of the country due to the lasting effects that colonialism had on the region. In these extreme regions, extreme weather events are even more pronounced, leading to crop and livestock devastation. Also, in the Caribbean, people have reported erosion of beaches, less beach access, a reduction in vegetation, a noticeable rise in sea-level, and rivers that are drying up. Erosion to beaches and coastlines as well as vegetation loss is partly due to increased built development along vulnerable coastlines throughout the Caribbean, which is generally related to the expanding tourism industry and increased human activity.In 2005 an extensive coral bleaching event occurred across the Caribbean, which was attributed to unusually high sea surface temperatures, which may or may not be attributable to climate change. Vast coral bleaching can have detrimental effects on the health of marine ecosystems and can lead to reduced fish stocks, which indigenous Caribbean peoples may rely on as a food source and way of income. Considering many regions in the Caribbean are water scarce and many Small Island Developing States rely on rainfall and groundwater water security has also become an issue.Among changing agricultural practices, it is imperative for indigenous peoples and inhabitants of these regions to integrate disaster plans, national sustainable development goals and environmental conservation into daily lives. As indigenous lands are constantly under attack, from governments to industries, it is imperative for indigenous peoples to partner with groups such as the Rainforest Alliance to fight and protest for indigenous rights. The Caribbean region has been focusing on capacity-building needs to further enable indigenous peoples to utilise their traditional knowledge to build community resilience to climate change. North America Effects of climate change on indigenous peoples in North America include temperature increases, precipitation changes, decreased glacier and snow cover, rising sea level, increased floods, droughts and extreme weather. Food and water insecurity, limited access to traditional foods and locations, and increased exposure to infectious diseases may result from these changes.One in four Native Americans face food insecurity. North American peoples, such as the Inuit, rely on subsistence activities like hunting, fishing, and gathering. 15-22% of the diet in some indigenous communities is from a variety of traditional foods. These activities are important to the survival of tribal culture, and to the collective self-determination of a tribe. Indigenous North American diets consist of staple foods like wild rice, shellfish, beans, moose, deer, berries, caribou, walrus, corn, squash, fish, and seal. The effects of climate change—including changes in the quality and availability of freshwater, the changing migratory patterns of staple species, and the increased rarity of native plant species—have made it increasingly difficult for tribes to subsist on their traditional diets and participate in their culturally important activities. The traditional diets of indigenous North Americans also provide essential nutrients. In the absence of these essential staples—and often because the populations reside in "food deserts" and are subject to poverty—Native Americans living on reservations are subject to higher levels of detrimental diet-related diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. In some Native American counties in the United States, 20% of children aged 2–5 are obese.The indigenous populations in the United States and Canada are communities that are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to socioeconomic disadvantages. These environmental changes will have implications on the lifestyle of indigenous groups which include, but are not limited to, Alaska Natives, Inuit, Dene, and Gwichʼin people. There are higher rates of poverty, lower levels of access to education, to housing, and to employment opportunities in indigenous communities than there are in non-indigenous communities within North America. These conditions increase indigenous communities' vulnerability and sensitivity to climate change. These socioeconomic disadvantages not only increase their vulnerability and in some cases exposure, they also limit indigenous groups' capacity to cope with and recover from the harmful effects climate change brings. Some of the solutions proposed for combating climate change in North America like coal pollution mitigation, and genetically modified organism (GMO) foods actually violate the rights of indigenous peoples and ignore what is in their best interest in favor of sustaining economic prosperity in the region. Additionally, many tribal communities have already faced the need to relocate or protect against climate change (such as sea level rise), but there is a general lack of funds and dedicated government-supported programs to assist tribal communities in protecting themselves from climate change and resettlement, which can result in the further erosion of indigenous cultures and communities. Furthermore, the loss of biodiversity in the region has severely limited the ability of indigenous peoples to adapt to changes in their environment. Such uncertainties and changes in livelihood and even culture, alongside the destruction of culturally significant ecosystems and species, can negatively affect people's mental health and "sense of place."Additionally, increases in temperature threatens cultural practices. Many indigenous ceremonies involve going for days without food or water, which can become health and even life threatening in increasingly hot temperatures.An important topic to consider when looking at the intersection of climate change and indigenous populations is having an indigenous framework and understanding indigenous knowledge. Because of the direct effect climate change has on the livelihoods of many indigenous peoples and their connection to the land and nature, these communities have developed various indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge refers to the collective knowledge that has been accumulated and evolved across multiple generations concerning people's relationship to the environment. These knowledge systems are becoming increasingly important within the conversations surrounding climate change because of the long timeline of ecological observations and regional ecological understanding. However, there are dangers which come with sharing them. Traditional knowledge is often a part of an indigenous population's spiritual identity, and misuse of it can lead to disrespect and exploitation of their culture, thus some may be hesitant to share their knowledge. However, an example of the ways indigenous knowledge has been used effectively to understand climate change is the monitoring of the Arctic by Alaska Natives. Their knowledge has been used to monitor changes in animal behavior and weather patterns, as well to develop ways of adapting in a shifting environment.In reaction to the environmental changes within North American tribal communities, movements of indigenous activism have organized and risen to protest against the injustices enforced upon them. A notable and recent example of indigenous activism revolves around the #NoDAPL movement. "On April 1st, tribal citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation, and other Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota citizens founded a spirit camp along the proposed route of the Dakota Access Pipeline" to object against the installment of an oil pipeline through indigenous land. Another example would be in Northwestern Ontario, where indigenous peoples of the Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (Grassy Narrows First Nation) have protested against clearcutting in their territory. Tribes in the state of Washington that rely on fish have protested against overfishing and habitat destruction. Indigenous environmental activism against effects of climate change and forces that facilitate ongoing damaging effects to tribal land, aims to correct their vulnerability and disadvantaged status, while also contributing to the broader discussion of tribal sovereignty. In efforts to promote acknowledgement of indigenous tribes in accordance with indigenous environmental activism, indigenous scientists and organizations, such as the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, have made note of the importance of incorporating indigenous sciences into efforts toward sustainability., Pacific and Oceania The Pacific region is characterized by low elevation and insular coastlines, making it severely susceptible to the increased sea-level and erosion effects of climate change. Entire islands have sunk in the Pacific region due to climate change, dislocating and killing indigenous persons. Furthermore, the region suffers from continually increasing frequency and severity of cyclones, inundation and intensified tides, and decreased biodiversity due to the destruction of coral reefs and marine ecosystems. This decrease in biodiversity is coupled with a decreased populations of the fish and other sea life the indigenous people of the region rely upon for food. Indigenous people of the region are also losing many of its food sources, such as sugarcane, yams, taro, and bananas, to climate change as well as seeing a decrease in the amount of drinkable water made available from rainfall.Many Pacific island nations have a heavy economic reliance upon the tourism industry. Indigenous people are not outside of the economic conditions of a nation, therefore they are impacted by the fluctuations of tourism and how that has been impacted by climate change. Pacific coral reefs are a large tourist attraction and with the acidification and warming of the ocean due to climate change, the coral reefs that many tourists want to see are being bleached leading to a decline in the industry's prosperity.According to Rebecca Tsosie, a professor known for her work in indigenous peoples' human rights, the effects of the global climate change are especially visible in Pacific region of the world. She cites the indigenous peoples' strong and deeply interconnected relationship with their environment. This close relationship brings about a greater need for the indigenous populations to adapt quickly to the effects of climate change because of how reliant they are upon the environment around them. Australia Many Aboriginal people live in rural and remote agricultural areas across Australia, especially in the Northern and Southern areas of the continent. There are a variety of different climate impacts on different Aboriginal communities which includes cyclones in the northern region and flooding in Central Australia which negatively impacts cultural sites and therefore the relationship between indigenous people and the places that hold their traditional knowledge.Some of these changes include a rise in sea levels, getting hotter and for a longer period of time, and more severe cyclones during the cyclone season. Climate issues include wild fires, heat waves, floods, cyclones, rising sea-levels, rising temperatures, and erosion. The communities most affected by climate changes are those in the North where Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders make up 30% of the population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities located in the coastal north are the most disadvantaged due to social and economic issues and their reliance on their traditional lands for food, culture, and health. This has begged the question for many community members in these regions, should they move away from this area or remain present.Indigenous people have always responded and adapted to climate change, including indigenous people of Australia. Aboriginal Australian people have existed in Australia for tens of thousands of years. Due to this continual habitation, Aboriginal Australians have observed and adapted to climatic and environmental changes for millennia which uniquely positions them to be able to respond to current climate changes. Though these communities have shifted and changed their practices overtime, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) exists that can benefit local and indigenous communities today. Indigenous people have not been offered many opportunities or provided with sufficient platforms to influence and contribute their traditional knowledge to the creation of current international and local policies associated to climate change adaptation. Notes == References ==

effects of climate change on mental health

The effects of climate change on mental health and wellbeing are documented. This is especially the case for vulnerable populations and those with pre-existing serious mental illness. There are three broad pathways by which these effects can take place: directly, indirectly or via awareness. The direct pathway includes stress-related conditions caused by exposure to extreme weather events. These include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Scientific studies have linked mental health to several climate-related exposures. These include heat, humidity, rainfall, drought, wildfires and floods. The indirect pathway can be disruption to economic and social activities. An example is when an area of farmland is less able to produce food. The third pathway can be of mere awareness of the climate change threat, even by individuals who are not otherwise affected by it.An additional aspect to consider is the detrimental impact climate change can have on green or blue natural spaces, which in themselves have been proven to have beneficial impact on mental health. Impacts of anthropogenic climate change, such as freshwater pollution or deforestation, degrade these landscapes and reduce public access. Even when the green and blue spaces are intact, access to them is not equal across society, which is an issue of environmental justice and economic inequality.Mental health outcomes have been measured in several studies. These use indicators such as psychiatric hospital admissions, mortality, self-harm and suicide rates. People with pre-existing mental illness, Indigenous peoples, migrants and refugees, and children and adolescents are all vulnerable. The emotional responses to the threat of climate change can include eco-anxiety, ecological grief and eco-anger. Such emotions can be rational responses to the degradation of the natural world and lead to adaptive action.Assessing the exact mental health effects of climate change is difficult; increases in heat extremes pose risks to mental health which can manifest themselves in increased mental health-related hospital admissions and suicidality.: 9 Pathways Mental health is a state of well-being where an individual can recognize their abilities, handle daily stresses of life, productively work and be able to contribute to their community. There are three main causal pathways by which climate change impacts mental health: directly, indirectly or via awareness (or "psychosocial"). In some cases, people may be affected via more than one pathway at once. Various studies use different nomenclature to designate the three causal pathways. e.g. some designate the "awareness" pathway using the term "Indirect impact," while grouping "indirect effects" via financial and social disruption under "psychosocial". Impacts from direct pathway The direct pathway includes stress-related conditions being caused by exposure to extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires. These conditions can result in trauma-related events, such as dislocation from climate-change induced natural disasters, such as flooding or fire, losing friends and family, or other traumatic events. The effect of being exposed to such events can be increased mental health illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder. These effects often occur simultaneously, as well as individually. A large amount of literature exists concerning the association between disasters and mental health (without explicitly linking an increase in frequency and severity to climate change).Most commonly this is short term stress, from which people can often soon make a rapid recovery. But sometimes chronic conditions set in, especially among those who have been exposed to multiple events, such as post traumatic stress, somatoform disorder or long term anxiety. A swift response by authorities to restore a sense of order and security can substantially reduce the risk of any long term psychological impact for most people. Though individuals who already had mental ill health, especially psychosis, can need intensive care, which can be challenging to deliver if local mental health services were disrupted by the extreme weather.Physical health can be severely impacted by climate change (see also effects of climate change on human health). The deterioration of a person's physical health can also lead to a deterioration in a person's mental health.The less extreme direct manifestations of climate change can also have direct psychological effects. The single most well studied linkage between weather and human behavior is that between temperature and aggression. Various reviews conclude that high temperatures cause people to become bad tempered, leading to increased physical violence. Increased temperatures and heatwaves Several studies have shown that there is a correlation between elevated temperatures and psychiatric hospital admissions for a range of mental and neurological disorders (dementia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, somatoform disorders, and disorders of psychological development).Mortality has also been found to be influenced by high ambient temperatures for people living with mental illness and neurological conditions. Another European study supports this finding with increased mortality risk for people with psychiatric disorders during heat waves from 2000 to 2008 in Rome and Stockholm, particularly for older people (75+) and women. Projections of mortality under different climate change scenarios in China also estimate increasing trends in heat-related excess mortality for mental disorders but a decreasing trend in cold-related excess mortality.Several studies from Asia found that fluctuating temperatures influenced mental health and well-being, impacting productivity and livelihoods. For example, long-term exposure to high and low temperatures in Taiwan resulted in a 7% increase of major depressive disorder incidence per 1 °C increment in regions with an average annual temperature above the median 23 °C. Suicide rates Temperature has also been associated with self-harm and suicide rates. Using data from the US and Mexico, suicide rates were found to increase by 0.7% and 3.1%, respectively, for a 1 °C increase in monthly average temperature. Increasing temperatures are associated with increases in aggressive behavior and rising crime rates, leading to increases in homicides and assaults, as well as increased suicide rates in young men and older adults. Higher ambient temperatures are also associated with emergency department visits for mental health, suicides, and self-reporting of poor mental health.It is projected that in the coming decades, suicide rates in the United States and Mexico will increase due to increasing ambient temperatures. Assuming no reduction in the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, it is projected that by 2050 there will be an additional 9,000 to 40,000 suicides in the United States and Mexico, which is a rate comparable to the one estimated after the impact of economic recessions, suicide prevention programs, and gun restriction laws. The study also showed an increase in depressive language and suicidal ideation used on social media posts correlated with an increase in temperatures. In India, higher temperatures during growing seasons for crops have also been associated with increased suicides, at a rate of an additional 67 deaths per year per 1 °C additional degree. Wildfires Studies from North America have shown that experiences of evacuation and isolation due to wildfires, as well as feelings of fear, stress, and uncertainty, contributed to acute and long-term negative impacts on mental and emotional well-being. Prolonged smoke events were linked to respiratory problems, extended time indoors, and disruptions to livelihood and land-based activities, which negatively affected mental well-being. Similar findings were reported in an Australian study, with increased rates of stress, depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder being correlated with bushfire exposure severity. Floods An Australian study in rural communities concluded that the threat of drought and flood are intertwined and contributed to decreased well-being from stress, anxiety, loss, and fear. A cohort study from the UK looking at the long-term impact of flooding found psychological morbidity persisted for at least three years after the flooding event. Increased carbon dioxide concentrations Drivers of climate change may also have a physiological effects on the brain, in addition to their psychological impacts. By the end of the 21st century people could be exposed to indoor CO2 levels of up to 1400 ppm, triple the amount commonly experienced outdoors today. This may cut humans' basic decision-making ability indoors by ~25% and complex strategic thinking by ~50% due to carbon dioxide toxicity. Impacts from indirect pathway Climate change can affect wellbeing and mental health also through indirect consequences, such as "loss of land, flight and migration, exposure to violence, change of social, ecological, economic or cultural environment". Indirect effects on mental health can also occur via impacts on physical health. Physical health and mental health have a reciprocal relationship, so any climate change related effect that affects physical health can potentially indirectly affect mental health too.In several parts of the world, climate change significantly impacts people's financial income, for example by reducing agricultural output. This can cause significant stress, which in turn can lead to depression, suicidal ideation, and other negative psychological conditions. Consequences can be especially severe if financial stress is coupled with significant disruption to social life, such as relocation to camps. Effective government interventions, similar to those used to relief the stress from a financial crisis, can alleviate the negative conditions caused by such disruption.Having to migrate due to an extreme weather event or conflict exacerbated by climate change can lead to increased rates of physical illnesses and psychological distress. Impacts from increasing awareness pathway The third pathway can be of mere awareness of the climate change threat, even by individuals who have not personally experienced any direct negative impacts. This can cause psychological distress, anxiety (eco-anxiety), and grief (eco-grief).The increasing "awareness of the existential dimension of climate change" can influence people's wellbeing or challenge their mental health, especially for children and adolescents. Awareness for climate change in young people has grown in Europe as evidenced by the “Fridays for Future” movement that started in summer 2018. This can lead to higher emotional distress amongst young people, as well as feelings of fear, sadness, and anger, apocalyptic and pessimistic feelings – which can lead to grief, anxiety and hopelessness – all factors which can impact people's mental health. This effect has been compared to nuclear anxiety which occurred during the Cold War. Conditions such as eco-anxiety are very rarely severe enough to require clinical treatment. While unpleasant and thus classified as negative, such conditions have been described as valid rational responses to the reality of climate change. Types of mental health outcomes There are a multitude of mental illnesses that affect everyone differently. The types of mental health outcomes that are related to the effects of climate change (for example during heat waves) can be grouped as follows: Clinical disorders Trauma related disorders Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Acute stress disorder Depression Anxiety Self-harm and suicide Sub-clinical conditions Psychological distress Environmental and climate specific constructs Climate anxiety (eco-anxiety) Solastalgia Psychiatric-related hopitalisations and deaths (admissions for mental and neurological disorders, including dementia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, somatoform disorders, and disorders of psychological development) Exacerbation of pre-existing mental illness Potential neurodevelopmental impacts Vulnerable populations and life stages Climate change does not impact everyone equally; those of lower economic and social status are at greater risk and experience more devastating impacts. People with pre-existing mental illness Higher temperatures can affect people taking certain psychotropic medications (including hypnotics, anxiolytics, and antipsychotics). They can have an increased risk of heatstroke and death as a result of high temperatures. Indigenous peoples Inuit communities Qualitative studies reporting the unique mental health impacts of climate change on Inuit communities in Canada have described a loss of place-based solace, land-based activities such as hunting, and cultural identity due to changing weather and local landscapes.Climate change has devastating effects on Indigenous peoples' psychological wellbeing as it impacts them directly and indirectly. As their lifestyles are often closely linked to the land, climate change directly impacts their physical health and financial stability in quantifiable ways. There is also a concerning correlation between severe mental health issues among Indigenous peoples worldwide and environmental changes. The connection and value Indigenous cultures ascribe to land means that damage to or separation from it, directly impacts mental health. For many, their country is interwoven with psychological aspects such as their identity, community and rituals.Inadequate government responses which neglect Indigenous knowledge further worsen negative psychological effects linked to climate change. This produces the risk of cultural homogenization due to global adaptation efforts to climate change and the disruption of cultural traditions due to forced relocation. Countries with lower socio-economic status and minority groups in high socio-economic areas are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. This has created climate migrants due to worsening environmental conditions and catastrophic climate events.Changes in sea levels and ice formation cause great impacts in Indigenous communities. The changes can lead to shifts in emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, a sense of loss, etc.; as well as to changes in behavior such as withdrawal, aggression, and increased substance use. A sense of loss due to the changes in traditional weather prediction and navigation techniques has been observed, especially among younger generations where it results in feelings of cultural dislocation and dissociation as well as changes in identity. Climate change is likely to continue affecting Indigenous communities and their mental health for the next decades. Another study indicated that the cumulative effect of repeated exposure to climate change events and related stressors would be likely to lead to some form of mental illness. The effect of climate change on Inuit youth has also been studied, with concern for Elders, reduced connection to the land, challenges to cultural activities, among other things having an effect on mental health on youth. Indigenous peoples of Australia Studies conducted with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Australia also highlight the environmental impacts of climate change on emotional wellbeing, including increased community distress from deteriorating the connection to country. Heat also appeared to be associated with suicide incidence in Australia's Indigenous populations; however, other socio-demographic factors may play a more critical role than meteorological factors. Children Climate change is a serious threat to children and adolescent mental health. Children's mental health, their rights and climate change need to be seen as interlinked topics, not separate points.Children and young adults are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Many of the climate change impacts which affect children's physical health also lead to psychological and mental health consequences. Children who live in geographic locations that are most susceptible to the impacts of climate change, and/or with weaker infrastructure and fewer supports and services suffer the worst impacts.The impacts of climate change on children include them being at a high risk of mental health consequences like PTSD, depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep disorders, attachment disorders, and substance abuse. These conditions can lead to problems with emotion regulation, cognition, learning, behavior, language development, and academic performance. Adolescents Lack of political advocacy and change, with an increase in media attention, has brought upon ecological grief, which has had particular impacts on adolescent mental health. Climate change affects adolescents differently and in a multitude of ways. Many of these ways intersect as each adolescent processes their trauma and distress. Adolescents with pre-existing mental illnesses experience an elevated risk of ecological grief and distress.While these feelings are not directly harmful to the adolescent's physical health and conditions, they are unpleasant and a rising issue. Ecological grief, distress, anxiety, and anger are the most popular emotions sparked among adolescents. Psychologists, specifically climate psychologists, are experiencing difficulties in originating the source of these emotions, and methods to aid those in need and prevent those not as affected.Being forced to move, or displacement is becoming more common as the climate crisis rises. Forced displacement may be caused by natural disasters, reduction of food or food security, famine, water scarcity, or other environmental impacts. This displacement alone evokes feelings of grief and loss by being forced to move from a place of comfort to someplace unknown. Reduction of food, famine and water scarcity will indirectly impact an adolescent's health by invoking fear and anxiety, as well as grief and loss. As an adolescent, relationships are important. Displacement can put strains on an adolescent's social relationships, as well as prevent them from further developing their social skills and relationships. Community conflict can also indirectly impact an adolescent's mental health. The community may experience conflicting views on how to approach climate change, climate change methods, and climate change awareness. Surrounded by negative emotions, and situations can heavily way on a developing adolescent. They may not want to personally experience this conflict with others and pull back from social interactions. They may possess different ideas, but struggle to get someone to listen due to their age. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and fear become prevalent. Environmental and climate-specific constructs Climate anxiety (eco-anxiety) Eco-grief Solastalgia Co-benefits While most study on the psychological impact of climate change finds negative effects, there may be some positive impacts via direct or indirect pathways. Climate activism Direct experience of the negative impacts of climate change may also lead to personal changes that can be seen as positive. Direct experiences of environmental events such as flooding have resulted in greater psychological salience and concern for climate change, which in turn predicts intentions, behaviors. and policy support for climate change.At a personal level, emotions like worry and anxiety are a normal, if uncomfortable, part of life. They can be seen as part of a defense system that identifies threats and deals with them. From this perspective, anxiety can be useful in motivating people to seek information and take action on a problem. Anxiety and worry are more likely to be associated with engagement when people feel that they can do things. Feelings of agency can be strengthened by including people in participatory decision-making. Problem-focused and meaning-focused coping skills can also be promoted. Problem-focused coping involves information gathering and trying to find out what you personally can do. Meaning-focused coping involves behaviors such as identifying positive information, focusing on constructive sources of hope, and trusting that other people are also doing their part. A sense of agency, coping skills, and social support are all important in building general resilience. Education may benefit from a focus around emotional awareness and the development of sustainable emotion-regulation strategies.For some individuals, the increased engagement caused by the shared struggle against climate change reduces social isolation and loneliness. At a community level, learning about the science of climate change, and taking collective action in response to the threat, can increase altruism and social cohesion, strengthen social bonds, and improve resilience. Such positive social impact is generally associated only with communities that had somewhat high social cohesion in the first place, prompting community leaders to act to improve social resiliency before climate-related disruption becomes too severe. Mitigation and adaptation efforts There are potential mental health benefits of mitigation actions taken by individuals, such as active transport, increased physical activity, and healthier diets. History Early investigation of the mental health impacts for climate change began in the 20th century, and became more topical in the 21st. See also Barriers to pro-environmental behaviour Climate psychology Effects of climate change on human health Politics of climate change Psychological impact of climate change == References ==

effects of climate change on livestock

There are numerous interlinked effects of climate change on livestock rearing. This activity is both heavily affected by and a substantial driver of anthropogenic climate change due to its greenhouse gas emissions. As of 2011, some 400 million people relied on livestock in some way to secure their livelihood.: 746  The commercial value of this sector is estimated as close to $1 trillion. Climate change is already now (as of 2023) resulting in a range of adverse impacts on livestock production. These include reduced quantity or quality of animal feed, whether due to drought or as a secondary impact of CO2 fertilization effect. Animal parasites and vector-borne diseases are also spreading further than they had before, and the data indicating this is frequently of superior quality to one used to estimate impacts on the spread of human pathogens.As the global surface temperatures rise, there is a corresponding increase in overall heat stress in all but the coldest nations. This heat stress can be outright lethal at worst, with mass livestock mortality already observed during heatwaves, yet it also has a range of sublethal impacts – from lower quantity of quality of products like milk, to greater vulnerability to lameness or even impaired reproduction. With global warming continuing, difficulties with growing feed could reduce worldwide livestock headcounts by 7–10% by midcentury.: 748  While some areas which currently support livestock animals are expected to avoid "extreme heat stress" even with high warming at the end of the century, others may stop being suitable as early as midcentury.: 750 In general, sub-Saharan Africa is considered to be the most vulnerable region to food security shocks caused by the impacts of climate change on their livestock, as over 180 million people across those nations are expected to see significant declines in suitability of their rangelands around midcentury.: 748  On the other hand, Japan, the United States and nations in Europe are considered the least vulnerable. This is as much a product of pre-existing differences in human development index and other measures of national resilience and widely varying importance of pastoralism to the national diet as it is an outcome of direct impacts of climate on each country.Livestock produces the majority of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and demands around 30% of agricultural fresh water needs, while only supplying 18% of the global calorie intake. Animal-derived food plays a larger role in meeting human protein needs, yet is still a minority of supply at 39%, with crops providing the rest.: 746–747 Out of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, only SSP1 offers any realistic possibility of meeting the 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) target. Together with measures like a massive deployment of green technology, this pathway assumes animal-derived food will play a lower role in the global diets relative to now. As a result, there have been calls for phasing out subsidies currently offered to livestock farmers in many places worldwide, and net zero transition plans now involve limits on total livestock headcounts, including substantial reductions of existing stocks in some countries with extensive animal agriculture sectors like Ireland. Yet, an outright end to human consumption of meat and/or animal products is not currently considered a realistic goal. Therefore, any comprehensive plan of adaptation to effects of climate change, particularly the present and future effects of climate change on agriculture, must also consider livestock. Health impacts Heat stress In general, the preferred ambient temperature range for domestic animals is between 10 °C (50 °F) and 30 °C (86 °F).: 747  Much like how climate change is expected to increase overall thermal comfort for humans living in the colder regions of the world, livestock in those places would also benefit from warmer winters. Across the entire world, however, increasing summertime temperatures as well as more frequent and intense heatwaves will have clearly negative effects, substantially elevating the risk of livestock suffering from heat stress. Under the climate change scenario of highest emissions and greatest warming, SSP5-8.5, "cattle,sheep, goats, pigs and poultry in the low latitudes will face 72–136 additional days per year of extreme stress from high heat and humidity".: 717 In Jamaica, considered representative of the Caribbean region, all livestock animals besides layer hens are already exposed to "very severe" heat stress in the present climate, with pigs being exposed to it at least once per day during the 5 summer and early autumn months, while ruminants and broilers only avoid daily exposure to very severe heat stress during the winter. it has been projected that even at 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) of global warming, "very severe" heat stress would become a daily event for ruminants and broilers. By 2 °C (3.6 °F), it would be felt for a longer duration, and extensive cooling systems would likely become a necessity for livestock production in the Caribbean. At 2.5 °C (4.5 °F), only layer hens would avoid daily exposure to "very severe" heat stress during the winter months. Once the body temperature of livestock animals is 3–4 °C (5.4–7.2 °F) above normal, this soon leads to "heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat syncope, heat cramps, and ultimately organ dysfunction". Livestock mortality rates are already known to be higher during the hottest months of the year, as well as during heatwaves. During the 2003 European heat wave, for instance, thousands of pigs, poultry, and rabbits died in the French regions of Brittany and Pays-de-la-Loire alone.Livestock can also suffer multiple sublethal impacts from heat stress, such as reduced milk production. Once the temperatures exceed 30 °C (86 °F), cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens all begin to consume 3–5% less feed for each subsequent degree of temperature increase. At the same time, they increase respiratory and sweating rates, and the combination of these responses can lead to metabolic disorders. One examples is ketosis, or the rapid accumulation of ketone bodies, caused by the animal's body rapidly catabolizing its fat stores to sustain itself. Heat stress also causes an increase in antioxidant enzyme activities, which can result in an imbalance of oxidant and antioxidant molecules, otherwise known as oxidative stress. Feed supplementation with antioxidants like chromium can help address oxidative stress and prevent it from leading to other pathological conditions, but only in a limited way.The immune system is also known to be impaired in heat-stressed animals, rendering them more susceptible to various infections. Similarly, vaccination of livestock is less effective when they suffer from heat stress. So far, heat stress had been estimated by researchers using inconsistent definitions, and current livestock models have limited correlation with experimental data. Notably, since livestock like cows spend much of their day laying down, comprehensive heat stress estimation needs to take account of ground temperature as well, but the first model to do so was only published in 2021, and it still tends to systematically overestimate body temperature while underestimating breathing rate. Studies of heat stress and livestock had historically focused on cattle, as they are often kept outdoors and so are immediately exposed to changes in climate. On the other hand, a little over 50% of all pork production and 70% of all poultry production worldwide originated from animals kept entirely in confined buildings even around 2006, and the raw numbers were expected to increase by 3–3.5 times for pigs, by 2–2.4 times for layer hens and 4.4–5 times for broilers. Historically, livestock in these conditions were considered less vulnerable to warming than the animals in outdoor areas due to inhabiting insulated buildings, where ventilation systems are used to control the climate and relieve the excess heat. However, in the historically cooler midlatitude regions, indoor temperatures were already higher than the outdoor temperatures even in summer, and as the increased heating exceeds these systems' specifications, confined animals are left more vulnerable to the heat than those kept outdoors.A range of climate change adaptation measures can help to protect livestock, such as increasing access to drinking water, creating better shelters for animals kept outdoors and improving air circulation in the existing indoor facilities. Installing specialized cooling systems is the most capital-intensive intervention, but it may be able to completely counteract the impact of future warming.In the United States alone, economic losses caused by heat stress in livestock were already valued at between $1.69 and $2.36 billion in 2003, with the spread reflecting different assumptions about the effectiveness of contemporary adaptation measures. Nevertheless, some reviews consider the United States to be the least vulnerable nation to food security shocks caused by the negative impacts of climate change on livestock, as while it rates in the middle of the pack in terms of exposure of its livestock and the societal sensitivity to that exposure, it has the highest adaptive capacity in the world due to its GDP and development status. Japan and the nations in Europe have low vulnerability for similar reasons. Meanwhile the exposure of Mongolian livestock to climate change is not very different from that of American livestock, but the enormous importance of pastoralism in Mongolian society and its limited capacity to adapt still renders it one of the most vulnerable countries in the world. Nations in sub-Saharan Africa generally suffer from high exposure, low adaptive capacity and high sensitivity due to the importance of livestock in their societies, with these factors particularly acute in Eastern African countries, where between 4 and 19% of livestock-producing areas are expected to suffer "significantly" more "dangerous" heat stress events after 2070, depending on the climate change scenario. There is high confidence that under the most intense scenario, SSP5-8.5, the net amount of land which can support livestock will decline by 2050 as heat stress would already become unbearable for them in some locations.: 748 Nutrition Livestock is fed either by letting them directly graze forage from pasture, or by growing crops like corn or soybeans for fodder. Both are highly important; the majority of soybeans are grown for fodder, while a third of croplands worldwide are devoted to forage, which feeds around 1.5 billion cattle, 0.21 billion buffalo, 1.2 billion sheep and 1.02 billion goats. Insufficient supply or quality of either leads to a decrease in growth and reproductive efficiency in domestic animals, especially in conjunction with the other stressors, and at worst, may increase mortality due to starvation. This is a particularly acute issue when livestock herds are already of an unsustainable size. For instance, two-thirds of animal feed requirements in Iran come from its rangelands, which cover around 52% of its land area, yet only 10% have forage quality above "medium" or "poor". Consequently, Iranian rangelands support over twice their sustainable capacity, and this leads to mass mortality in poor years, such as when around 800,000 goats and sheep in Iran perished due to the severe 1999 − 2001 drought. This was then exceeded by millions of animal deaths during the 2007–2008 drought.Climate change can impact livestock animals' food supply in multiple ways. First, the direct effects of temperature increase affect both fodder cultivation and productivity of rangelands, albeit in variable ways. On a global scale, there is confidence that with all else equal, every single 1 °C (1.8 °F) of warming would decrease the yields of the four most important crops by between ~3% for rice and soybean (a crop grown primarily for animal feed) and up to 6% and 7.4% for wheat and corn respectively. This global decline is dominated by negative impacts in already warm countries, since agriculture in cooler countries is expected to benefit from warming. However, this does not include the impact of changes in water availability, which can be far more important than the warming, whether for pasture species like alfalfa and tall fescue, or for crops. Some studies suggest that high water availability through irrigation "decouples" crops from climate as they become much less susceptible to extreme weather events, but the feasibility of this approach is obviously limited by the region's overall water security, especially once the warming reaches levels of 2 °C (3.6 °F) or 3 °C (5.4 °F).: 664  While climate change increases precipitation on average, regional changes are more variable, and variability alone adversely impacts "animal fertility, mortality, and herd recovery, reducing livestock keepers' resilience".: 717  In Zimbabwe, uncertainty about rainfall under different climate change scenarios could mean the difference between 20% to 100% of farmers negatively affected by 2070, while the average livestock revenue could potentially increase by 6%, yet may also plunge by as much as 43%. Many places are likely to see increased drought, which would affect both the crops and the pastural land. For instance, in the Mediterranean region, forage yields have already declined by 52.8% during drought years. Drought can also affect freshwater sources used by people and livestock alike: 2019 drought in Southwestern China caused around 824,000 people and 566,000 livestock to experience severe water scarcity, as over 100 rivers and 180 reservoirs dried out. That event was considered between 1.4 and 6 times more likely to happen as the result of climate change. In the mountain regions, glacier melt can also affect pasture, as it first floods the land, and then retreats entirely. Altogether, around 10% of current global pasture is expected to be threatened by water scarcity caused by climate change, as early as 2050.: 614  By 2100, 30% of the current combined crop and livestock areas would become climatically unsuitable under the warmest scenario SSP5-8.5, as opposed to 8% under the low-warming SSP1-2.6, although neither figure accounts for the potential shift of production to other areas.: 717  The abundance of fodder and forage strongly benefits from the CO2 fertilization effect, which boosts growth and makes their water usage more efficient, potentially counteracting the effects of drought in certain places (i.e. many of the United States' rangelands). At the same time, it also causes plants' nutritional value to decline, with some forage grasses potentially becoming useless to livestock under certain conditions (i.e. during autumn, when their nutrition is already poor). On mixed grass prairies, experimental local warming of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) during the day and of 3 °C (5.4 °F) at night has a relatively minor effect in comparison to increasing CO2 levels to 600 ppm (nearly 50% larger than the ~420 ppm levels of 2023) during the same experiment. 96% of overall forage growth on such prairies stems from just six plant species, and they become 38% more productive largely in response to the increased CO2 levels, yet their nutritious value to livestock also declines by 13% due to the same, as they grow less edible tissue and become harder to digest. Warming and water deficit also affect nutritional value, sometimes synergistically. For instance, Guinea grass, an important forage plant in the tropics, already gains more inedible lignin in response to water deficit (+43%), as well as in response to warming (+25%). Its lignin content increases the least in response to both stressors (+17%), yet elevated CO2 further reduces its nutritional value, even as it makes the plant less susceptible to water stress. Similar response was observed in Stylosanthes capilata, another important forage species in the tropics, which is likely to become more prevalent with warming, yet which may require irrigation to avoid substantial losses in nutritional value.If 2 °C (3.6 °F) of warming occurs by 2050, then 7–10% of the current livestock are predicted to be lost primarily due to insufficient feed supply, amounting to $10–13 billion in lost value.: 748  Similarly, an older study found that if 1.1 °C (2.0 °F) of warming occurs between 2005 and 2045 (rate comparable to hitting 2 °C (3.6 °F) by 2050), then under the current livestock management paradigm, global agricultural costs would increase by 3% (an estimated $145 billion), with the impact concentrated in pure pasturalist systems. At the same time, mixed crop-livestock systems already produced over 90% of the global milk supply as of 2013, as well as 80% of ruminant meat, yet they would bear the minority of the costs, and switching all pure livestock systems to mixed crop-livestock would decrease global agricultural costs from 3% to 0.3%, while switching half of those systems would reduce costs to 0.8%. The full shift would also reduce future projected deforestation in the tropics by up to 76 million ha. Pathogens and parasites While climate-induced heat stress can directly reduce domestic animals' immunity against all diseases, climatic factors also impact the distribution of many livestock pathogens themselves. For instance, Rift Valley fever outbreaks in East Africa are known to be more intense during the times of drought or when there is an El Nino. Another example is that of helminths in Europe which have now spread further towards the poles, with higher survival rate and higher reproductive capacity (fecundity).: 231  Detailed long-term records of both livestock diseases and various agricultural interventions in Europe mean that demonstrating the role of climate change in the increased helminth burden in livestock is actually easier than attributing the impact of climate change on diseases which affect humans.: 231  Temperature increases are also likely to benefit Culicoides imicola, a species of midge which spreads bluetongue virus. Without a significant improvement in epidemiological control measures, what is currently considered an once-in-20-years outbreak of bluetongue would occur as frequently as once in five or seven years by midcentury under all but the most optimistic warming scenario. Rift Valley Fever outbreaks in East African livestock are also expected to increase.: 747  Ixodes ricinus, a tick which spreads pathogens like Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, is predicted to become 5–7% more prevalent on livestock farms in Great Britain, depending on the extent of future climate change.The impacts of climate change on leptospirosis are more complicated: its outbreaks are likely to worsen wherever flood risk increases, yet the increasing temperatures are projected to reduce its overall incidence in the Southeast Asia, particularly under the high-warming scenarios. And tsetse flies, the hosts of trypanosoma parasites, already appear to be losing habitat and thus affect a smaller area than before.: 747 By type of livestock Aquaculture Under high warming there will be a global decline in area suitable for shellfish aquaculture after 2060. It will be preceded by regional declines in Asia.: 725  Farmed fish can be affected by heat stress as much as any other animal, and there has already been research on its effects and ways to mitigate it in species like tambaqui or blunt snout bream. Camels Along with camels, goats are more resilient to drought than cattle. In Southeastern Ethiopia, some of the cattle pastoralists are already switching to goats and camels. Cattle As of 2009 there were 1.2 billion cattle in the world, with around 82% in the developing countries; the totals only increased since then, with the 2021 figure at 1.53 billion. As of 2020, it was found that in the current Eastern Mediterranean climate, cattle experience mild heat stress inside unadapted stalls for nearly half a year (159 days), while moderate heat stress is felt indoors and outdoors during May, June, July, August, September, and October. Additionally, June and August are the months where cattle are exposed to severe heat stress outside, which is mitigated to moderate heat stress indoors. Even mild heat stress can reduce the yield of cow milk: research in Sweden found that average daily temperatures of 20–25 °C (68–77 °F) reduce daily milk yield per cow by 0.2 kg, with the loss reaching 0.54 kg for 25–30 °C (77–86 °F). Research in a humid tropical climate describes a more linear relationship, with every unit of heat stress reducing yield by 2.13%. In the intensive farming systems, daily milk yield per cow declines by 1.8 kg during severe heat stress. In organic farming systems, the effect of heat stress on milk yields is limited, but milk quality suffers substantially, with lower fat and protein content. In China, daily milk production per cow is already lower than the average by between 0.7 and 4 kg in July (the hottest month of the year), and by 2070, it may decline by up to 50% (or 7.2 kg) due to climate change. Some researchers suggest that the already recorded stagnation of dairy production in both China and West Africa can attributed to persistent increases in heat stress.: 747 Heatwaves can also reduce milk yield, with particularly acute impacts if the heatwave lasts for four or more days, as at that point the cow's thermoregulation capacity is usually exhausted, and its core body temperature starts to increase. At worst, heatwaves can lead to mass mortality: in July 1995, over 4000 cattle in the mid-central United States heatwave, and in 1999, over 5000 cattle died during a heatwave in northeastern Nebraska. Studies suggest that Brahman cattle and its cross-breeds are more resistant to heat stress than the regular bos taurus breeds, but it is considered unlikely that even more heat-resistant cattle can be bred at a sufficient rate to keep up with the expected warming. Further, both male and female cattle can have their reproduction impaired by heat stress. In males, severe heat can affect both spermatogenesis and the stored spermatozoa. It may take up to eight weeks for sperm to become viable again. In females, heat stress negatively affects conception rates as it impairs corpus luteum and thus ovarian function and oocyte quality. Even after conception, a pregnancy is less likely to be carried to term due to reduced endometrial function and uterine blood flow, leading to increased embryonic mortality and early fetal loss. Calves born to heat-stressed cows typically have a below-average weight, and their weight and height remains below average even by the time they reach their first year, due to permanent changes in their metabolism. Heat-stressed cattle have also displayed reduced albumin secretion and liver enzyme activity. This is attributed to accelerated breakdown of adipose tissue by the liver, causing lipidosis. Cattle are suspectible to some specific heat stress risks, such as ruminal acidosis. Cattle eat less when they experience acute heat stress during hottest parts of the day, only to compensate when it's cooler, and this disbalance soon causes acidosis, which can lead to laminitis. Additionally, one of the ways cattle can attempt to deal with higher temperatures is by panting more often, which rapidly decreases carbon dioxide concentrations and increases pH. To avoid respiratory alkalosis, cattle are forced to shed bicarbonate through urination, and this comes at the expense of rumen buffering. These two pathologies can both develop into lameness, defined as "any foot abnormality that causes an animal to change the way that it walks". This effect can occur "weeks to months" after severe heat stress exposure, alongside sore ulcers and white line disease. Another specific risk is mastitis, normally caused by either an injury to cow's udder, or "immune response to bacterial invasion of the teat canal." Bovine neutrophil function is impaired at higher temperatures, leaving mammary glands more vulnerable to infection, and mastitis is already known to be more prevalent during the summer months, so there's an expectation this would worsen with continued climate change.One of the vectors of bacteria which cause mastitis are Calliphora blowflies, whose numbers are predicted to increase with continued warming, especially in the temperate countries like the United Kingdom. Rhipicephalus microplus, a tick which primarily parasitises cattle, could become established in the currently temperate countries once their autumns and winters become warmer by about 2–2.75 °C (3.60–4.95 °F). On the other hand, the brown stomach worm, Ostertagia ostertagi, is predicted to become much less prevalent in cattle as the warming progresses.By 2017 it was already reported that farmers in Nepal kept fewer cattle due to the losses imposed by a longer hot season.: 747  Cow-calf ranches in Southeast Wyoming are expected to suffer greater losses in the future as the hydrological cycle becomes more variable and affects forage growth. Even though the annual mean precipitation is not expected to change much, there will be more unusually dry years as well as unusually wet years, and the negatives will outweigh the positives. Keeping smaller herds to be more flexible when dry years hit was suggested as an adaptation strategy. Since more variable and therefore less predictable precipitation is one of the well-established effects of climate change on the water cycle,: 85  similar patterns were later established across the rest of the United States, and then globally. As of 2022, it has been suggested that every additional millimeter of annual precipitation increases beef production by 2.1% in the tropical countries and reduces it by 1.9% in temperate ones, yet the effects of warming are much larger. Under SSP3-7.0, a scenario of significant warming and very low adaptation, every additional 1 °C (1.8 °F) would decrease global beef production by 9.7%, mainly because of its impact on tropical and poor countries. In the countries which can afford adaptation measures, production would fall by around 4%, but by 27% in those which can't. Only a few exceptions have been identified to date: for instance, east and south of Argentina may become more suitable to cattle ranching due to climate-driven shifts in rainfall, but a shift to Zebu breeds would likely be needed to minimize the impact of warming. Equines As of 2019, there are around 17 million horses in the world. Healthy body temperature for adult horses is in the range between 37.5 °C (99.5 °F) and 38.5 °C (101.3 °F), which they can maintain while ambient temperatures are between 5 °C (41 °F) and 25 °C (77 °F). However, strenuous exercise increases core body temperature by 1 °C (1.8 °F)/minute, as 80% of the energy used by equine muscles is released as heat. Along with bovines and primates, equines are the only animal group which use sweating as their primary method of thermoregulation: in fact, it can account for up to 70% of their heat loss, and horses sweat three times more than humans while undergoing comparably strenuous physical activity. Unlike humans, this sweat is created not by eccrine glands by apocrine glands. In hot conditions, horses during three hours of moderate-intersity exercise can loss 30 to 35 L of water and 100g of sodium, 198 g of choloride and 45 g of potassium. In another difference from humans, their sweat is hypertonic, and contains a protein called latherin, which enables it to spread across their body easier, and to foam, rather than to drip off. These adaptations are partly to compensate for their lower body surface-to-mass ratio, which makes it more difficult for horses to passively radiate heat. Yet, prolonged exposure to very hot and/or humid conditions will lead to consequences such as anhidrosis, heat stroke, or brain damage, potentially culminating in death if not addressed with measures like cold water applications. Additionally, around 10% of incidents associated with horse transport have been attributed to heat stress. These issues are expected to worsen in the future.African horse sickness is a viral illness with a mortality close to 90% in horses, and 50% in mules. A midge, Culicoides imicola, is the primary vector of AHS, and its spread is expected to benefit from climate change. The spillover of Hendra virus from its flying fox hosts to horses is also likely to increase, as future warming would expand the hosts' geographic range. It has been estimated that under the "moderate" and high climate change scenarios, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, the number of threatened horses would increase by 110,000 and 165,000, respectively, or by 175 and 260%. Goats and sheep Goats and sheep are often collectively described as small ruminants, and tend to be studied together rather than separately. Both of them are known to be less affected by climate change than cattle,: 747  with goats in particular considered one the most climate-resilient domestic animals, being second only to camels. In Southeastern Ethiopia, some of the cattle pastoralists are already switching to goats and camels.Even so, the 2007–2008 drought in Iran had already resulted in the country's sheep population declining by nearly 4 million – from 53.8 million in 2007 to 50 million in 2008, while the goat population declined from 25.5 million in 2007 to 22.3 million in 2008. Some researchers expect climate change to drive genetic selection towards more heat- and drought-adapted breeds of sheep. Notably, heat-adapted sheep can be of both wool and hair breeds, in spite of the popular perception that hair breeds are always more resistant to heat stress.Parasitic worms Haemonchus contortus and Teladorsagia circumcincta are predicted to spread more easily amongst small ruminants as the winters become milder due to future warming, although in some places this is counteracted by summers getting hotter than their preferred temperature. Earlier, similar effects have been observed with two other parasitic worms, Parelaphostrongylus odocoilei and Protostrongylus stilesi, which have already been able to reproduce for a longer period inside sheep due to milder temperatures in the sub-Arctic. Pigs For pigs, heat stress varies depending on their age and size. Young and growing pigs with the average body mass of 30 kilograms can tolerate temperatures up to 24 °C (75 °F) before starting to experience any heat stress, but after they have grown and are fattened to about 120 kg, at which point they are considered ready for slaughter, their tolerance drops to just 20 °C (68 °F).One paper estimated that in Austria, at an intensive farming facility used to fatten up about 1800 growing pigs at a time, the already observed warming between 1981 and 2017 would have increased relative annual heat stress by between 0.9 and 6.4% per year. It is considered representative of other such facilities in Central Europe.A follow-up paper considered the impact of several adaptation measures. Installing a ground-coupled heat exchanger was the most effective intervention at addressing heat stress, reducing it by 90 to 100%. Two other cooling systems also showed substantial effectiveness: evaporative cooler pads made of wet cellulose reduced heat stress by 74 to 92%, although they also risked increasing wet bulb temperature stress as they necessarily moistened the air. Combining such pads with regenerative heat exchangers eliminated this issue, but also increased costs and reduced the effectiveness of the system to between 61% and 86%. All three interventions were considered capable of completely buffering the future impact of climate change on heat stress over at least the next three decades, but installing them requires substantial start-up investments, and their impact on commercial viability of the facilities is unclear. Other interventions were considered unable to fully buffer the impact of warming, but they were also cheaper and simpler by comparison. They include doubling the ventilation capacity, and having the pigs rest during the day while feeding them at night when it's cooler: such a 10-hour shift would require that the facility only uses artificial light and switch to predominantly night shift work. Similarly, stocking fewer pigs per facility is the absolute simplest intervention, yet it has the lowest effectiveness, and necessarily reduces profitability. Poultry It is believed that the thermal comfort zone for poultry is in the 18–25 °C (64–77 °F) range. Some papers describe 26–35 °C (79–95 °F) as the "critical zone" for heat stress, but others report that due to acclimatization, birds in the tropical countries do not begin to experience heat stress until 32 °C (90 °F). There is wider agreement that temperatures greater than 35 °C (95 °F) and 47 °C (117 °F) form "upper critical" and lethal zones, respectively. Average daily temperatures of around 33 °C (91 °F) are known to interfere with feeding in both broilers and egg hens, as well as lower their immune response, with outcomes such as reduced weight gain/egg production or greater incidence of salmonella infections, footpad dermatitis or meningitis. Persistent heat stress leads to oxidative stress in tissues, and harvested white meat ends up with a lower proportion of essential compounds like vitamin E, lutein and zeaxanthin, yet an increase in glucose and cholesterol. Multiple studies show that dietary supplementation with chromium can help to relieve these issues due to its antioxidative properties, particularly in combination with zinc or herbs like wood sorrel. Resveratrol is another popular antioxidant administered to poultry for these reasons. Though the effect of supplementation is limited, it is much cheaper than interventions to improve cooling or simply stock fewer birds, and so remains popular. While the majority of literature on poultry heat stress and dietary supplementation focuses on chickens, similar findings were seen in Japanese quails, which eat less and gain less weight, suffer reduced fertility and hatch eggs of worse quality under heat stress, and also seem to benefit from mineral supplementation.Around 2003 it was estimated that the poultry industry in the United States already lost up to $165 million annually due to heat stress at the time. One paper estimated that if global warming reaches 2.5 °C (4.5 °F), then the cost of rearing broilers in Brazil increases by 35.8% at the least modernized farms and by 42.3% at farms with the medium level of technology used in livestock housing, while they increase the least at farms with the most advanced cooling technologies. On the contrary, if the warming is kept to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), costs at moderately modernized farms increase the least, by 12.5%, followed by the most modernized farms with a 19.9% increase, and the least technological farms seeing the greatest increase. Reindeer By mid-2010s Indigenous people of the Arctic have already observed reindeer breeding less and surviving winters less often, as warmer temperatures benefit biting insects and result in more intense and persistent swarm attacks. They also become more susceptible to parasites spread by such insects, and as the Arctic becomes warmer and more accessible to invasive species, it is anticipated that they will come in contact with pests and pathogens they have not encountered historically.: 233 Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock activities See also Economic impacts of climate change Effects of climate change on agriculture == References ==

climate change in thailand

Climate change impacts Thailand's society and economy in numerous ways. Since the 20th century, climate change has caused temperatures in Thailand to increase. Thailand is considered highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Extreme heat and rising sea levels threaten parts of Thailand, including the capital city of Bangkok. Erosion is considered a major problem due to climate change within the country. As a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the Thai government has committed a nationally determined contribution to reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 20–25% by 2030. Temperature change Researchers have found that temperatures have increased in Thailand over the past half-century, though there is some variability in their assessments. Thailand's Department of Meteorology reported that the annual mean temperature in Thailand rose by one degree Celsius from 1981 to 2007.: 231  Another study found that average annual temperatures in Thailand increased by 0.95 °C between 1955 and 2009, more than the average world temperature increase of 0.69 °C. The annual highest temperature has increased by 0.86 °C and the annual lowest temperature has decreased by 1.45 °C over the past 55 years. From 1993 to 2008, the sea level in the Gulf of Thailand has risen 3–5 mm per year, compared to the global average of 1.7 mm per year. Danny Marks, professor and climate consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation, has warned that "Climate change is set to drastically affect the world, and Thailand will likely be one of the most affected countries given its geography, economy, and level of development.": 231 Rising sea level Rising sea levels, caused by climate change, is one of the major threats that climate change poses to Thailand.The Thai Government's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) has calculated that erosion causes the country to lose 30 km2 of coastal land every year. The Thai Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning predicts that the sea level will rise one meter in the next 40 to 100 years, impacting at least 3,200 km2 of coastal land, at a potential cost to Thailand of three billion baht. 17% of Thailand's population, more than 11 million people, will be directly affected by this.The ground under Bangkok sinks around three centimeters per year. Subsidence, partially caused by the city's location on an alluvial plain of soft clay, has been exacerbated by industries' excessive pumping of groundwater and by the weight of massive buildings. According to Thailand's National Reform Council (NRC), without urgent action, Bangkok could be under water by 2030 due to a combination of rising sea levels, groundwater extraction, and the weight of city buildings. Critics argue that despite warnings from experts that coastal Thailand and Bangkok face catastrophic and perpetual flooding similar to the 2011 Thai floods, the government is still moving too slowly to address the impacts of climate change. Government action Thailand submitted its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 1 October 2015. It pledged a 20–25% reduction in its emissions of greenhouse gases by 2030. Thailand sent 81 representatives, at a cost of 20 million baht, to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21 or CMP 11) in Paris. Thailand signed the Paris Climate Agreement on 22 April 2016 at the official signing ceremony, and ratified its adherence to the treaty on 21 September 2016.National pledges in Paris equate to a 3 °C increase in global temperatures according to climate scientists. Negotiators in Paris worked to bring this down to 2 °C, but even this lower number may be "catastrophic for Bangkok," forcing the abandonment of the city by 2200 at the latest and by 2045–2070 at the earliest. In a paper published on 1 March 2016, climate researchers James Hansen and Makiko Sato state that, "The tropics...in summer are in danger of becoming practically uninhabitable by the end of the century if business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions continue..." In 2015, Bangkok averaged 29.6 °C, 1.6 °C higher than normal.In November 2019, the Fundación Ecológica Universal (FEU), a global environmental NGO based in Buenos Aires, published an assessment of national climate pledges. It judged Thailand's nationally determined contribution to be "insufficient." At the Paris Agreement, Thailand pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20% below its projected "business as usual" (BAU) emissions, using 2005 emissions as a baseline, by 2030, plus an additional 5% decrease contingent on receiving help from developed nations. In contrast, FEU calculated that Thailand's 20% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 would amount to an increase in emissions of 39% more than 2013's emissions. The FEU assessment judged every ASEAN nation's pledges to be insufficient: Myanmar has set no emissions reduction target; Cambodia and Laos would not commit to any reductions unless international assistance is forthcoming; and Brunei and the Philippines had yet, as of 2019, to declare INDCs. The FEU report stood in sharp contrast to the narrative expressed by Thai premier and ASEAN Chair Prayut Chan-o-cha at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019, where he claimed that the region had reduced its use of energy by 22% compared to 2005. A study shows that the efforts to curb emissions by Thailand and other ASEAN countries are still incompatible with their nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Vulnerability and governmental response Some tropical ecosystems are being decimated by climate change far faster than expected—coral bleaching is one example—while many more habitats may be damaged over time. Tropical ecosystems are considered particularly vulnerable because many tropical species have evolved within very specific temperature ranges. As temperatures rise, they may not survive. According to one report, Thailand will likely be disproportionately affected by the consequences of climate change.Extreme heat in Southeast Asia today reduces working hours by 15–20%, and that figure could double by 2050 as climate change progresses, according to a paper published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health. The paper projects a loss of six percent of Thailand's GDP by 2030 due to a diminution of working hours caused by rising temperature. A 2013 paper published in Nature, by Mora, et al. forecasts that things in the tropics will start going "haywire" around the year 2020. Some scientists project that by 2100, "...most of the low and mid latitudes will be uninhabitable because of heat stress or drought..." A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined how worst-case CO2 emissions would affect the human habitat: by the end of the century, the average human will experience a temperature increase of 7.5 °C when global temperatures increase 3 °C the study predicts. At that level, about 30% of the world's population would live in extreme heat, defined as an average temperature of 29 °C. In 2020, this temperature is rare outside the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert. Thailand is among those geographies affected, with a projected 62 million Thais exposed to extreme heat. NASA reported that 2016 would be the hottest year ever recorded in 136 years of modern record keeping. Locally, the Thai Meteorological Department reported that the temperature in Mae Hong Son Province reached 44.6 °C on 28 April 2016, breaking Thailand's "hottest day" record.: 20  April in Thailand is typically hot, but 2016's weather set a record for the longest heat wave in at least 65 years. In its WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2016, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2016 was the hottest year in Thailand's history.: 6–7 The Climate Impact Group at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyzed climate data for major cities worldwide. It found that Bangkok in 1960 had 193 days at or above 32 °C. In 2018, Bangkok can expect 276 days at or above 32 °C. The group forecasts a rise by 2100 to, on average, 297 to 344 days at or above 32 °C. The FAO's The State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016 reports that a recent study finds that climate change will affect food security in Asia by the middle of the 21st century. It counts Thailand's fisheries as among the most negatively impacted considering all environments—freshwater, brackish-water, and marine fisheries.: 133 Researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, studying historical records of how temperature affects economies, predict that, given current trends, global income will be 23% less by the end of the century than it would be without climate change. The decline in income is not evenly distributed, with tropical regions hardest hit. The study estimates that Thailand's GDP will have declined by 90% in 2099 relative to GDP in 2016. Even niche sectors of the economy could be affected: coral reef tourism worldwide—worth US$36 billion in 2019—may decline by 90% in Thailand and the other four leading reef tourism destinations by 2100.Thailand's CO2 emissions per capita rose from 0.14 tonnes in 1960 to 4.5 tonnes in 2013, while the population rose from 27 million to 67 million over the same period. The Thai government's Climate Change Master Plan, 2012-2050 foresees that "Thailand is able [sic] to continue its economic, social, and environmental developments in accordance with sufficiency economy philosophy and to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, without impeding the country's gross domestic product (GDP) or reducing its growth of developmental capability and competitiveness." The Bangkok250 and Green Bangkok 2030 projects aim to make the capital more walkable, reduce emissions, and improve air quality. See also Plug-in electric vehicles in Thailand == References ==

climate risk

Climate risk is the potential for negative consequences for human or ecological systems from the impacts of climate change. It refers to risk assessments based on formal analysis of the consequences, likelihoods and responses to these impacts and how societal constraints shape adaptation options. However, the science also recognises different values and preferences around risk, and the importance of risk perception.: 149 Common approaches to risk assessment and risk management strategies based on natural hazards have been applied to climate change impacts although there are distinct differences. Based on a climate system that is no longer staying within a stationary range of extremes, climate change impacts are anticipated to increase for the coming decades. Ongoing changes in the climate system complicates assessing risks. Applying current knowledge to understand climate risk is further complicated due to substantial differences in regional climate projections. There is also an expanding numbers of climate model results, and the need to select a useful set of future climate change scenarios in the assessments.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment framework is based on the understanding that climate risk emerges from the interaction of three risk factors: hazards, vulnerability and exposure. The IPCC summarises publishes research on climate risk evaluations. International and research communities have been working on various approaches to climate risk management including climate risk insurance. Definitions Climate risk is the potential for negative consequences for human or ecological systems from the impacts of climate change. Risk is used mainly to talk about the potential effects of climate change, but it may also result from the measures that we take to respond to those changes. The definition also recognises the different values and preferences that people have towards the human or ecological systems at risk. Risk assessment is the qualitative and/or quantitative scientific estimation of risks.Risk perception is the personal judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Understanding risks Climate risks are increasingly felt in all regions of the world, and they are especially visible in the growing number of disasters that are driven by climatic events. Many of these risks and impacts are expected to increase in future, and therefore are an increasing concern. Risk assessments are based on responses of a climate system that is no longer staying within a stationary range of extremes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment framework is based on the understanding that climate risk emerges from the interaction of three risk factors: hazards, vulnerability and exposure. In this framework, climate risks are also described in five sets of major risks: : 2417  unique and threatened systems extreme weather events distribution of impacts global aggregate impacts large-scale singular events Risks and uncertainties Risks and uncertainties are closely related concepts. Risk is “the potential” for a negative outcome, so it implies uncertainty or incomplete information. However, risks are more often understood in a more context-specific way. Each component of climate risk - hazards, exposure and vulnerability - may be uncertain in terms of the magnitude and likelihood of occurrence. Assessment of the risk includes a set of measured uncertainties. These are usually given in terms of a set or range of possible outcomes, which may also include probabilities. The IPCC uses qualitative rating scales for uncertainty which may be based on quantitative results or expert judgement.: 2926  : 11–12 Uncertainty is also used in a broader way to describe general lack of knowledge about the world and of possible outcomes (epistemic uncertainty). Some such outcomes are inherently unpredictable (aleatory uncertainty). It can also refer to different framings or understandings about the world (ambiguity) including different scientific understandings. There are many types of sources of uncertainty. Unlike risk, uncertainty does not always carry negative connotations. Risk is subcategory of uncertainty that is considered to make potential issues and problems more manageable.: 11–12  Risk is a term used widely across different management practice areas. Examples are business, economics, environment, finance, information technology, health, insurance, safety, and security. Vulnerability Responses to risk Climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation can reduce climate-related risks. These two types of climate action can be complementary and can result in synergies, and thus more successful results.: 128, 175 By sector Climate risks can be categorised into natural environment, infrastructure, human health, the built environment, business and international. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report considers risks within important sectors affected by climate change, like agriculture, water, cities, ecosystems, health and livelihoods.: ix  It also considers sets of major risks across these sectors. : 2417  Risk categories are often assessed in relation to multiple hazards and impacts, but hazard-specific assessments are often also available, eg. flood risk or heatwave risk assessment. Ecosystems and their services The main risks to ecosystems from climate change are biodiversity loss, ecosystem structure change, increased tree mortality, increased wildfire, and ecosystem carbon losses. These risks are linked. Loss of species can increase the risks to ecosystem health.: 279  Wildfire is an increasing risk for people as well as to ecosystems in many parts of the world.: 290  Wildfires and increased pest infestations due to climate change caused much of the recent tree mortality in North America. : 280 Risks to seas and coastal areas include coral bleaching linked with ocean warming. This can change the composition of ecosystems. Coral bleaching and mortality also increase the risks of flooding on nearby shorelines and islands. Ocean acidification attributed to climate change drives change in coral reefs and other ecosystems such as rocky shores and kelp forests.: 142 Health Climate change-related risks to health include direct risks from extreme weather such as cold waves, storms, or prolonged high temperatures. There are also indirect risks such as mental health impacts of undernutrition or displacement caused by extreme weather.: 1076  Similarly there are mental health risks from loss of access to green spaces, reduced air quality, or from anxiety about climate change.: 1076, 1078  There are further risks from changes in conditions for transmission of infectious diseases. Malaria and dengue are particularly climate-sensitive.: 1062 Cities Rising temperatures and heatwaves are key risks for cities. With warmer temperatures the urban heat island effect is likely to get worse. Population growth and land use change will influence human health and productivity risks in cities.: 993  Urban flooding is another key risk. This is especially the case in coastal settlements where flood risks are exacerbated by sea-level rise and storm surges. A further set of risks arises from reduced water availability. When supply cannot meet demand from expanding settlements, urban residents become exposed to water insecurity and climate impacts. This is especially so during periods of lower rainfall. These key risks differ greatly between cities, and between different groups of people in the same city.: 993 Infrastructure Water Climate change is affecting the overall and seasonal availability of water across regions. Climate change is projected to increase the variability of rain. There will be impacts on water quality as well as quantity. Floods can wash pollutants into water bodies and damage water infrastructure. In many places, particularly in the tropics and sub-tropics, there are longer dry spells and droughts, sometimes over consecutive years. These have contributed to drier soil conditions, lower groundwater tables and reduced or changed flows of rivers. There are risks to ecosystems, and across many water-using sectors of the economy.: 660  Agriculture is likely to be affected by changes in water availability, putting food security at risk. Irrigation has often contributed to groundwater depletion and changes in the water cycle. It can sometimes make a drought worse.: 1157 Livelihoods and communities Climate change affects livelihoods and living conditions in significant ways. These include access to natural resources and ecosystems, land and other assets. Access to basic infrastructure services such as water and sanitation, electricity, roads, telecommunications is another aspect of vulnerability of communities and livelihoods to climate change.: 1119 The biggest livelihood-related risks stem from losses of agricultural yields, impacts on human health and food security, destruction of homes, and loss of income. There are also risks to fish and livestock that livelihoods depend on. : 1178  Some communities and livelihoods also face risks of irreversible losses and challenges to development, as well as more complex disaster risks.: 1214 The consequences of climate change are the most severe for the poorest populations. These are disproportionately more exposed to hazards such as temperature extremes and droughts. They usually have fewer resources and assets and less access to funding, support and political influence. There are other forms of disadvantage due to discrimination, gender inequalities and through lack of access to resources This includes people with disabilities or minority groups.: 1251 Companies also face financial risks as well as reputational risks: Companies publicly criticized for their environmental policies or high emissions might lose customers because of negative reputation. International International climate risks are climate risks that cross national borders. Sometimes the impacts of climate change in one country or region can have further consequences for people in other countries. Risks can spread from one country to a neighbouring country, or from one country to distant regions. Risks can also cascade and have knock-on effects elsewhere, across multiple borders and sectors. For example, an impact of the floods in Thailand in 2011 was disruption to manufacturing supply chains affecting the automotive sector and electronics industry in Japan, Europe and the USA.: 2441–2444 The different stages in a supply chain, where risks can be transmitted and managed, is an example of a risk pathway. Risk pathways, via which impacts are transmitted, include trade and finance networks, flows of people, resource flows such as water or food, and ecosystem connections.: 2441–2444 International risks potentially could affect small trade-dependent countries especially those dependent on food imports. They could also affect richer, developed nations that are relatively less exposed to direct risks from climate change. In addition, there are potential consequences from adaptation responses initiated in one country that might transmit or alter risks elsewhere. For example, a decision to pull out of investment in risky markets may increase climate vulnerability for many communities. Management Climate risk management Climate risk insurance Disaster risk reduction Climate change adaptation Major national and international risk assessments International The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment framework is based on the understanding that climate risk emerges from the interaction of three risk factors: hazards, vulnerability and exposure. One of primary roles of the IPCC, which was created by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988, is to evaluate climate risks and explore strategies for their prevention and publish this knowledge each year in a series of comprehensive reports. The most recent report to consider the widest set of climate risks across nature and human activity was the Sixth Assessment Report Working Group II report Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, published in 2022. The assessed levels of risk generally increased compared to previous reports, whilst the impacts were found to have been on the high end of what had been expected. European Union The European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA) will assess current and future climate change impacts and risks relating to the environment, economy and wider society in Europe. The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action and the EEA lead the preparation. The EUCRA is expected to be published in Spring 2024. United States The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a United States government interagency ongoing effort on climate change science conducted under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The fourth edition 'Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States' was published in 2018. United Kingdom The UK Government is required, under the 2008 Climate Change Act, to publish a Climate Change Risk Assessment every five years. This assessment sets out the risks and opportunities facing the UK from climate change. The third assessment published in 2022 identified 61 risks cutting across multiple sectors. These risks were categorised into natural environment, infrastructure, human health, the built environment, business and international. See also Climate change scenario Eco-anxiety Public opinion on climate change == References ==

soft climate change denial

Soft climate change denial (also called implicit or implicatory climate change denial) is a state of mind acknowledging the existence of global warming in the abstract while remaining, to some extent, in partial psychological or intellectual denialism about its reality or impact. It is contrasted with conventional "hard" climate change denial, which refers to explicit disavowal of the consensus on global warming's existence, causes, or effects (including its effects on human society). Soft denial is akin to cognitive dissonance: despite understanding and accepting the scientific consensus on climate change as substantially true, a person in "soft" climate denial may behave as though the existence or severity of global warming are not fully real. A person in soft denial about global warming may neglect its urgency, miscalculate its risks, overestimate the extent of scientific uncertainty, and underestimate the extent of social change required to effectively mitigate climate change. Additionally, one may prefer inaction, postponement of climate action, or maintaining the status quo to an unreasonable degree, or may simply fail to act on the issue whatsoever due to apathy or disengagement. Even some forms of unproductive activism could be considered soft denial. More generally, soft climate denial can refer to any mild or partial climate change denial. Michael Hoexter is credited with formalizing the definition of soft climate denial in September 2016, though the term was in use earlier. The closely related term "neoskepticism" originated a month earlier in Science Magazine. While soft climate denial generally connotes a state of mind or set of beliefs, neoskepticism describes a deliberate set of rhetorical strategies adopted by opponents of climate mitigation policy. Although neoskeptics do not deny the existence of global warming outright, they err toward the most optimistic, least disruptive projections and oppose mitigation policy as ineffective, costly, or both. Both soft climate denial and neoskepticism are relevant to the politics of global warming, the political (not scientific) global warming controversy, and the study of environmental communication. The term soft climate denial has been used to criticize political inaction on climate-related issues. Development of the terms Expanding the meaning of "denial" The idea of "soft" or implicit climate change denial became prominent in the mid-2010s, but variations of the same concept originated earlier. An article published by National Center for Science Education referred to "implicit" denial: Climate change denial is most conspicuous when it is explicit, as it is in controversies over climate education. The idea of implicit (or "implicatory") denial, however, is increasingly discussed among those who study the controversies over climate change. Implicit denial occurs when people who accept the scientific community's consensus on the answers to the central questions of climate change on the intellectual level fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Such people are in denial, so to speak, about climate change. In May 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben penned an op-ed criticizing Barack Obama's policies of approving petroleum exploration in the Arctic, expanding coal mining, and remaining indecisive on the Keystone XL pipeline. McKibben wrote: This is not climate denial of the Republican sort, where people simply pretend the science isn't real. This is climate denial of the status quo sort, where people accept the science, and indeed make long speeches about the immorality of passing on a ruined world to our children. They just deny the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground. McKibben's use of the word "denial" was an early expansion of the term's meaning in environmental discourse to include "denial of the significance or logical consequences of a fact or problem; in this case, what advocates see as the necessary policies that flow from the dangers of global warming." In April 2016, the environmentalist organization Friends of the Earth Action accused Hillary Clinton—who was, at the time, campaigning in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries—of "engaging in soft climate denial." Michael Hoexter's analysis of soft climate change denial Michael Hoexter, a scholar and sustainability advocate, analyzed the phenomenon of "soft climate change denial" in a September 2016 article for the blog New Economic Perspectives and expanded on the idea in a follow-up article published the next month. Despite the term's earlier, informal usage, Hoexter has been credited with formally defining the concept. In Hoexter's terms, "soft" climate denial "means that one acknowledges in some parts of one's life that climate change is real, disastrous and happening now but in most other parts of one's life, one ignores that anthropogenic global warming is, in fact, a real existential emergency and catastrophic." According to Hoexter, "soft climate denial and the thin gruel of climate action policies that accompany it may be functioning as a 'face-saving' device to mask fundamental inertia or a deep manifest preference for inaction while continuing fossil-fueled business as usual."He also applied the term to "more 'radical' groups" that pushed for more responsive measures, but "often either miss the mark in terms of the climate challenge facing us or wrap themselves in communication strategies and 'memes' that limit their potential influence on politics and policy." In Hoexter's view, soft denial can only be escaped through collective action, not individual action or realization. Neoskepticism "Neoskepticism" was coined in a policy paper published in 2016 issue. The term has substantial overlap with "soft climate change denial". The policy paper makes the case that opposition to climate policy was beginning to take a "rhetorical shift away from outright skepticism": rather than denying the existence of global warming, neoskeptics instead "question the magnitude of the risks and assert that reducing them has more costs than benefits." According to the authors, the emergence of neoskepticism "heightens the need for science to inform decision making under uncertainty and to improve communication and education."There are a range of projected changes that will result from global warming and a variety of possible mitigation policies. Disagreement over the sufficiency, viability, or desirability of a given policy is not necessarily neoskepticism. However, neoskepticism is marked by failure to appreciate the increased risks associated with delayed action. Distinguishing "rational optimism" from neoskepticism, Gavin Schmidt described the latter as a form of confirmation bias and the tendency of "always taking as gospel the lowest estimate of a plausible range." Neoskeptics err toward the least-disruptive projections and least-active policies and, as such, neglect or misapprehend the full spectrum of risks associated with global warming. They also neglect the costs associated with delay and inaction. Factors that contribute to soft climate denial In his second article on the topic, Hoexter listed several beliefs or thought patterns that, in his observation, tend to contribute to soft climate denial: Psychological isolation and compartmentalization – Events of everyday life usually lack an obvious connection to global warming. As such, people compartmentalize their awareness of global warming as abstract knowledge without taking any practical action. Hoexter identifies isolation/compartmentalization as the most common facet of soft denial. "Climate providentialism" – In post-industrial society, modern comforts and disconnection from nature lead to an assumption that the climate "will provide" for humans, regardless of drastic changes. Though named for a belief found in some forms of Christianity, Hoexter uses the term in a secular context and relates it to anthropocentrism. "Carbon gradualism" – An assumption that global warming can be addressed though minor "tweaks" conducted over extended periods of time. Proposals for more drastic change may be more realistic, but appear "radical" by comparison. Substitutionism – A tendency among politically engaged people to "substitute a high-minded pre-existing activist cause" in place of the more immediate challenge of fossil fuel phase-out. Hoexter associates substitutionism with eco-socialism, green anarchism, and the climate justice movement, which he said tends to prioritize "laudable and important concerns about environmental justice and inequality" at the expense of "the future-looking fight to stabilize the climate." Intellectualization – Engaging with climate change in a primarily academic context makes the issue an abstraction, lacking the visceral stimuli that prompt people to take concrete action. Localism – Emphasis on "small" changes to improve one's local environment is a well-intentioned but limited response to a problem on the scale of global warming. "Moral or intellectual narcissism" – Deriving a misplaced sense of superiority over "hard" climate deniers, soft deniers may come to believe that simply acknowledging the existence of climate change or expressing concern is sufficient by itself. "Confirmation of pre-existing worldview" – Because of cognitive inertia, people may fail to integrate the significance or scale of climate change the framework of their existing beliefs, knowledge, and priorities. Millenarianism – Activists become transfixed with a grand vision of an eventual, fundamental transformation of society, supplanting meaningful concrete action at the day-to-day level. Sectarianism – Activists may become preoccupied with a particular vision of climate policy and become caught up in the narcissism of small differences, tedious debates, and far-flung hypotheticals to the detriment of more productive activity. "Commitment to Hedonism" – The looming dread of climate change can emotionally overwhelm a person and may prompt a retreat into pleasure for its own sake. Alternately, people may indulge in pleasurable activities that they worry may not be readily accessible in a future society adapted to climate change. "Entente with nihilism, defeatism, and depression" – In Hoexter's view, genuine nihilism remains a tendency within "hard" denialism; however, people who feel disempowered or overwhelmed about climate change may come to accept an uneasy coexistence with such nihilism.According to Anne Pasek, the difficulty of comprehending the sheer scale of global warming and its effects can result in sincere (albeit ill-founded) belief that individual changes in behavior will suffice to address the problem without requiring more fundamental structural changes. In political terms, soft climate denial can stem from concerns about the economics and economic impacts of climate change, particularly the concern that strong measures to combat global warming or mitigate its impacts will seriously inhibit economic growth. Examples Soft climate denial has been ascribed to both liberals and conservatives, as well as proponents of market-based environmental policy instruments. It has also been used in self-criticism against tendencies toward complacency and inaction. Depending on perspective, sources may differ on whether a person engages in "soft" or "hard" denial (or neither). For example, the environmental policy of the Trump administration has been described as both "soft" and "hard" climate denial. In Scientific American, Robert N. Proctor and Steve Lyons described Bret Stephens, a conservative New York Times opinion columnist and self-described "climate agnostic", as a soft denialist: The irony is that Stephens himself seems to presume that climate science must be understood in political terms—as part of a larger struggle between liberals and conservatives. But the reality of climate change has nothing to do with politics: it's an atmospheric fact, not a political fact. And the whole idea of needing to keep 'an open mind' to a legitimate 'controversy' is the very essence of modern 'soft' denialism. It was pointed out in 2017 that all the other current opinion columnists at the New York Times expressed varying degrees of soft denial in their work: "Like many liberals, every current liberal NYT columnist remains stuck in various states of “soft” climate denial", This applied to the writing of Stephens's fellow conservatives (Ross Douthat and David Brooks) as well as his liberal colleagues (Maureen Dowd, David Leonhardt, Frank Bruni, Gail Collins, Charles Blow, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Thomas Friedman, and Roger Cohen). Criticism Critics have argued that labels like soft denial are overly broad and counterproductive. Brian Schatz, a US Senator from Hawaii who has focused on climate change as an issue, said that the term "denial" should be reserved for those who dispute the reality, human causation, and urgency of climate change. According to Schatz, expanding the definition further would mean "throwing around the term without any precision" at a time when "actual climate denial is on the wane." Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center affiliated with ecomodernism, said the label "denier" can be unhelpful and alienating regardless of its intended target, but is especially polarizing when used to label someone who accepts the scientific consensus and expresses support for environmentalist ideas. See also Anti-environmentalism Cognitive dissonance Environmental skepticism False consciousness Fear, uncertainty, and doubt Individual action on climate change Motivated reasoning Status quo bias References == Sources ==

climate security

Climate security is a political and policy framework that looks at the impacts of climate on security. Climate security often refers to the national and international security risks induced, directly or indirectly, by changes in climate patterns. It is a concept that summons the idea that climate-related change amplifies existing risks in society that endangers the security of humans, ecosystems, economy, infrastructure and societies. Climate-related security risks have far-reaching implications for the way the world manages peace and security. Climate actions to adapt and mitigate impacts can also have a negative effect on human security if mishandled.The term climate security was initially promoted by national security analysts in the US and later Europe, but has since been adopted by a wide variety of actors including the United Nations, low and middle income states, civil society organizations and academia. The term is used in fields such as politics, diplomacy, environment and security with increasing frequency. There are also critics of the term who argue that the term encourages a militarized response to the climate crisis, and ignores issues of maldistribution and inequity that underpin both the climate crisis and vulnerability to its impacts.Those who look at the national and international security risks argue that climate change has the potential to exacerbate existing tensions or create new ones – serving as a threat multiplier. For example, climate change is seen as a threat to military operations and national security, as the rise in sea level can affect military bases or extreme heat events can undermine the operability of armies. Climate change is also seen as a catalyst for violent conflict and a threat to international security, although the causality of climate and conflict is also debated. Due to the growing importance of climate security on the agendas of many governments, international organizations, and other bodies some now run programs which are designed to mitigate the effects of climate change on conflict. These practices are known as climate security practices. These practices stem from a variety of actors with different motivations in the sphere of development, diplomacy and defense; both NATO and the UN Security Council are involved in these practices. Definition Climate security looks at the impacts of climate on security. Climate security often refers to the national and international security risks induced, directly or indirectly, by changes in climate patterns. It is a concept that summons the idea that climate-related change amplifies existing risks in society that endangers the security of humans, ecosystems, economy, infrastructure and societies. Background Climate security refers to the security risks induced, directly or indirectly, by changes in climate patterns. Climate change has been identified as a severe-to-catastrophic threat to international security in the 21st century by multiple risk and security reports. The 2020 Global Catastrophic Risks report, issued by the Global Challenges Foundation, concluded that climate change has a high likelihood to end civilization. 70% of international governments consider climate change to be a national security issue. Policy interest in climate security risks has grown rapidly and affects the policy agenda in relation to food and energy security, migration policy, and diplomatic efforts. Development The term climate security was initially promoted by national security analysts in the US and later Europe, but has since been adopted by a wide variety of actors including the United Nations, low and middle income states, civil society organizations and academia. The term is used in fields such as politics, diplomacy, environment and security with increasing frequency. Within academia, climate security emerged from a discourse of environmental security and was first mentioned in the Brundtland Report in 1987. During the 70's and 80's the Jason advisory group, concerned with security, conducted research on climate change. Global climate change became an international issue with the broadening of the concept of security which emerged in the 1980s in the post-Cold War era.The broadening of the concept of security sought to look beyond the military domain, and include political, economic, societal, and environmental areas in the security agenda. The term security can refer to a broad range of securities including national, international, ecological and human security. To map the different ways in which climate change is conceptualized, scholar Matt McDonald identifies four discourses of climate security advanced by policymakers, lobbyists, environmental advocates, civil society groups and academic analysts. He divides them into national, human, international and ecological types of security which respectively concern nation-states, ‘people’, the international community, and the ‘ecosystem’. National climate security is the most dominant of the four discourses as it focuses on the threat climate change poses to nation-states and the maintenance of its sovereignty and ‘territorial integrity’ from an external threat. This discourse is advanced by national security institutions where the nation-state is viewed as the most capable provider of security through the military apparatus. This discourse has also been advanced by policy think tanks embracing the concept of ‘threat multiplier'.The international security discourse focuses on internationalism and global cooperation where international organizations are viewed as providers of security. Mitigation and adaptation strategies are central to this discourse, such as the transition to low carbon economies and the transfer of technology, sources, and expertise to developing countries. International organizations such as the UN Environment Program are involved in these processes and the more recent Sustainable Development Goals are an embodiment of such discourse. However, the UN Security Council plays a central role as the securitizing agent, which has been often criticized by developing countries, such as Group 77 and the non-Aligned Movement, as they are concerned climate change will be used to justify military intervention and increased military budgets by powerful countries. The human security discourse emerged as a counteracting alternative to national security, and was embraced first by the United Nations Development Program in 1994. It seeks to center the wellbeing of people rather than states. For the UN agencies, mitigation strategies and the redistribution of resources are seen as central to providing security to populations. The ecological security discourse is seldom included in dominant policy or academic debates.While many International Relations (IR) scholars link climate change with security and conflict through a traditional military approach, there is an ongoing debate on whether climate change and environmental issues should be securitized and who and what is really protected. The scholars who theorized the concept of securitization allowed to deepen and broaden concepts of security beyond traditional military security through discourse methodology and ‘speech acts.’ For example, Copenhagen School scholars, such as Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, argue that security justifies urgency and exceptionalism, focusing on defense, the military and the state and that climate change should instead be placed into ‘normal politics’ and removed from the security agenda. Furthermore, some scholars note how securitization theory, stemming as a response to traditional realism theory in the post-Cold War era, is mostly a Eurocentric field and does not include the legacies of colonialism and racial hierarchies inform global politics and governance.With the first IPCC Assessment Report in 1990 and the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the scale of climate change impacts pushed international actors to view climate change as a security threat. A report in 2003 by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall looked at potential implications from climate-related scenarios for the national security of the United States, and concluded, "We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately."In 2008, the EU published a report on climate change and international security, defining climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ affecting EU own security and interests. Critiques and alternatives The climate security approach has become prominent among political and policy spheres and has been called inevitable by some countries, inviting the UN Security Council to adopt more militarized approaches. However, some scholars and activists criticize climate security, arguing that framing climate change as a security issue can be problematic as it could increase solutions that rely on militaries which can worsen the injustices of those most affected by the climate crisis. This can also mean that security solutions end up benefiting the status quo, ignoring the well-being of the rest, such as refugees and other marginalized communities.The climate security approach has also a significant impact on borders and migration, as its narrative emphasizes the ‘threat’ of climate-induced mass migration. Indeed, the border industrial complex is expected to grow globally by 7% annually. As the Transnational Institute report “Global Climate Wall” shows, the seven biggest GHG emitters the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia spent collectively at least twice on border and immigration control than on climate finance between 2013 and 2018. The EU’s budget for Frontex has increased by 2763% since its establishment in 2016 through 2021.Social movements and organizations, such as Climate Justice alliance, We are Dissenters, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network, call for a bigger emphasis on climate justice and environmental justice rather than climate security. Climate justice puts the emphasis on the root causes of climate change, like colonialism and neocolonialism, global inequality, globalization and exploitative economic systems such as the exploitation of natural resources. Many call this addressing the era of climate colonialism. Indeed, many proponents of climate justice call for bigger support for Indigenous people and other frontline communities that are fighting for climate change and also already protecting 80% of Earth’s biodiversity.Many civil society actors also call for climate reparations on top of more climate finance, and also the establishment of Loss and Damage Finance Facility (LDFF), which has been proposed by low-income countries, as well as sovereign debt cancellation. This way, low-income countries could tackle the impacts of climate change for which they are bear the least responsibility. From an academic standpoint, the concept of ecological security, allows for a more systemic approach to climate change that examines the structural roots of the climate crisis as the overlapping economic, political, and social issues of the global system. Effects of climate change Climate change is a global challenge which will affect all countries in the long-term as the impact of climate change is spread unevenly across different regions. However, there may be a disproportionately harsher effect in fragile contexts and/or socially vulnerable and marginalized groups due to climate change vulnerability. For example, the Bay of Bengal, which includes Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions and. Marginalized groups and minority communities, both in the Global North and Global South, are most affected by the effects of climate change, for which they are least responsible, which many call environmental injustice (see also climate justice).Indeed, the richest 10% (circa 630 million people), of the world’s population, mostly from EU and North America, are in fact responsible for 52% of carbon emissions, whereas the poorest 50% (circa 3.1 billion people) were responsible for only 7% of cumulative emissions. The Global North is responsible for 92 percent of GHG emissions and climate change is devastating the Global South (external link). To account for this, the UNFCCC embodies the notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)” which addresses developed countries’ responsibility to transfer aid and technology to developing countries. Conflicts The risk of global conflict, especially in more vulnerable regions, rises with global warming. Studies have shown that extreme weather events can damage economies, lower food production and raise inequality, which can increase risks of violence when combined with other factors. One study found that climate change has influenced between 3% and 20% of armed conflict in the last century, that an increase of 2°C above pre-industrial levels more than doubles the current risk of conflict, increasing it to 13%, and that an increase of 4°C multiplies the risk by five, up to a 26% risk.A report by the Global Peace Index found that 971 million people lived in areas with either a high or very high climate change exposure and that 400 million of those people lived in countries with low levels of peacefulness. It warned that climate change can increase the likelihood of violent conflict by impacting upon resource availability, job security, and by causing forced migration.There is no scientific consensus yet regarding the likelihood of war increasing or not as a result of climate change. Future climate change is likely to be very different from what humanity has experienced previously and the ability of societies to adapt is unclear. Many climate security advocates draw a connection between climate change and conflict. In a 2007 study on the topic, the German Advisory Council on Global Change identified four pathways potentially connecting climate change to conflict: degradation of freshwater resources, food insecurity, an increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, and increasing or changing migration patterns. These factors can reportedly increase the risk of violent conflict by, for instance, changing opportunity structures for violence (e.g., when states are weakened or deprived individuals can be recruited by armed groups more easily) or exacerbating the grievances of affected populations. A more recent 2021 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence predicts intensifying physical effects of climate change "will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance." It names Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Nicaragua, North Korea and Pakistan as likely to face extreme weather episodes that pose threats to energy, food, water and health security: "Diminished energy, food and water security in the 11 countries probably will exacerbate poverty, tribal or ethnic intercommunal tensions and dissatisfaction with governments, increasing the risk of social, economic, and political instability." In a 2016 article, published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the author Zia Mian suggested that conflict over climate-related water issues could lead to nuclear conflict, involving Kashmir, India and Pakistan. Other scholars believe that climate change are unlikely to have major impacts on the nature of interstate wars, but have expressed concerns about its impacts on civil wars and communal conflicts. Based on a meta-analysis of 60 studies, Hsiang, Burke and Miguel conclude that warmer temperatures and more extreme rainfall could increase interpersonal violence by 4%, and intergroup conflict by 14% (median estimates). However, their results have been disputed by other researchers as being not sufficiently robust to alternative model specifications. Recent studies have been more careful and agree that climate-related disasters (including heatwaves, droughts, storms and floods) modestly increase armed conflict risks, but only in the presence of contextual factors like agricultural dependence, insufficient infrastructure or the political exclusion of ethnic groups. Climate change is therefore rather a "risk multiplier" that amplifies existing risks of conflict. In line with this and other reviews of the topic, an expert assessment published 2019 in Nature concludes that between 3% and 20% of intrastate, armed conflict risks in the previous century were affected by climate-related factors, but that other drivers of conflict are far more important.The expert assessment itself notes that major knowledge gaps and uncertainties continue to exist in the research field, especially regarding the pathways connecting climate change to conflict risk. Selby argues that the assessment ignores critical or constructivist approaches. Indeed, there are a number of studies that criticize how climate-conflict research is based on a deterministic and conflict-oriented worldview and that findings of statistical studies on the topic are based on problematic models and biased datasets. Existing research also predominantly focuses on a few, well-known and already conflict-ridden regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. This raises questions about sampling biases as well as implications for less-considered regions like Latin America and the Pacific, with topics such as peaceful adaptation and environmental peacebuilding also understudied. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report also notes that several factors that increase general conflict risk are sensitive to climate change, but that there is no direct and simple causal association between nature and society.On a country by country basis, several case studies have linked climate change to increased violent conflicts between farmers and herders in Nigeria, Kenya and Sudan, but have found mixed results for Mali and Tanzania. Evidence is also ambiguous and highly contested for high-intensity conflicts such as civil wars. Yet some studies have suggested that there is very little evidence for several of these causal claims, including for the cases of Darfur, Egypt, Syria, and Ghana. For example in the case of Syria, many military officials affirm that in the country due to climate change led to rural–urban migration and the Syrian civil war. However, some experts like scholar Selby have demonstrated that Assad’s economic measures that led to the cutting of agricultural subsidies had a bigger impact than the drought in causing migration. Recently, researchers have paid increased attention to the impacts of climate change on low-intensity and even non-violent conflicts, such as riots, demonstrations or sit-ins. Even if people do not have the means or motivation to use violence, they can engage in such forms of conflict, for instance in the face of high food prices or water scarcity. Studies indeed show that in vulnerable societies, the anticipated consequences of climate change such as reduced food and water security increase the risk of protests. These conflicts often add to and trigger the escalation of deeper social and political struggles. Experts have suggested links to climate change in several major conflicts: War in Darfur, where sustained drought encouraged conflict between herders and farmers Syrian civil war, preceded by the displacement of 1.5 million people due to drought-induced crop and livestock failure But this is disputed by some academics who say that although the severe drought of 2007–2008 in north-east Syria was made more likely by climate change, it is very unlikely that this helped to start the Syrian civil war. Islamist insurgency in Nigeria, which exploited natural resource shortages to fuel anti-government sentiment Somali Civil War, in which droughts and extreme high temperatures have been linked to violence Herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria, Mali, South Sudan and other countries in the Sahel region are exacerbated by climate change. Northern Mali conflict, in which droughts and extreme high temperatures have been linked to violence Adaptation Energy At least since 2010, the U.S. military begun to push aggressively to develop, evaluate and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels. Based on the 2015 annual report from NATO, the alliance plans investments in renewables and energy efficiency to reduce risks to soldiers, and cites the impacts from climate change on security as a reason. Military Operations and Climate Security The main concern for military strategists - and central to many military and national security strategies - is the operability of armed forces during climate change. There are concerns over the impact of climate change on infrastructure, such as military bases, as well as on the capacity to fight, for example in extreme heat. A 2018 Pentagon report revealed that half of 3,500 military sites were suffering the effects of six key categories of extreme weather events, such as storm surge, wildfires and droughts. There have consequently been efforts to ‘green’ the military and prepare it for a climate changed world, through the installation of solar panels at military bases, alternative fuels in shipping and renewable energy equipment.There are also concerns about the reliance on fossil fuels, which can pose vulnerabilities for armed forces. The Pentagon alone is the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuel. For example, during the US invasion of Iraq, one in nearly 40 fuel convoys in Iraq in 2007 resulted in a death or serious injury. At least since 2010, the U.S. military begun to push to develop, evaluate and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels. The NATO’s 2021 Climate Change and Security Action Plan proposes strategies to protect its assets along with a promise of GHG emissions reduction by 2050.However, because military emissions reporting is only voluntary, there is a lack of transparent data on militaries’ GHG emissions. A 2019 study by Brown University estimated 1.2 billion metric tons of GHG have been consumed by the U.S. military alone since the beginning of the War on Terror in 2001. Additionally, Scientists for Global Responsibility have calculated UK military emissions to be 11 million tonnes, and EU emissions to be 24.8 million tonnes with France contributing to a third of the total.The military’s sustainability plans have been criticized as ‘greenwashing.’ Additionally, militarism and war have caused devastating environmental damages. The chemical contamination left in Afghanistan and the nuclear contamination in the Marshalls Islands are some examples of American imperialism and its environmental legacy. Climate security practices Due to the growing importance of climate security on the agendas of many governments, international organizations, and other bodies some now run programs which are designed to mitigate the effects of climate change on conflict. These practices are known as climate security practices which are defined by von Lossow et al. as "tangible actions implemented by a (local or central) government, organization, community, private actor or individual to help prevent, reduce, mitigate or adapt (to) security risks and threats related to impacts of climate change and related environmental degradation". The Planetary Security Initiative at the Clingendael Institute maintain an updated list of climate security practices.These practices stem from a variety of actors with different motivations in the sphere of development, diplomacy and defence. An example is the Arms to Farms project in Kauswagan municipality, the Philippines. An insurgency in the area was aggravated by food insecurity because irregular rainfall that caused poor harvests led to an uptick in insurgent recruitment sparking further violence. The project successfully integrated former insurgents into the community by training them in agricultural methods and fostering trust between communities, increasing food security, peace and human security overall. Another example is a division of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA) that seeks to solve community conflicts, which can stem from climate change caused resource shortages. One project in Kidal built a new and more effective water pump in order to solve the issue of conflict between different stakeholders in the area over water which risked a violent confrontation.A growing number of non-military and civil society organizations are advocating for a national security approach including Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations (US), the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Chatham House (UK), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Clingendael (Netherlands), French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, Adelphi (Germany) and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Environmental groups have also embraced a national security approach such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund and Nature Conservancy (US) and E3G in Europe. The grassroots group Extinction Rebellion Netherlands even invited a Dutch military general to contribute to their ‘rebel’ handbook. Even though these groups are often more concerned with human security they seek to involve the military as allies, driven by the belief that it can help achieve broader political and economic support.The field of climate security practices is still young and even though the issue is growing in importance, some actors are still reluctant to get involved due to the uncertainty inherent in the new field. Because climatic change will only increase in the near future von Lossow et al. conclude that expanding the number of climate security practices in vulnerable areas of the world has "huge potential to catalyse more sustainable and long-term peace and stability". Political approaches The transnational character of climate-related security risks often goes beyond the capacity of national governments to respond adequately. Many parts of governments or state leaders acknowledge climate change as an issue for human security, national or regional security. Despite ongoing concerns about the securitization of climate change, it has had little effect on the policies and activities of national governments, which have tended to take ‘business as usual’ approaches to managing and containing international migration. NATO NATO stated in 2015 that climate change is a significant security threat and that "Its bite is already being felt". In 2021, NATO agreed a Climate Change and Security Action Plan that committed the alliance to 1) analyze the impact of climate change on NATO's strategic environment and NATO's assets, installations, missions and operations 2) incorporate climate change considerations into its work3) contribute to the mitigation of climate change and 4) exchange with partner countries, as well as with international and regional organizations that are active on climate change and security.It is important to note that the deployment of security forces can sometimes lead to insecurity, rather than security, for certain populations.For example the 20-year US-led and NATO-supported military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was launched in order to obtain security from terrorism and fight the War on Terror , but it ended up fueling more war, conflict, and the return to power of the Taliban as a result of the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan (2020–2021). United Nations Although climate change is first and foremost dealt within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and now also under the Paris agreement, the security implications of climate change do not have an institutional home within the United Nations system, and hence remain largely unaddressed, in spite of the urgency of the threat it poses to peace and security in several regions. The UN, through its COP - The Conference of the Parties - is the supreme body to negotiate climate frameworks under the UNFCCC Convention. It consists of the representatives of the Parties to the Convention and holds its sessions every year, and takes decisions which are necessary to ensure the effective implementation of the provisions of the Convention and regularly reviews the implementation of these provisions. Preventing "dangerous" human interference with the climate system is the ultimate aim of the UNFCCC. The UNFCCC is a "Rio Convention", one of three adopted at the "Rio Earth Summit" in 1992. The UNFCCC entered into force on March 21, 1994. Today, it has near-universal membership. The COP has discussed Climate Security during panels, workshops as session, but not as a programmatic track. The greater focus on this topic by the UN has led to the launch in October 2018 of the inter-agency DPPA-UNDP-UN Environment cooperation called the Climate Security Mechanism. United Nations Security Council The UN Security Council first debated climate security and energy in 2007 and in 2011 issued a presidential statement expressing concern at the possible adverse security effects of climate change. There has been a series of informal Arria-Formula meetings on issues related to climate change. In July 2018, Sweden initiated a debate on Climate and Security in the United Nations Security Council. In 2021 the UN Security Council convened for a high-level open debate on climate security. Climate change grew beyond its categorization as a hypothetical, existential risk and became an operational concern of relevance to other peace and security practitioners beyond the diplomats in the Security Council. However, some countries, especially low and middle income countries (LMICs), do not think climate change should be seen as a security issue. When the topic of climate and security first emerged in the UN, LMICs opposed the securitization of climate change. In 2006 the Group of 77 (G77) argued that ‘the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change’ and that the richest countries should not only address the ‘consequences [of climate change] but mainly the roots of the problem.' The G77 also stated that it is inappropriate to consider the issue of energy in the UNSC, ‘reaffirming the key role of energy in achieving the goals of sustainable development, poverty eradication and achieving the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]’. In 2013, the G77 and China argued that the UNSC was ‘not the appropriate forum for this discussion’ and that such issues should be assigned to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the UN General Assembly. The G77 has not issued public positions since then. Country and continent examples Africa Climate change has had devastating effects on the African continent, affecting the poorest communities. It has escalated food insecurity, led to the displacement of populations and exerted extreme pressure on the available water resources. Africa's exposure to climate change is high due to the legacy of colonialism, inequitable global trade arrangements, its low adaptive capacity and limited government capabilities, making it the most vulnerable continent. A 2007 report by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon points out that, climate change and environmental degradation were partly responsible for the Darfur, Sudan conflict. Between 1967 and 2007, the total rainfall in the area had reduced by 30 percent and the expansion of the Sahara was beyond a mile every year. The ensuing friction between farmers and pastoralists over the reducing grazing land and the few water sources available was at the heart of the Darfur civil war. More recently US and European security analysts refer to the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin as a ‘hotspot’ because of its severe climate-related vulnerabilities, communal violence, jihadist insurgencies, political instability, and internal and regional displacement. Climate change has caused rainfall variations and desertification threatening the well-being of people whose lives depend on Lake Chad. Reports suggest that Lake Chad is shrinking at a fast speed, which is creating sharp competition for water. In 2017, the UNSC adopted Resolution 2349 connecting conflict and water scarcity in the region. In 2020, Niger co-organized a UN Security Council meeting on climate security, following a 2018 UNSC statement on the Lake Chad Basin which identified climate change and the shrinking of Lake Chad as one of the root causes of the Boko Haram uprisings. However scholars disagree on whether the desertification of Lake Chad has indeed led to conflicts, because there are other factors such as pre-existing socioeconomic and political conditions, the influx of arms into the region, unfair terms of trade, religious issues, and the marginalization of pastoralist communities. Australia A 2018 published report by the Australian Senate noted how "climate change as a current and existential national security risk... defined as one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development." European Union The European Council's conclusions on climate diplomacy state that "Climate change is a decisive global challenge which, if not urgently managed, will put at risk ... peace, stability and security." The Intelligence on European Pensions and Institutional Investment think-tank published a 2018 report with the key point, "Climate change is an existential risk whose elimination must become a corporate objective". In June 2018 European External Action Service (EEAS) High-Level Event hosted an event themed "Climate, Peace and Security: The Time for Action". The EU's comprehensive approach to security would suggest that the EU is well placed to respond to climate-related security risks. However, recent scientific research shows that the European Union has not yet developed a fully coherent policy. United Kingdom The UK’s former Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, FCDO) was the first to push the UN to hold a meeting in the UN Security Council on climate change and urged the UNFCCC to take action in 2007. In 2011, the then UK Department for International Development (DFID) committed to spending 30% of its aid in fragile and conflict-affected states by 2014–15. Between 2013 and 2015, the FCO had discussions on the climate, security and conflict in ‘fragile’ states at G8 and G7 meetings.In 2014, David Cameron noted that "Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing our world". A 2018 article in UK's The Independent also argued that the U.S.' Trump administration is "putting British national security at risk", according to over 100 climate scientists. In the same year, the former UK Special Representative for Climate Change, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, claimed that ‘Climate change will require more deployment of the British military in conflict prevention, conflict resolution or responding to increased humanitarian requirements due to extreme weather impacts.’ The UK-established International Climate Fund (ICF) identifies climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ within ‘fragile’ states. In 2015 a report by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (NSS) confirmed that climate change presents a risk to national security and that spending on security would need to adapt. On September 23, 2021, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, UK Minister for the United Nations stated that climate change threatened the safety of the country and all people. Recently the United Kingdom hosted the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on October 31 – 12 November 12, 2021. The UK’s ‘Integrated Review of Defence, Security, Development, and Foreign Policy’, published in March 2021, argues that dealing with climate change and biodiversity loss was its ‘number one international priority’ and identified African countries as vulnerable countries to climate change, which can amplify insecurity, migration and instability on the continent. United States In the United States, analysis of climate security and the development of policy ideas for addressing it has been led by the Center for Climate and Security, founded by Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell in 2011, which is now an institute of the Council on Strategic Risks. US intelligence analysts have expressed concern about the "serious security risks" of climate change since the 1980s. In 2007, the Council on Foreign Relations released a report titled, Climate Change and National Security: An Agenda for Action, stating that "Climate change presents a serious threat to the security and prosperity of the United States and other countries." A 2012 report published by the Joint Global Change Research Institute indicated that second and third order impacts of climate change, such as migration and state stability, are of concern for the US defense and intelligence communities. A 2015 report published by the White House found that climate change puts coastal areas at risk, that a changing Arctic poses risks to other parts of the country, risk for infrastructure, and increases demands on military resources. In 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted: "Unpredictable instability has become the 'new normal,' and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future...Extreme weather, climate change, environmental degradation, rising demand for food and water, poor policy decisions and inadequate infrastructure will magnify this instability."A 2015 Pentagon report pointed out how climate denial threatens national security. In 2017, the Trump administration removed climate change from its national security strategy. But in January 2019 the Pentagon released a report stating that climate change is a national security threat to USA. In June 2019, in the course of House Select Committee on Intelligence hearings on the national security implications of climate change, the White House blocked the submission of a statement by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Office, and the analyst who wrote the statement resigned. The idea of creating a presidential committee on climate security has been proposed. As part of the United States National Defense Authorization Act the U.S. Congress asked the Department of Defense for a report on climate matters. The report was published in 2019, and notes, "The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to Department of Defense (DoD or the Department) missions, operational plans, and installations." In 2021, United States President Biden declared climate change a national security priority. See also Climate resilience Energy security Environmental monitoring Food security Water conflict Water security References External links Global Military Advisory Council On Climate Change How Climate Change Became a National Security Problem (Wired, 2015) National Security in the Fourth National Climate Assessment (2018) Primer on Climate Security - The dangers of militarising the climate crisis (Transnational Institute, 2021)

climate change in liberia

Climate change in Liberia causes many problems as Liberia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Like many other countries in Africa, Liberia both faces existing environmental issues, as well as sustainable development challenges. Because of its location in Africa, it is vulnerable to extreme weather, the coastal effects of sea level rise, and changing water systems and water availability. Climate change is expected to severely impact the economy of Liberia, especially agriculture, fisheries, and forestry. Liberia has been an active participant in international and local policy changes related to climate change. Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes Sea level rise 60% of the population of Liberia lives along the coast. Sea level rise is expected to put pressure on a number of populations, including communities in slums such as the West Point Slum, and incur losses of US$250 million. Water resources High evaporation, changes in seasonal rainfall patterns, and runoff increases are expected to lead to decreased water and worse water quality. Additionally, by the 2020s the Mount Coffee Hydropower Project is expected to have challenges with maintaining water supply. Moreover, sea level rise is expected to cause increase salinization in important coastal communities. Impacts on people Economic impacts Agriculture 61% of the GDP and 75% of employment is in the agriculture sector. Climate change is expected to exacerbate extreme weather and decrease crop yields, resulting in food insecurity. Mitigation and adaptation Policies and legislation The Liberian Environmental Protection Agency launched a national response plan in 2018. International cooperation Liberia was one of the first recipients of the Green Climate Fund, and received significant funding in 2014 from Norway in order to address forestry practices, fossil fuel subsidies, and renewable energy in the country. See also Climate change in Africa == References ==

disability and climate change

Climate change disproportionately affects individuals with disabilities, both directly and indirectly. Individuals with disabilities are more likely to experience the effects of climate change on humans more acutely compared to those without disabilities. Typically, disabled people are the most likely to be negatively affected by any form of emergency, whether it be an immediate emergency like a flood or tornado or a gradual emergency like rising sea levels, due to a lack of access to emergency resources and the difficulties imposed by limited mobility. Disabled people are also more adversely affected by climate change because a disproportionate number of disabled people live in poverty, and people living in poverty are inherently more at risk due to climate change. Despite this, and despite the fact that disabled people make up more than 15% of the global population, they have had minimal input and involvement in the decision-making process surrounding responses to climate change. A 2022 study by the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme revealed that only 37 of 192 State Parties to the Paris Agreement currently refer to persons with disabilities in their nationally determined contributions, while only 46 State Parties refer to persons with disabilities in their domestic climate adaptation policies. Acknowledgements of increased risks The increased risks of disabled people with respect to climate change have not been widely acknowledged. For example, the Millennium Development Goals did not reference the relationship between disability and climate change. However, several international agreements and documents do elaborate on the relationship, such as the 2010 Cancun Agreements, the 2013 Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, and the preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Another step taken to ensure that information about climate risks by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that publishes its new report highlighting the cases and further updates.In 2019, the OHCHR published an analytical study on the promotion and protection of the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of climate change.Meaningful participation, inclusion and leadership of people with disabilities and their representative organizations within disaster risk management and climate-related decision-making strategy within a local, national, regional and global levels, is a human right approach to address their rights and needs. Global frameworks on Disability and Climate Change There are a number of frameworks and policies that highlight the governments use of a human rights-based approach when developing and implementing climate policies and programmes to ensure equity. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and its Optional Protocol (A/RES/61/106) was adopted on 13 December 2006 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and was opened for signature on 30 March 2007. It had 82 signatories to the convention, 44 signatories to the Optional Protocol, and 1 ratification of the convention. It is the first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century and is the first human rights convention to be open for signature by regional integration organizations.Under the UNCRPD, States have a number of obligations that are relevant in the context of climate change. The UNCRPD specifically requires that State Parties "take into account the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities in all policies and programmes". This can be understood, as argued by Jodoin, Ananthamoorthy, and Lofts, as requiring States to design climate policies and measures in a way that considers the rights of persons with disabilities and ensures that the policies themselves do not violate their rights. Moreover, this requirement could be understood as requiring States to reduce carbon emissions in order to avoid their negative human rights impacts on persons with disabilities. The UNCRPD also requires that States ensure the participation of persons with disabilities in the development and implementation of policies; accordingly, States should include persons with disabilities, through consultation or other processes, in the creation and implementation of climate policies. The United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy (UNDIS) The UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a system wide partnership that UNDP hosts the technical secretariat with 5 other UN entities, can support UNCTs' joint UN work on disability inclusion. The UNDIS acts as a benchmark towards achieving transformative change for people with disability. It consists of a policy and an accountability framework.UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the UNDIS to bring disability inclusion to the forefront of all areas of the UN's work around the world. The United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy provides the foundation for sustainable and transformative progress on disability inclusion through all pillars of the work of the United Nations: peace and security, human rights, and development. The Strategy enables the UN system to support the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other international human rights instruments, as well as the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Agenda for Humanity and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The Strategy enables the UN system to support the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other international human rights instruments, as well as the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Agenda for Humanity and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. IASC Guidelines on Inclusive Humanitarian Action Inclusion is achieved when people with disabilities meaningfully participate and when disability-related concerns are addressed in compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. IASC Guidelines sets out the essential actions that humanitarian actors must take in order to effectively identify and respond to the needs and rights of persons with disabilities. The impacts of climate change on people with disabilities People with disabilities represent wide and diverse communities. However, on the whole, persons with disabilities are more vulnerable to climate change than persons without disabilities. Other factors, such as poverty, gender, or Indigeneity, can also compound an individual's vulnerability to climate change. For instance, individuals with certain pre-existing conditions or chronic illnesses may be more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as warmer temperatures and decreased air quality. However, a disproportionate number of persons with disabilities live in poverty, meaning that they may be unable to access crucial tools, like air conditioning, necessary to adapt to warmer temperatures and extreme heat events. The combined effects of economic inequality and an individual's health conditions can thus render them especially vulnerable to climate change. The UN flagship report on disability and development reveals that disabled youth face additional challenges that are related to their basic rights to higher education, as is the case in less developed countries where education for regular people is lacking.In 2018, the United Nations created a flagship report that has never been done before. The report was based on and talked about "disability and sustainable development goals". The report mentions how people with disabilities are at a disadvantage when it comes to climate change and the issues that come with it. The report states that the world needs to create action in order to remove the disadvantages that people with disabilities have. The report recommends actions that should be taken in order to do so. The report had actual outcomes. In 2019, Member states adopted two resolutions that were in the general assembly. "The first resolution titled "Promoting social integration through social inclusion" (A/C.3/74/L.17/Rev.1) and the second titled "Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol thereto: accessibility" (A/C.3/74/L.32/Rev.1)" (UN.org). Climate change related disadvantages Poverty Disabled people are disproportionately represented in the poorest communities, and a large percent live below the poverty line. As such, disabled people are more likely to be affected by the same challenges faced by impoverished communities. People with disabilities experience poverty at more than twice the rate of non-disabled people. As the climate changes, crop failure and drought will become more common, leaving poorer communities without food security. Water shortages are more acutely felt by poor neighborhoods, a problem which will only become more clear as climate change worsens. As job opportunities are lost due to the impacts of environmental disasters, disabled people are likely to be the first to lose employment or agricultural land. Health Climate change results in more health care inequalities faced by persons with disabilities.Even without the impacts of climate change, disabled people have less equal access to health care than those without disabilities because of social stigmas, exclusion, poverty, discriminatory policies, and a lack of health care programs for specific disabilities. When stressors related to climate change reduce the effectiveness of health care systems, these inequalities in access to health care between disabled and non-disabled people widen. Disruptions to social services and other essential services can be especially detrimental, as disabled people often rely on regular and reliable access to these services.During climate change induced disasters, another challenge disabled people may face is the loss of adaptive equipment that help them have increased mobility or ability to interface via sight or sound.Many people with disabilities depend on assistive devices that improve their physical functions and mobility. Once they are threatened by a disaster, assistive devices are out of reach because they are either lost or damaged. This would leave these people without adaptive support to survive. These could include wheelchairs, hearing aids, and the like. During a disaster, these devices are likely to be lost or destroyed. Additionally, when relief is provided to areas affected by natural disasters, these types of items are rarely provided, leaving disabled people to go without them for extended periods of time. Increased temperatures pose greater risks to disabled people, as many disabilities impact one's ability to regulate body temperatures. Climate change also poses specific risks to those with respiratory disabilities because the warming climate can increase triggers such as ground level ozone and pollen. Mobility While disabled people are frequently less physically mobile, they also experience other mobility-related disadvantages. Disabled people often have more difficulty travelling internationally, despite technically having the right to international mobility. This typically occurs because countries will deny disabled migrants entry because of the perceived burden they are believed to place on the country.In the greater picture of climate change motivated migration, international migration plays a relatively minor role, with internal migration making up the bulk of movement. Unfortunately, there has been minimal research on the involvement in internal migration by disabled people, and the effects that this form of migration have on disabled people's adaptive capabilities are largely unknown. Recognizing Vulnerability and Capacity for Adaption An emergency within the context of climate change puts people with disabilities with an increased risk because of their vulnerability. A guidance note created by the World Health Organization regarding disability and emergency risk management describes a number of extra challenges faced by people with disabilities in an emergency period.Critical factors shape the resilience and adaptive ability of individuals within their communities. Such factors are: access to and control over natural, human, social, physical, and financial resources. People with disabilities have various types of vulnerabilities : poor education, lack of income, social exclusion and limited access to decision-making authorities. == References ==

2022 in climate change

This article documents events, research findings, scientific and technological advances, and human actions to measure, predict, mitigate, and adapt to the effects of global warming and climate change—during the year 2022. Summaries ~22 January: the International Monetary Fund stated that "Much larger coordinated global policies—including carbon price floors—will be needed to meet the new goals laid out at the (Nov 2021) Glasgow climate conference and stave off catastrophic global climate change. ... Such national-level measures will need to be reinforced with adequately resourced multilateral climate finance initiatives to ensure that all countries can invest in needed mitigation and adaptation measures." 13 September: The United in Science 2022 report is published by the WMO, summarizing latest climate science-related updates and assessing recent climate change mitigation progress as "going in the wrong direction". 26 October: At the 30th anniversary of the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, scientists in a BioScience study concluded that "We are now at 'code red' on planet Earth", presenting new or updated information about "recent climate-related disasters, assess[ed] planetary vital signs, and [...] policy recommendations". The Global Carbon Project reports that carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels, with no sign of the decrease that is needed to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. At the current rate, the carbon that can still be emitted while still meeting the 1.5 °C global goal will likely (at a 50% chance) be emitted within only around nine years. Measurements and statistics 13 January: Australia matched its hottest reliably recorded temperature near the West Australian town of Onslow, registering 50.7 °C (123.3 °F). February: the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing was the first to rely 100% on artificial snow, exceeding Pyeongchang (2018, 90%) and Sochi (2014, 80%). If global warming continue the trajectory of the preceding two decades, by 2100 the winter games were predicted to be unviable at 20 of 21 former host venues. 1 February: a study published in PLOS Climate reported that, in 2019, 57% of the global ocean surface recorded extreme heat, compared to 2% during the second industrial revolution, and that, between the 1980s and 2010s, the global mean normalized heat index increased by 68.23%. Researchers stated that "many parts of the subtropical and midlatitude regions have reached a near-permanent extreme warming state". 14 February: a study published in Nature Climate Change concluded that the southwestern North American megadrought that began in 2000 was the driest 22-year period in southwestern North America since at least 800 CE, and forecast that this megadrought would very likely persist through 2022, matching the duration of a late-1500s megadrought. 7 March: researchers report in Nature Climate Change that more than three-quarters of the Amazon rainforest has been losing resilience due to deforestation and climate change since the early 2000s as measured by recovery-time from short-term perturbations ("critical slowing down" (CSD)), reinforcing the theory that it is approaching a critical transition. On March 11, INPE reports satellite data that show record-high levels of Amazon deforestation in Brazil for a February (199 km2). 15 March: a Global Energy Monitor report based on mine-level data and modeling determined that coal mining emits 52.3 million tonnes of methane per year, rivaling oil (39 million tonnes) and gas (45 million tonnes), and comparable to the climate impact of the CO2 emissions of all coal plants in China. 24 March: a study published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change review the biophysical mechanisms by which forests influence climate, showing that beyond 50°N large scale deforestation leads to a net global cooling, that tropical deforestation leads to substantial warming from non-CO2-impacts, and that standing tropical forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 °C.30 March: Ember's Global Electricity Review reported that in 2021, wind and solar power reached a record 10% of global electricity, with clean power being 38% of supply, more than coal's 36%. However, demand growth rebounded, leading to a record rise in coal power and emissions. 7 April: NOAA reported an annual increase in global atmospheric methane of 17 parts per billion (ppb) in 2021—averaging 1,895.7 ppb in that year—the largest annual increase recorded since systematic measurements began in 1983. The increase during 2020 was 15.3 ppb, itself a record increase. 12 April: a study of 2020 storms of at least tropical storm-strength published in Nature Communications concluded that human-induced climate change increased extreme 3-hourly storm rainfall rates by 10%, and extreme 3-day accumulated rainfall amounts by 5%. For hurricane-strength storms, the figures increased to 11% and 8%. 26 April: The Global Carbon Budget 2021 (published in Earth System Science Data) concludes that fossil CO2 emissions rebounded by around +4.8% relative to 2020 emissions – returning to 2019 levels, identifies three major issues for improving reliable accuracy of monitoring, shows that China and India surpassed 2019 levels (by 5.7% and 3.2%) while the EU and the US stayed beneath 2019 levels (by 5.3% and 4.5%), quantifies various changes and trends, for the first time provides models' estimates that are linked to the official country GHG inventories reporting, and shows that the remaining carbon budget at 1. Jan 2022 for a 50% likelihood to limit global warming to 1.5 °C is 120 GtC (420 GtCO2) – or 11 years of 2021 emissions levels. 26 April: Scientists propose and preliminarily evaluate in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment a likely transgressed planetary boundary for green water in the water cycle, measured by root-zone soil moisture deviation from Holocene variability. A study published one day earlier in Earth's Future integrates "green water" along with "blue water" into an index to measure and project water scarcity in agriculture for climate change scenarios. 27 April: the second edition of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification's Global Land Outlook concluded that "humans have already transformed more than 70% of the Earth's land area from its natural state, causing unparalleled environmental degradation and contributing significantly to global warming". May: the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reported that a March 2022 aerial survey of the park indicated that 91% of the coral reefs showed "some bleaching", with bleaching patterns "largely consistent with the spatial distribution of heat stress accumulation".12 May: researchers identify the 425 biggest fossil fuel extraction projects globally, of which 40% as of 2020 are new projects that haven't yet started extraction. They conclude in the Energy Policy study that "defusing" these "carbon bombs" would be necessary for climate change mitigation of global climate goals. On 17 May, a separate study in Environmental Research Letters finds that "staying within a 1.5 °C carbon budget (50% probability) implies leaving almost 40% of 'developed reserves' of fossil fuels unextracted". On 26 May, a study in Nature Climate Change calculates climate policies-induced future lost financial profits from global stranded fossil-fuel assets. 26 May: a study in Nature Climate Change reveals that storms in the Southern Hemisphere have already reached intensity levels previously predicted to occur only in the year 2080. 3 June: the NOAA reports that the global concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is now 50% greater than in pre-industrial times, and is likely at a level last seen 4.1 to 4.5 million years ago, at 421 parts per million (ppm). 20 June: a study in Nature Food suggests global food miles CO2 emissions are 3.5–7.5 times higher than previously estimated, with transport accounting for about 19% of total food-system emissions, albeit shifting towards plant-based diets remains substantially more important. 25 June: a study published in Geophysical Research Letters indicates that the Arctic is warming four times faster than global warming now, substantially faster than current CMIP6 models could project. 13 July: A study in Nature affirms (see 7 March) that critical slowing down indicators suggest that tropical, arid and temperate forests are substantially losing resilience. On 4 July, Brazil's INPE reports that the country's regions of the Amazon rainforest have been deforested by a record amount in the first half of 2022. 18 July: a study in Global Change Biology shows that climate change-related exceptional marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean Sea during 2015–2019 resulted in widespread mass sealife die-offs in five consecutive years. 8 August: a study published in Nature Climate Change found that 58% of infectious diseases confronted by humanity have been at times aggravated by climatic hazards, and that empirical cases revealed 1,006 unique pathways in which climatic hazards led to pathogenic diseases. 22 August: a study published in The Cryosphere estimated that 51.5 ±8.0% of Swiss glacier volume was lost between 1931 and 2016, finding that low-elevation, high-debris-cover, and gently sloping glacier termini are conducive to particularly high mass losses. 1 September: a study published in Nature estimated the social cost of carbon (SCC) to be $185 per tonne of CO2—3.6 times higher than the U.S. government's then current value of $51 per tonne. 3 September: for the first time on record, temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet exceeded the melting point in September. 29 September: a study published in Science reported that the Arctic Ocean experienced acidification rates three to four times higher than in other ocean basins, attributing the acidification to reduced sea ice coverage on a decadal time scale. Reduced sea ice coverage exposes seawater to the atmosphere and promotes rapid uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, leading to sharp declines in pH. 29 September: A study published in Science adds to the accumulating research showing that oil and gas industry methane emissions are much larger than thought. 5 October: a study published by World Weather Attribution concluded that, for the Northern Hemisphere extratropics in 2022, human-induced climate change made drought 20 times worse for root zone soil moisture, and 5 times worse for surface soil moisture. 25 October: The Lancet published a report stating that transitioning to clean energy and improved energy efficiency can prevent 1.2 million annual deaths resulting from exposure to fossil fuel-derived PM2·5 particulates, and that extreme heat due to climate change accounted for an estimated 98 million more people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020 than the 1981–2010 average. 28 October: a study published in Science Advances estimated that from 1992 to 2013, cumulative global losses due to extreme heat were more than US$16 trillion (likely range: $5–29.3 trillion), also finding that human-caused increases in heat waves depressed economic output most in the poor tropical regions least culpable for warming. 9 November: The largest global inventory and interactive map of greenhouse gas emission sources is released by Climate TRACE. 11 November: a study published in Earth System Science Data estimated that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement increased by 1.0% in 2022, hitting a new record high of 36.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2). December: Christian Aid's Counting the cost 2022: a year of climate breakdown reported climate-related losses for Pakistan flooding ($30 billion), U.S./Cuba Hurricane Ian ($100 billion), Europe/UK heatwaves ($20 billion), with each of the top ten costing at least $3 billion. * 26 January 2023: Bloomberg NEF's "Energy Transition Investment Trends" report estimated that, for the first time, energy transition investment matched global fossil fuel investment—$1.1 trillion in 2022, including China with $546 billion, the US with $141 billion, and the EU if treated as a bloc, $180 billion. 29 August 2023: an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) publication stated that ~86% (187 GW) of renewable capacity added in 2022 had lower costs than electricity generated from fossil fuels. Natural events and phenomena 10 March: results of a 22-month study reported in Nature Portfolio's Scientific Reports indicated that several species of coral can survive and cope with future ocean conditions (temperature and acidity) consistent with then-current (late 2021) commitments under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, "provid(ing) hope for future reef ecosystem function globally". Reported in March: a coral bleaching event caused severe bleaching in 60 percent of the corals in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, in the reef's first such event occurring in a La Niña (cooling) year. 28 April: a study published in Nature stated that climate and land use change will produce novel opportunities for transmission of viruses between previously geographically isolated species of wildlife, so that species will aggregate in new combinations to drive new cross-species transmission of their viruses an estimated 4,000 times. The study concluded that holding warming under 2 °C within the century would not reduce future viral sharing. 27 June: with a small catalog of unknown bacteria, researchers suggest, in a Nature Biotechnology study, work on microbes soon to be released from melting glaciers across the world to identify and understand potential threats in advance and understand extremophiles. 28 June: A review in Environmental Research: Climate elucidates the current state of climate change extreme event attribution science, concluding probabilities and costs-severity of links as well as identifying potential ways for its improvement. 4 July: scientists report in Nature Communications that heatwaves in western Europe are increasing "three-to-four times faster compared to the rest of the northern midlatitudes over the past 42 years" and that certain atmospheric dynamical changes can (partly) explain their increase. 25 August: a study published in Scientific Reports concluded that the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires caused an abrupt rise in global mean lower stratosphere temperatures and extended the duration of the Antarctic ozone hole, validating concerns that wildfires intensified by global warming would undo progress achieved through the Montreal Protocol in preserving the ozone layer. Reported 1 September: Swiss Re Institute's economic insights report stated that insured losses from floods doubled to $80 billion globally during 2011–2020 compared to the previous decade, while insurance penetration remained at about 18%. September: stating that climate change is already "an important threat", with "climate change and severe weather" endangering 34% of species, BirdLife International's State of the World's Birds 2022 reported that 49% of bird species worldwide have declining populations (only 6% are increasing). Actions, and goal statements Science and technology 17 January: researchers published in WIREs Climate Change an argument against solar geoengineering, saying it "is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system", and advocating for an International Non-Use Agreement. 21 January: a transport ship set sail from Australia to Japan with liquid hydrogen in its insulated hold, in what project participants claim is the first time the non-CO2-emitting fuel has been transported by sea to an international market. However, the project producing the hydrogen used brown coal (lignite), a high-emitting energy source. March: the first wind farm in the Mediterranean Sea is being constructed near Taranto, Italy, and is designed to power 21,000 homes. April: Researchers publishing in the International Journal of Information Management argue that although advancements in science and technology are key in providing a solution for global warming, they also have numerous harmful impacts, including E-waste, CO2 emissions, and resource consumption. 23 May: a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows why decarbonization must be accompanied by strategies to reduce the levels of short-lived climate pollutants with near-term effects for climate goals. June: Progress in climate change mitigation (CCM) living review-like works:The living document-like aggregation, assessment, integration and review website Project Drawdown adds 11 new CCM solutions to its organized set of mitigation techniques. The website's modeling framework is used in a study document available in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling to show that metal recycling has significant potential for CCM. A revised or updated version of a major worldwide 100% renewable energy proposed plan and model is published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science. July: a 5 MW floating solar park was installed in the Alqueva Dam reservoir, Portugal, enabling solar power and hydroelectric energy to be combined. Separately, a German engineering firm committed to integrating an offshore floating solar farm with an offshore wind farm to use ocean space more efficiently. The projects involve "hybridization"—in which different renewable energy technologies are combined in one site. 1 July: Scientists show in One Earth why climate benefits from nature restoration are "dwarfed by the scale of ongoing fossil fuel emissions". 5 December: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved fusion ignition—a reaction producing more energy from nuclear fusion than laser energy used to drive it—for the first time ever, at its National Ignition Facility. The LLNL director projected that it would take "a few decades of research on the underlying technologies" to enable a clean-energy power plant to be built. Political, economic, legal, and cultural actions 24 January: BBC Science Focus reported that "well over 100" countries had constitutions recognizing a human right to a healthy environment, leading to legal actions and petitions to governments. March: The World Bank issued the world's first wildlife conservation bond, raising $150 million and paying investors returns based on the rate of growth of black rhinoceros populations in South Africa's Addo Elephant National Park and Great Fish River Nature Reserve. 31 March: The first Middle East and North Africa Climate Week (MENACW 2022) concluded in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, after hosting about 4000 participants, 200 sessions, and 500 speakers from 147 countries. 8 April: the World Economic Forum reported that for the first time, wind and solar generated more than 10% of electricity globally in 2021, with fifty countries having crossed the 10% threshold. However, power from coal rose 9% to a new record high. 6 May: the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines issued a non-binding "National Inquiry on Climate Change" stating that countries have a special duty to protect human rights in the context of climate change, and business enterprises have a responsibility, distinct from legal liability, to respect human rights. 27 May: energy and environment ministers from all Group of Seven countries agreed to end taxpayer funding for oil, gas and coal projects overseas. 12 August: The National Centers for Environmental Information publish a report called Assessing the Global Climate in July 2022, where they state an all-time record cold temperature occurred in Australia during the month. On October 7, 2022, Zack Labe, a climate scientist for the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory released a statement and a climate report from Berkeley Earth denying the all-time record cold temperature occurred saying, "There are still no areas of record cold so far in 2022." Labe's statement also denied the record cold temperatures in Brazil, reported by the National Institute of Meteorology in May 2022, a month before the official start of winter, was also not record cold temperatures. 16 August: U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains the largest climate investment by the U.S. federal government in history, including over $430 billion to reduce carbon emissions. The bill, passing by a 51–50 vote in the Senate, explicitly defined carbon dioxide as an air pollutant under the Clean Air Act to make the Act's EPA enforcement provisions harder to challenge in court. 25 August: The California Air Resources Board approved the Advanced Clean Cars II regulation that requires all new cars and light trucks sold in the state of California to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. 29 August: five climate scientists, joined by a political scientist who studies social movements, wrote in Nature Climate Change to urge colleagues to commit acts of civil disobedience to counter the "grim trajectory on which the Earth is headed". 14 September: The WHO joins health associations and scientists in calling for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to protect lives of current and future generations. Late September: the United Nations Human Rights Committee declared that the Australian government violated the human rights of Indigenous Torres Strait Islanders by failing to adequately protect them from the impacts of climate change, the ruling being the first time a judicial body focused on human rights has told a government to pay for harm caused by climate change. 29 September: Global Witness reported that, in the past decade, more than 1,700 land and environmental defenders were killed, about one every two days. Brazil, Colombia, Philippines, and Mexico were the deadliest countries. 27 October: the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2022 stated that Russia's invasion of Ukraine "can be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure energy system thanks to the unprecedented response from governments around the world". 4 November: the Senate of the French Republic passed a bill requiring solar panels to be installed over outdoor parking lots having more than 80 places, with a 2026 deadline for larger lots and 2028 for others. 6–20 November: The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt) arrived at a "loss and damage" fund for countries most affected by climate change, a development that the BBC said was hailed as a "historic moment". However, the conference failed to commit to "phasing out" fossil fuels (referring instead to "low emission and renewable energy"), and, according to the BBC, "faltered" on the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement. A large presence of representatives from fossil fuel companies influenced the conference. 19 December: 190 countries (excluding the U.S. and Vatican) approved a United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity agreement to protect 30 percent of the planet's land and oceans by 2030, compared to 2022's protection of ~17 percent of land and ~8 percent of oceans. The 2022 pact includes provisions to make targets measurable and to monitor countries' progress. December: sixteen communities in Puerto Rico (U.S.) filed a first of its kind lawsuit against oil and coal companies under the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act—originally intended to combat criminal enterprises like the mafia—alleging the companies conspired to deceive the public about the climate crisis. 2022: climate change protesters turned increasingly to disruptive tactics, risking arrest and widespread disapproval (e.g., glueing themselves to airport runways or museum artworks, throwing a can of soup at the glass protecting Vincent van Gogh’s "Sunflowers" painting). August 2023: the International Monetary Fund stated that in 2022, global fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion (7.1% of GDP). Mitigation goal statements 29 June: Environment ministers for European Union countries reached an agreement to eliminate carbon emissions from new cars by 2035, defining the states' stance for talks with the EU Parliament and European Commission on the Fit for 55 package. 11 October: stating that the energy sector accounts for almost three quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, the World Meteorological Organization quoted the International Energy Agency as stating that energy supply from low-emissions sources must double by 2030 to achieve net zero by 2050. Adaptation goal statements February: The U.S. Army's Climate Strategy includes providing 100% carbon-pollution-free electricity for Army installations' needs by 2030, achieving 50% reduction from 2005 levels in GHG emissions from all Army buildings by 2032, attaining net-zero GHG emissions from Army installations by 2045, fielding an all-electric light-duty non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027, fielding purpose-built hybrid-drive tactical vehicles by 2035 and fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050, achieving carbon-pollution free contingency basing by 2050, and attaining net-zero GHG emissions from all Army procurements by 2050. 1 November: a key finding of the United Nations Environment Programme's Adaptation Gap Report 2022 is that "evidence suggests that for developing countries, estimated adaptation costs–and likely adaptation financing needs–could be five to ten times greater than current international adaptation finance flows". Public opinion and scientific consensus 12 January: a survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication indicated that Americans are "alarmed" (33%), "concerned" (25%), "cautious" (17%), "disengaged" (5%), "doubtful" (10%), and "dismissive" (9%) about climate change. 25 July: in IEEE Access researchers review the scientific literature on 100% renewable energy, addressing various issues, outlining open research questions, and concluding there to be growing consensus, research and empirical evidence concerning its feasibility worldwide. 29 September: A study published in Nature Sustainability estimates the disproportionality of drivers of climate change by wealth and concludes that to total emissions, investments of the global top 1% are far more important than their consumption and that the pollution gap is larger within countries than between countries. Projections January: the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Perception Survey 2021–2022 listed climate inaction failure, extreme weather, and biodiversity loss as the most severe risks on a global scale over the next 10 years. January: Deloitte published a report forecasting that failing to take sufficient action on climate change could result in economic losses to the US economy of $14.5 trillion(in present-value terms) over the next 50 years, and that decarbonization could catalyze transformational growth in the US economy that could result in $3 trillion added to the economy over that time period. 1 February: a study published in PLOS Climate projected a decline in global thermal refugia for coral reefs from 84% (2022) to 0.2% (at 1.5 °C of global warming), and 0% (at 2.0 °C of global warming), stating that management efforts on thermal refugia may only be effective in the short term. 15 February: NOAA's Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios said that relative sea level along the contiguous U.S. coastline is expected to rise on average as much over the next 30 years—25 to 30 centimetres (9.8 to 11.8 in)—as it has over the preceding 100 years. 23 February: the United Nations Environment Programme projected that climate change and land-use change will make wildfires more frequent and intense, with a global increase of extreme fires of up to 14% by 2030, 30% by 2050, and 50% by 2100. March: a study published in Urban Climate projected that the air temperature in Singapore would increase to 2.2-3.8 °C in the 2080s using global modelling results that was accommodated to city scale and taking into account the future urbanization projects. 30 March: an American Lung Association report stated that a national shift to 100 percent sales of zero-emission passenger vehicles (by 2035) and medium- and heavy-duty trucks (by 2040), coupled with renewable electricity, would generate over $1.2 trillion in public health benefits and avoid up to 110,000 premature deaths. 28 April: a study published in Science cited ocean warming and oxygen depletion, and concluded that "under business-as-usual global temperature increases, marine systems are likely to experience mass extinctions on par with past great extinctions based on ecophysiological limits alone", with polar species at highest risk. 9 May: a World Meteorological Organization update stated that there is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above pre-industrial level for at least one of the ensuing five years; in 2015 that probability was estimated as "close to zero". 16 May: a study published in GeoHealth concluded that eliminating energy-related fossil fuel emissions in the United States would prevent 46,900–59,400 premature deaths each year and provide $537–$678 billion in benefits from avoided PM2.5-related illness and death. 20 May: a study published in One Earth concluded that rising temperatures will continue to shorten sleep, primarily through delayed onset, increasing the probability of insufficient sleep and impacting human functioning, productivity, and health. Those living in warmer climates were found to lose more sleep per degree of temperature rise, and elderly, women, with residents of lower-income countries being most impacted. 12 August: a study published in Science Advances stated that climate-caused changes in atmospheric rivers affecting California has already doubled the likelihood of megafloods—which can involve 100 inches (250 cm) of rain and/or melted snow in the mountains per month, or 25 to 34 feet (7.6 to 10.4 m) of snow in the Sierra Nevada—and runoff in a future extreme storm scenario is predicted to be 200 to 400% greater than historical values in the Sierra Nevada. 25 August: a study published in Communications Earth & Environment projected that, even if global warming is constrained to within 2.0 °C, by 2100 the "extremely dangerous" heat index threshold 124 °F (51 °C) is likely to be exceeded on more than 15 days each year in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Arabian peninsula, and much of the Indian subcontinent. Exposure to "dangerous" (exceeding 103 °F (39 °C)) heat index levels are projected to likely increase by 50–100% across much of the tropics and increase by a factor of 3–10 in many regions throughout the midlatitudes. 29 August: a study published in Nature Climate Change projected, based on 2000–2019 climatology, that 3.3% of the Greenland ice sheet will melt, resulting in 274 millimetres (10.8 in) of global sea level rise—with "most" of the rise within the 21st century—regardless of how well greenhouse gas release is limited. 9 September: A study published in Science describes how multiple tipping elements in the climate system could be triggered if global warming exceeds 1.5 °C. 26 October: the United Nations' synthesis report of nationally determined contributions estimated that the best estimate of peak temperature in the twenty-first century is 2.1–2.9 °C. Assuming full implementation of NDCs, including all conditional elements, the best estimate for peak global mean temperature is 2.1–2.4 °C. 27 October: the United Nations Environment Programme's Emissions Gap Report 2022 projected that "policies currently in place with no additional action are projected to result in global warming of 2.8 °C over the twenty-first century. Implementation of unconditional and conditional NDC scenarios reduce this to 2.6 °C and 2.4 °C respectively". 7 November: Scientists warned in Ecological Monographs about summarized effects of climate change on insects, among other novel stressors, which may "drastically reduce our ability to build a sustainable future based on healthy, functional ecosystems", providing several recommended mitigation options. 2 December: the International Energy Agency projected that, in large part because of the 2022 global energy crisis, renewable energy will surpass prior predictions, and will become the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, surpassing coal. Significant publications IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II:Working Group II (27 February 2022). "Climate Change 2022 / Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability / Summary for Policymakers" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 February 2022. (36 pages; 10 MB) Working Group II (27 February 2022). "Technical Summary" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 February 2022. Accepted, subject to final edits (96 pages; 20 MB) Working Group II (27 February 2022). "Climate Change 2022 / Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (full report)" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 February 2022. (3675 pages; 280 MB)IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III:Working Group III (4 April 2022). "Climate Change 2022 / Mitigation of Climate Change / Summary for Policymakers" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2022. (64 pages; 5 MB) Working Group III (4 April 2022). "WG III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report / Technical Summary" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2022. (145 pages; 10 MB) Working Group III (4 April 2022). "Climate Change 2022 / Mitigation of Climate Change / Full Report" (PDF). IPCC.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2022. (2913 pages; 88 MB)"State of the Global Climate 2021". WMO.int. World Meteorological Organization (WMO-No. 1290). 18 May 2022. Archived from the original on 18 May 2022. "Global Electricity Review 2022" (PDF). Ember. March 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 March 2022. "Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement / Synthesis report by the secretariat" (PDF). UNFCCC.int. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 26 October 2022. p. 30. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 October 2022. "Emissions Gap Report 2022 / The Closing Window". United Nations Environment Programme. 27 October 2022. Archived from the original on 27 October 2022. (includes download link) "World Energy Outlook 2022" (PDF). IEA.org. International Energy Agency. 27 October 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 October 2022. "Adaptation Gap Report 2022 / Too Little, Too Slow / Climate Adaptation Failure Puts World at Risk". UNEP.org. United Nations Environment Programme. 1 November 2022. p. 18. Archived from the original on 1 November 2022. "WMO Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022". WMO.int. World Meteorological Organization. 6 November 2022. Archived from the original on 6 November 2022. Friedlingstein, Pierre; O'Sullivan, Michael; Jones, Matthew W.; Andrew, Robbie M.; et al. (11 November 2022). "Global Carbon Budget 2022 / Data Description Paper". Earth System Science Data. 14 (11): 4811–4900. Bibcode:2022ESSD...14.4811F. doi:10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022. hdl:20.500.11850/594889. "Arctic Report Card 2022 / The warming Arctic reveals shifting seasons, widespread disturbances, and the value of diverse observations" (PDF). NOAA.gov. Arctic Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 13 December 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 December 2022. See also 2022 in the environment 2022 in environmental sciences 2022 in science Climatology § History History of climate change policy and politics History of climate change science Politics of climate change § History Timeline of sustainable energy research 2020–present Notes References External links Organizations The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Climate indicators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Surveys, summaries and report lists Perera, Frederica; Nadeau, Kari (2022). "Climate Change, Fossil-Fuel Pollution, and Children's Health". New England Journal of Medicine. 386 (24): 2303–2314. doi:10.1056/NEJMra2117706. PMID 35704482. S2CID 249677417. (review article) Peters, Adele (19 July 2022). "A list of all the climate disasters the world is facing right now". Fast Company. Archived from the original on 19 July 2022.

loss and damage

In the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, loss and damage is the harm caused by anthropogenic (human-generated) climate change.The appropriate response to loss and damage has been disputed since the UNFCCC's adoption. Establishing liability and compensation for loss and damage has been a long-standing goal for vulnerable and developing countries in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries Group in negotiations. However, developed countries have resisted this. The present UNFCCC loss and damage mechanism, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, focuses on research and dialogue rather than liability or compensation. The COP27 climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022 resolved to set up a global fund to compensate low and middle-income countries for loss and damage from climate change impacts. The idea behind that fund is that high emitters of greenhouse gases have historically contributed the most to the causes of climate change and have economically benefitted from them. Low and middle-income countries are on the receiving end of many of the impacts of climate change but also have the lowest coping capacity to deal with climate change impacts such as crop failures or rising sea levels. At previous COP events, industrialised nations blocked attempts by low and middle-income countries asking for financial support with their climate adaptation plans. However, at COP27, the agreement to compensate countries for loss and damage from climate change was signed, and that was seen by many as a major breakthrough. Definition The UNFCCC has defined loss and damage to include harms resulting from sudden-onset events (climate disasters, such as cyclones) as well as slow-onset processes (such as sea level rise). It includes the damages (and the risks of future damages) beyond those addressed by climate adaptation actions. These losses and damages are sometimes referred to as 'residual' impacts or risks. Loss and damage can occur in human systems (such as livelihoods) as well as natural systems (such as biodiversity), though the emphasis in research and policy is on human impacts. Within the realm of loss and damage to human systems, a distinction is made between economic losses and non-economic losses. Economic losses and damage affect resources, goods and services that are commonly traded in the market. Non-economic losses and damage contain loss of family members and disappearance of cultures. The main difference between the two is that non-economic losses involve things that are not commonly traded in markets.Climate reparations are loss and damage payments which are based on the concept of reparations. Climate reparations are a form of climate justice, in which compensation is necessary to hold countries accountable for loss and damage resulting from historical emissions, and is an ethical and moral obligation.A Bangladeshi consultant remarked at COP26, "The term 'loss and damage' is a euphemism for terms we're not allowed to use, which are 'liability and compensation' ... 'Reparations' is even worse."Despite the increasing dialogue and attention to the topic, it is also noted that there is ‘not one definition of L&D’.: 2563  In fact, the UN distinguishes between L&D (Loss and Damage) as the dialogue under the negotiations for the UNFCCC and 'losses and damages' as the impacts seen and researched. As well as its connection to finance and support, including liability, compensation and litigation, loss and damage is connected closely to the area of climate change adaptation. Understanding Loss and Damage Loss and damage refers to the adverse effects of climate-related stressors on natural and human systems that cannot be, or have not been, avoided through mitigation or managed through adaptation efforts’. Loss and damage include impacts from extreme weather events and slow-onset events such as rising sea-levels and glacial retreat. With the rapid increase in the manifestation and awareness of climate-related risks and impacts from climate change worldwide, the world has realised that climate mitigation and adaptation may not be enough to manage the effects of anthropogenic climate change. The Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage was set up in 2013 as a climate policy mechanism to deal with climate-related effects in highly vulnerable countries and was endorsed in 2015 by the Paris Agreement. Yet, as described in the book on the topic published in 2019, the concepts, methods, tools, and directions for policy and implementation of loss and damage have remained contested and vague.Loss can be understood as irreversible harm caused by climate change, for example, through the complete destruction or permanent reduction in the functioning of assets, infrastructure, or resources, the complete submergence of small island nations due to sea-level rise, the irreversible extinction of a species, or the permanent loss of cultural heritage sites due erosion caused by extreme weather events. Damage refers to harmful effects and costs associated with climate change that can be quantified and potentially compensated (including economic, social, and environmental costs). Damage can be temporary or partially reversible, and it often involves repair, restoration, or compensation, for example, the destruction of infrastructure by hurricanes, economic losses due to crop failure caused by drought, or the costs of relocating coastal communities due to erosion and rising sea levels. Early negotiations As the UNFCCC was being drafted in 1991, the AOSIS proposed the creation of an international insurance pool to "compensate the most vulnerable small island and low-lying coastal developing countries for loss and damage arising from sea level rise". In the proposal, the amount to be contributed by each country to this pool would be determined by their relative contribution to global emissions and their relative share of global gross national product, a formula "modelled on the 1963 Brussels Supplementary Convention on Third Party Liability in the field of Nuclear Energy". This proposal was rejected, and when the UNFCCC was adopted in 1992 it contained no mention of loss or damage.Loss and damage was first referred to in a formally-negotiated UN text in the 2007 Bali Action Plan, which called for "Disaster reduction strategies and means to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change". Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, created in 2013, acknowledges that "loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change includes, and in some cases involves more than, that which can be reduced by adaptation". Its mandate includes "enhancing knowledge and understanding", "strengthening dialogue, coordination, coherence and synergies among relevant stakeholders", and "enhancing action and support, including finance, technology and capacity-building, to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change". However, it makes no provisions for liability or compensation for loss and damage. The only reason loss and damage was even discussed in Warsaw was because the entire delegation of developing countries staged a walkout at negotiations.The Paris Agreement provides for the continuation of the Warsaw International Mechanism but explicitly states that its inclusion "does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation". The inclusion of this clause was the condition on which developed countries, particularly the United States, agreed to include a reference to loss and damage. In reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2013-2014 had no separate chapter on loss and damage, but Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (WG2) Chapter 16 about adaptation limits and constraints, is very relevant for people interested in loss and damage. A qualitative data analysis of what the IPCC 5th Assessment Report has to say about loss and damage surprisingly showed that the term was used much more often in statements about Annex 1 countries (e.g. US, Australia or European countries) than in text about non-Annex 1 countries (most countries in Africa, Asia Latin America and the Pacific), which tend to be more vulnerable to impacts of climate change.An IPCC assessment of Loss and Damage in 2018 found that residual risks (risks beyond those addressed by adaptation actions) will rise with further warming. This may lead to impacts beyond adaptation limits.: 2563–2564  The IPCC 6th Assessment Report included a section on Loss and Damage. Some of the main topics of UNFCCC negotiation texts and of scientific research in this area are risk finance (for residual risks), finance sources and options for losses and damages, and transformative finance. Examples for transformative finance include financing relocation and retreat of assets and communities, or for switching livelihoods when current ones become unfeasible.: 2563–2564 COP 27: Loss and Damage accepted, Santiago Network to establish framework After three decades of pushing for compensation for 'Loss and Damage' caused by climate change, the 27th Conference of Parties adopted the proposal. The parties agree to utilise the Santiago Network, established at COP25, to provide technical assistance in averting, minimizing, and addressing loss and damage.This means that rich countries have agreed to compensate poor countries for the damages that have been already caused, such as the 2022 Pakistan floods. Pakistani climate change minister Sherry Rehman, who pushed hard for this at the conference in Sharm el Sheikh, described this as a "down payment on climate justice". Paris climate finance summit Before the Paris climate finance summit in June 2023 more than 100 leading economists signed a letter calling for an establishment of an extreme wealth tax as a loss and damage mechanism as the 1% of richest people is responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50% (2% tax can generate around 2.5 trillion). If compare the emissions of high income countries with the damage caused to low income by climate change, the result is that rich countries have a debt of around 6 trillion to the low income per year.The idea was not accepted in the summit, even though some advance was achieved: the World Bank allowed to low income countries temporarily stop paying debts if they are hit by climate disaster (most of financial help to climate vulnerable countries is coming in the form of debts, what often worsens the situation as those countries are overburdened with debts). Around 300 billion dollars was pledged as financial help in the next years, but trillions are needed to really solve the problem. == References ==

john clauser

John Francis Clauser (; born December 1, 1942) is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science". Biography Clauser was born in Pasadena, California. His father, Francis H. Clauser, was a professor of aeronautical engineering who founded and chaired the aeronautics department at Johns Hopkins University. He later served as the Clark Blanchard Millikan Professor of Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His mother, Catharine McMillan, was the humanities librarian at Caltech and sister of 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate Edwin McMillan.He received a bachelor of science in physics from Caltech in 1964, where he was a member of Dabney House. He received a master of arts in physics in 1966 and a doctor of philosophy in physics in 1969 from Columbia University under the direction of Patrick Thaddeus.From 1969 to 1975, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1972, working with Berkeley graduate student Stuart Freedman, he carried out the first experimental test of the CHSH-Bell's theorem predictions. This was the first experimental observation of a violation of a Bell inequality. In 1974, working with Michael Horne, he first showed that a generalization of Bell's Theorem provides severe constraints for all local realistic theories of nature (a.k.a. objective local theories). That work introduced the Clauser–Horne (CH) inequality as the first fully general experimental requirement set by local realism. It also introduced the "CH no-enhancement assumption", whereupon the CH inequality reduces to the CHSH inequality, and whereupon associated experimental tests also constrain local realism. Also in 1974 he made the first observation of sub-Poissonian statistics for light (via a violation of the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality for classical electromagnetic fields), and thereby, for the first time, demonstrated an unambiguous particle-like character for photons. Clauser worked as a research physicist mainly at Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley from 1975 to 1997. In 1976 he carried out the world's second experimental test of the CHSH-Bell's Theorem predictions.Clauser was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2010 together with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. The three were also jointly awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. Climate change denial In May 2023, Clauser joined the board of the CO2 Coalition, a climate change denial organization.In November 2023, Clauser called himself a "climate denier" at an event organized by the Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of Catholic organizations. He believes that Earth's temperature is primarily determined by cloud cover instead of, as stated by the scientific consensus on climate change, carbon dioxide emissions. He has concluded that clouds have a net cooling effect on the planet, and stated "there is no climate crisis." Low-altitude, thick clouds do have a net cooling effect, in contrast with high-altitude, thin ones, but there is observational evidence that the current cloud feedback is positive, not negative. See also Epistemological Letters References External links John Clauser on Nobelprize.org Oral history interview transcript with John Clauser on 20, 21, and 23 May 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives John Clauser's homepage

most affected people and areas

Most Affected People and Areas, also known by its acronym MAPA, is a term that represents groups and territories disproportionately affected by climate change, such as women, indigenous communities, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, young, older and poorer people and the global south. The term and concept is interconnected with intersectionality. These communities bear the brunt of carbon emissions and climate change. In particular, with the rise of grassroots movements that had the goal of climate justice - such as Fridays for Future, Ende Gelände or Extinction Rebellion - the connection of these groups in the context of climate justice became more important. The term is usually preferred by climate change activists to older concepts such as global south. == References ==

laudato si'

Laudato si' (Praise Be to You) is the second encyclical of Pope Francis. The encyclical has the subtitle "on care for our common home". In it, the pope critiques consumerism and irresponsible development, laments environmental degradation and global warming, and calls all people of the world to take "swift and unified global action."The encyclical, dated 24 May 2015, was officially published at noon on 18 June 2015, accompanied by a news conference. The Vatican released the document in Italian, German, English, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese and Arabic, alongside the original Latin.The encyclical is the second published by Pope Francis, after Lumen fidei (The Light of Faith), which was released in 2013. Since Lumen fidei was largely the work of Francis's predecessor Benedict XVI, Laudato si' is generally viewed as the first encyclical that is entirely the work of Francis. Content The title of the social encyclical is a Central Italian phrase from Francis of Assisi's 13th-century "Canticle of the Sun" (also called the Canticle of the Creatures), a poem and prayer in which God is praised for the creation of the different creatures and aspects of the Earth.The tone of the Pope's phrasing has been described as "cautious and undogmatic, and he specifically calls for discussion and dialogue". For example, he states in the encyclical (#188): There are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus. Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good. He adds that "Although the post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in history, nonetheless there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities." Francis does state that concern for the natural world is no longer "'optional' but is an integral part of the Church teaching on social justice."Francis reportedly has said that the encyclical was not really an environmental document at all. The warming of the planet is a symptom of a greater problem: the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as they pursue short-term economic gains. This has resulted in a "throwaway culture" in which unwanted items and unwanted people, such as the unborn, the elderly, and the poor, are discarded as waste. This subtext makes the document "more profoundly subversive" than it appears on the surface.The real problem, according to Francis, lies in the fact that humans no longer see God as the Creator. Thus we see "other living beings as mere objects subjected to arbitrary human domination" and do not realize that "the ultimate purpose of other creatures is not found in us". Francis says that instead of viewing humanity as having "dominion" over the earth, we must see that everything is interconnected and that all of creation is a "kind of universal family". Nature cannot be seen as something apart from humanity, or merely the place where we live. He says that our social and environmental crises are thus one complex crisis that must be solved holistically. Environmentalism The Catholic Church, even after the Second Vatican Council, had put some distance between itself and the modern environmentalist movement. This was due primarily to concerns about Malthusian-derived concepts about population control and how that related to Catholic moral teachings on aspects such as artificial contraception and abortion, as emphasised in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. Martin Palmer, an Anglican who was previously the Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (an NGO created by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1995 to change the views of religions on environmentalism and global warming) claims that Francis' encyclical "really helped, but now unfortunately, people in the Vatican still fear they will be attacked or compromised over this."Francis "pulls no punches" when lamenting pollution, climate change, a lack of clean water, loss of biodiversity, and an overall decline in human life and a breakdown of society. "Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years," he states.He "describe[s] a relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment, for which he blamed apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness." Laudato si' "unambiguously accepts the scientific consensus that changes in the climate are largely man-made" and states that "climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day" and warns of "unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequence for all of us" if prompt climate change mitigation efforts are not undertaken.The encyclical highlights the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. "We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay," Francis says. "Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the less harmful alternative or to find short-term solutions." The encyclical's comments on climate change are consistent with the scientific consensus on climate change. Poverty The encyclical states that developed nations are morally obligated to assist developing nations in combating the climate-change crisis. Poor nations, the pontiff says, are ill-prepared to adapt to the effects of climate change and will bear the brunt of its effects. Linking the issues of poverty, which has been a major issue in his papacy, and the environment, he insists that the world must "hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor."He does not believe, according to the editor of First Things, R. R. Reno, that "for all our flaws, Western societies are more democratic, more egalitarian, and more inclusive than any in history." Citing the New Zealand Bishops' Conference Statement on Environmental Issues, Francis asks "what the commandment 'Thou shall not kill' means when 'twenty percent of the world's population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive.'" Science and modernism "Science and religion, with their distinctive approaches to understanding reality, can enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both", according to the pontiff. Religions, including Christianity, can make "rich contributions ... towards an integral ecology and the full development of humanity," However, "the scientific and experimental method" itself can be part of the problem when it decouples creation from the Creator.Reno critiques the encyclical, writing Laudato si' makes "many fierce denunciations of the current global order". This global order "destroys the environment, oppresses the multitudes, and makes us blind to the beauty of creation." According to Reno, the critiques of the scientific and technocratic present contained in the encyclical make this "perhaps the most anti-modern encyclical since the Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX's haughty 1864 dismissal of the conceits of the modern era". He adds that the encyclical's tone lacks elements commonly found in the works of John Paul II and Benedict XVI that, in the tradition of Gaudium et spes, would have affirmed the modern world while correcting its errors. Technology Modern technology, the "dominant technocratic paradigm", is seen as a key contributor to the environmental crisis and human suffering. While the technocratic paradigm (i.e. the simulation) is switched on, Pope Francis points out, technology is viewed as "principal key to the meaning of existence" and asks the world to "resist" the "assault" of the technocratic paradigm."The technocratic paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology… Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology 'know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race.'" B. P. Green observes that Francis' "continual rejection of the 'technocratic paradigm' in the encyclical" should not confuse the reader into thinking that he rejects technological progress itself.Technology is not value-neutral and technological developments are directed by the profit motive, according to Pope Francis. This is a form of institutionalized greed, generally with little regard for environmental and social consequences. "The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings". The encyclical warns against "blind confidence in technical solutions", particularly in view of the fact that "the specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the large picture", which "can actually become a form of ignorance". As a result, many technological solutions are nothing more than short-term techno-fixes attempting to remove symptoms rather than addressing the underlying environmental, social, economic, and even moral and spiritual problems: "Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact, proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others."Given these significant shortcomings of technology, "scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history", and we are deluded by the myth of progress to believe that "ecological problems will solve themselves simply with the application of new technology and without need for ethical consideration or deep change." A profound redefinition of progress and "liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm" are needed, i.e., "we have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral." More fundamentally, according to the pontiff, we need to recognize that "technology severed from ethics will not easily be able to limit its own power", and that "the most extraordinary scientific advances, the most amazing technical abilities, the most astonishing economic growth, unless they are accompanied by authentic social and moral progress, will definitively turn against man." Pope Francis adds that the environmental crisis can ultimately only be solved if our immense technological developments are accompanied by a "development in human responsibility, values, and conscience." Other topics According to a New York Times summary, the encyclical is "sweeping" in scope and is wide-ranging (80 pages / 45,000 words), including mentions of such topics as urban planning, agricultural economics, and biodiversity.An intensified pace of social evolution in modern times leads to a phenomenon which Francis calls "rapidification" (paragraph 18). The term translates the words "rapidación" (Spanish) and "rapidizzazione" (Italian), which appear together in the Italian text of the letter. Celia Hammond, of the University of Notre Dame Australia, considers the term, although new to her, "a perfect description of our 21st century world, particularly in developed countries like Australia".The encyclical also gives voice to the Pope's opposition to abortion, embryonic stem cell research and population control, saying that respect for creation and human dignity go hand in hand. "Since everything is interrelated", Francis says, "concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion." According to the Pope, we cannot "genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties."Laudato si' opposes gender theory and supports "valuing one's own body in its femininity or masculinity". In acknowledging differences, the Pope states "we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment." Sources The encyclical has 172 footnoted citations, many to Francis's immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The encyclical also "draws prominently from" Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Constantinople and an ally of the pope. It is highly unusual to quote an Orthodox bishop in a papal document. More than 10 per cent of all the footnotes, 21, cite documents from 16 bishops' conferences around the world, mostly from the global south. This is the first encyclical to cite bishops' conferences. This was an effort, experts believe, to build alliances on a controversial topic. The encyclical also cites Thomas Aquinas, the 9th-century Sufi mystic Ali al-Khawas, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Romano Guardini. History Early stages Speculation about an "environmental encyclical" to be issued by Pope Francis first began in November 2013. On 24 January 2014, the Vatican confirmed that drafting had begun. Federico Lombardi, the Holy See Press Office director, said that the document was in its very early stages, that no publication date had been set, and that the encyclical would be about ecology (and specifically the "ecology of man").Cardinal Peter Turkson, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and his team wrote the first draft of the encyclical. The draft was later reviewed by several theologians as well and sent (about three weeks before the encyclical's release) to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the second section of the Secretariat of State, and the theologian of the Papal Household. Edits were made based on their responses.In drafting the encyclical, the Vatican consulted with leading scientific experts for months. One of the experts consulted was Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the founder and head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change.On 28 April 2015, in advance of the encyclical's release, the Vatican hosted a one-day conference on climate change, featuring Turkson, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (who delivered the keynote address), Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and American economist Jeffrey Sachs.The title and subtitle of the encyclical were first reported on in a Twitter message by Spanish-language journalist Mercedes De La Torre on 30 May 2015. The Vatican confirmed that the title would be Laudato si' on 10 June. While some initial reports said the encyclical would be called Laudato Sii, this was incorrect; the pope chose to use the original Umbrian form and spelling of the poem, with a single i.On 4 June, the Vatican press office announced that the encyclical – which was "already attracting global attention for its expected discourses on Catholic theology on ecology, current environmental destruction, and climate change" – would be released on 18 June. Redaction Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández took part in the redaction of the encyclical. Leak Four days before the encyclical's release, the Italian magazine L'Espresso posted a leaked draft of the document online. The leaked document "almost exactly matched" the final document. The leak angered Vatican officials who called it a "heinous act" and revoked the press credentials of the longtime L'Espresso Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister. The New York Times and the Italian newspaper La Stampa both noted suggestions that the leak came from conservatives inside the Vatican who wished to embarrass the pope and hinder the rollout of the encyclical. Release The encyclical letter was officially released at an event in the New Synod Hall of the Vatican City. Speaking at the press conference were Turkson, Schellnhuber, and John Zizioulas (the metropolitan of Pergamon, representing the Orthodox Church). On the day of the encyclical's official release, Pope Francis issued two messages about it on his official Twitter account, @Pontifex. It has been suggested that the encyclical's release was timed to influence three summits being held at the United Nations on financial aid, sustainable development and climate change later in 2015. Reception After the encyclical was released, the Vatican's website was briefly inaccessible as many people tried to read it. It has been described as "one of the shrewdest documents issued by the Vatican during the past century" and "has revealed Francis as a wily and sophisticated politician of the first order." It contains, according to Paul Vallely, "a raft of defenses against critics who dismiss it as the work of some kind of left-wing maverick." Within Roman Catholic Church The Laudato Si' Movement, a global network of over 900 Catholic organizations and over 10,000 trained grassroots leaders known as Laudato Si' Animators, has played a key role in supporting the Church to receive and implement the encyclical. In close partnership with the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development, Laudato Si' Movement has convened various global initiatives to raise awareness and spark action, such as the annual Laudato Si' Week celebration, the Season of Creation ecumenical celebration, and the film "The Letter".The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, led by its president Joseph Edward Kurtz, the archbishop of Louisville, described the encyclical as "our marching orders for advocacy" and planned briefings on the encyclical with both chambers of Congress and with the White House. Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston said that the "constant linkage throughout the encyclical of the dual need to respect and protect "Our Common Home" and the need to respect and protect the dignity and lives of the poor may be regarded as the distinctive characteristic of this powerful message of Pope Francis."Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, wrote that "In Laudato si' Pope Francis reminds us to replace consumption with a sense of sacrifice, greed with generosity and wastefulness with a spirit of sharing. We must "give, and not simply give up." We are called to free ourselves from all that is heavy and negative and wasteful and to enter into dialogue with our global family."The three bishops of Northern and Central California, Stephen Blaire, Armando Xavier Ochoa, and Jaime Soto, issued a joint statement that highlighted how climate change disproportionately affects the poor. "The Catholic perspective is that human and natural ecology go hand in hand," the trio said. "We are called to solidarity with the poor as well as stewardship of the Earth. Our deep regard for the dignity of every person commands us to cultivate a climate of life where each of God's children thrive and join with creation in praising our Creator. This is the 'integral ecology' of which Pope Francis speaks."Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, which has the first major presidential primary contest in the United States, called on candidates to show courage and leadership on the issue, saying "With presidential candidates already visiting us regularly, I encourage Catholics across our state, and all people of goodwill, to talk to them and ask not if, but how, they plan to work toward solutions to climate change." German Archbishop of Hamburg Stefan Heße praised the encyclical, calling it "valuable momentum for a worldwide ecological reorientation." He commented further, saying:He makes it clear that urgent issues of the future for the whole world and for all human beings have to be solved. Without a radical change of mentality, it will not do. Thus he underlines that the problems that concern all can be solved only by all.Vaticanologist John L. Allen Jr., said in an analysis, "Laudato si' seems destined to go down as a major turning point, the moment when environmentalism claimed pride of place on a par with the dignity of human life and economic justice as a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching. It also immediately makes the Catholic Church arguably the leading moral voice in the press to combat global warming and the consequences of climate change."Catholic Millennials have written widely giving their opinions of the encyclical. Criticism Samuel Gregg, director of research at the libertarian Acton Institute, has criticised "the sheer overreach that plagues" Laudato si'. RealClearReligion editor Nicholas Hahn has said that "Good Catholics can disagree on how to combat climate change and shouldn't worry about being sent to the confessional if they drive a SUV."This criticism comes even though Francis took "care to locate his text firmly in the substantial body of teaching set out by previous popes," especially John Paul II and Benedict XVI.In July 2015, Cardinal George Pell criticised Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato si' for associating the church with the need to address climate, stating: It’s got many, many interesting elements. There are parts of it which are beautiful. But the church has no particular expertise in science ... the church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science. From other faiths Three days before the encyclical was released, the 14th Dalai Lama issued a Twitter message stating: "Since climate change and the global economy now affect us all, we have to develop a sense of the oneness of humanity."Two days before the encyclical was released, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Anglican Communion, issued a "green declaration" (also signed by the Methodist Conference as well as representatives of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and the British Muslim, Sikh and Jewish communities) urging a transition to a low-carbon economy and fasting and prayer for success at the December 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.The same day, the Lausanne Movement of global evangelical Christians said it was anticipating the encyclical and was grateful for it. The encyclical was also welcomed by the World Council of Churches and the Christian Reformed Church in North America. From world leaders The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, welcomed the encyclical in a statement on the day it was released. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general and current chair of the Africa Progress Panel, also issued a statement in support of the encyclical, stating "As Pope Francis reaffirms, climate change is an all-encompassing threat. … I applaud the Pope for his strong moral and ethical leadership. We need more of such inspired leadership. Will we see it at the climate summit in Paris?"Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: "Pope Francis is personally committed to this issue like no other pope before him. I do think the encyclical is going to have a major impact. It will speak to the moral imperative of addressing climate change in a timely fashion in order to protect the most vulnerable."On the same day, Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank Group, also praised the encyclical. From the scientific community Science historian Naomi Oreskes observes that Laudato si' "insists we embrace the moral dimensions of problems that have heretofore been viewed primarily as scientific, technological, and economic."The encyclical gave a boost to the fossil fuel divestment movement. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, who advised the Vatican on the drafting of the encyclical, said that "the science of Laudato si' is watertight" and gave the pontiff an "A" for command of the subject.An editorial in Nature praised the encyclical for its statements about sustainability and global poverty and the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources: "The papal calls to end poverty and share the world's ecological space in a fair way are objectives that mirror the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, to be released in September. The Pope's letter adds an important facet to the discussion: it is not merely conceivable to secure a sound future for human civilization without relying on coal, oil and gas – it is a prerequisite." However, it criticised Francis for ignoring important issues like family planning and birth control. "Alas, he remained silent on issues of contraception. With a world population heading towards a possible 10 billion, the importance of family planning is clear. The Vatican has been brave on climate change. If it is serious about the fate of the planet and the welfare of its inhabitants, then it must be braver still on the issue of contraception."A review by nine climate scientists under the Climate Feedback project concluded the encyclical "rather accurately depicts the current reality of climate change" and "fairly represents the present concerns raised by the scientific community."Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and author of an influential report on climate change, stated that "The publication of the Pope's encyclical is of enormous significance. He has shown great wisdom and leadership. Pope Francis is surely absolutely right that climate change raises vital moral and ethical issues.... Moral leadership on climate change from the Pope is particularly important because of the failure of many heads of state and government around the world to show political leadership." Leading ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman Daly praised the Pope's encyclical on the grounds that it "... unifies the main divisions of Christianity on at least the fundamental recognition that we have a shamefully neglected duty to care for the Earth out of which we evolved, and to share the Earth's life support more equitably with each other, with the future, and with other creatures." Daly even believes that the Pope "skates fairly close to the idea of steady-state economics," although the important issues of population stabilization, responsible family planning and contraception were "conspicuously near-absent" in the encyclical. Impact on the United States political system Stephen F. Schneck, the director of Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America, has said that "Something's going to come out of this and it's definitely going to have an impact on public policy in the US." However, Kathy Saile, the former long time director of the US bishops' office for domestic social justice, does not believe that "it will spark a climate change bill, but someday when negotiations are happening on a bill or a treaty, these kinds of moral teachings could have an influence." Nonetheless, she added, "Pope Francis's tone, his honesty, how he talks about mercy and care for the poor, and his genuine desire to be a bridge," could influence political culture in Washington. "If he could change the tone of the debate, that would be an amazing gift." Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, chairman of the US bishops' committee on domestic peace and justice, wrote a letter to Congress letting them know that "The U.S. bishops stand united with the Holy Father in his call to protect creation." He also asked them to "resist any effort to impair the development of a national carbon standard and instead to support our nation's ability to address this urgent global challenge confronting the human family." Schneck opined that "This is different than the normal letters that the USCCB sends over all the time on a variety of issues. It really transcends the fault lines of both US politics and politics around the world."Cornell anthropologists Annelise Riles and Vincent Ialenti told NPR.org: "We find Laudato Si' important because it defies the United States' political imagination at every turn. In some moments, the pope reads like an archconservative, in other moments an archliberal. Sometimes he defers to scientists, other times he quotes scripture and, still other times, he criticizes the very foundations of economics. Mixing together ideas many see as incompatible, he forces us to think."The New York Times reported that the encyclical put pressure on Catholics seeking the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum, who "have questioned or denied the established science of human-caused climate change, and have harshly criticized policies designed to tax or regulate the burning of fossil fuels." Jeb Bush said: "I hope I'm not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope." Neoconservative critique and counterarguments Neoconservative circles in the United States have criticised the encyclical right from its publication in Rome, sometimes in very harsh terms. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Irwin M. Stelzer has argued that: Pope Francis is unambiguously opposed to the American system of "savage capitalism". He has famously quoted a fourth century Doctor of the Church, St. Basil of Caesarea, who called money "the devil's dung", has railed against the "anonymous influences of mammon" and a "new colonialism" that includes "free trade treaties... [and] imposition of austerity," and stated a preference for "cooperatives". Throw in Francis' views that we are witnessing "a disturbing warming of the climatic system... due to the great concentration of greenhouse gasses," and that "there is an urgent need of a true world political authority," and you have positions that it will take more than a spoonful of the Pontiff's charm to make go down the throats of many Americans. From industry A lobbyist of Arch Coal sent an email to Republican lawmakers stating the pope "does not appear to address the tragedy of global energy poverty." The lobbyist argued the church should promote fossil fuels instead if he really cared about the poor. The email suggested "talking points" to the legislators for defending the coal industry and rejecting the arguments of the pope. The lobbyist wrote: "Billions of people around the globe are living without electrification and suffering through untold poverty and disease as a result." In contrast to these arguments the encyclical argues that fossil fuels in general and coal in particular threaten the poor: Fossil fuels are a threat to prosperity for the poor. They would suffer even more in particular from sea level rise, droughts, warming and extreme weather caused by burning fossil fuels.In June 2019, in a meeting at the Vatican which climatologist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber described as one of the most significant of his 30-year career, Francis "convinced big oil CEOs to alter their message on climate change." These included CEOs of ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Chevron who pledged to avert what Francis called "a climate emergency" that risks "perpetrating a brutal act of injustice towards the poor and future generations." Francis "stressed the need for a radical energy transition to save our common home." They pledged to "advance the energy transition [...] while minimizing the costs to vulnerable communities." From other groups Bill McKibben reviewed the encyclical in The New York Review of Books and later called it "the most important document yet of this millennium".The LGBT-interest magazine The Advocate noted that the encyclical contains passages which reinforce the church's position against the transsexuality movement, calling for "the acceptance of our bodies as God's gift."Pankaj Mishra wrote that the encyclical was "Arguably the most important piece of intellectual criticism in our time."In 2019, the journal Biological Conservation published research by Malcolm McCallum showing evidence of widespread, sustained growth in interest in the environment in many countries around the world. In film The 2022 documentary film The Letter: A Message for our Earth, presented by YouTube Originals, tells the story of the Laudato Si' encyclical.The film was produced by Oscar-winning Off The Fence Productions and directed by Nicolas Brown, in partnership with the Laudato Si' Movement.Following its global premiere in Vatican City on 4 October 2022, the film was an instant success amassing over 7 million views in its first two weeks, with the support of celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In music On behalf of the Diocese of Limburg, Peter Reulein wrote the music for the oratorio Laudato si' – a Franciscan Magnificat to the libretto by Helmut Schlegel. This work is based on the Latin version of the Magnificat, corresponds to the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, and includes texts from the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium and the encyclical Laudato si'. The premiere of the oratorio took place in the Limburg Cathedral on 6 November 2016. Laudato Si' Movement With the encyclical's publication in 2015, the Laudato Si Movement was founded to bring together Catholics interested in promoting its message. In 2022 the Laudato Si' Movement consisted of 967 member organizations, 11539 Laudato Si' Animators, 204 Laudato Si' Circles and 58 National Chapters around the globe. On 4 October 2021, the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Development launched the Laudato Si Action Platform, in collaboration with the Laudato Si' Movement and many other Catholic institutions.On 4 Oct.. 2022 was the premiere of the film The Letter: A Message for our Earth by award-winning documentary filmmaker Nicolas Brown and the production team "Off The Fence" (Oscar winners for "My Octopus Teacher"), in collaboration with Laudato Si' Movement and the Vatican. See also Laudato Si' Movement The Letter: A Message for our Earth (2022) Climate change and poverty Ecotheology Saints and animal/plant life Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region Stewardship (theology) Laudate Deum (2013) References Further reading Annett, Anthony, Jeffrey Sachs, and William Vendley (2017). The Significance of Laudato si'. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Ecological consciousness Devall, Bill, and George Sessions (2001). Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Gibbs Smith, ISBN 0879052473, 267 pp. Frank Pasquale (ed.) (2019). Care for the World: Laudato Si' and Catholic Social Thought in an Era of Climate Crisis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sessions, George (1995). Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. Shambala Press, ISBN 1570620490, 520 pp. Global climate change. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (2001). Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good.. Technocratic paradigm Barbour, Ian G. (1980), Technology, Environment, and Human Values, Praeger, ISBN 0275914836, 342 pp. Huesemann, Michael H., and Joyce A. Huesemann (2011). Technofix: Why Technology Won't Save Us or the Environment, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, ISBN 0865717044, 464 pp. Mander, Jerry (1992), In the Absence of the Sacred, Sierra Club Books, ISBN 0871565099, 458 pp. External links Laudato si' in English – official text of the encyclical from the official website of the Holy See Full text of the encyclical in other languages from the official website of the Holy See Laudato si' – The Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development The Laudato si' Website' Video of the presentation of the encyclical – from the Vatican Television Center/Vatican Radio's official YouTube channel

our world in data

Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. It is a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales, and was founded by Max Roser, a social historian and development economist. The research team is based at the University of Oxford. The organisation is chaired by Hetan Shah. Content Our World in Data uses interactive charts and maps to illustrate research findings, often taking a long-term view to show how global living conditions have changed over time. History Roser began his work on the project in 2011, adding a research team at the University of Oxford later on. In the first years, Roser developed the publication together with inequality researcher Sir Tony Atkinson. Hannah Ritchie joined in 2017 and became Head of Research. Edouard Mathieu joined in 2020 and became Head of Data. The organization began the COVID-19 pandemic with six staff members, and grew to 20 by late 2021.In 2019, Our World in Data won the Lovie Award, a European web award, and was one of three nonprofit organizations in Y Combinator's Winter 2019 cohort.Beginning in 2020, Our World in Data added an emphasis on publishing global data and research on the COVID-19 pandemic: They created and maintained a worldwide database on vaccinations for COVID-19, which was used as the source for data published by the World Health Organization, researchers and other international organizations, journals, and numerous newspapers. Similarly, the team built and maintained a global dataset on COVID-19 testing which was used by the United Nations, the White House, the World Health Organization, and epidemiologists and researchers, and also published data such as hospitalizations and computations of excess deaths.In 2021 the team began campaigning for the International Energy Agency to make the data it collects from national governments publicly available. Funding and collaborations Global Change Data Lab, the non-profit that publishes Our World in Data and the open-access data tools that make the online publication possible, is funded through a mix of grants, sponsors, and reader donations. The first grant to support the research project was given by the Nuffield Foundation, a London-based foundation focused on social policy. Other grantors supporting the project have included the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a grant from German philanthropist Susanne Klatten. In the past, Our World in Data has also received grants from the World Health Organization, the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom, and the Effective Altruism Meta Fund. Reader donations are also a major source of funding. In 2020, more than 3,000 individuals supported the project, exceeding 4,000 donors by 2023. The list of donors includes Jamie Metzl and YouTuber Hank Green.The research team collaborated with the science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt.In the coronavirus pandemic, the team partnered with epidemiologists from Harvard's Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Koch Institute to study countries that have responded successfully in the early phase of the pandemic. Janine Aron and John Muellbauer worked with OWID to research excess mortality during the pandemic.In 2022, FTX's Future Fund offered Our World in Data a $7.5 million grant to support their activities. Max Roser told Fortune that Our World in Data's board of trustees ultimately rejected the grant money after conducting due diligence and other checks. Usage In 2021, the Our World in Data website had 89 million unique visitors.Our World in Data has been cited in academic scientific journals, medicine and global health journals, and social science journals. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Economist have used Our World in Data as a source. The site uses permissive licenses to allow others to copy, modify, and distribute the work (CC BY for content and the MIT License for software). See also Effective altruism Gapminder Foundation References External links Official website History of Our World in Data

2023 new zealand general election

The 2023 New Zealand general election was held on 14 October 2023 to determine the composition of the 54th Parliament of New Zealand. Voters elected 122 members to the unicameral New Zealand House of Representatives under the mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system, with 71 members elected from single-member electorates and the remaining members elected from closed party lists. Of the 72 electorates, only 71 seats were filled, with the remaining electorate MP to be determined in the 2023 Port Waikato by-election, due to the death of one of the general election candidates. Two overhang seats were added due to Te Pāti Māori winning six electorate seats when the party vote only entitled them to four seats, meaning there will be 123 members of parliament once the by-election has been held.The incumbent centre-left Labour Party, led by Chris Hipkins, sought to win a third term for the Sixth Labour Government. However, they were defeated in a landslide, with the centre-right National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, becoming the largest party in the new parliament. The election saw the worst defeat of a sitting government in New Zealand since the introduction of the MMP voting system in 1996, with Labour going from having 65 seats in the first-ever majority government under MMP to winning just 34 seats, Labour's worst performance since 2014. Labour faced a 23-percentage-point swing against it, whilst National improved its party vote share by 12 points. The Green and ACT parties and Te Pāti Maori all increased their vote share, while New Zealand First gained enough votes to return to parliament after being ousted in the 2020 election. National made gains in many Auckland electorates that were once considered to be safe Labour seats, such as Mount Roskill and New Lynn, whilst also coming close to winning Jacinda Ardern's former seat of Mount Albert after the left vote was split between Labour and the Greens. The Greens won three electorates, gaining Rongotai and Wellington Central from Labour, while ACT won two electorates, gaining Tāmaki from National. Te Pāti Māori claimed five Māori seats from Labour, which saw 21-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke become the youngest MP elected in 170 years and in the process unseated incumbent foreign affairs minister Nanaia Mahuta.Prime Minister Hipkins conceded on election night, paving the way for the Sixth National Government of New Zealand under Prime Minister-designate Luxon. National will require support from the ACT Party and New Zealand First to form a government, regardless of the result of the Port Waikato by-election. As of 21 November 2023, negotiations between the three parties were still ongoing. Until a new goverment is formed, the Sixth Labour Government continues as the caretaker government. Background The previous general election held on 17 October 2020 resulted in a majority for the Labour Party, winning 65 seats, allowing them to continue the Sixth Labour Government unrestricted in the 53rd Parliament. Their coalition partner from the 52nd Parliament, New Zealand First, did not receive enough votes to pass the five percent threshold or win in an electorate, removing them from Parliament. Confidence and supply partner the Green Party received 10 seats, up two, becoming the first minor party ever to increase their share of the vote following a term in government. In the opposition, the National Party lost 23 seats, giving them a total of 33, and ACT New Zealand went from one seat to ten. Te Pāti Māori won a Māori electorate and gained an additional list seat, returning to Parliament after a one-term absence, having lost all seats in the 2017 election.In the 2022 Tauranga by-election, National retained the marginal seat with a large swing away from Labour. In the 2022 Hamilton West by-election, National gained the seat from Labour. Electoral system New Zealand uses a mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system to elect the 120 members of the House of Representatives. Each voter gets two votes, one for a political party (the party vote) and one for a local candidate (the electorate vote). Political parties that meet the threshold (5% of the party vote or one electorate seat) receive seats in the House in proportion to the share of the party vote they receive. 72 of the 120 seats are filled by the MPs elected from the electorates, with the winner in each electorate determined by the first-past-the-post method (i.e. the candidate with the most votes wins). (In this case, one electorate vote has been postponed due to the death of a candidate.) The remaining 48 seats are filled by candidates from each party's closed party list. If a party wins more electorates than seats it is entitled to under the party vote, an overhang seat occurs; in that case, the party winning overhang seats keeps that many extra seats in addition to the 120 seats distributed proportionally.On 9 October 2023, the ACT candidate for Port Waikato, Neil Christensen, died. As a result, the electorate vote was cancelled in the electorate, and a by-election will be held after the election to determine the member for Port Waikato. As this means only 71 electorate MPs are elected on election day, an extra list MP will be elected in order to allocate 120 proportional seats. A by-election will later be held in Port Waikato, with the winner joining the 54th Parliament as the 123nd member and third overhang seat. It is the first time since the 1957 election that an electorate vote has been delayed due to the death of a candidate.The political party or party bloc with the majority of the seats in the House forms the government. Since the introduction of MMP in 1996, no party had won enough votes to win an outright majority of seats until the landslide 2020 Labour victory, which gave them 65 seats. When no party has commanded a majority, parties have had to negotiate with other parties to form a coalition government or a minority government.With 120 seats, or 121 seats (with an overhang of one seat), a party, coalition, or minority government with confidence and supply support requires 61 seats for a majority. When there are two or three overhang seats in Parliament, as occurred in this election, 62 seats are required; this had previously happened only once. The Māori Party had two overhang seats in 2008, and one in 2005 and 2011. While other parties have returned to Parliament with less than 5% of the party vote by winning an electorate seat (e.g. ACT in 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017), this did not result in overhang seats. Electorate boundaries for the election were the same as for the 2020 election, with 65 general electorates (49 in the North Island and 16 in the South Island) and 7 Māori electorates. Boundaries are due to be redrawn in 2024, after the 2023 census. Election date and schedule Unless an early election is called or the election date is set to circumvent holding a by-election, a general election is held every three years. The previous election was held on 17 October 2020. The governor-general must issue writs for an election within seven days of the expiration or dissolution of the current parliament. Under section 17 of the Constitution Act 1986, parliament expires three years "from the day fixed for the return of the writs issued for the last preceding general election of members of the House of Representatives, and no longer." The writs for the 2020 election were returned on 20 November 2020; as a result, the 53rd Parliament must dissolve no later than 20 November 2023. Writs must be issued within seven days, so the last day for issuance of the writs is 27 November 2023. Writs must be returned within 60 days of their issuance (save for any judicial recount, death of a candidate, or emergency adjournment), which would be 26 January 2024. Because polling day must be a Saturday, and ten days is required for the counting of special votes, the last possible date for the next election to be held is 13 January 2024.However, it was widely accepted by political commentators, news media and the Electoral Commission that the next election would be held in late 2023. News website Stuff, as part of its annual political predictions, predicted that the election would be in November so as not to coincide with the New Zealand co-hosted 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, which finishes in August, and the 2023 Men's Rugby World Cup, which finishes in October.On 19 January 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Saturday 14 October 2023 as the election date. The indicative schedule for the election is as follows: On 30 August 2023, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced in Adelaide that the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum would be held on 14 October 2023. This means that tens of thousands of New Zealand Australians would be voting in two polls on the same day. Some have suggested that the referendum may have an impact on Māori issues in the New Zealand election. Australia has the largest number of New Zealand expats in the world, with 530,491 New Zealand-born people living in Australia as of the 2021 Australian census, making up 2.1% of Australia's total population. Parties and candidates Political parties registered with the Electoral Commission can contest the general election as a party. To register, parties must have at least 500 financial members, an auditor, and an appropriate party name. A registered party may submit a party list to contest the party vote, and can have a party campaign expenses limit in addition to limits on individual candidates' campaigns. Unregistered parties and independents can contest the electorate vote only.Since the 2020 election, six parties have been deregistered: Mana on 5 May 2021, Advance New Zealand on 19 August 2021, Sustainable NZ on 15 December 2021, New Zealand TEA Party on 21 September 2022, New Zealand Social Credit Party on 28 February 2023, and Heartland New Zealand on 22 June 2023. MPs not standing for re-election Tāmati Coffey announced his intention to retire in March 2023 but reversed his decision in July. MPs standing for re-election as list-only MPs Fundraising On 18 January 2023, The New Zealand Herald reported that the National Party had raised NZ$2.3 million from 24 big donors in 2022 to fund their 2023 election campaign. The ACT Party raised NZ$1.1 million in large donations in 2022. By comparison, the incumbent Labour Party had raised $150,000 during that same period including a $50,000 donation from the family of Les Mills gym owner Phillip Mills. The Green Party raised $122,000 through personal contributions from co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson. The New Zealand First party received a $35,000 donation from Tom Bowker.By 1 May, the Christchurch-based Weft Knitting company had donated $100,000 to the Green Party, at the time the largest single election donation in 2023.By 23 June, the Green Party had received a total of about $500,000 in donations, including a $50,000 donation from film director James Cameron and his wife Suzy Amis Cameron, and another $50,000 donation from actress Lucy Lawless. In addition, the Labour Party received a total of $458,000 in donations. The ACT, National, and New Zealand First parties also raised a total of $1.15 million, about $700,000, and $517,000 in big donations respectively. Property developer Trevor Farmer also donated $50,000 to the National Party, $200,000 to ACT, and $50,000 to New Zealand First. Other notable wealthy donors to the National Party have included philanthropists Brendan and Jo Lindsay (who donated $100,000), and Jeffrey Douglas ($51,000).On 14 September, Radio New Zealand reported that National had received $1.1 million, ACT had received $375,000, the Greens $100,000, and NZ First $50,000 in business donations between early 2021 and September 2023. During the same period, Labour received $275,000 in large donations from unions but received no significant business donations. In 2023, Labour received $600,000 in large donations from individuals and unions. An interim report published by the Independent Electoral Review has recommended limiting political donations to individuals, and banning businesses and unions from donating to parties. Review member Professor Andrew Geddis expressed concern about banning businesses from donating to parties but allowing unions to donate.On 18 September, Radio New Zealand reported that billionaire Graeme Hart had donated a total of $700,000 to right-wing parties including National, ACT and NZ First. Of this amount, National had received $400,000, ACT $200,000 and NZ First $100,000 from Hart and his company, the Rank Group Limited. Campaigning Expense limits and broadcasting allocations Parties and candidates During the regulated period prior to election day, parties and candidates have limits on how much they may spend on election campaigning. The limits are updated every year to reflect inflation. It is illegal in New Zealand to campaign on election day itself, or within 10 metres of an advance polling booth.For the 2023 general election, every registered party contending the party vote is permitted to spend $1,388,000 plus $32,600 per electorate candidate on campaigning during the regulated period, excluding radio and television campaigning (broadcasting funding is allocated separately). For example, a registered party with candidates in all 72 electorates is permitted to spend $3,735,200 on campaigning for the party vote. Electorate candidates are permitted to spend $32,600 each on campaigning for the electorate vote. Broadcasting allocation Registered parties are allocated a separate broadcasting budget for radio and television campaigning. Only money from the broadcasting allocation can be used to purchase airtime; production costs can come from the general election expenses budget. The Electoral Commission determines how much broadcasting funding each party gets, set out by part 6 of the Broadcasting Act 1989. The allocation is based a number of factors including the number of seats in the current Parliament, results of the previous general election and any by-elections since, and support in opinion polls.An initial broadcasting allocation was released from the Electoral Commission on 12 May 2023. On 31 May Freedoms New Zealand and two of its component parties, the NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party and Vision New Zealand, challenged the Electoral Commission's decision to allocate broadcasting funds to them collectively rather than as individual political parties. The Electoral Commission had decided to allocate broadcasting funds to them collectively on the basis that they were a "group of parties" that had joined forces. The plaintiffs argued that the Broadcasting Act 1989 did not clearly define what was a "group of parties" and that the Electoral Commission had not published clear criteria for how their parties had joined forces. On 17 July 2023, the High Court dismissed the case.The final broadcasting allocation was released on 8 September 2023. For comparison, the cost of a 30-second television slot in October 2023 ranged from $250 during the daytime to over $29,000 on TVNZ 1 during 1 News at 6pm and Country Calendar. Third-party promoters Third-party promoters, such as trade unions and lobby groups, can campaign during the regulated period. The maximum expense limit for the election is $391,000 for those promoters registered with the Electoral Commission, and $15,700 for unregistered promoters.As of 3 October 2023, the following third-party promoters were registered for the general election: In early September 2023, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (NZCTU) launched an adverstisement campaign attacking National Party leader Christopher Luxon. In response, National's campaign chair Chris Bishop accused the NZCTU and Labour Party of promoting negative campaigning. The NZCTU's president Richard Wagstaff defended the union's advertisement campaign, claiming that it was targeting National's policies including the elimination of fair pay agreements, the restoration of 90-day work trials, and public sector cuts. Labour leader and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins defended the NZCTU's advertisements, stating that the union had published advertisements in previous elections. He also accused the National Party and its alleged surrogates including the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union, Groundswell NZ, and Hobson's Pledge of publishing attack advertisements against him and the Labour Government.In late September 2023, Hobson's Pledge launched a series of attack advertisements targeting Labour leader Chris Hipkins, with the caption "Delivers division, not outcomes." Party campaigns Labour The Labour Party's campaign chairperson was Minister Megan Woods and campaign manager was Hayden Munro. The party also enlisted the services of advertising company "Together" as a media buyer.On 17 May 2023, the Labour Party government attacked National's record on healthcare. On 27 May, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni launched Labour's first election policy: to keep the superannuation age at 65 years and above. On 28 May, Hipkins announced Labour's second election promise: that it would retain the Apprenticeship Boost scheme.On 12 July, Hipkins ruled out introducing a capital gains tax if Labour was re-elected to Government. On 16 July, Labour launched its election campaign and unveiled its election slogan "In It For You." Hipkins also campaigned on cutting inflation, reducing living costs, public safety, and investing in education, health and housing.On 17 July, Labour introduced its youth crime package which included building two "high-needs units" within existing youth justice residences in Auckland and Christchurch, improving safety and security at youth justice residences, focusing on crime prevention measures including family group conferences, and empowering Family Courts to require youth offenders to perform community service including cleaning graffiti and rubbish disposal. That same week, the Labour Government announced several justice policies including introducing legislation to punish adults convicted of influencing young people to commit crimes, making the publishing of recordings of criminal behaviour on social media an aggravating factor in sentencing, making ram-raiding a criminal offence with a ten-year sentence and allowing 12 and 13-year old ram raiders to be tried in Youth Courts.On 31 July, the party released its official list of 76 party list candidates. Several Labour MPs including Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, Soraya Peke-Mason, and Greg O'Connor also confirmed they would be standing solely as electorate candidates.On 13 August, Labour announced that it would remove the goods and service tax (GST) for fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, and would increase the "Working for Families" programme for families. Labour's proposed GST policy attracted criticism including economist Brad Olsen, Child Poverty Action Group economist Susan St John, Health Coalition Aotearoa food expert Sally Mackay, Stuff political editor Luke Malpass, Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch, Newsroom journalist Marc Daalder, and The New Zealand Herald business journalist Jenée Tibshraeny. On 15 August, Labour campaigned on extending paid parental leave from two weeks to four weeks if re-elected, almost three weeks after Labour voted down National's proposed bill allowing parents to share their leave entitlement. On 19 August, Labour launched its Māori campaign and released its Māori language manifesto.On 2 September, the Labour campaign launch in Auckland was interrupted by protesters from Freedoms New Zealand. The Labour party announced a policy of free dental care for under 30s, starting in July 2025. On 6 September, Hipkins announced Labour's five part economic plan and also promised to lead a trade delegation to India within the first 100 days of government if re-elected. On 7 September, Labour announced several law and order policies including adding 300 frontline Police officers, expanding the use of mental health officers, and introducing legislation to make stalking a criminal offence.On 12 September, Labour campaigned on rolling out free cervical screening for women aged between 25 and 69 years. In response to National's campaign pledge to build a third medical school at the University of Waikato, Hipkins announced on 13 September that the Government would invest in training 335 extra doctors by 2027. On 17 September, Labour released its women's election manifesto and pledged to raise the age for free breast cancer screening, and to develop an endometriosis action plan.On 18 September, Labour campaigned on introduced rebates for rooftop solar panels and batteries, and a NZ$20 million community energy fund. That same day, campaign manager Woods confirmed that Labour would rule out an electoral deal with the Green Party in tight electorate seats. On 22 September, Hipkins announced that Labour would retain its free lunch school programme if re-elected. On 23 September, Labour promised to introduce a 10-year multiple-entry "Super Visa" that would allow migrants' relatives to make successive visits of between 6 months and 5 years, and also campaigned on introducing a one-off amnesty program for overstayers who had been in New Zealand for ten years. On 24 September, Woods announced that Labour would build 6,000 more state houses if re-elected.On 25 September, Labour released its climate manifesto with key policies including a second emissions reduction plan and boosting renewable energy. On 26 September, Hipkins promised that Labour would invest NZ$1 billion in state pharmaceutical purchaser Pharmac over the next four years. On 27 September, Labour introduced its fiscal plan, with a focus on reducing government spending and maintaining current income tax settings. On 30 September, Labour released its Rainbow Manifesto, with key policies including reformed surrogacy laws, a new LGBTQ+ refugee quota, and restrictions on gay men donating blood.On 1 October, Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni released the party's full election manifesto, focusing on improving children's education and funding youth training and work programmes. In early October, Labour confirmed that if re-elected it would extend diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine by inviting Izzat Salah Abdulhadi, the head of the General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, to present credentials as the Palestinian Ambassador to New Zealand. Following Hamas attack on Israel, Hipkins paused plans to extend diplomatic recognition to Palestine on 10 October. National National's campaign chairperson was MP Chris Bishop while Jo de Doux served as its campaign director. The party also enlisted the services of media buyer Rainmakers, independent creative advertising contractors Sue Worthington and Glenn Jamieson, and advertising company Topham Guerin.The National Party has not run candidates in Māori electorates since the 2002 election. In 2019, list MP Jo Hayes expressed a desire to contest Te Tai Hauāuru; Leader Judith Collins stated her support in July 2020, but said it would not be possible for the 2020 election due to time constraints. After the election, Collins affirmed the party's intent to contest Māori electorates in 2023. After Christopher Luxon replaced Collins as leader, he confirmed that these plans would continue, but stated that it was a "pragmatic" move and that he felt Māori electorates were incompatible with the principle of "one person, one vote". List MP Harete Hipango was the first confirmed candidate, announced in April 2023 to be contesting Te Tai Hauāuru.In May 2023, Luxon confirmed that National would not work with Te Pāti Māori if it formed the next government after the 2023 election, citing National's disagreement with the party's support for co-governance in public services and alleged separatism.On 23 May, a National spokesperson admitted the party had been using images created by artificial intelligence in some of their attack ads on social media, while Luxon was unaware of this. In June, the party removed numerous videos featuring movie and television content from their TikTok account after Newshub contacted studios about whether National was breaching their copyright.On 11 June, National announced that it would end New Zealand's ban on genetic modification and establish a national biotechnology regulator if elected into government. On 18 June, National announced that it would make gang membership an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing. On 25 June, National unveiled several law and order policies including limiting sentencing discounts, scrapping "cultural reports" and the Government's "prisoner reduction" target, and boosting investment in victim support funding and rehabilitation programmes for remand prisoners.In early July, the National Party campaigned on building a new medical school at the University of Waikato to address the national shortage of doctors and reversing the Labour Government's cuts to the replacement Dunedin Hospital. On 16 July, Luxon confirmed that National's election slogan would be "Get our country back on track". He also announced that National would create a NZ$500 million fund for repairing both state highways and local roads. On 30 July, National announced that it would take a tough stance against gangs. On 31 July, National announced a NZ$24 billion transportation package that included building 13 new roads of "national significance," investing in three new bus "transport corridors" in Auckland, upgrading the lower North Island's railway infrastructure, and investing in road infrastructure in both the North and South Islands. Luxon also proposed creating a National Infrastructure Agency to coordinate government funding, promote investment, and improve funding, procurement and delivery.On 9 August, National proposed banning cellphones in schools in order to help students focus and improve their academic outcomes. On 19 August, National released its official party list; with senior MP Michael Woodhouse opting to stand solely as an electorate MP due to his disagreement with his list ranking. On 21 August, National campaigned on spending NZ$280 million to fund 13 cancer treatments. On 22 August, Luxon confirmed that National would not support ACT's proposal to repeal the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act and proposed Treaty of Waitangi principles legislation. On 23 September, National announced a new "Parent Visa Boost" which would allow relatives to visit family members in New Zealand for five years, with the possibility of renewal for another five years. Visa-holders would have to have health insurance since they would not be eligible for superannuation and other entitlements.On 28 August, Luxon confirmed that National would be abandoning its historical "teacup" deal with the ACT Party and would be contesting ACT leader David Seymour's Epsom seat. On 30 August, National announced a proposed $14.6 billion in income tax cuts aiming to relieve "the squeezed middle". These will be funded by a reduction in the public service and by new taxes on foreign home buyers, foreign gambling operators and commercial buildings.On 3 September, Luxon released National's election year pledge card at the party's campaign launch in South Auckland, which listed eight priority promises. Members of Freedoms NZ protested outside the venue hosting the campaign launch. On 5 September, National announce that it would demote the Māori partnership boards, which the Government had established as part of its 2022 health sector reforms. On 6 September, National campaigned on investing NZ$257 million over the next four years to increase the number of electric vehicle chargers to 10,000 and stated it would end the Government's "clean car" discount programme and "ute tax." On 7 September, National released its tourism policy, which would be funded by a proposed International Visitor Levy.On 21 September, National announced that it would fast track visa processing for international students and expand their working rights. On 22 September, National unveiled its 100-point economic plan; with a focus on cutting "wasteful" spending and red tape, delivering tax relief, and promoting economic growth, trade and investment. On 24 September, National campaigned on reversing the Government's "blanket speed limit reductions" and restoring highway and local roads' speed limits to 100 km and 50 km respectively.On 25 September, National leader Christopher Luxon said he could pursue a coalition with Winston Peters New Zealand First after the elections. On 26 September, National proposed a "traffic light system" to transition Jobseeker beneficiaries into the work force, including benefit reductions or mandatory community work. On 29 September, National releases its fiscal plan, promising lower taxes and to reduce government spending and net debt. On 1 October, National released its 100-day action plan. Key promises included removing Auckland's Regional Fuel Tax, banning gang patches and insignia, restoring the 90-day employment period for businesses, banning cellphones in schools, and repealing the Government's Three Waters and "RMA 2.0" legislation.On 5 October, Luxon announced that a National government would create a Minister for Space. In addition, Willis conceded that under National's proposed tax policy only 3,000 households would get full tax relief but denied that National had misled voters about its tax plan. Former Prime Minister Sir John Key also released a video urging voters to give their "party vote" to National in order to prevent a hung government. Greens The Green Party's campaign was led by the Campaign 23 Committee, which was convened by deputy mayor of Nelson Rohan O'Neill-Stevens and party activist Gina Dao-McClay. Chennoah Walford served as campaign director while the party enlisted the services of media buyer and advertisement company "Reason." On 18 May, the party announced it would campaign on climate change, housing, inequality, tax reform, and the cost of living. On 20 May, the Greens released their finalised list of 31 candidates, which excluded Elizabeth Kerekere, who left the party to sit as an independent MP until the election whereupon she retired. Following the success of Chlöe Swarbrick's 2020 Auckland Central campaign, the Green Party ran three additional "two tick" campaigns in this election; Ricardo Menéndez March in Mount Albert, Julie Anne Genter in Rongotai, and Tamatha Paul in Wellington Central. The Green Party also campaigned for electorate votes in Panmure-Ōtāhuhu, Tāmaki Makaurau, and Te Tai Tokerau.In June 2023, the Greens announced they would be introducing various wealth and taxation proposals including tax cuts for anyone earning below NZ$125,000, a minimum income guarantee of NZ$385 per week, a wealth tax on assets worth above NZ$2 million, a 1.5% trust tax, a 45% top income tax rate, and a corporate tax rate of 33%.In early July 2023, the Greens announced their "Pledge to Renters." Key provisions included imposing rent controls on landlords, introducing a rental "warrant of fitness," providing a government underwrite for housing providers, accelerating the public housing building programme, and creating a national register for all landlords and property managers. On 9 July, the party announced its election manifesto. Key provisions include establishing a new climate change ministry, expanding the criteria for carbon emissions, decriminalising drugs, boosting the refugee intake to 5,000, introducing rent controls, and building 35,000 new public homes.On 17 July, the Greens launched their Hoki Whenua Mai policy. Key provisions include introducing legislation to return all confiscated land to the indigenous Māori people, removing a 2008 deadline for Treaty of Waitangi breaches, and establishing a process for privately owned land. On 23 July, the Greens formally launched their election campaign along with the slogan "The Time Is Now" and a new campaign video.On 6 August, the Greens proposed setting up a national dental service to provide free dental health care, which would be funded by a wealth tax. On 13 August, the Greens announced a Clean Power Payment and Zero Carbon Homes upgrade with the goal of equipping homes with solar panels and replacing fossil fuel appliances like gas heaters.On 10 September, the Greens launched its oceans policies, which included creating an independent Ocean Commission and passing a Health Ocean Act. On 16 September, the Greens co-leader Marama Davidson campaigned on raising workers' minimum annual leave from four to five weeks. On 19 September, Davidson announced that the Greens would support expanding the free school lunch programme to 365,000 children.On 23 September, the Greens campaigned on introducing a full amnesty for all overstayers accompanied with residency pathways. On 26 September, the Greens pledged to double Best Start payments and extend it to children under three years in order to combat child poverty. On 1 October, the Greens released a document, entitled "The Future is Up to Us", unveiling its three priorities: income guarantee, affordable and healthy homes, and climate action. The party also released an independent fiscal review to support their plan. ACT The ACT Party's campaign committee chairperson was Nick Wright and campaign chairperson was Stu Wilson. The party also enlisted the services of American pollster Joe Trippi & Associates as its media buyer. ACT has campaigned against gun control. Contrary to the Greens, ACT leader David Seymour has said that he believes it's inequitable for a small portion of New Zealand's population to bear a substantial share of the country's tax revenue. In late April, ACT confirmed that it would be running "two-ticks" campaigns for both Seymour and Deputy Leader Brooke Van Velden in Auckland's Epsom and Tāmaki electorates.The party launched its campaign on 4 June 2023, with Seymour announcing a policy to create a new "Ministry of Regulation" to police red tape and introduce a new law to ensure that regulation is underpinned by law-making principles. On 9 July, ACT vowed to lower the youth justice age back to 17 years. In 2016, the previous National Government had raised the youth justice age to 18 years, with 17 year olds being tried in youth courts for most offences except serious offences such as murder, sexual assault, aggravated robbery, arson, and serious assaults. On 13 July, ACT released its Oranga Tamariki (Ministry for Children) policy which advocated making the Independent Children's Monitor (ICM) an independent Crown entity, separating social workers' jobs into mentors and Child Protection Officers, and transferring youth justice functions from Oranga Tamariki to the Department of Corrections.On 16 July, ACT released their finalised list of 55 candidates, with notable newcomers including former Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard and former National MP Parmjeet Parmar. On 30 July, ACT announced that it would seek to speed up the Employment Relations Authority's (ERA) personal grievance process in order to help small businesses. On 17 August 2023, Seymour joked about bombing the Ministry for Pacific Peoples during an interview with Newstalk ZB following revelations about wasteful spending by the Ministry earlier in August. During the interview, Seymour claimed "in his fantasy' he would "send a guy like Guy Fawkes" into the Ministry's headquarters and "it'd all be over", apparently implying he would have it blown up. This was a reference to the Gunpowder Plot, planned in 1605 by English Catholic plotters but foiled at the last minute. ACT has campaigned for the abolition of the Ministry, alongside the Human Rights Commission and Ministry for Women. Seymour's remarks were criticised by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni and former National Party minister Alfred Ngaro as inflammatory and insensitive towards Pasifika New Zealanders.On 20 August, Seymour announced that ACT would set performance benchmarks for public sector organisations, "key performance indicators" for public sector chief executives, and would restore "performance pay" for public sector chief executives.On 27 August, ACT pledged to remove Māori wards in local governments. On 3 September, Seymour announced that ACT would reverse the Government's ban on oil and gas exploration, ease the consent process for offshore wind projects, and remove the Te Mana o te Wai framework from the resource consenting process. On 6 September, Seymour confirmed that ACT's "red tape review" would focus on the early childhood education sector, health services, primary industries, and financial services.On 13 September, Seymour unveiled ACT's law and order policies which included reforming the reparations process in favour of victims, imposing tougher sentences for crimes against vulnerable workers, reinstating "three strikes" legislation, and building 500 additional prison beds and 200 youth justice beds. On 15 September, ACT campaigned on stripping welfare beneficiaries off their benefits if they did not seek treatment for drugs and stress or seek work. On 17 September, ACT launched its election campaign on a platform of opposing co-governance and introducing legislation setting out the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The campaign launch was interrupted by Freedoms NZ candidate Karl Mokoraka. A Newshub cameraman and visual journalist were also allegedly assaulted by an ACT supporter. Seymour condemned the alleged assaults and vowed to support the investigation.On 20 September, ACT launched its education and early childhood education policies, with a focus on combating bureaucratic "micro-management" and truancy. Following the pre-election fiscal and economic update, ACT announced on 21 September that it would revise its budget to delay tax cuts and proposed defence spending boosts. On 22 September, ACT unveiled its senior citizens policy, which included reforming the Retirement Commission, ending the ban on pseudoephedrine, and boosting the health workforce. On 23 September, ACT promised to introduce a new "Unite Visa" that would allow to visit family in New Zealand for up to five years, with a renewal requirement each year and an annual fee of NZ$3,500 to cover potential health costs.On 26 September, ACT announced it would scrap several climate change policies including the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act and focus on building infrastructure to cope with climate change. On 28 September, ACT announced several policies that would make it easier for landlords to evict tenants and terminate tenancies. On 29 September, ACT announced that it would amend the COVID-19 inquiry's terms of reference to give the public a greater say. That same day, Seymour suggested that an ACT government would reduce New Zealand's carbon emissions cap to match its trading partners' emissions. On 30 September, ACT unveiled its small business policy plan which involved abolishing Fair Pay Agreements, not raising the minimum wage for three years, and removing the 2 January public holiday. Te Pāti Māori Te Pāti Māori's campaign was led by campaign chairperson and party president John Tamihere and the party enlisted the services of creative agency "Motion Sickness." Labour minister Meka Whaitiri defected to Te Pāti Māori on 3 May 2023. On 15 June, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rāwiri Waititi released a Facebook video targeted towards Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon, calling for the pair to "shut their mouths and stop using our iwi as a political football to score points", in regards to the tangihanga of Steven Taiatini, who was the Ōpōtiki president of the Mongrel Mob Barbarians. Waititi is of the Whakatōhea iwi. Both Hipkins and Luxon objected to Waititi's comments, citing concerns of safety.Te Pāti Māori launched its election campaign at Te Whānau O Waipareira's Matariki event in Henderson, Auckland. Waititi and fellow co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer led the event, which featured a music concert. The party campaigned on advancing the interests of the Māori people, combating racism, and the "second-rate" status of Māori, as Ngarewa-Packer labeled it. During the campaign launch, a man attempted to assault Waititi but was removed by security. The man was later given a warning for disorderly conduct and resisting police.On 27 July, Te Pāti Māori announced a raft of tax policies including a zero tax policy on those earning below NZ$30,000, a new 48% tax on those earning above NZ$300,000, raising the companies tax rate back to 33% and a wealth tax on millionaires. On 2 August, the party campaigned on ending state care for Māori children and replacing the present Oranga Tamariki (Ministry for Children) with an independent Mokopuna Māori Authority that would network with Māori organisations, iwi (tribes), and hapu (sub-groups) to ensure that Māori children remained connected with their whakapapa (genealogies). On 20 August, Te Pāti Māori released its official candidate list of 30 candidates. New Zealand First New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says if NZ First is elected to government, New Zealand First would remove Māori names from government departments and bring back English names. The party has also resisted changes to the age of eligibility for Superannuation. Additionally, New Zealand First is against vaccine mandates and proposes that gang affiliation should automatically serve as an aggravating factor in crime sentencing.On 23 July, NZ First launched its election campaign with the slogan "Let's take back our country." Peters announced that the party would campaign on five key issues: combating so-called "racist separatism," fighting Australian-owned banks and the "supermarket duopoly," investing in health, social services, and elderly care, and adopting "tough on crime" policies including building a "gang prison" and designating all gangs as terrorist organisations. On 30 July, NZ First campaigned on moving the Ports of Auckland and the Royal New Zealand Navy's Devonport base to Northport, extending the North Island Main Trunk Line to Marsden Point, a new four-lane alternative highway through the Brynderwyn Range, and establishing a full inquiry into the Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand.On 16 August, NZ First released a policy on transgender people on bathrooms and sports; which included introducing legislation requiring public bodies to have "clearly demarcated" unisex and single-sex toilets, restricting toilet access to individuals from the opposite sex, and requiring sporting bodies to have an "exclusive biological female category." The National Party criticised the policy. On 20 August, NZ First released a policy of making English an official language of New Zealand and withdrawing from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.On 3 September, NZ First released a cowboy-themed campaign video featuring Peters riding a horse. On 10 September, Peters claimed that Māori people were not indigenous to New Zealand on the grounds that they originated in the Cook Islands and China during a public meeting in Nelson. National Party Luxon criticised Peter's remarks but avoided confirming or denying whether his party would enter into coalition with NZ First in a future government. On 16 September, NZ First released its 31 member party list which included several former NZ First Members of Parliament including Peters, Shane Jones, Mark Patterson, Jenny Marcroft, and former Mayor of Wellington Andy Foster.On 26 September, Peters announced that an NZ First government would place a two-year cap on the Jobseeker benefit to combat welfare dependency. On 6 October, NZ First released its election manifesto, which proposed abolishing Goods and Services Tax (GST) for basic foods. Following a live-televised TVNZ debate that same day, the party stated it would support a select committee of inquiry to explore the viability of removing GST for from basic foods. New Conservatives Party In August 2023, the New Conservatives leader Helen Houghton released the party's Family Builder policy, which was costed at NZ$9.1 billion for its first year. Key provisions included allowing workers to keep the first $20,000 they earned, child tax credits, allowing couples to split their income, and shifting funding from early childhood centres to parents with the goal of encouraging at least one parent to raise children at home. Houghton said that the Family Builder policy was intended to encourage parents not to split up and to protect the family unit. The Opportunities Party The Opportunities Party aligns with the Greens on various policy fronts, including the endorsement of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and for a more progressive tax system. The proposed tax reforms include implementing an income tax rate of 45% for individuals earning over $250,000 per year, while those earning less than $15,000 per year would be exempt from income tax completely. On 16 June, during a Q&A Wellington Central candidate Natalia Albert, although acknowledging the similarities, said one key divergence from the Greens was that they were open to forming a coalition with either National or ACT.To secure a place in Parliament, The Opportunities Party primarily banked on their leader Raf Manji's potential victory in the Ilam electorate. In March 2023, TOP announced its NZ$1.5 billion "Teal Deal" policy aimed at youths that would allow people under the age of 30 years to use a "Teal Card" to purchase bikes, scooters, free health care, and skills-based training. The party also proposed a national civic service programme for young people, with participants being given a NZ$5,000 tax-free savings boost. On 17 June, Manji confirmed that TOP was developing an artificial intelligence candidate.On 16 August, TOP released its health plan, which included fully-funded contraception, increasing placements at medical, nursing, and dentistry schools, boosting the voluntary bond scheme for health professionals and workers, establishing a fully-funded ambulance service, and fully-funded contraception, antenatal ultrasounds, and doctor visits. On 20 August, Manji announced that TOP would introduce a new NZ$3 million investor visa policy that would be used to support a fund to resettle climate refugees in New Zealand.On 6 September, TOP's deputy leader Natalia Albert announced the party's democracy policy, with key provisions including a four-year parliamentary term, lowering the mixed-member proportional threshold, and lowering the voting age to 16 years. Debates TVNZ announced their debate schedule on 29 August. Newshub announced their debate schedule on 7 September. A debate hosted by The Press between Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon was scheduled for 3 October, but after Hipkins caught COVID-19, Luxon pulled out due to being unable to provide any alternative dates. Issues According to TVNZ's and Vox Pop Lab's Vote Compass online tool, the top five issues in the general electorates were cost of living (28%), the economy (17%), healthcare (14%), crime (9%), and the environment (8%). Within the Māori electorates, the top five issues were the cost of living (35%), Māori issues (15%), the economy (14%), healthcare (9%) and social justice (9%). Law and order According to a Vote Compass survey, 73% of respondents believed that too many offenders avoided prison sentences in New Zealand. According to data released by the Ministry of Justice, there were a total of 8,500 prisoners incarcerated in New Zealand prisons in June 2023; it was the lowest imprisonment rate per 100,000 people in over 20 years. This was part of the Labour Government's policy of reducing the prison population by 30%, which Labour has vowed to scrap if re-elected. While the National and ACT parties have campaigned on reversing the 30% prison reduction target, Te Pāti Māori has advocated abolishing prisons and replacing it with a tikanga-based (Māori customary) system. The Greens have emphasised rehabilitation and restorative justice.Vote Compass also found that 76% of respondents supported harsher punishments for youth offenders. While 92% of National and ACT voters supported harsher punishments, 73% of Labour voters agreed while 18% disagreed. The survey concluded that conservative party supporters favoured a more punitive and individualised approach towards crime while liberal party supporters thought that crime was rooted in structural factors including poverty and discrimination. Co-governance and the Treaty of Waitangi Co-governance and the Treaty of Waitangi were polarising issues during the 2023 general election, with The Spinoff comparing campaign discussions around these issues to the "iwi vs Kiwi" debate during the 2005 New Zealand general election. While the incumbent Labour and Green parties were sympathetic to co-governance, they avoided campaigning strongly on the issues due to the controversy that co-governance generated in 2022. Labour has supported the expansion of Māori wards and constituencies in local and regional councils. The opposition National, ACT, and New Zealand First parties have opposed co-governance to varying degrees, despite the former two instituting co-governance arrangements during the Fifth National Government. While National and ACT have opposed the expansion of Māori wards in local government, ACT has accepted other co-governance arrangements such as Auckland's Tūpuna Maunga Authority and the Waikato River Authority. Meanwhile, NZ First has rejected all power-sharing arrangements with Māori including co-governaning indigenous biodiversity. While the Labour and Green parties have supported the Government's Water Services Reform Programme, National and ACT have campaigned on repealing the programme in its entirety.In terms of the Treaty of Waitangi and treaty settlements, Labour has supported expanding Te Haetea, the online database for monitoring Treaty settlement commitments. The Green and Māori parties have advocated reforming the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal and Treaty settlements by reopening historical claims, allowing hapū (sub-tribes) to negotiate claims, boosting Tribunal funding and broadening the Tribunal's scope to include private property. The Māori Party has also sought to include council-owned land in Treaty settlements, make Tribunal recommendations binding, remove fiscal and deadline limits, and to end "full and final settlements" in the Treaty process.In terms of constitutional arrangements, Te Paati Māori has proposed several major constitutional changes including the creation of a separate Māori parliament, entrench the Māori electorates, allowing Māori to switch between the general and Māori electoral rolls anytime, and expanding the scope of the Waitangi Tribunal process. The Greens also support entrenching the Māori electorates, implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its local He Puapua strategy, and creating a citizen's assembly based on Treaty principles. By contrast, ACT and NZ First oppose the entrenchment of both the Declaration on Indigenous Rights and the He Puapua documents.In late September 2023, Horizon Research published the results of a survey on how New Zealanders' voting choices were influenced by their views on co-governance, the Treaty of Waitangi, and racial harmony. The Horizon Research study also identified a large gulf between Māori and European/Pākehā voters on the issues of co-governance and honouring the Treaty. On co-governance, 28% of European voters surveyed said that stopping co-governance policies was an important influence on their party vote choice, compared with 17% of Māori respondents. 62% of prospective ACT voters opposed co-governance, compared with 45% of New Zealand First prospective voters and 40% of prospective National voters. Regarding the Treaty, 46% of Māori respondents regarded honouring the Treaty as an important influence on their party vote, compared with 20% of European respondents. The survey found that 31% of voters regarded racial harmony as important; with 34% of Māori and 30% of Europeans regarding racial harmony as important. Disinformation and misinformation Several researchers including Victoria University of Wellington political scientist Lara Greaves, psychologist and artificial intelligence commentator Paul Duignan, and University of Auckland research associate Sarah Bickerton expressed concern that artificial intelligence could be used to spread misinformation and disinformation during the lead-up to the 2023 general election. Similarly, Sanjana Hattotuwa of The Disinformation Project, Joshua Ferrer, and InternetNZ expressed concerns about microtargeting being used as a tool for spreading disinformation and facilitating foreign election interference online. By contrast, Victoria University political scientist Jack Vowles opposed calls to ban microtargeting and argued that microtargeting could be used for positive purposes such as promoting educational policies among teachers.In early August 2023, the Electoral Commission confirmed it was considering an investigation of controversial Stop Co-Governance organiser Julian Batchelor's pamphlets for allegedly breaching electoral advertising laws. Batchelor's pamphlets included a section telling people not to vote for parties which supported co-governance. Electoral law expert Graeme Edgeler opined that this section constituted an electoral advertisement. According to 1 News, the Electoral Commission had warned Batchelor that electoral adverts must have an official promoter statement, including a name and address. In response, Batchelor claimed that the infringement was "extremely minor" and would be hard to prove in court.In mid August, Stuff reported that several NZ First candidates including property and commercial lawyer Kirsten Murfitt, Auckland consultant Janina Massee, Matamata-Piako district councillor Caleb Ansell, and Kevin Stone had espoused COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and "plandemic" conspiracy theories, New World Order conspiracy theories, climate skepticism, QAnon, and homophobia. In response, party leader Winston Peters claimed that NZ First's candidate list was provisional and defended the party's candidate selection process.On 21 August, ACT candidate Elaine Naidu Franz resigned after 1 News uncovered a LinkedIn post likening COVID-19 vaccine mandates to concentration camps. ACT leader David Seymour described her comments as "unacceptable" and welcomed her decision to resign as an ACT candidate. A second ACT candidate Darren Gilchrist of Waikato apologised for a Telegram post claiming that COVID-19 vaccines contributed to a surge in drowning in 2021. A third ACT candidate Anto Coates also resigned after describing COVID-19 as a mass hysteria and writing a parody song suggesting that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had thought about sending people to gulags. Seymour defended ACT's candidate vetting process while Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer accused the party of courting conspiracy theorists and being secretive respectively.On 7 September, the Labour Party removed a social media attack advertisement which falsely claimed that the National Party would end free public transport for disabled people. In truth, disabled "Total Mobility" users have never been eligible for free public transport or the half-price public transport fees announced in the 2023 New Zealand budget in mid-May 2023.On 18 September, Radio New Zealand reported that National's Hamilton East candidate Ryan Hamilton, a serving Hamilton City Councillor, had for two decades espoused anti-fluoridation and vaccine hesitancy views at odds with the National Party's positions on fluoridation and vaccination. Hamilton had also posted social media posts opposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates and alleging that the number of COVID-19 deaths had been inflated. In response to media coverage, National claimed that Hamilton had since changed his views on fluoridation.On 16 November, Victoria University of Wellington political scientist Mona Krewel's "New Zealand Social Media Study" found that misinformation and disinformation were not problematic in election campaigning during the 2023 general election. The study was based on an analysis of over 4,000 Facebook posts from political parties and their leaders during the five week period leading to 14 October. The Social Media Study found that fake news posts remained below 3% throughout the election campaign, with a weekly average of 2.6% over that five week period. Krewel's study also observed that various parties and politicians promoted "half truths" or "small lies" throughout the campaign. One notable example was the National Party claiming that the Ministry for Pacific Peoples had hosted breakfasts to promote Labour MPs. In truth the Ministry had held these breakfasts to explain the 2023 New Zealand budget to constituents. Polarisation and vandalism The 2023 electoral campaign has been noted for its increased divisiveness, with a far more tense and discordant campaign than 2020. Some political commentators, such as Henry Cooke, have written about heightened political polarisation.During the second of the three leaders' debates, as moderated by Paddy Gower on Three, Chris Hipkins read out a quote by Rob Ballantyne, the New Zealand First candidate for Rangitata, that he described as explicitly racist. The quote said to Māori: "Cry if you want to, we don't care. You pushed it too far. We are the party with the cultural mandate and courage to cut out your disease and bury it permanently." Hipkins then asked Christopher Luxon why he was willing to work with New Zealand First. Luxon responded by agreeing that the quote was racist, but said that he was "going to make the call [to Winston Peters on election night] if it means stopping you, Te Pati Māori and the Greens from coming to power." Hipkins later committed to calling out racism and defending Te Tiriti, while accusing ACT and NZ First of race-baiting. David Seymour condemned the statement while Ballantyne later claimed to journalist Tova O'Brien that he was talking about "elite" Māori.The widespread defacement of electoral billboards has caused concern. A billboard featuring Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who is defending Maungakiekie for Labour, was vandalised with misogynistic language. Several billboards featuring Māori politicians have been defaced with racial slurs, including coon and on one occasion nigger, and the word "Māori" repeatedly cut out. National Party billboards were also vandalised but not in overtly racist or misogynistic ways.On 29 September 17 Māori leaders including Dave Letele signed an open letter to National Party leader Christopher Luxon calling on him to "condemn the racist comments made by NZ First, condemn the race-baiting policies of the ACT Party, and commit himself to representing all of us, including Māori." In response, Luxon accused Labour leader Hipkins of creating a campaign built on fear and negativity. NZ First leader Winston Peters accused the letter writers of racism and reiterated his claims that co-governance was Apartheid. ACT leader David Seymour accused the signatories of making false accusations of racism while ignoring the alleged racism of the Māori Party. In turn, Hipkins accused Luxon of exploiting race since he became National Party leader.On 5 October, while interviewing Greens co-leader James Shaw, journalist Tova O'Brien revealed that the Green candidate for Maungakiekie, Sapna Samant, had a history of racist tweets. These included "White people are stupid" and "can be fooled easily" and also called Labour Minister Priyanca Radhakrishnan "****ing useless [sic]" and an "incompetent" minister. Shaw was unaware of this and when asked if Samant was a good fit for the Green Party, Shaw said, from "what you're saying, it doesn't sound like it". She had also tweeted "Defund the police" which Shaw stated was not Green Party policy. Political violence and intimidation There have also been several acts of political violence and intimidation. On 26 September, Angela Roberts, a list MP and the Labour Party candidate for Taranaki-King Country, was physically assaulted at a town hall meeting. At the Rotary Club in Inglewood, Taranaki, a man who was confronting Roberts "grabbed [her] shoulders" and shook her violently "in order to emphasise the point he was making" before slapping her across the face. Chris Hipkins spoke to the media and condemned the incident. He also addressed Labour MPs and candidates directly, saying that if they were "criticised for not going to that meeting because you don't feel safe going there, I will absolutely defend you doing that." Roberts later said to RNZ "It feels like, incrementally, there is a growing acceptance of aggression in politics and our democratic processes. This must change." She thanked National MP Barbara Kuriger for reaching out to her after the incident.On 29 September, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Te Pāti Māori's candidate for Hauraki-Waikato allegedly suffered a home invasion, in which her house was vandalised and a threatening letter was left behind. Te Pāti Māori put out a statement saying that the "premeditated and targeted attack" was "the latest of three incidents to take place at Hana's home just this week... to our knowledge, this is the first time in our history that a politician's home and personal property has been invaded to this extent." The party blamed "right-wing politicians [race-baiting] and [fearmongering] for votes" for emboldening the perpetrators.On 5 October, an elderly Pākehā/European New Zealander man alleged to be a well-known National Party campaigner was issued a trespass notice by police for allegedly intimidating Maipi-Clarke. Police subsequently confirmed that they were investigating five reports about behaviour against Maipi-Clarke but did not believe that the incidents were racially motivated or coordinated. Detective Inspector Darrell Harpur confirmed that a person had been trespassed from Maipi-Clarke's Huntly home. While Police confirmed the theft of an election hoarding from Maipi-Clark's home, they clarified that the incident had been incorrectly reported as a ram raid rather than a theft. Police also confirmed they were investigating a related burglary and the threatening letter but were unable to establish any criminality. Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere contested the Police statement and confirmed it would be filing a civil lawsuit against the elderly National Party campaigner following the 2023 election. In response to media coverage, the National Party defended the elderly campaigner and rejected assertions he had trespassed on Maipi-Clarke's property. National stated that the elderly Pakeha man had only wished to congratulate Maipi-Clarke for participating at a "meet the candidate event" but had left since Maipi-Clark was not at home.On 2 October, National's campaign chair Chris Bishop reported that several National Party candidates and volunteers had encountered several alleged incidents of intimidation, death threats, assaults including a candidate being forced to move houses, a dog attack, and at least one burglary. Bishop alleged that "malevolent actors" were attempting to disrupt the 2023 election and also claimed that the Mongrel Mob's endorsement of the Labour Party had placed National Party candidates and supporters at risk. In one incident, National's Auckland Central candidate Mahesh Muralidhar, his partner, and several volunteers were illegally filmed by a member of the Head Hunters Motorcycle Club who uploaded the video on social media, where it attracted vitriol and abusive language from gang members including a senior Headhunter. The National and ACT parties condemned threats and violence against political candidates as "unacceptable" and "disgraceful." National blamed the intimidation and violence on gang members while ACT urged people to report these incidents to the Police. Protests and disruptions Members of the Freedoms New Zealand disrupted Labour leader Chris Hipkins' campaign visit to the Ōtara Markets on 20 August, a National Party press conference featuring leader Christopher Luxon and transport spokesperson Simeon Brown on 28 August, and the Labour Party's campaign launch on 2 September. In early September 2023, The Disinformation Project's director Kate Hannah claimed that the disruptive activities of "fringe" parties were instigated by lobby groups. She also expressed concern that these disruptive activities would discourage public participation in the democratic process. Social media On 8 September, The New Zealand Herald reported that several political parties including the National, Green, ACT, NZ First, and Labour parties were using the video-sharing platform TikTok to reach younger voters in the 18–24 age group, which accounted for 418,831 eligible voters. National launched its TikTok account in November 2022 with Labour following suit in September 2023. By September 2023, National had gained 54,000 TikTok followers, the Greens 13,400 followers, ACT 12,200 followers, and Labour 1,400 followers. Popular election-related TikTok content included interviews featuring ACT leader David Seymour and NZ First candidate Shane Jones' rendition of the song "Don't Stop Believing." During the lead-up to the election, TikTok added a pop-up directing New Zealand viewers searching for election-related content to the Electoral Commission's website.On 20 October, The Spinoff reported that several political parties had spent large sums on online advertisements on Meta Platforms' Ad Library (which appears on Facebook and Instagram) and Google. The highest spender was the ACT Party, which spent NZ$334,900 on Meta advertising and NZ$444,000 on Google advertising. The second highest spender was Labour, which spent NZ$250,400 on Meta advertising and NZ$66,000 on Google advertising. The third highest spender was National, which spent NZ$215,500 on Meta advertising and NZ$63,000 on Google advertising. Other parties advertising on Meta's platforms included Green Party (NZ$143,300), Te Pāti Māori (NZ$44,700), TOP (NZ$31,600), and NZ First (NZ$17,900). NZ First also spent NZ$44,400 on Google advertisements.On 21 October, Radio New Zealand estimated that National, Labour, ACT, the Greens, NZ First and Te Pāti Māori spent between NZ$1.5 and NZ$2.3 million on Meta and Google platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube in the three month period leading up to the 2023 election. The two major parties Labour and National focused on the economy. Labour also spent heavily on health advertising including on promoting its policy of free dental care for people under the age of 30 years. While National and ACT also spent heavily on crime-related advertising, the Greens were the only party to spend on climate change-related advertisements. During the final stages of the campaign, Labour published several attack advertisements targeting National leader Christopher Luxon. While most parties did not target gender segments, 81% of Green ads were viewed by women while 63% of ACT ads were viewed by men. NZ First targeted the over 65 age demographic. Ethnic engagement and representation In mid September 2023, Ngaire Reid, the managing director of Reid Research, stated that Chinese New Zealanders along with Māori and Pasifika New Zealanders were often reluctant to participate in opinion polls, causing these ethnic communities to be underrepresented in opinion polling. Market research firm Trace Research director Andrew Zhu stated that opinion polls could help the Chinese community to feel more engaged in the political process. On 21 September, Trace Research published the results of a survey which found that 70.9% of ethnic Chinese voters supported the National Party, 13.4% supported ACT, 12.5% supported Labour, and 1.4% supported the Greens. Support for right-wing parties within the Chinese community rose in 2023 while support for Labour declined compared with the 2020 general election. Trace Research found that ethnic Chinese voters were most concerned with rising living costs, law and order, economic growth, racial equality and healthcare.In early October, Radio New Zealand reported that several young Asian voters were concerned that Asian communities were not being heard in the 2023 election and that there was a lack of "meaningful" engagement with political parties. Key issues among Asian voters included health, employment, the economy, and income equality.On 4 October, Radio New Zealand reported that a record number of Indian New Zealanders were standing as candidates in the 2023 general election across the political spectrum. National had five ethnic Indian candidates, ACT four, Labour two, and the Greens two. Notable ethnic Indian candidates included ACT's Pakuranga candidate Parmjeet Parmar, National's Auckland Central candidate Mahesh Muralidhar, and Labour Maungakiekie MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Opinion polls Several polling firms have conducted opinion polls during the term of the 53rd New Zealand Parliament (2020–present) for the 2023 general election. The regular polls are the quarterly polls produced by Television New Zealand (1 News) conducted by Verian (formerly known as Colmar Brunton and Kantar Public) and Discovery New Zealand (Newshub) conducted by Reid Research, along with monthly polls by Roy Morgan Research, and by Curia (Taxpayers' Union). The sample size, margin of error and confidence interval of each poll varies by organisation and date. Seat projections The use of mixed-member proportional representation allows ready conversion of a party's support into a party vote percentage and therefore a number of seats in Parliament. Projections generally assume no material change to the electorate seats held by each party (ACT retains Epsom, Greens retain Auckland Central, Māori retains Waiariki, etc.). Parties that do not hold an electorate seat and poll below 5% are assumed to win zero seats. When determining the scenarios for the overall result, the minimum parties necessary to form majority governments are listed (provided parties have indicated openness to working together). Actual governments formed may include other parties beyond the minimum required for a majority; this happened after the 2014 election, when National only needed one seat from another party to reach a 61-seat majority, but instead chose to form a 64-seat government with Māori, ACT and United Future.On 19 November 2022, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters ruled out a coalition with Labour, claiming "No one gets to lie to me twice". In April 2023, National leader Christopher Luxon commented that it would be "highly unlikely" that National would form a government with Te Pāti Māori or the Greens; however, a spokesperson later clarified Luxon had not "intended to fully rule out working" with either party. At the time, Te Pāti Māori was largely seen as the kingmaker in the upcoming election. Furthermore, Te Pāti Māori may not be prepared to support a National-led government that includes the ACT Party, as Te Pāti Māori has repeatedly accused the ACT Party of race baiting over "co-governance" and its calls for a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi. On 10 May, Luxon officially ruled out forming a coalition with Te Pāti Māori. On 27 August, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out New Zealand First as a possible coalition partner. Voting Overseas voting opened on 27 September with overseas voters having until 7:00 pm on 14 October (New Zealand time; UTC+13) to cast their vote. 74 voting locations were established overseas including 10 in Australia, four in China, four in the United States, and one in the United Kingdom. Overseas voters were also given the option of downloading their voting papers from "vote.nz," and uploading it onto the website. By 27 September, the Electoral Commission confirmed that 78,000 voters had overseas addresses.EasyVote packs were sent to voters starting in late September 2023. These packs contain the voter's personalised EasyVote card, which is used by polling booth staff to help identify and locate the voter on the electoral roll. The packs also contain a list of candidates and a list of voting places and opening times.On 4 October, Stuff reported that an estimated 1.4 million eligible voters had not yet received their EasyVote pack. While the Commission emphasised that voters did not need an EasyVote card to vote, delays in posting the cards to households had caused concern. In response, Hipkins confirmed that the Labour Party's general secretary had raised the issue with the Electoral Commission. In addition, all EasyVote packs for Epsom, Mount Albert and Pakuranga had to be reprinted after a quality assurance check found several packs containing misprinted voting place lists, delaying delivery in these electorates.Advance voting began on 2 October 2023, with 1,376,366 advance votes cast. This was significantly down on the 2020 general election, in which 1,976,996 votes were cast in advance, but still ahead of the 1,240,740 advance votes cast for the 2017 election.On 6 October, Radio New Zealand reported that 2,600 polling booths would be set up across New Zealand for the 2023 general election. While 800 of these booths would open early, 265 would not be open on polling day. Of those booths only open during advance voting, 61 were located in rural electorates while 204 were situated in regional and urban electorates. In response, the Electoral Commission issued a statement that the opening days and times of individual polling booths were determined by several factors including agreements with the individual location, staffing levels, and local demand.Following election day, Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere and Dave Letele criticised the Electoral Commission for alleged "unacceptable" treatment of Māori voters at polling booths including reports of long queues, enrolled voters being told to cast special votes, insufficient ballot forms, and voters being incorrectly told that they could not vote if they did not have an EasyVote card. Results Preliminary results were gradually released after polling booths closed at 7:00 pm on 14 October. The Electoral Commission aimed to have 50% of votes counted by 10:00 pm and 95% counted by 11:30 pm. The preliminary count only included ordinary votes (approximately 2.2 million); it did not include the 603,257 special votes, which can take up to 10 days to be returned to their correct electorate and need to be approved before they are counted. The polling booth rolls will also be compiled into a master roll to ensure nobody has voted more than once. Official results, including special votes and a recount of the ordinary votes, were released by the Electoral Commission on 3 November 2023, 20 days after the election.Compared to the preliminary results, the official results showed the National Party had dropped two seats, meaning that it no longer had a majority with ACT, and must obtain the support of NZ First in order to form a government. The Māori Party took two more electorate seats, one of which was won by a margin of four votes. Detailed results Electorate results The table below shows the results of the electorate vote in the 2023 general election: Key List results The following list candidates were elected: MPs who lost their seats Andrew Little was eligible for a position as a Labour Party list MP but declined to accept it after Labour lost the election. Unsuccessful Ikaroa-Rāwhiti candidate Meka Whaitiri had held office as an independent (previously Labour Party) but contested the election for Te Pāti Māori. New MPs Based on the official results, 41 candidates who had never been in parliament before were returned. Of those, 19 were from National, 2 from Labour, 8 from the Greens, 4 from ACT, 4 from Te Pāti Māori, and 4 from NZ First. The parliament will have 123 seats after the Port Waikato by-election has concluded, meaning that one-third of the members will be newcomers. Post-election events Resignations of members On 17 October 2023, Labour's Andrew Little announced his retirement from politics, effective immediately. Since Little did not hold an electorate seat, his list position of 12th was enough to get him into parliament. His retirement removes his position and promotes Camilla Belich back into Parliament. 2023 Port Waikato by-election The electorate contest in Port Waikato was cancelled because the ACT New Zealand candidate died during the general election voting period. A by-election to fill this vacancy will be held on 25 November 2023. The successful candidate will be additional to the 122 MPs elected during the general election, for a total of 123 MPs. Local body by-elections Three local government by-elections have been called as a result of incumbent local body politicians resigning from their previous roles due to their election to Parliament. East ward by-election, Hamilton City Council: Hamilton City councillor and incoming Hamilton East MP Ryan Hamilton resigned immediately after the general election. Voting in the by-election for the council's East ward will close on 17 February 2024. Banks Peninsula community board by-election, Christchurch City Council: Christchurch City Council community board member and incoming Christchurch East MP Reuben Davidson resigned in late October. Voting in the council's Banks Peninsula community board by-election will close on 17 February 2024. Pukehīnau Lambton ward by-election, Wellington City Council: Wellington City councillor and incoming Wellington Central MP Tamatha Paul will serve her last day as a councillor on 10 November. Voting in the council's Pukehīnau Lambton ward by-election will close on 17 February 2024.Marlborough District councillor and incoming New Zealand First list MP Jamie Arbuckle told media after the election he would not resign from his council position until October 2024, by which point a by-election would not be required due to the proximity of the 2025 local elections. Ethnic representation In late October 2023, Radio New Zealand reported that Pasifika New Zealanders were under-represented in the incoming Sixth National Government. While the outgoing Labour Government had 12 Pasifika MPs over the previous two terms, National's two Pasifika candidates Angee Nicholas and Agnes Loheni, were based in marginal seats or ranked too lowly on the party list to be elected into Parliament. Following the release of final results on 3 November, Nicholas lost her Te Atatū electorate to Labour's Phil Twyford by a margin of 131 votes whilst Loheni was ranked too low on the list, (25), to get into parliament. As a result, the incoming National-led government lacked a single Pasifika MP. Vote counting errors On 7 November 2023, The New Zealand Herald reported that three booths in the Port Waikato and Ilam electorates had mistakenly assigned hundreds of votes to the Leighton Baker Party and the New Conservatives Party. This affected votes which had been cast for the National, Labour, Greens, NZ First parties and Te Pāti Māori. The Electoral Commission subsequently admitted that a data entry error had resulted in this mistake. The Commission also launched a full check of all voting place results to investigate if there were more transcription errors.On 9 November, the Electoral Commission admitted that 15 voting places had data entry errors, and that more than 700 votes were left off the final vote announced on 3 November. The Commission also said that the final checks of party, electorate and special votes had not affected overall results or allocation of seats in Parliament. Due to these corrections, 693 extra party votes and 708 candidate votes were included in the overall result. The overall turnout for the 2023 election remained at 78.2%. Judicial recounts On 8 November 2023, the District Court of New Zealand received three applications for judicial recounts of 2023 election results in three marginal electorates. Labour sought a judicial recount for Tāmaki Makaurau where their candidate Peeni Henare had been unseated by Māori Party candidate Takutai Moana Kemp by a margin of four votes. In addition, National sought judicial recounts for Nelson and Mount Albert, where their candidates Blair Cameron and Melissa Lee trailed close behind their respective Labour candidates after the final count, by 29 and 20 votes respectively.On 10 November, the Electoral Commission confirmed that Labour MP Rachel Boyack had retained Nelson by a margin of 26 votes, three votes smaller than the final vote results on 3 November. On 15 November, the Electoral Commission confirmed that Helen White had retained Mount Albert for Labour by 18 votes (two fewer than the final vote results) and that Takutai Moana Kemp had unseated Peeni Henare in Tāmaki Makaurau by 42 votes (38 more than the final vote results). Alleged treating On 9 November, the Electoral Commission confirmed that it was investigating allegations that food was served to voters at Manurewa Marae in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate. Under New Zealand electoral law, serving food to voters in order to influence their vote is illegal and considered a form of treating. Māori Party candidate Takutai Moana Kemp is the CEO of Manurewa Marae. Māori Party president John Tamihere rejected allegations that food was served to voters to influence their votes, describing them as "innuendo" and "without evidence." Return of the writ and first meeting of Parliament On 16 November, following the completion of the judicial recounts, the writ was returned to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, along with the declaration of MPs elected from party lists.Per Section 19 of the Constitution Act 1986, the latest possible date for the first meeting of the 54th Parliament is 28 December (six weeks following the return of the writ). Reactions Domestic Hipkins conceded to Luxon on election night and congratulated Luxon for his victory. International Australia's prime minister Anthony Albanese congratulated Luxon on his victory and thanked Hipkins for his service, describing Hipkins as his friend. Opposition Leader and Liberal Party of Australia (the main centre-right, liberal conservative party) leader Peter Dutton also congratulated Luxon for his victory. Cook Islands' prime minister Mark Brown called Luxon to congratulate him for his victory. India's prime minister Narendra Modi congratulated Luxon for his party's win. Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien-Loong congratulated Luxon for his victory. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Hipkins for his support for Ukraine and congratulated Luxon on his victory. Government formation Following the release of preliminary results on 14 October, National began coalition negotiations with both ACT and New Zealand First. Christopher Luxon stated that he would be conducting these negotiations privately and would not confirm his stance on policies such as ACT's proposed referendum on Māori co-governance. Following the release of final results on 3 November, National's seat count dropped from 50 to 48, depriving a two-party arrangement between National and ACT of the 62 seats needed for a majority government, thus making the support of New Zealand First necessary to command a parliamentary majority.On 8 November, ACT and NZ First made first contact in their coalition talks during a meeting between ACT's chief of staff Andrew Ketels and NZ First's chief of staff Darroch Ball. This introductory meeting was meant "to establish a line of communication" between the two parties. In addition, the National and NZ First parties conducted high-level negotiation talks in Wellington that same week. Following the release of final results, ACT leader David Seymour attempted to contact NZ First leader Peters via text message but he had mistaken it for a scam. On 9 November, Seymour expressed hope that coalition negotiations and government formation would be completed before an upcoming APEC meeting in mid-November 2023.Amidst coalition talks, the outgoing Labour Government will remain in a caretaker capacity. On 10 November, Hipkins and Luxon agreed to advise Governor-General Cindy Kiro to prolong the caretaker government arrangement until the conclusion of coalition talks.On 13 November, Luxon said it was unlikely he would go to APEC due to prioritising a government coalition.On 15 November, Luxon, Seymour and Peters met at Pullman Hotel's boardroom in Auckland. It was the first time the three leaders had met since the election. See also Elections in New Zealand Notes References External links Electoral Commission website

climate change in new york city

Climate change in New York City could affect buildings/structures, wetlands, water supply, health, and energy demand, due to the high population and extensive infrastructure in the region. A seaport like New York is especially at risk if the sea level rises, with many bridges and tunnels in the city. Major facilities for Aviation in the New York metropolitan area, and the New York Passenger Ship Terminal, are also located in areas vulnerable to flooding. Flooding would be expensive to reverse. Tide gauge records indicate a rise in sea level of about 50 cm (20 inches) since 1860.Rising temperatures could bring a higher risk of heat related deaths from heat waves and increased concentrations of ground-level ozone (potentially causing asthma and other health concerns). The New York Times has identified climate change as a contributing factor in the city's increasing level of rat infestation, stating that "[m]ilder winters — the result of climate change — make it easier for rats to survive and reproduce". In June 2019 NYC made a climate emergency declaration. Mitigation The NYC Mayor's Office Climate Policy and Programs team, who also manages the OneNYC program, said in 2018 that it is pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2050 and align with the 1.5 degree Celsius target put into place under the Paris Agreement. Inroads have already begun, as the city's emissions have decreased 15% since 2005. The aim is to develop low-carbon transportation options and mandate retrofits to city buildings. In 2018 the team has sued five companies (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) for being responsible for climate change, and divesting the City's pension funds from fossil fuels, the first major US city to do so. Mayor Bill de Blasio stated in support of the decision, "As climate change continues to worsen, it's up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the costs of making New York City safer and more resilient." The OneNYC program as of 2018 made progress towards renewable energy reliance; for instance, solar installations have increased six-fold since 2014, $500 million was invested to improve building energy efficiency, and an additional $1 billion allocated to preserving NYC's drinking water. Coastal flooding Flooding was the second highest cause of weather related fatalities in the United States in 2018. The projected 11-21 inches of sea level rise in New York City by 2050 and 4.17–9 feet by 2100 will compound the impacts of coastal flooding. The damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 served as an impetus for policymakers and residents to more seriously consider coastal resiliency efforts. Since then, regulations have been strengthened to better protect the 400,000 New Yorkers in the one percent annual chance floodplain. Additionally, in May 2017, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the construction of a 5.3 mile seawall along the Staten Island coastline capable of withstanding coastal flooding of 15.6 feet, two feet higher than that caused by Hurricane Sandy. When completed, the seawall will reduce damages by approximately $30 million. Adaptation New York in 2009 launched a task force to advise on preparing city infrastructure for flooding, water shortages, and higher temperatures. The New York City water supply system has been built to provide for its water needs. The NYC Mayor's Office Climate Policy and Programs team is investing $20 billion to adapt the city's neighborhoods to climate change threats like flooding, heat, and sea level rise.The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency initiative aims to address threats to the Financial District and surrounding neighborhoods. In 2019, the city allocated $615 million for a 5.1 mile East Shore Seawall, a combined seawall and walkway on Staten Island, officially called the Staten Island Multi-Use Elevated Promenade. Influences on New York City climate change The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 is intended to protect citizens against industrial toxic pollution. This information is available in order to keep track of increasing toxin releases and identify high toxic-releasing companies. Once these records are publicly released, individuals have the freedom to respond to that information however they please. If a shareholder of a specific facility is discouraged by the facility's amount of toxin releases, that person may choose to remove themselves as a shareholder. This is why is it important to minimize underreporting or overreporting of toxic emissions. Although this information is available to the public, New York seems to continue to struggle with keeping carbon emissions low. According to the NYC Mayor's Office of Sustainability, New York City generates 14 million tons of waste and recyclables annually at a cost of $300 million for residential waste alone. Scorecard has documented that the risk of cancer from New York County hazardous air pollutants in each category was almost always the same for each side of the spectrum (kids below poverty and kids above poverty, for example). The information also shows that the lower-income and minority groups emit a greater percentage of toxins and pollutants than others. Toxic disposal and storage facilities (TDSF) are built in low-income areas with lower-valued homes because those residing there are less likely to have the purchasing and political power to fight against it, unlike those living in high-income communities. This means that they will not have the means to make a change against this, so TSDF's are often built in low-income communities with lower-valued houses. Even so, the 2010 New York State Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Plan states that the number of commercial TSD facilities in New York have declined over time with 30 commercial TSD facilities in 1988 and 13 commercial TSD facilities in 2008. This is a positive and negative accomplishment, because there are fewer TSDF's in general, but there are increased usage and pollution emission levels at the few TSDF's that are available. The 2010 New York State Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Plan also presents important information when evaluating the TSDF's in each county. Chapter 1 of the siting plan states that ten-day transfer stations, generators that store for less than 90 days, facilities or locations for collecting household hazardous wastes, facilities for collecting non-manifested waste such as universal waste, sanitary landfills, and trucks are not included as TSD facilities in the detailed analyses included in the plan. This shows that not all hazardous waste facilities are taken into consideration when examining the eligibility of a county for building more facilities. Omitting such facilities from the analyses presents inaccurate calculations and assumptions. Those facilities still emit pollution and wastes, regardless of the size of facility or time-length of the waste transfer. Someone who lives in a single-family houses emits more toxic chemicals into the environment than someone who lives in multifamily buildings, since detached houses use more energy. Many people rely on public transit in New York City because it is cheaper and easier than using a car. This intense use of the public transit system decreases those people's carbon emissions. The Scorecard analysis states that New York experiences only 45% of days with good air quality in a year and 1% of days with unhealthful air quality. Because of this, New York ranked among the 10% dirtiest/worst of all counties in the United States in 2003. In regards to air quality management, the Mayor's Office of Sustainability states that “the City has implemented a policy to reduce, replace, retrofit and refuel City vehicles. In 2014, the City reduced its fleet by at least 5 percent and expanded the use of biodiesel. Additionally, 400 vehicles were upgraded through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) and other funding sources, and Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) were installed on 685 buses in 2014”. In literature New York 2140 is a 2017 climate fiction novel set in New York City by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. See also New York Harbor Storm-Surge Barrier Climate change in the United States Climate change in New York (state) Climate change and cities Plug-in electric vehicles in New York (state) § New York City References External links Archive-It: New York Climate Change Science Web Archive

developing country

A developing country is a sovereign state with a less developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreement on which countries fit this category. The terms low and middle-income country (LMIC) and newly emerging economy (NEE) are often used interchangeably but refers only to the economy of the countries. The World Bank classifies the world's economies into four groups, based on gross national income per capita: high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low income countries. Least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing states are all sub-groupings of developing countries. Countries on the other end of the spectrum are usually referred to as high-income countries or developed countries. There are controversies over the term's use, as some feel that it perpetuates an outdated concept of "us" and "them". In 2015, the World Bank declared that the "developing/developed world categorization" had become less relevant and that they will phase out the use of that descriptor. Instead, their reports will present data aggregations for regions and income groups. The term "Global South" is used by some as an alternative term to developing countries. Developing countries tend to have some characteristics in common often due to their histories or geographies. For example, they commonly have: lower levels of access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, energy poverty, higher levels of pollution (e.g. air pollution, littering, water pollution, open defecation), higher proportions of people with tropical and infectious diseases (neglected tropical diseases), more road traffic accidents, and generally poorer quality infrastructure. In addition, there are also often high unemployment rates, widespread poverty, widespread hunger, extreme poverty, child labour, malnutrition, homelessness, substance abuse, prostitution, overpopulation, civil disorder, human capital flight, a large informal economy, high crime rates (extortion, robbery, burglary, murder, homicide, arms trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, kidnapping, rape), low education levels, economic inequality, school desertion, inadequate access to family planning services, teenage pregnancy, many informal settlements and slums, corruption at all government levels, and political instability. Unlike developed countries, developing countries lack rule of law. Access to healthcare is often low. People in developing countries usually have lower life expectancies than people in developed countries, reflecting both lower income levels and poorer public health. The burden of infectious diseases, maternal mortality, child mortality and infant mortality are typically substantially higher in those countries. The effects of climate change are expected to impact developing countries more than high-income countries, as most of them have a high climate vulnerability or low climate resilience.Developing countries often have lower median ages than developed countries. Population aging is a global phenomenon, but population age has risen more slowly in developing countries.Development aid or development cooperation is financial aid given by foreign governments and other agencies to support developing countries' economic, environmental, social, and political development. If the Sustainable Development Goals which were set up by the United Nations for the year 2030 are achieved, they would overcome many of these problems. Terms used to classify countries There are several terms used to classify countries into rough levels of development. Classification of any given country differs across sources, and sometimes, these classifications or the specific terminology used is considered disparaging. By income groups The World Bank classifies the world's economies into four groups, based on gross national income per capita calculated using the Atlas method, re-set each year on July 1: low income countries lower-middle income countries upper-middle income countries high income countries (similar to developed countries)The three groups that are not "high income" are together referred to as "low and middle income countries" (LMICs). For example, for 2022 fiscal year, a low income country is defined as one with a GNI per capita less than 1,045 in current US$; a lower middle-income country is one with GNI per capita between 1,046 to 4,095 in current US$; an upper middle-income country is one with GNI per capita between 4,096 to 12,695 in current US$, and a high income country is one with GNI per capita of more than 12,696 in current US$. Historical thresholds are documented. By markets and economic growth Use of the term "market" instead of "country" usually indicates specific focus on the characteristics of the countries' capital markets as opposed to the overall economy. Developed countries and developed markets Developing countries include in decreasing order of economic growth or size of the capital market: Newly industrialized countries Emerging markets Frontier markets Least developed countries (also called less economically developed country)Under other criteria, some countries are at an intermediate stage of development, or, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put it, following the fall of the Soviet Union, "countries in transition": all those of Central and Eastern Europe (including Central European countries that still belonged to the "Eastern Europe Group" in the UN institutions); the former Soviet Union (USSR) countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan); and Mongolia. By 2009, the IMF's World Economic Outlook classified countries as advanced, emerging, or developing, depending on "(1) per capita income level, (2) export diversification—so oil exporters that have high per capita GDP would not make the advanced classification because around 70% of its exports are oil, and (3) degree of integration into the global financial system". By geography Developing countries can also be categorized by geography: Small Island Developing States (a group of developing countries that are small island countries which tend to share similar sustainable development challenges: small but growing populations, limited resources, remoteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on international trade, and fragile environments). Landlocked Developing Countries (landlocked countries often experience economic and other disadvantages) By other parameters Heavily indebted poor countries, a definition by a program of the IMF and World Bank Transition economy, moving from a centrally planned to market-driven economy Multi-dimensional clustering system: with the understanding that different countries have different development priorities and levels of access to resources and institutional capacities and to offer a more nuanced understanding of developing countries and their characteristics, scholars have categorized them into five distinct groups based on factors such as levels of poverty and inequality, productivity and innovation, political constraints and dependence on external flows. By self declaration In general, the WTO accepts any country's claim of itself being "developing". Certain countries that have become "developed" in the last 20 years by almost all economic metrics, still insist to be classified as "developing country", as it entitles them to a preferential treatment at the WTO, countries such as Brunei, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Macao, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates have been cited and criticized for this self-declared status. Measure and concept of development Development can be measured by economic or human factors. Developing countries are, in general, countries that have not achieved a significant degree of industrialization relative to their populations, and have, in most cases, a medium to low standard of living. There is an association between low income and high population growth. The development of a country is measured with statistical indices such as income per capita (per person), gross domestic product per capita, life expectancy, the rate of literacy, freedom index and others. The UN has developed the Human Development Index (HDI), a compound indicator of some of the above statistics, to gauge the level of human development for countries where data is available. The UN had set Millennium Development Goals from a blueprint developed by all of the world's countries and leading development institutions, in order to evaluate growth. These goals ended in 2015, to be superseded by the Sustainable Development Goals. The concept of the developing nation is found, under one term or another, in numerous theoretical systems having diverse orientations – for example, theories of decolonization, liberation theology, Marxism, anti-imperialism, modernization, social change and political economy. Another important indicator is the sectoral changes that have occurred since the stage of development of the country. On an average, countries with a 50% contribution from the secondary sector (manufacturing) have grown substantially. Similarly countries with a tertiary sector stronghold also see a greater rate of economic development. Associated theories The term "developing countries" has many research theories associated with it (in chronological order): Modernization theory – to explain the process of modernization within societies Dependency theory – the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former Development theory – a collection of theories about how desirable change in society is best achieved. Postdevelopment theory – holds that the whole concept and practice of development is a reflection of Western-Northern hegemony over the rest of the world Criticisms of the term There is criticism for using the term "developing country". The term could imply inferiority of this kind of country compared with a developed country. It could assume a desire to develop along the traditional Western model of economic development which a few countries, such as Cuba and Bhutan, choose not to follow. Alternative measurements such as gross national happiness have been suggested as important indicators. One of the early criticisms that questioned the use of the terms "developing" and "underdeveloped" countries was voiced in 1973 by prominent historian and academic Walter Rodney who compared the economic, social and political parameters between the United States and countries in Africa and Asia.There is "no established convention" for defining "developing country". According to economist Jeffrey Sachs, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. The late global health expert Hans Rosling has argued against the terms, calling the concept "outdated" since the terms are used under the prerequisite that the world is divided in rich and poor countries, while the fact is that the vast majority of countries are middle-income. Given the lack of a clear definition, sustainability expert Mathis Wackernagel and founder of Global Footprint Network, emphasizes that the binary labeling of countries is "neither descriptive nor explanatory". Wackernagel and Rosling both argue that in reality, there are not two types of countries, but over 200 countries, all faced with the same laws of nature, yet each with unique features.The term "developing" refers to a current situation and not a changing dynamic or expected direction of development. Since the late 1990s, countries identified by the UN as developing countries tended to demonstrate higher growth rates than those in the developed countries category.To moderate the euphemistic aspect of the word "developing", international organizations have started to use the term less economically developed country for the poorest nations – which can, in no sense, be regarded as developing. This highlights that the standard of living across the entire developing world varies greatly. In 2015, the World Bank declared that the "developing / developed world categorization" had become less relevant, due to worldwide improvements in indices such as child mortality rates, fertility rates and extreme poverty rates. In the 2016 edition of its World Development Indicators (WDI), the World Bank made a decision to no longer distinguish between "developed" and "developing" countries in the presentation of its data, considering the two-category distinction outdated. Accordingly, World Bank is phasing out use of that descriptor. Instead, the reports by Worldbank (such as the WDI and the Global Monitoring Report) now include data aggregations for the whole world, for regions, and for income groups – but not for the "developing world". Related terms The term low and middle-income country (LMIC) is often used interchangeably with "developing country" but refers only to the economy of the countries. Least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing states are all sub-groupings of developing countries. Countries on the other end of the spectrum are usually referred to as high-income countries or developed countries. Global South The term "Global South" began to be used more widely since about 2004. It can also include poorer "southern" regions of wealthy "northern" countries. The Global South refers to these countries' "interconnected histories of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources are maintained". Third World (outdated) Common characteristics Government, politics and administration Many developing countries have only attained full self-determination and democracy after the second half of the 20th century. Many were governed by an imperial European power until decolonization. Political systems in developing countries are diverse, but most states had established some form of democratic governments by the early 21st century, with varying degrees of success and political liberty. The inhabitants of developing countries were introduced to democratic systems later and more abruptly than their Northern counterparts and were sometimes targeted by governmental and non-governmental efforts to encourage participation. 'Effective citizenship' is defined by sociologist Patrick Heller as: "closing [the] gap between formal legal rights in the civil and political arena, and the actual capability to meaningfully practice those rights".Beyond citizenship, the study of the politics of cross-border mobility in developing countries has also shed valuable light in migration debates, seen as a corrective to the traditional focus on developed countries. Some political scientists identify a 'typology of nationalizing, developmental, and neoliberal migration management regimes' across developing countries. Economy Following independence and decolonization in the 20th century, most developing countries had dire need of new infrastructure, industry and economic stimulation. Many relied on foreign investment. This funding focused on improving infrastructure and industry, but led to a system of systemic exploitation. They exported raw materials, such as rubber, for a bargain. Companies based in the Western world have often used the cheaper labor in developing countries for production. The West benefited significantly from this system, but left developing countries undeveloped. This arrangement is sometimes called neocolonialism, meaning a system in which less-developed countries are taken advantage of by developed countries. It does not necessarily mean that former colonies are still controlled by their former colonizer; it refers to colonial-like exploitation. Developing countries are often helping further develop rich countries, rather than being developed themselves. Several institutions have been established with the goal of putting an end to this system. One of these institutions is the New International Economic Order. They have a 'no-strings-attached' policy that promotes developing countries remaining or becoming self-sufficient. More specifically, they advocate sovereignty over natural resources and industrialization. Coalitions of developing nations, like the NIEO, frequently lobby for parity in the world stage. The rise of China might imply the rise of the BRIC countries. Common challenges The global issues most often discussed by developing countries include globalisation, global health governance, health, and prevention needs. This is contrasted by issues developed nations tend to address, such as innovations in science and technology.Most developing countries have these criteria in common: High levels of poverty – measured based on GNI per capita averaged over three years. For example, if the GNI per capita is less than US$1,025 (as of 2018) the country is regarded as a least developed country. Human resource weakness (based on indicators of nutrition, health, education and adult literacy). Economic vulnerability (based on instability of agricultural production, instability of exports of goods and services, economic importance of non-traditional activities, merchandise export concentration, handicap of economic smallness, and the percentage of population displaced by natural disasters). Among other challenges, developing countries have a higher risk of suffering a balance of payments crisis. Urban slums According to UN-Habitat, around 33% of the urban population in the developing world in 2012, or about 863 million people, lived in slums. In 2012, the proportion of urban population living in slums was highest in Sub-Saharan Africa (62%), followed by South Asia (35%), Southeast Asia (31%) and East Asia (28%).: 127 The UN-Habitat reports that 43% of urban population in developing countries and 78% of those in the least developed countries live in slums.Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons. Causes include rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, forced or manipulated ghettoization, poor planning, politics, natural disasters and social conflicts. For example, as populations expand in poorer countries, rural people move to cities in extensive urban migration that results in the creation of slums.In some cities, especially in countries in Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, slums are not just marginalized neighborhoods holding a small population; slums are widespread, and are home to a large part of urban population. These are sometimes called "slum cities". Violence against women Several forms of violence against women are more prevalent in developing countries than in other parts of the world. Acid throwing is associated with Southeast Asia, including Cambodia. Honor killing is associated with the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. Marriage by abduction is found in Ethiopia, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Abuse related to payment of bride price (such as violence, trafficking and forced marriage) is linked to parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.Female genital mutilation (FGM) is another form of violence against women which is still occurring in many developing countries. It is found mostly in Africa, and to a lesser extent in the Middle East and some other parts of Asia. Developing countries with the highest rate of women who have been cut are Somalia (with 98% of women affected), Guinea (96%), Djibouti (93%), Egypt (91%), Eritrea (89%), Mali (89%), Sierra Leone (88%), Sudan (88%), Gambia (76%), Burkina Faso (76%), and Ethiopia (74%). Due to globalization and immigration, FGM is spreading beyond the borders of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and to countries such as Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, New Zealand, the U.S., and UK.The Istanbul Convention prohibits female genital mutilation (Article 38). As of 2016, FGM has been legally banned in many African countries. According to UN Women facts and figures on ending violence against women, it is estimated that 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and sexual violence by intimate partners or sexual violence by a non-partner (not including sexual harassment) at some point in their lives. Evidence shows women who have had experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence report higher rates of depression, having an abortion and acquiring HIV, compared to women who have not had experienced any physical or sexual violence.Data from the Middle East and North Africa shows that men who witnessed their fathers against their mothers, and men who experienced some form of violence as children, more likely have reported perpetrating intimate partner violence in their adult relationships. Healthcare and public health The status of healthcare that the general public can access is substantially different between developing countries and developed countries. People in developing countries usually have a lower life expectancy than people in developed countries, reflecting both lower income levels and poorer public health. The burden of infectious diseases, maternal mortality, child mortality and infant mortality are typically substantially higher in those countries. Developing countries also have less access to medical health services generally, and are less likely to have the resources to purchase, produce and administer vaccines, even though vaccine equity worldwide is important to combatting pandemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Undernutrition is more common in developing countries. Certain groups have higher rates of undernutrition, including women – in particular while pregnant or breastfeeding – children under five years of age, and the elderly. Malnutrition in children and stunted growth of children is the cause for more than 200 million children under five years of age in developing countries not reaching their developmental potential. About 165 million children were estimated to have stunted growth from malnutrition in 2013. In some developing countries, overnutrition in the form of obesity is beginning to present within the same communities as undernutrition.The following list shows the further significant environmentally-related causes or conditions, as well as certain diseases with a strong environmental component: Illness/disease (malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, etc.): Illness imposes high and regressive cost burdens on families in developing countries. Tropical and infectious diseases (neglected tropical diseases) Unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and hygiene Indoor air pollution in developing nations Pollution (e.g. air pollution, water pollution) Motor vehicle collisions Unintentional poisoning Non communicable diseases and weak healthcare systems Water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) Access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is at very low levels in many developing countries. In 2015 the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that "1 in 3 people, or 2.4 billion, are still without sanitation facilities" while 663 million people still lack access to safe and clean drinking water. The estimate in 2017 by JMP states that 4.5 billion people currently do not have safely managed sanitation. The majority of these people live in developing countries. About 892 million people or 12 percent of the global population, practiced open defecation instead of using toilets in 2016. Seventy-six percent (678 million) of the 892 million people practicing open defecation in the world live in just seven countries. Countries with a high number of people openly defecating are India (348 million), followed by Nigeria (38.1 million), Indonesia (26.4 million), Ethiopia (23.1 million), Pakistan (19.7 million), Niger (14.6 million) and Sudan (9.7 million).Sustainable Development Goal 6 is one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the UN in 2015. It calls for clean water and sanitation for all people. This is particularly relevant for people in developing countries. Energy In 2009, about 1.4 billion of people in the world lived without electricity. 2.7 billion relied on wood, charcoal, and dung (dry animal dung fuel) for home energy requirements. This lack of access to modern energy technology limits income generation, blunts efforts to escape poverty, affects people's health due to indoor air pollution, and contributes to global deforestation and climate change. Small-scale renewable energy technologies and distributed energy options, such as onsite solar power and improved cookstoves, offer rural households modern energy services.Renewable energy can be particularly suitable for developing countries. In rural and remote areas, transmission and distribution of energy generated from fossil fuels can be difficult and expensive. Producing renewable energy locally can offer a viable alternative.Renewable energy can directly contribute to poverty alleviation by providing the energy needed for creating businesses and employment. Renewable energy technologies can also make indirect contributions to alleviating poverty by providing energy for cooking, space heating, and lighting.Kenya is the world leader in the number of solar power systems installed per capita. Pollution Water pollution Water pollution is a major problem in many developing countries. It requires ongoing evaluation and revision of water resource policy at all levels (international down to individual aquifers and wells). It has been suggested that water pollution is the leading worldwide cause of death and diseases, and that it accounts for the deaths of more than 14,000 people daily.India and China are two countries with high levels of water pollution: An estimated 580 people in India die of water pollution related illness (including waterborne diseases) every day. About 90 percent of the water in the cities of China is polluted. As of 2007, half a billion Chinese had no access to safe drinking water.However, after a series of reforms, China's environment began to demonstrate enormous improvements around the 2010s. Under the leadership of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, a sizable fraction of high-pollution industries have been gradually phased out and many illegally polluting factories were sanctioned or closed. A considerable amount of effort went to enforce environmental regulations at regional levels and holding persons of malpractice accountable, including officials and firm managers. The slogan "clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as gold and silver mountains" proposed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2005 signifies China's determination in amending environmental burdens created during industrialization while shifting to more sustainable modes of development and adopting high-end industries. Water bodies around the country are much cleaner than a decade ago and steadily approaching natural levels in pollutants. In 2021, China introduced the "coal to gas" policy as one of many policies directed towards achieving peak carbon emissions in 2060. Coal combustion in homes, power stations and production industries constitutes 60% of total energy consumption in China and is the main source of water and air pollution. It is speculated that pollution sources will be progressively eliminated as China reaches the upper tiers of developing countries. Further details of water pollution in several countries, including many developing countries: Indoor air pollution Indoor air pollution in developing nations is a major health hazard. A major source of indoor air pollution in developing countries is the burning of biomass. Three billion people in developing countries across the globe rely on biomass in the form of wood, charcoal, dung, and crop residue, as their domestic cooking fuel. Because much of the cooking is carried out indoors in environments that lack proper ventilation, millions of people, primarily poor women and children face serious health risks. Globally, 4.3 million deaths were attributed to exposure to IAP in developing countries in 2012, almost all in low and middle income countries. The South East Asian and Western Pacific regions bear most of the burden with 1.69 and 1.62 million deaths, respectively. Almost 600,000 deaths occur in Africa. An earlier estimate from 2000 put the death toll between 1.5 million and 2 million deaths.Finding an affordable solution to address the many effects of indoor air pollution is complex. Strategies include improving combustion, reducing smoke exposure, improving safety and reducing labor, reducing fuel costs, and addressing sustainability. Climate change Particular vulnerability to climate change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that warming of the climate system due to human intervention is 'unequivocal'. The effects of climate change will be felt around the globe and will result in events such as extreme weather events, droughts, floods, biodiversity loss, disease and sea level rise, which are dangerous for societies and the environment.Although 79% of carbon emissions are produced by developed countries, and developing countries have not been the major cause of climate change, they are the most at risk from the effects of these changes and may face challenges in adapting to climate change due to the intersecting issues of high climate vulnerability, low economic status, restricted access to technology, failing infrastructure and limited access to financial resources. Where a country is particularly vulnerable to climate change they are called "highly climate vulnerable". This applies to many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, fragile states or failed states like Afghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar, and Somalia, as well as to Small Island Developing States. In the cases where developing countries produce only small quantities of greenhouse gas emissions per capita but are very vulnerable to the negative effects of global warming, the term "forced riders" as opposed to the "free riders" has been used as a descriptor. Such countries include Comoros, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.Climate vulnerability has been quantified in the Climate Vulnerability Monitor reports of 2010 and 2012. Climate vulnerability in developing countries occurs in four impact areas: health, extreme weather, habitat loss, and economic stress. A report by the Climate Vulnerability Monitor in 2012 estimated that climate change causes 400,000 deaths on average each year, mainly due to hunger and communicable diseases in developing countries.: 17  These effects are most severe for the world's poorest countries. Internationally there is recognition of the mismatch between those that have caused climate change and those which will suffer the most from climate change, termed "climate justice". It has been a topic for discussion at some of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences (COP). "When we think about livelihoods at risk from climate change impacts, we know that people living in developing countries, and especially the least-developed countries and small island states, often have the least financial resources to adapt," says Nancy Saich, the European Investment Bank’s chief climate change expert. Impacts A changing climate also results in economic burdens. The economies in Least Developed Countries have lost an average of 7% of their gross domestic product for the year 2010, mainly due to reduced labor productivity.: 14  Rising sea levels cost 1% of GDP to the least developed countries in 2010 – 4% in the Pacific – with 65 billion dollars annually lost from the world economy. Another example is the impact on fisheries: approximately 40 countries are acutely vulnerable to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on fisheries. Developing countries with large fisheries sectors are particularly affected.: 279  During the Cancún COP16 in 2010, donor countries promised an annual $100 billion by 2020 through the Green Climate Fund for developing countries to adapt to climate change. However, concrete pledges by developed countries have not been forthcoming. Emmanuel Macron (President of France) said at the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn (COP 23): "Climate change adds further injustice to an already unfair world". Economic development and climate are inextricably linked, particularly around poverty, gender equality, and energy.Tackling climate change will only be possible if the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are met, in particular Sustainable Development Goal 13 on climate action.Climate stress is likely to add to existing migration patterns in developing countries and beyond but is not expected to generate entirely new flows of people.: 110  A report by the World Bank in 2018 estimated that around 143 million people in three regions (Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America) could be forced to move within their own countries to escape the slow-onset impacts of climate change. They will migrate from less viable areas with lower water availability and crop productivity and from areas affected by rising sea level and storm surges.In spite of the cumulative stressors and challenges faced by developing countries in adapting to the effects of climate change, there are those that are world leaders in the field such as Bangladesh. Bangladesh created a national programme in 2009 focused on how the country would adapt to climate change (the first country to do so). It established a fund to support these plans, spending on average $1 billion annually in this regard. Population growth Over the last few decades, global population growth has largely been driven by developing countries, which often have higher birth rates (higher fecundity rate) than developed countries. According to the United Nations, family planning can help to slow population growth and decrease poverty in these countries.The violent herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria, the March 2019 attacks against Fulani herders in Mali, the Sudanese nomadic conflicts and other conflicts in the countries of the Sahel region have been exacerbated by climate change, land degradation, and population growth. Droughts and food shortages have been also linked to the Northern Mali conflict. Poor governance Many developing countries are considered flawed democracies or authoritarian regimes by democracy indices such as the V-Dem Democracy indices and Democracy Index (The Economist). Following decolonization and independence, elites have often had oligarchic control of the government.The establishment of a healthy democratic state has often been challenged by widespread corruption and nepotism and a low confidence and participation in democratic process. Political instability and political corruption are common problems. To fully reach the goal of a low level of corruption, developing countries are usually using special steps for different establishments inside their territories, such as : Development or creation of a fair public administration system that is not partially based on corruption and is entirely based on the values and laws of the country Better investigation towards the sources of the corruption and probable causes of that particular action Publicly informing the residents about the source of corruption and negative influence on the countries economy Regulation of the official positions of an individual to not be the source of abuse for corruption. Creation of special laws dedicated to the corruption itself for specific establishments Others Other common challenges include: Increased and intensified industrial and agricultural production and emission of toxic chemicals directly into the soil, air, and water, unsustainable use of energy resources; high dependency on natural resources for livelihood, leading to unsustainable exploitation or depletion of those resources; child marriage, indebtedness (see Debt of developing countries) and under performing civil service (see Civil service reform in developing countries), food insecurity, illiteracy and unemployment.The economies of many developing nations are tried to primary products and a majority of their exports go to advanced nations. When advanced nations encounter economic downturns, they can quickly transmitted to their developing country trading partners as seen in global economic downturn of 2008–2009. Opportunities Human Capital Trade Policy: Countries with more restrictive policies have not grown as fast as countries with open and less distorted trade policies. Investment: Investment has a positive effect on growth. Education Aid for Trade: Included in Sustainable Development Goal 8 under Target 8.a.1 Increase aid for trade is an initiative to help developing countries practice trade and benefit. Aid for trade is to assist developing countries in trade related programmes, priotise trade and trade capacity, improve trade performance and reduce poverty. Global partnership: A provision of Sustainable Development Goal 17 which advocates for international investment and support to achieve innovative technological development, access to market, and fair trade for developing countries. Country lists Developing countries according to International Monetary Fund The following are considered developing economies according to the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Database, April 2023. Countries not listed by IMF Abkhazia Cuba North Korea Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic South Ossetia Upper middle income countries by World Bank Lower middle income countries by World Bank Countries and regions that are graduated developed economies The following list, including the Four Asian Tigers and new Eurozone European Union countries (except for Czech Republic), were historically considered developing countries and regions until the 1990s, and are now listed as advanced economies (developed countries and regions) by the IMF. Time in brackets is the time to be listed as advanced economies. Hong Kong (since 1997) Israel (since 1997) Singapore (since 1997) South Korea (since 1997) Taiwan (since 1997) Cyprus (since 2001) Slovenia (since 2007) Malta (since 2008) Czech Republic (since 2009, since 2006 by World Bank) Slovakia (since 2009) Estonia (since 2011) Latvia (since 2014) Lithuania (since 2015) Andorra (since 2021) Croatia (since 2023)Three economies lack data before being listed as advanced economies. However, because of the lack of data, it is difficult to judge whether they were advanced economies or developing economies before being listed as advanced economies. San Marino (since 2012) Macau (since 2016) Puerto Rico (since 2016) Newly industrialized countries Ten countries belong to the "newly industrialized country" classification. They are countries whose economies have not yet reached a developed country's status but have, in a macroeconomic sense, outpaced their developing counterparts: BRICS countries Five countries belong to the "emerging markets" groups and are together called the BRICS countries: Brazil (since 2006) Russia (since 2006) India (since 2006) China (since 2006) South Africa (since 2010) Society and culture Media coverage Western media tends to present a generalized view of developing countries through biased media coverage; mass media outlets tend to focus disproportionately on poverty and other negative imagery. This common coverage has created a dominant stereotype of developing countries: "the 'South' is characterized by socioeconomic and political backwardness, measured against Western values and standards." Mass media's role often compares the Global South to the North and is thought to be an aid in the divide. Mass media has also played a role in what information the people in developing countries receive. The news often covers developed countries and creates an imbalance of information flow. The people in developing countries do not often receive coverage of the other developing countries but instead gets generous amounts of coverage about developed countries. See also Colonialism Economic miracle International development Land reform List of countries by wealth per adult Women migrant workers from developing countries Notes References Works cited World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change. World Bank Publications. 6 November 2009. ISBN 978-0-8213-7988-2. External links Quotations related to Developing country at Wikiquote

women in climate change

The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."Many studies have documented the gender gap in science and investigated why women are not included or represented, particularly at higher levels of research. Despite significant progress, female scientists continue to endure discrimination, unequal pay, and funding inequities, according to a special report published in the journal Nature in 2013. It also states that 70 percent of men and women around the world regard science as a male endeavor. Women encounter hurdles due to their family obligations, and they are underrepresented in publications and citations. Overview Women have made major contributions to climate change research and policy and to broader analysis of global environmental issues. They include many women scientists as well as policy makers and activists. Women researchers have made significant contributions to major scientific assessments such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and are reasonably well represented on key global change committees of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and US National Academy of Sciences. Women have played important leadership roles in international climate policy. For example, Christiana Figueres leads the international climate negotiations as the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and former Irish President Mary Robinson is the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change. Susan Solomon chaired the climate science working group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment in 2007. Underrepresentation of women in science Women are generally underrepresented in science and have faced many barriers to their success and recognition. Following the scientific revolution in the 17th century European women became involved in observational science, including astronomy, natural history and weather observations although many universities would not admit women until the late 19th century.The latest report from the US National Science Foundation shows that while women are now earning half of the undergraduate degrees in science and engineering, most of these are in the biosciences (especially pre-med) compared to physics, computer sciences and engineering (20%). In terms of doctorates, women are also only 20% of the engineering and physics PhDs. Although the proportion of women full professors in the US has doubled since 1993 women occupy less than 1/4 of senior faculty positions in science and engineering and women earn less than men at the same level. It has been noted that women of color, indigenous women and women from the global south are even more likely to be overlooked, to be poorly represented in the academy and leadership. This is associated with a legacy of discrimination, lack of educational opportunities, language barriers, and a lack of effort to identify and cite them. Women in climate change disciplines Women are underrepresented in key disciplines for the study of climate change. For example, women are a minority in the earth sciences where surveys reveal that less than 20% of meteorologists and geoscientists are women. A recent analysis of US atmospheric science doctoral programs reveals that women were 17% of tenure track and tenured faculty, with even smaller proportions at higher rank, and 53% of departments had two or fewer women faculty. Women are slightly better represented in the ecological sciences. One study reports that women are 55% of graduate students in ecology but only 1/3 of tenured faculty are women and that 3/4 of the articles in the flagship international journal - Ecology - are written by men. Women received proportionally less research funding and were less likely to be cited by their colleagues. Women members of the Ecological Society of America increased from 23% in 1992 to 37% in 2010.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization publishes data on women in science worldwide. Overall women are better represented as a share of total scientific researchers in Latin America, Oceania and Europe (30%+) and least in Asia (19%). Arguments for women in science and climate change It is argued that when women are overlooked as scholars and decision makers the world fails to take advantage of its full human capacity, which is needed for issues as urgent as climate change. Women may also take more collaborative approaches, especially in negotiations, and may pay more attention to disadvantaged groups and to the natural environment.Gender has become an issue because of women's essential roles in managing resources such as water, forests and energy and as women lead fights for environmental protection.A general concern has been expressed about the need to highlight the work of women and to include more women in major committees in order to provide gender balance, social justice, and inspiration to young women to enter careers in science. This reflects more general arguments about the barriers to women's advancement and the need for women to "Lean in" to leadership positions. Women and international climate policy The outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development - the Future we Want - recognized the need to remove barriers to the full and equal participation of women in decision making and management and the need to increase women in leadership positions. A report prepared by UN Women, the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice, the Global Gender and Climate Alliance and the UNFCCC recognizes the structural inequalities that impede the representation of women in climate science, negotiations and policies and recommends greater gender balance in the UNFCCC and national delegations. The report argues that the "challenges of climate change cannot be solved without empowering women" and that women have been marginalized in international negotiations. It reports data that show weak representation of women in the institutions of the UNFCCC including the Adaptation Committee (25%), the GEF Council (19%) and the Expert Group (15%) and that overall women constitute less than 20% of delegation heads and less than 30% of delegation members at UNFCCC conferences. The Manthropocene A call for international science to pay greater attention to the inclusion of women scholars was made by Kate Raworth and then in her article "Must the Anthropocene be the Manthropocene?" She pointed out that the working group of 36 scientists and scholars who convened in Berlin in 2014 to begin assessing evidence humanity was entering a new epoch, the Anthropocene, was composed almost entirely of men. She stated: "Leading scientists may have the intellect to recognize that our planetary era is dominated by human activity, but they still seem oblivious to the fact that their own intellectual deliberations are bizarrely dominated by white northern male voices". Women working in climate change There are a variety of ways to identify women who have made major contributions to climate change. The first is the list of authors of the high level international assessments for the UN and other organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The second is to examine women who have been invited to join the editorial boards of climate change refereed journals. A third is to look at the membership of the global change committees of the International Council for Science (ICSU). And a fourth is to recognize women that are members of their National Academy of Sciences who work on climate change. Many of them are IPCC or other report authors, and also members of ICSU committees, members of their National Academy and other marks of accomplishment. Seven cities around the world have appointed women as Chief Heat Officers (CHOs) to take action against extreme heat due to climate change. Ecofeminism Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism that sees environmentalism and the relationship between women and the earth as interlinked. According to Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974), ecofeminism relates the oppression and domination of all marginalized groups (women, people of color, children, the poor) to the oppression and domination of nature (animals, land, water, air, etc.). The Greta Thunberg effect Currently, young girls are taking more action at a younger age which is known as the "Greta Thunberg effect." Greta Thunberg is a nineteen-year-old environmental activist, who is well known for her work on fighting climate change, and is seen as a role model for younger girls. These new generations of girls are being called "eco-warriors", they are taking actions for the environment in various ways. In Kazakhstan, a group of young girls named Team Coco have come together to fight the ecological problems that pollute their nation, in order to accomplish this they have created an app known as TECO which is an "augmented reality game that merges educational and entertainment tools to help players change their behavior and become more eco-conscious". More girls have been taking action against climate change by using technology, and in turn help encourage other political leaders to take action for climate change and business corporations to reduce the carbon foot print they leave behind. Women climate researchers Following is a comprehensive list of women researchers in the climate change field. Note that not all women researchers have their individual Wikipedia pages that showcase their work (red text indicates no Wikipedia page). You can amplify their work by creating individual Wikipedia pages and updating them if they already exist. Sharina Abdul Halim: Environmental Sociologist at the Institute for Environment and Development, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia. Her research focuses on islands and indigenous communities, sustainable livelihoods, tourism development and heritage conservation. She is a lead author for Chapter 5 on the IPCC 1.5-C Special Report and Chapter 10 for the Working Group II of the IPCC AR6. Ibidun Adelekan: Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her research focuses on climate-society interactions, human dimensions of global environmental change, vulnerability and resilience of human-environment systems to climate change. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 and a contributing author to the IPCC AR5 - Africa Chapter. Carolina Adler: Executive Director of Mountain Research Initiative(MRI), Switzerland where she oversees the work of the MRI coordination office, promotes global change research agenda and supports regional and thematic collaborations across mountain communities worldwide. She is an Environmental Scientist and Geographer by background and has vast experience in international career, both in public and private sector. She is a lead author of the IPCC Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere and Working Group II of IPCC AR6. Paulina Aldunce: Associate Professor of the Department of Environmental Science and Natural Resources and the Deputy Director of the Center of Disaster Risk Reduction, CITRID at University of Chile, Chile. Her research interests include the social and institutional dimension of disaster management and climate change, with a focus on adaptation, resilience, transformation, and local and community management. She is a leading author of three IPCC reports including the latest IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Elham Ali: Professor of Oceanography at the University of Suez, Egypt where she is the head of the Department of Aquatic Environment Sciences and Director of Suez University International Relations Office. Her expertise includes aquatic ecology, marine biodiversity, coastal ecology and water quality assessment and monitoring. She is the lead author of the IPCC AR6 and the coordinating lead author of the Mediterranean cross chapter. Paola A. Arias: Associate Professor at the Environmental School of University of Antioquia, Colombia. Her research interests include climate dynamics, climate change, climate variability and surface hydrology in Colombia and South America. She is a lead author for Working Group I of the IPCC AR6. Laura Astigarraga: Professor at the Department of Animal Production and Pastures at the University of Republic, Uruguay. Her research expertise includes climate change, dairy science, pasture management, agricultural economics and environmental science. She is an author of the IPCC AR6. Azar Zarrin: Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. She is the Director of Climate Research Institute, ASMERC, Iran and Eco Regional Center for Risk Management of Natural Disasters in Mashhad, Iran. Her research interests include regional and meso-scale climate modeling, climate variability and change, extreme weather, climatology of arid lands and Middle East. She is a review editor of the Chapter 2 of IPCC AR6, Working Group I. Karin Bäckstrand: Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden who has written extensively on climate and environmental governance and advises the ICSU Earth System Governance project. Sallie Baliunas: retired astrophysicist. She formerly worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and at one point was the deputy director of the Mount Wilson Rondrotiana Barimalala: Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interests include climate variability, modeling and change, air sea interaction and African climate. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6: The Physical Basis. Her current projects are CRISTAL project (Climate ResilIent development for SoutheasTern African isLands) where she serves as a Principal Investigator and a study of "uncertainty reduction in climate models for understanding development applications" over central and southern Africa. Birgit Bednar-Friedl: Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Graz, Austria. Her expertise includes environmental economics, natural resource management, climate change impacts, energy economics, and biodiversity and conservation. She is a coordinating lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Michele Betsill: Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University in the USA who is an expert on cities and climate change and transnational forms of climate governance. She is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee for the ICSU Earth System Governance project and was a contributing author to Working Group III of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Suruchi Bhadwal: Director of Earth Science and Climate Change at TERI (The Energy and Resource Institute), India. She leads climate change research focusing mainly on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation assessment and works closely with local communities. She was a lead author of the IPCC AR2, and a review editor for the IPCC AR5 WGII report and the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events. She is also a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report. Preety Bhandari: Director for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Division of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department (SDCC) at Asian Development Bank, Philippines. She also serves as the Chief of Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management thematic group. Her expertise include providing policy and strategic direction, accessing finance from Climate Investment Funds and Green Climate Fund, and supporting international negotiations on climate finance, in addition to the focus on environment, climate change and sustainable development. She is also a lead author of the upcoming IPCC AR6 report. Mercy Borbor-Cordova: Associate Professor at Escuela Superior Politécnica Del Litoral (ESPOL) in Ecuador. Her research focuses on ocean, human health, and interaction between climate and health. She is particularly interested in transferring knowledge to decision makers and practitioners especially in the field of climate services for coastal marine resources and human health. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Working Group III which focuses on mitigation. Lidia Brito: Professor of Forestry at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique who is the former Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology of Mozambique and has worked closely with UNESCO on global change issues and chaired the Planet under Pressure conference in 2012. Harriet Bulkeley: Professor of Geography at the University of Durham in the UK who is an expert on cities and climate change, energy and environmental governance. Jane Burston: Managing Director of the Clean Air Fund. She was previously Head of Energy and the Environment at the National Physical Laboratory and Head of Science for climate change and energy in the United Kingdom central government. Mercedes Bustamente: Ecologist and Full Professor at University of Brasília, Brazil. She is widely known for her contributions to the ecological knowledge of threatened tropical ecosystems and their interactions with human-induced changes. Her research lab focuses on studying the natural ecosystem's responses to changes in disturbance regimes, land use, biogeochemical cycles and climate. She is a lead author of IPCC AR6 and is an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Inés Camilloni: Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and an independent researcher at the Center for Research on the Sea and Atmosphere. Her research focuses on Climate Variability and Change in South America. She was a lead author for the IPCC AR5-WG1 and SR1.5 reports and is currently a review editor of IPCC AR6-WG1. Pasha Carruthers: Environmental Sustainability Adviser with a focus on sustainable development and global change issues. She was formerly a Cook Islands National Coordinator at RedCross Office in Cook Islands. She has wide experience in international negotiations, project proposal development, and participatory approaches through her work with the Government of the Cook Islands National Environment Service and Secretariat of the Pacific Community. She is a review editor of the IPCC AR6. Anny Cazenave: Deputy director of the French Laboratory for Geophysical Studies and Spatial Oceanography who is an expert on sea level rise and IPCC lead author. Ruth Cerezo-Mota: Researcher at the Laboratory of Engineering and Coastal Processes at National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico. Her research interests include climatology, climate change, regional climate models and extreme events. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis. She completed her PhD from University of Oxford in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics. Noemí Chacón: Researcher at Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), Venezuela. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Lynette Cheah: Associate Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore. She leads the Sustainable Urban Mobility research group to reduce environmental impacts of passengers and urban freight transport. Her expertise lies in transport modeling and simulation, life cycle energy and environmental assessment of products and systems, and urban metabolism. She is a review editor of the IPCC AR6. Ying Chen: Professor at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Graduate School and a Senior Research Fellow at Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies (IUE), CASS, China. She is also the Deputy Director of CASS Research Center for Sustainable Development. Her research interests include international climate governance, energy and climate policy. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Wenying Chen: Professor in Energy, Environment and Economics Research Institute, Tsinghua University, China. Her research focuses on energy system modeling, energy development, and climate change mitigation strategy. She also researches CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) to develop an Arc-GIS based Decision Support System to map carbon emission sources and sinks. She is well known for her work in the area of energy environment, economy modelling, carbon permit allocation and more. She is a review editor for both IPCC AR5 and AR6. So Min Cheong: Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Kansas, USA. Her research focuses on the social consequences of environmental disasters and climate change adaptation. She is a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and the IPCC special report on ocean and cryosphere. She has also worked on a number of commissioned reports for the Korean government, UNESCO and WMO on the topic of coastal management, climate change adaptation and boundary issues and disaster management. Julia Cole: Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan, USA. Expert on climate history, variability and corals. Leopold Leadership Fellow (2008), IPCC contributor and Google Science Communication Fellow (2011). Cecilia Conde: Professor of Atmospheric Science at UNAM, Mexico, who works on climate impacts on agriculture. She is the director of climate adaptation for the Mexican Institute of Ecology and Climate, contributor to IPCC. Leticia Cotrim Da Cunha: Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Oceanography at Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil. As a chemical oceanographer, her research focuses on the Southwestern Atlantic region and co-leads the Brazilian Ocean Acidification Research Network. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Working Group I. Faye Abigail Cruz: Laboratory Head of the Manila Observatory, Philippines. Her research is focused on regional climate and climate change, extreme weather events, and interactions between land surface and climate. She is also involved in the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-Southeast Asia project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Working Group I. Heidi Cullen: Director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives and director of the Information and Technology Dissemination (ITD) Division at MBARI, formally the chief scientist for Climate Central. Expert on climate change communication. Formerly climate change expert for weather channel. Science advisory board for NOAA Judith Curry: Professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology. She has written or co-authored over 140 research papers, mainly in the field of atmospheric science. She also runs her own climate blog, and has testified before the US House of Representatives. Gretchen Daily: Professor of Environmental Science at Stanford University, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, and senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Co-founder, Natural Capital Project. She is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She is a board member of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics and The Nature Conservancy and was a MacArthur fellow. Purnamita Dasgupta: Chair Professor and Head of Environmental Economics Unit at Institute of Economic Growth, India. Her research focuses on the relationship between environment and economic development. She has been an author and advisor to the international research assessments including the IPCC 1.5C Special Report and International Panel on Social Progress; the IPCC's Scientific Steering Group on Economics, Costing and Ethics; Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) and the Association of Commonwealth Universities. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Ruth DeFries: Professor of Sustainable Development Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University. She is a faculty affiliate of the Earth Institute, Columbia University. She is a member of the United States Academy of Sciences and was a MacArthur Fellow in 2007. Defries specializes in using remote sensing to study earth's habitability in the context of deforestation and other human drivers that influence biophysical and biogeochemical regulatory processes. Fatima Denton: Director of the United Nations University, Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA), Ghana. Her expertise lies in natural resource management, research and policy development and the African region. Formerly, she worked with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Canada-based International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and United Nations Environment Programme. She is a lead author for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, and a coordinating lead author for the IPCC AR6 Working Group III. Claudine Dereczynski: Professor at Institute of Geosciences, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Her research expertise include numerical weather prediction, regional climate modeling, climate variability, atmospheric science and climate change. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Sandra Diaz: Professor of Community and Ecosystems Ecology at Córdoba National University, and Senior Principal Researcher of the National Research Council of Argentina. She studies plant interactions with global change drivers and their effects on ecosystem properties. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2002 and is a Foreign Associate Member of the USA National Academy of Sciences. She participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the IPCC. She is a member of the Science Committee of the international programme on biodiversity science DIVERSITAS, and the founder and director of the international initiative Núcleo DiverSus on Diversity and Sustainability. Aïda Diongue-Niang: Adviser of the National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology, Senegal. She has more than 20 years of experience in interacting with a wide range of stakeholders at all levels and has expertise in numerical weather prediction, atmospheric physics, climate, monsoon and extreme events. She is a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment report Working Group I. Riyanti Djalante: Assistant Director/Head of Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance Division at the ASEAN Secretariat, Indonesia. She is also a visiting lecturer at United Nations University - Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability. Her research focuses on sustainable development, governance, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Currently, she is a fellow of the Earth System Governance Network and is a lead author of IPCC AR6. Fatima Driouech: Associate Professor and the Executive Coordinator of the Adaptation Metrics and Techniques Cluster at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco. Her research interests include climate variability, regional climate modeling and climate science. Previously, she was the Head of the Meteorological Research Center of the Moroccan Meteorology and the National Climate Centre. She was also Vice-Chair of Working Group I of the IPCC and she was lead author of the fifth IPCC report. For the recent IPCC AR6, she serves as a review editor. She is currently acting as co-coordinator of MedECC, the independent network of Mediterranean Experts on Climate and environmental Change. Opha Pauline Dube: Professor of Environmental Science, University of Botswana. Dube has expertise in sustainable development, community-inclusive environmental management, and climate change adaptation. She is an IPCC contributing author. Carolina Dubeux: Social Scientist and a Senior Researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research focuses on environmental analysis, climate change, sustainability, and ecological economics. Her work related to the mitigation of climate change and socio-economic development especially with Brazilian cities is recognized as pioneering. She was a lead author of the IPCC AR5 and is a review editor of the IPCC AR6. Kris Ebi: Professor of Global Health, University of Washington. Expert on climate change impacts on health, IPCC coordinating lead author. Tamsin Edwards: British climate scientist, lecturer at King's College London and a popular science communicator. Eunice Newton Foote: Conducted early studies on warming of air containing carbon dioxide, presented in 1856 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Sha Fu: Assistant Professor at the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, National Development and Reform Commission, China. She has expertise in GHG emission inventory and trends, GHG policies, emission reduction strategies including the financial, technological and capacity building aspects. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Inez Fung: Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of California, Berkeley. She studies interactions between climate change and biogeochemical cycles and models climate co-evolution with atmospheric CO2. She contributed to the IPCC and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She has been a fellow of NASA, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society. Laura Gallardo: Professor at the Geophysics Department (DGF), University of Chile and was the former Director for the Center of Excellence for Climate and Resilience Research, Chile. Her research interests include atmospheric modeling and data assimilation, air quality in mega cities, and aerosol-cloud-climate interactions. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Jacquelyn Gill: paleoecologist researching climate change and extinction in the ice age fossil record and Assistant Professor of Paleoecology and Plant Ecology at the University of Maine. Genevieve Guenther: Affiliate Faculty at the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School, she researches climate-change communication. She is an expert reviewer for the working group III of IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report. Joyeeta Gupta: Professor of environment and development in the global south at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam and UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft. She is a member of the Amsterdam Global Change Institute. She is a lead author of the IPCC and author of several books about global climate governance. Heide Hackmann: Chief Executive Officer, International Council for Science and former executive director, International Social Science Council (ISSC). She is a specialist in science policy studies, the governance of science, and research evaluation. Joanna Haigh: BBC Womans Hour Top 30 Power List of 2020, retired professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London and co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a former head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, and a former president—now a vice-president—of the Royal Meteorological Society. She is an expert in solar variability and climate modelling. Sandy Harrison: Professor in Global Palaeoclimates and Biogeochemical Cycles at the University of Reading. Katharine Hayhoe : Professor at Texas Tech University where she is director of the Climate Science Center. She is well known for her efforts to communicate faith based, especially Christian, concern about climate change and was an author of the US National Climate Assessment. Ann Henderson-Sellers: Emeritus Professor of the Department of Environment and Geography and founding director of the Climate Impacts Center at Macquarie University, Sydney. Former director of the World Climate Research Programme and the Environment Division at ANTSO. She was a convening lead author for the IPCC SAR. She is an elected Fellow of Australia's Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Her research comprises an intentional re-development of traditional climate science to communicate directly in the language of economics, policy, and regulation. Ellie Highwood: Professor of Climate Physics at the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading and Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Reading in the UK. Her research interest focus around atmospheric aerosols, climate change, science outreach, diversity and inclusion. Kathryn Hochstetler: Professor of International Development at London School of Economics. Her research is on the role of emerging powers in global climate politics, with a special focus on renewable electricity in Brazil and South Africa. Marika Holland: Senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) USA and until recently the chief scientist of the Community Earth System Model. Her research is on the role of sea ice in the climate system. IPCC author. Lesley Hughes: Distinguished Professor of Biology, a former federal Climate Commissioner and former Lead Author in the IPCC's 4th and 5th Assessment Report and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Integrity & Development) at Macquarie University. Her research has mainly focused on the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems. Antonina Ivanova Boncheva: Professor at the Department of Economics, Autonomous University of Baja California Sur, Mexico. Her expertise and interest include renewable energy, sustainable tourism, sustainable development, climate change policies, development economics and development planning. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Katharine Jacobs: Director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions (CCASS), Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona. CCASS builds and supports climate change adaptation and assessment capacity at regional, national and international scales. Jacobs is a full professor in Soil, Water and Environmental Science at the University of Arizona. From 2009 - 2013 Jacobs served as director of the U.S. National Climate Assessment and Assistant Director, Energy and Environment Division, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, USA. Jill Jager (Williams): Independent Scholar, former executive director of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) (1999 until 2002) and senior researcher at the Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI), Austria (2004 until 2008). She studies research themes ranging from energy and climate, biodiversity, global responsibility, public and stakeholder participation, integrating policies to linkages between knowledge and action for sustainable development. Hui Ju: Based at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China. Her research includes studying wheat quality, drought characteristics and impacts of climate change on evapotranspiration in the Huang-Huai-Hai plain in China. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Suzana Kahn Ribeiro: Professor at COPPE, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She researches renewable energy, climate change, urban mitigation alternatives and sustainable mobility. She is the coordinator of UFRJ Green Fund and the president of the Scientific Committee of Brazilian Panel on Climate Change. She served as a vice president of Working Group III for the IPCC AR5 report and currently serves as a coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6. Mary Therese Kalin Arroyo: Director of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity at the University of Chile in Santiago and winner of the Chilean National Prize in Natural Science in 2010. Her research interests center on the conservation of biodiversity of Mediterranean ecosystems and temperate forests of South America. She is a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, a member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences, and an honorary member of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Astrid Kiendler-Scharr: Director of the Institute for Energy and Climate Research IEK-8: Troposphäre, Germany. Her research interests include organic aerosol, atmospheric chemistry, aerosol and climate interactions, and atmospheric-biosphere exchange and feedback. She is a lead author of IPCC AR6. Şiir Kilkis: Associate Professor of Energy Systems Engineering at METU, Turkey and a senior researcher and advisor to the President at The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Her research includes development of SDEWES Index, novel net-zero district concepts and the Rational Exergy Management Model to curb carbon dioxide emissions. She is also a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Nana Ama Browne Klutse: Senior Lecturer at the Department of Physics, University of Ghana. Her research focuses on understanding climate dynamics and variability from observations, mainly of West Africa and the African Monsoon. Previously she worked at the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission as a senior research scientist. She currently serves as a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Sari Kovats: Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Environmental Research in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy. She is the knowledge mobilization lead for the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change and Health, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in partnership with Public Health England (PHE). She researches the effects of weather and climate on human health, including health impact assessments of climate change and epidemiological studies of the effects of climate, weather and weather events in urban and rural populations. She was a co-coordinating lead author of the Chapter 23 on Europe for the 5th IPCC Assessment Report. Svitlana Krakovska: Head of Applied Climatology Laboratory at Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute and senior scientist at National Antarctic Scientific Centre, Ukraine. Her expertise includes numerical modeling, atmospheric physics, climate change, climate variability and meteorology. She is a review editor of IPCC 1.5 C Special Report and a lead author of IPCC AR6. Won-Tae Kwon: Managing Director of APEC Climate Center and Science Advisor of National Institute of Meteorological Research, Korea. Her research interests include climate variability, precipitation, time series analysis, climate change and statistical modeling. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Alice Larkin: Professor of Climate Science and Energy Policy. Head of the School of Engineering] at the University of Manchester (UK) and member of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Trained as a physicist, Professor Larkin's research now focuses on reducing emissions from the energy system, with specialist interest in the aviation and shipping sectors. Corinne Le Quéré: Professor of Climate Change Science at University of East Angelia and former director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, UK whose research has made major contributions to carbon sciences and contributed to the annual carbon budgets of the ICSU Global Carbon project. She is the chair of France's High Council on climate and she is also a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change. June-yi Lee: Assistant Professor at IBS Center for Climate Physics, Pusan National University, Korea. Her research interests include paleo monsoon variability, earth system predictability including biogeochemical cycle with physical variables, and nearterm climate predictability and projection. She is a coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Margaret Leinen: Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Expert in paleoclimate, climate impacts on the ocean, climate engineering. She also serves as UC San Diego's vice chancellor for marine sciences and dean of the School of Marine Sciences. She formally served as Vice Provost for Marine and Environmental Initiatives and executive director of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, a unit of Florida Atlantic University. Maria Fernanda Lemos: Professor of Urban Planning and Design at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research focuses mainly on cities adaptation for climate change, urban resilience and sustainability and social housing. She is the lead author of Urban Areas in Coastal Zones, ARC3-2, and of the UCCRN-LA and a member of UCCRN (Urban Climate Change Research Network). She is also the coordinating lead author of IPCC AR6, Central and South America Chapter. Maria Carmen Lemos: Professor of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan and her broad research interest include climate adaptation and role of knowledge in building adaptive capacity. She was a lead author of IPCC's 5th Assessment Report and the 4th US National Climate Assessment. Debora Ley: Economic Affairs Officer of Energy and Natural Resources at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Chile. She is a lead author of IPCC 1.5 C Special Report and the IPCC AR6 report. She is an experienced renewable energy and climate change specialist who worked across different sectors and at different scales from grassroots to regional level in the field of clean energy and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Hong Liao: Professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China. Her research focuses on global and regional modeling of air pollutants and their effects on climate change. She is a member of the World Climate Research Programme and a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Diana Liverman: Professor of Geography and Development and formerly co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona USA and expert on the human dimensions of climate change. IPCC author. ICSU. Emma Liwenga: Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Her research focuses on agriculture, food and livelihood security, natural resource management and climate change adaptation. She was an author of the IPCC Special Report on Land and Climate Change and currently serves as a coordinating lead author of IPCC AR6 report. Jane Lubchenco: Professor of environmental science and marine ecology at Oregon State University. Former Administrator of NOAA and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (2009-2013). Her research interests include interactions between the environment and human well-being, biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable use of oceans and the planet. Nominated by President Obama in December 2008 as part of his "Science Dream Team". Amanda Lynch: Professor of Environmental Studies at Brown University and the director of Brown Institute of Environment and Society. She in an expert in polar climate modeling, indigenous environmental knowledge, and climate policy analysis. She is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Graciela Magrin: Researcher at the Institute of Climate and Water at Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA) in Argentina. She participated in the IPCC and served as Training Material Reviewer of vulnerability and adaptation assessment related to climate change in the agriculture sector at the UNFCCC Secretariat in Germany. She specializes in climate change, vegetal ecophysiology, and agrometeorology. Jennifer Marohasy: Australian biologist, columnist and blogger. She was a senior fellow at the free-market think tank, the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs between 2004 and 2009 and director of the Australian Environment Foundation until 2008. Paulina Martinetto: Researcher at National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her research focuses on ecology of nearshore marine ecosystems, climate change, and answering fundamental questions related to carbon budget in coastal and shelf ecosystems of the South West Atlantic. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Kate Marvel : New York City based climate scientist and science writer. She is an Associate Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Engineering's Department of Applied Physics and Mathematics. She writes regularly in her column "Hot Planet." for Scientific American. Catherine Masao: Lecturer at the Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Her research interests include conservation biology, ecology, biodiversity management and impact assessments. Currently, she is contributing as a lead author for the IPCC AR6 report. Valerie Masson-Delmotte: leading French climate scientist and research director at the Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, CEA) Valérie Masson-Delmotte: Senior researcher at the Laboratoire des Science du Climat et de l'environnement, France. Co-chair of IPCC Working Group I. She specializes in reconstructing and understanding past climate variations using natural archives, stable isotopes and climate models. Ritu Mathur: Director of Integrated Assessments and Modelling at The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), India. She is also an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Energy and Environment at TERI School of Advanced Studies. For the past two decades, she has been working in the field of sustainable development, energy security, mitigation and climate change. She has experience with IPCC assessments and has contributed to other national and global scientific assessments. Currently, she serves as a lead author to the IPCC AR6 report. Pamela Matson: Professor of Environmental Studies and former Dean of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, US; scholar of land use and sustainability science and member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Shannon McNeeley: Senior Researcher at the Pacific Institute and formerly a research scientist at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center at Colorado State University. She focuses on water and climate environmental justice for frontline communities and incorporates both natural and social sciences approach in her research. She was an author of third and fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment and currently serves on the steering committee of upcoming fifth National Adaptation Forum. Linda Mearns: Senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) USA who works on regional climate models and climate impacts. IPCC author. Liliana Raquel Miranda Sara: Founder and Executive Director of Cities for Life Foro, Peru. She is an architect, urban environmental planner, researcher and an activist. Her research focuses on climate change, cities, water, sustainable construction and justice issues. She is an Ashoka Fellow who designed and implemented pilot projects to promote sustainable building. Currently, she is serving as a lead author of Chapter 6 on Cities for the IPCC AR6 report. Mariana Moncassim Vale: Associate Professor at the Department of Ecology of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She works in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, the Amazon and focuses mainly on systematic conservation planning, ecosystem services, climate change, roadless areas, and GIS to prioritize species and area conservation. She is also a lead author for the IPCC AR6 report. Linda Mortsch: Senior Researcher, Adaptation and Impacts Research Division, Environment Canada. Adjunct in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo. She researches on the impact of climate change on water resources and wetlands in Canada, climate change scenario development, and "effective" communication of climate change information. She is a contributing author of the IPCC. Suzanne Moser: Consultant and researcher from Santa Cruz, California, USA who works on climate change impacts on coastal regions and on communication of climate information. ICSU committees. Aditi Mukherji: Principal Researcher at International Water Management Institute, India. Her expertise lies in climate change adaptation, groundwater institutions and policies, community management for water resources, political ecology, and water-energy-food nexus. Before IWMI, she was a theme leader of water and air at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Currently, she serves as a coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Maria Silvia Muylaert De Araujo: Based at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research focuses on land use change and renewable energy. She is the Assistant of the Rio de Janeiro State Government's Environment Secretary since 2007. She has contributed to IPCC work as a lead author in the IPCC AR5 and currently serves as a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Michelle Mycoo: Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Department of Geomatics Engineering and Land Management, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. She is the coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6 chapter on small islands and has served as Senior Technical Expert to various international, regional and local agencies in the field of urban planning, sustainable land, climate change and more. Her research focuses on strengthening science, policy and practice alignment/interface for optimal land use, infrastructure provision and environmental management. Soojeong Meong: Senior Research Fellow at Korea Environment Institute, Korea. She is a review editor of the IPCC AR6 report. Sarah Myhre: climate and ocean scientist with expertise in the physical, biological, and chemical consequences of abrupt climate warming. A Ph.D. holder from the University of California at Davis, and has worked as a research associate at the University of Washington's School of Oceanography. She is a Kavli Fellow with the National Academy of Science. Sasha Naidoo: Researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa. Her expertise lies in forest, wood anatomy, silviculture, wood science, climate change and environmental science. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Sunita Narain: Director general of the India-based Centre for Science and Environment and the director of the Society for Environmental Communications and publisher of the bimonthly magazine, Down To Earth. She is an influential environmental activist with interests in democracy at different scales, climate change, and natural resource management.Gemma Terersa Narisma: Executive Director of the Manila Observatory, Philippines and the Head of the Regional Climate Systems programme from 2017 - 2021. She was also an associate professor of the Physics Department at Ateneo de Manila University. She served as a coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6 Working Group I. Grace Ngaruiya: Head of the Ecology and Conservation Biology Section and a Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences at Kenyatta University, Kenya. She is also an IPCC AR6 lead author. Her research is focused on the relationship between climate change and Africa's heritage. Isabelle Niang: Professor at the University of Chiekh Anta Diop in Dakar. An expert in coastal erosion and climate change; coordinating lead author of the chapters on "Afrique du Groupe de travail II" for IPCC, in the 4th and 5th reports. Since 2008, she has been coordinating regional project ACCC (Adaptation au Changements Climatiques et Côtiers en Afrique de l'Ouest) and is based in BREDA/UNESCO. She is also Chair of the Pan-African Regional Committee for START (PACOM) through the Pan-African START Secretariat (PASS) based at the Institute for Resource Assessment (IRA) of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Andrea J. Nightingale: Professor of Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. An expert on the politics of climate change adaptation and mitigation, gender and intersectionality in relation to climate change and the politics of climate knowledge. Intan Nurhati: Senior Scientist at the Research Centre for Oceanography, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Indonesia. Her research focuses include indo-pacific climate variability, marine pollution and ocean acidification, and coral calcification in changing oceans. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Karen O'Brien: Professor of Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway who works on the human dimensions of global environmental change and societal transformation. IPCC author, ICSU committees Chioma Daisy Onyige-Ebeniro: Fellow at Kate Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities, The University of Bonn, Germany. She was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Her expertise lies in criminology, gender and crime, and environmental issues. She is a lead author of IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Naomi Oreskes: world-renowned geologist, historian and a Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science at Harvard university. She is a leading voice on the role of science in society and the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Elinor Ostrom: Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, USA who won the Nobel Prize for Economics and worked on the management of common property resources and sustainability. Bette Otto-Bliesner: Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and serves as head of NCAR's Paleoclimate Modeling Program. She is an expert in using computer-based models of Earth's climate system to investigate past climate change and climate variability across a wide range of time scales. IPCC author. Jean Palutikof: Founding Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) at Griffith University, Australia. Her research focuses on the application of climatic data to economic and planning issues, especially extreme events and their impacts. IPCC author. Swapna Panickal: Scientist at the Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, India. Her research focuses on the state-of-the-art earth system models to better predict the impact of climate change on the Indian monsoon. She is also a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Jyoti Parikh: Executive Director of Integrated Research and Action for Development IRADe. She is an expert on energy and environment problems of developing countries. She served as an energy consultant to the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Energy, EEC, Brussels and UN institutions such as UNIDO, FAO, UNU, UNESCO, and as an Environment Consultant to UNDP. IPCC author. Joyce E. Penner: Professor of Atmospheric Science at University of Michigan. She studies cloud and aerosol interactions and cloud microphysics, climate and climate change, global tropospheric chemistry and budgets, and modelling. IPCC co-ordinating lead author. Joy Jacqueline Pereira: Vice Chair of the Working Group II of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. She is a professor and Principal Research Fellow at the Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention Research Initiative of the Institute for Environment and Development in University Kebangsaan Malaysia (SEADPRI-UKM), and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia. Her research focuses on disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and mineral resource management for sustainable development, with a focus on linking science to policy. She has previously served as a coordinating lead author for Chapter 24 on Asia of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Lead Author for the IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report and a Review Editor for the 2012 IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. Rosa Perez: Senior Research Fellow at the Manila Observatory and a climate scientist specializing in hydro-meteorology, disaster risk reduction and adaptation policies on climate change. She is a lead author in Chapter 18 of the Working Group II of the 6th IPCC assessment report. She served as reviewer and lead author in the earlier IPCC assessment reports. At the Philippines Climate Change Commission, she is a member of the National Panel of Technical Experts. Patricia Fernanda Pinho: Visiting Professor/Researcher at Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research focuses on analysis of ecosystem services, human wellbeing, governance and climate change through socio-ecological lens. She is a lead author of Working Group II of IPCC AR6 and IPCC 1.5C Special Report. She has extensive experience in integrated impact analysis, vulnerabilities and adaptation to extreme events related to global environmental change. Vicky Pope: Head of the Climate Prediction Programme at the Hadley Centre, which provides independent scientific advice on climate change. Her research interests include developing and validating climate models. Joana Portugal Pereira: Senior Scientist at the IPCC Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change and holds a Visiting Researcher position at Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College, London, UK. Her research focuses on energy system innovations that mitigate local and global environmental impacts and her expertise includes energy scenario modelling, bioenergy, life cycle assessment and environmental modeling. She is a lead author of IPCC AR6 Report. Laura Ramajo Gallardo: Researcher at Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones, Chile. Her research interests include ocean observation, biological oceanography, biogeochemistry, climate change, ocean acidification, extreme events, fisheries and aquaculture and coastal communities. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6. Maureen Raymo: Paleoclimatologist and marine geologist. Interim Director of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. She is the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and the director of the Lamont–Doherty Core Repository. She is best known for the Uplift-Weathering Hypothesis. Katherine Richardson Christensen: Professor in Biological Oceanography at the University of Copenhagen's Sustainability Science Center. She was one of the main organizers of the scientific conference, "Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions," which sought to inform the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference. She studies carbon cycling in the upper ocean and how biological processes impact food webs. She also researches planetary boundaries. Maisa Rojas: Associate Professor at the Department of Geophysics, University of Chile, Chile. Her research interests include paleoclimate study of the evolution and dynamics of the climate system in the southern hemisphere over the last 25,000 years, regional climate modeling and climate change impacts on different sectors of society. She contributed to IPCC's work during the 5th Assessment Report as a lead author and currently serves as a coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Patricia Romero Lankao: Senior Research Scientist at NREL's Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences in joint appointment with University of Chicago's Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation. Previously worked as a Scientist II at Research Applications Laboratory and Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR UCAR), former deputy director, Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment, NCAR, and former professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. She studies the intersection among energy and water systems, mobility, and the built environment in cities. Terry Root: Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for Environment at Stanford University who works on ecosystems and climate change especially birds. IPCC author. Cynthia Rosenzweig: Researcher at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) New York who works on climate impacts on agriculture and on cities. IPCC author. Joyashree Roy: Professor of Economics, Jadavpur University in India who is an expert on the Economics of Climate Change and IPCC author, awarded the Prince Sultan Bin Aziz Prize. Madilte Rusticucci: Full Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is an expert of Climate Change and has been part of the IPCC Assessment Report - Working Group I since 2007. Currently, she is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 - Physical Science Report. Nahla Samargandi: Associate Professor of Economics and Finance at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. As an applied economist, she researches areas of economic growth, financial development, tourism, labor economics, environment and energy, and macroeconomics policy shocks. She is also a lead author of the investment and finance chapter of the upcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment Report - Working Group III. Lisa Schipper: Environmental Social Science Research Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. With a PhD in Development Studies, she looks at the links between adaptation and development. She is a Co-ordinating Lead Author of Chapter 18 "Climate Resilient Development Pathways" in WG2 of the IPCC AR6 and co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Climate and Development. Mary Scholes: Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg who has served on several international global change committees. Studies plant physiology and biology, especially nutrient cycling, sustainable agroforestry, and soil biology. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. Miranda Schreurs: Professor of Environmental and Climate Policy, Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich specialises in comparative environmental and climate governance. She has written on climate policy making in multiple world regions including Canada, China, the European Union, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Sybil P. Seitzinger: Professor of Nutrient Biogeochemistry at the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Her Rutgers research group focuses on the sources and transport of nutrients (N, C, P) in watersheds and airsheds and their effect on aquatic ecosystems. Sonia I. Seneviratne: Swiss climate scientist, professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science of the ETH Zurich. She is a specialist of extreme climate events. Maria Isabel Serrano Diná: Environment and Sustainability Consultant at Eco By Serrano and a Teacher of Architecture and Environment at Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Madre y Maestra, Dominican Republic. Her expertise lies in passive architecture, ecological design, environment, organic agriculture, recycling, sustainability, urban resilience, regenerative landscaping and climate change. She is also a review editor of the Building Chapter of the IPCC AR6 Working Group III. Karen Seto: Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at Yale University. She is a geographer, urban and land change scientist; Her research focuses on the human transformation of land and the links between urbanization, global change, and sustainability. She co-founded and co-chaired the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project (UGEC) of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) from 2004 to 2016. She was Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and co-lead the urban mitigation chapter. She is a Coordinating Lead Author for the urban mitigation chapter for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Joanne Simpson: (1923 – 2010) First woman to ever receive a Ph.D. in meteorology. She was graduated from the University of Chicago and taught and researched at numerous universities. She was a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Simpson contributed to many areas of the atmospheric sciences and helped develop the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). Chandni Singh: Senior Research Consultant at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), India. Her research focuses on climate change adaptation, differential vulnerability and wellbeing, disaster risk, and rural-urban migration. She was a contributing author of the IPCC 1.5 C special report and is currently a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Julia Slingo: Meteorologist, climate scientist, visiting Professor at the University of Reading, and Chief Scientist at the British Met Office between 2009 and 2016. Her specific interests include tropical climate variability and its influence on the global climate and climate modelling. Slingo was the first female Professor of Meteorology in the UK as well as, in 2008, the first woman President of the Royal Meteorological Society. Amy Snover: Director of the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, University Director of the Northwest Climate Science Center and Assistant Dean for Applied Research in the University of Washington's College of the Environment. Snover is a recognized leader for her work connecting decision-makers and stakeholders to the scientific data, tools, and guidance necessary for managing the climate risks facing the people, communities, and ecosystems across the Northwest of the United States. Amy was a 2015 White House Champion of Change for Climate Education and Literacy, a co-convening lead author for the Third US National Climate Assessment, and lead author of the groundbreaking 2007 guidebook, Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments. Susan Solomon: Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Climate Science known for her work on atmospheric chemistry and ozone and for leading the IPCC 4th assessment report on climate science. Member US National Academy of Sciences. She won the Volvo Environment and Blue Planet prizes. Anna Amelia Sörensson: Researcher at the Center for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (CIMA / CONICET-UBA), Argentina. Her research interests include climate change, climate modeling and variability, hydrology and precipitation. In the latest IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, she is serving as a coordinating lead author of Working Group I - Chapter 10: Linking global to regional climate change. Tannecia Stephenson: Senior Lecturer/Professor of Physics at The University of West Indies, Jamaica. Her research focuses on climate variability and seasonal prediction, climate extremes, climate change impacts and solar energy. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report - Working Group I. Nicole Stevens: Ecologist and Trapnell Fellow at Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK. She is also affiliated with Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her work examines the impact of global change on non-forested ecosystems in Africa and seeks to understand the mechanisms that shape plant distribution ranges. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Leah Stokes: Professor in the Department of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara. Senior policy consultant at Evergreen Action and Rewiring America. Hosts the climate podcast A Matter of Degrees. Her research focuses on political behavior, public opinion, and the politics of energy and environmental policy in the United States. Linda Yanti Sulistiawati: Senior Research Fellow at APCEL and also an Associate Professor of Law in Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. Her research focuses on climate change, REDD+, land issues and customary (adat) issues. She was a member of the Indonesian delegation at the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. Currently, she serves as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Ying Sun: Works at the National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Xianchun Tan: Professor at the Institute of Policy and Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. She is a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Adelle Thomas: Senior Fellow at University of The Bahamas, Bahamas. She is a human environment geographer, focused on climate change adaptation and loss and damage. At Climate Analytics, she is the Vulnerability, Adaptation and Gender Expert, along with her position as Senior Caribbean Research Associate. She is a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II and also served as a lead author for the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C. LuAnne Thompson: Professor of Oceanography at the University of Washington known for her work in communicating climate science and drawing connections between climate change and environmental sustainability, health and socioeconomic inequities. Sirintornthep Towprayoon: Associate Professor at the Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand. Her research interests include greenhouse gas inventories, municipal solid waste management, biogas from waste, methane emission and low carbon scenario. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Report. Diána Ürge-Vorsatz: Director, Center for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy (3CSEP) and Professor of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University. She specializes in environmental and energy studies especially energy efficiency and buildings. IPCC author. Kripa Vasant: Based at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India. She is a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Isabella Velicogna: Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California Irvine known for her work on time-variable space borne gravity to study the mass balance of ice sheets and changes in terrestrial water storage. IPCC. Thomson Reuters HCR. EGU Vening Meinesz Medal. Kavli fellow of NAS. Carolina Vera: Director of the Center for Atmosphere and Ocean Sciences (CIMA) and UMI/IFAECI, a joint institute with the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina's National Council of Sciences (CONICET) and CNRS (France). She is also Full Professor of the School of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. IPCC special report on extremes author. Maria Virginia Vilariño: Climate and Energy Manager at the Argentinian Business Council for Sustainable Development, Argentina. Her expertise includes sustainability, climate change and sustainable management tools for different economic sectors. She leads the Circular Economy Initiative in Argentina, in cooperation with GIZ to identify circular models and practices in different economic sectors and assess the contribution of the circular economy to climate goals in Argentina. She is a lead author of the IPCC 5th Assessment WG3 report on climate mitigation and a lead author of the IPCC 1.5C Special Report (SR1.5). She is also a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Report. Coleen Vogel: Independent Consultant and previously Professor of Sustainability at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She chaired the International Scientific Committee of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Climate Change and is an IPCC author. Her research has focused on climate vulnerability and southern Africa. Penny Whetton (1958–2019): Climatologist and an expert in regional climate change projections due to global warming their impacts. Her primary scientific focus was Australia. IPCC author. Kathy Willis: Ecologist who is the director of science at Kew Gardens, UK, and a professor at Oxford University who works on ecology, environmental history and biodiversity. Julie Winkler: Professor at Michigan State University and past president of the Association of American Geographers her work focuses on climate and its impacts, especially in the Great Lakes and Midwest of the United States. Libo Wu: Managing Director of the Center for Energy Economics and Strategy Studies and an associate professor at the School of Economics, Fudan University, China. Her research interests include natural resource economics, economic modeling, and climate change. She serves as a lead author of the IPCC AR6 Report. Zelina Zaiton Ibrahim: Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental Management, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. Her research focuses on catchment pollution estimation, estuarine and coastal processes to physical oceanography. She is a coordinating lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Sumaya A. Zakieldeen: Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Khartoum, Sudan. She researches climate change impacts and was part of the Sudanese delegation to the COP. She is also a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Hua Zhang: Professor at the National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, China. Her research interests include greenhouse gas effects, aerosol-cloud-radiation interaction, radiative forcing, modeling simulation and integration study. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Yan Zheng: Based at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China. Her research interests include climate change, urban vulnerability, adaptation, and risk governance. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Kirsten Zickfeld: Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University, Canada, working on the effects of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols on climate on centennial to millennial timescales. Gina Ziervogel: Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interests include climate change adaptation and resilience across scales, multi-level governance of urban adaptation, and social justice. She is a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report. Zinta Zommers: Mercy Corp's Head of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance and is a Rhodes and Commonwealth Scholar from Latvia. Her work experience includes providing support to the United Nations' Secretary-General's support team during the Paris Negotiation with the United Nations Environment and Food and Agriculture Organization, advising the United States' Government and the Government of Sierra Leone and co-editing a book on early warning systems for climate change. She is a review editor of the IPCC AR6. Zhiyan Zuo: Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, Fudan University, China. She was formerly a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. Her research focuses on land-atmosphere interaction, climate change, extreme events and asian monsoon. She currently serves as a lead author to the IPCC AR6 report. Adenike Oladosu is a Nigerian climate activist and initiator of the school strike for climate in Nigeria, In 2019, she was selected for the first UN Youth Climate Summit in New York. Recognized by UNICEF Nigeria as a young change-maker, she's leading a grassroots movement called ILeadClimate, advocating for the restoration of Lake Chad and youth involvement in climate justice through education. Hannah Fluck is a Senior National Archaeologist at the National Trust, UK and the former Head of Environmental Strategy at Historic England. She is a member of the Climate Heritage Network (CHN) Steering committee and Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Vice Chair at CHN. Women climate change policy makers and activists Franny Armstrong: British documentary film director known for films including The Age of Stupid, a reflection from 2055 about climate change. She founded the carbon reduction campaign 10:10 in 2009. Gro Harlem Brundtland: Former prime minister of Norway and author of the Brundtland report on Sustainable Development who has served on countless international committees on the environment. Kotchakorn Voraakhom: Thai landscape architect, public green space campaigner, Echoing Green Climate Fellow and chief executive officer of Porous City Network. She is also the founder of the Koungkuey Design Initiative. Helen Clark: Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008). Clark's government implemented several major economic initiatives including the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. Sheila Watt-Cloutier: Canadian Inuit activist who has focused on persistent organic pollutants and global warming, among other issues. Christiana Figueres: Costa Rican diplomat who has served in negotiations over climate change instruments since 1995. She became the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010. She was the founder of the Global Optimism group and was also the head of the UN climate change convention which led to the Paris agreement in 2015. Fiona Godlee: Anglo-American doctor, editor and journalist. Founder member and board director of the Climate and Health Council. Executive committee for the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. Genevieve Guenther: Founder and director of End Climate Silence and a nominee for the 2020 EcoAmerica American Climate Leadership Awards. Katharine Wilkinson: a writer and climate change activist and vice president at Project Drawdown. She is among the 2019 Time magazine's list of women who will save the world. Marie Christina Kolo: Climate activist, ecofeminist, and social entrepreneur from Madagascar, who has raised global awareness of the effects of climate change in Madagascar and requested international solidarity in addressing its impacts. She is the founder of Green N Kool and Ecofeminism Madagascar. Anne Simpson: CalPERS' director of board governance & strategy. She was part of Time magazine's list of 15 women leading the global fight on climate change, GreenBiz's list of 25 "kickass" women on climate change and Barron's (Dow Jones) list of 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance. She was previously senior faculty fellow and lecturer at the Yale School of Management, World Bank's head of the global corporate governance forum, first executive director of the International Corporate Governance Network and joint managing director of Pensions and Investment Research Consultants Limited. Wu Changhua: Chinese policy analyst and China/Asia Director of Office of Jeremy Rifkin. She is the Greater China director of The Climate Group, director of China studies of World Resources Institute, and editor of the English edition of China Environment News. Julia Marton-Lefevre: Hungarian environmentalist and academic who was Director General of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, from 2007 to 2014 and formerly Rector of the UN University for Peace. Jacqueline McGlade: Marine biologist and environmental informatics professor. Her research focuses on the spatial and nonlinear dynamics of ecosystems, climate change and scenario development. She was head of the European Environment Bureau. Catherine McKenna: Canadian human rights and social justice lawyer and Minister of Environment and Climate Change in Justin Trudeau's cabinet. Mary Robinson: Former president of Ireland and UN Commissioner on Human Rights who now serves as the UN special envoy on climate change Margaret Klein Salamon: Executive Director of the Climate Emergency Fund, founder and principal of Climate Awakening, co-founder of The Climate Mobilization, and the author of the book, "Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth." Marina Silva: Brazilian environmentalist, politician, Minister of Environment and former colleague of Chico Mendes. She ran in the 2010 and 2014 Brazilian elections. Greta Thunberg: Swedish activist who began protesting outside the Swedish parliament about the need for immediate action to combat climate change, also credited with initiating the school strike for climate movement in 2018 and 2019. She spoke for the UN Climate Action Summit in New York in September 2019. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim: Chadian environmental activist and geographer, coordinator of the Association des Femmes Peules Autochtones du Chad (AFPAT, the association of indigenous Fulani women of Chad) and served as the co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. Miranda Wang: Co-founder and CEO of BioCellection, 2018 UN Environment Programme's Young Champions of the Earth award for North America. She is also an Echoing Green Fellow, TED Speaker, and CNN Tomorrow's Hero. Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, formally the policy director for New Consensus. she is a Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and served on the policy team for former First Lady Michelle Obama. Worked with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an author of the Green New Deal. Hilda Heine: First female president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands elected in January 2016, she served as Minister of Education during the tenure of former President Christopher J. Loeak. She is the co-founder of the women's rights group Women United Together Marshall Islands (WUTMI). She is one of the Pacific leaders who are focal about climate crisis and the chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum. Tessa Khan: co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, and received an award from the Climate Breakthrough Project in 2018. She is known for her focus on international human rights law as a tool to dramatically increase national climate mitigation ambition. Rachel Kyte: Chief executive officer of the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All. She previously served as World Bank Group vice president and Special Envoy for Climate Change and International Finance Corporation Vice President for Business Advisory Services. She is currently the dean at Fletcher School Inc. See also Climate change and gender Climate justice List of women climate scientists and activists List of climate scientists Women in science Women4Climate (C40 Cities) == References ==

unsustainable inequalities: social justice and the environment

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment is a non-fiction book published in 2020 by French economist and researcher Lucas Chancel. The book explores the intricate relationship between social inequalities and environmental degradation, offering a comprehensive analysis of the global challenges posed by these intertwined issues. Chancel argues for the necessity of addressing social justice and environmental sustainability in tandem in order to achieve lasting and equitable solutions. Overview Unsustainable Inequalities examines the complex interplay between social and environmental issues, focusing on the ways in which social inequalities contribute to environmental degradation and hinder effective action against climate change. The book covers a range of topics, including income inequality, access to resources, environmental racism, and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on marginalized communities. Chancel proposes a framework for incorporating social justice into environmental policy and emphasizes the importance of rethinking economic models to prioritize both social equity and environmental sustainability. Background and Author Lucas Chancel is a French economist and researcher specializing in income inequality, environmental policy, and sustainable development. He is the Co-Director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. Chancel's academic and policy work focuses on the intersection of social and environmental issues, and his research has contributed significantly to the understanding of these complex relationships. Reception Best book pf 2020 year in economics according to Financial Times. == References ==

communism

Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal') is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more authoritarian vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a socialist state, followed by the withering away of the state. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, communism is placed on the left-wing alongside socialism, and communist parties and movements have been described as radical left or far-left.Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system, and mode of production, that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat, who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie, a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property, the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe, which blamed capitalism for the misery of urban factory workers. In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. As one of the many types of socialism, communism became the dominant political tendency, along with social democracy, within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s.During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These governments, which have been criticized by other leftists and socialists, were characterized by one-party rule by a communist party, the rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and mass media, restrictions on freedom of religion, and suppression of opposition and dissent. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several previously Communist governments repudiated or abolished Communist rule altogether. Afterwards, only a small number of nominally Communist governments remained, which are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. With the exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule. The decline of communism in the late 20th century has been attributed to the inherent inefficiencies of communist economies and the general trend of communist governments towards authoritarianism and bureaucracy.While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, several scholars posit that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism. Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between the anti anti-communist political left and the anti-communist political right. Many authors have written about mass killings under communist regimes and mortality rates, such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, which remain controversial, polarized, and debated topics in academia, historiography, and politics when discussing communism and the legacy of Communist states. Etymology and terminology Communism derives from the French word communisme, a combination of the Latin-rooted word communis (which literally means common) and the suffix isme (an act, practice, or process of doing something). Semantically, communis can be translated to "of or for the community", while isme is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or doctrine. Communism may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for the community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used to designate various social situations. Communism came to be primarily associated with Marxism, most specifically embodied in The Communist Manifesto, which proposed a particular type of communism.One of the first uses of the word in its modern sense is in a letter sent by Victor d'Hupay to Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne around 1785, in which d'Hupay describes himself as an auteur communiste ("communist author"). In 1793, Restif first used communisme to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property. Restif would go on to use the term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a form of government. John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with the first use of communism in English, around 1840. Communism and socialism Since the 1840s, communism has usually been distinguished from socialism. The modern definition and usage of the latter would be settled by the 1860s, becoming predominant over alternative terms associationist (Fourierism), co-operative, and mutualist, which had previously been used as synonyms; instead, communism fell out of use during this period.An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialize production, whereas the former aimed to socialize both production and consumption (in the form of common access to final goods). This distinction can be observed in Marx's communism, where the distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each according to his needs", in contrast to a socialist principle of "to each according to his contribution". Socialism has been described as a philosophy seeking distributive justice, and communism as a subset of socialism that prefers economic equality as its form of distributive justice.By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of communism which had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for the former. It was not until 1917, with the October Revolution, that socialism came to refer to a distinct stage between capitalism and communism, introduced by Vladimir Lenin as a means to defend the Bolshevik seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for socialist revolution. A distinction between communist and socialist as descriptors of political ideologies arose in 1918 after the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where Communist came to specifically refer to socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism, and later in the 1920s those of Marxism–Leninism, although Communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism.Both communism and socialism eventually accorded with the cultural attitude of adherents and opponents towards religion. In European Christendom, communism was believed to be the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, communism was too phonetically similar to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists. Friedrich Engels stated that in 1848, at the time when The Communist Manifesto was first published, socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not; the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists. This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. While liberal democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution, which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat.According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists' adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx." Associated usage and Communist states In the United States, communism is widely used as a pejorative term as part of a Red Scare, much like socialism, and mainly in reference to authoritarian socialism and Communist states. The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to the term's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet-type economic planning model. In his essay "Judging Nazism and Communism", Martin Malia defines a "generic Communism" category as any Communist political party movement led by intellectuals; this umbrella term allows grouping together such different regimes as radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's anti-urbanism. According to Alexander Dallin, the idea to group together different countries, such as Afghanistan and Hungary, has no adequate explanation.While the term Communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and news media to refer to countries ruled by Communist parties, these socialist states themselves did not describe themselves as communist or claim to have achieved communism; they referred to themselves as being a socialist state that is in the process of constructing communism. Terms used by Communist states include national-democratic, people's democratic, socialist-oriented, and workers and peasants' states. History Early communism According to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece. Since the 20th century, Ancient Rome has been examined in this context, as well as thinkers such as Aristotle, Cicero, Demosthenes, Plato, and Tacitus. Plato, in particular, has been considered as a possible communist or socialist theorist, or as the first author to give communism a serious consideration. The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (modern-day Iran) has been described as communistic for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property, and striving to create an egalitarian society. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of religious text.In the medieval Christian Church, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Sects deemed heretical such as the Waldensians preached an early form of Christian communism. As summarized by historians Janzen Rod and Max Stanton, the Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles, church discipline, and practised a form of communism. In their words, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe." This link was highlighted in one of Karl Marx's early writings; Marx stated that "[a]s Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty." Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War, which Friedrich Engels analyzed in his 1850 work The Peasant War in Germany. The Marxist communist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people. Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his 1516 treatise titled Utopia, More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason and virtue. Marxist communist theoretician Karl Kautsky, who popularized Marxist communism in Western Europe more than any other thinker apart from Engels, published Thomas More and His Utopia, a work about More, whose ideas could be regarded as "the foregleam of Modern Socialism" according to Kautsky. During the October Revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin suggested that a monument be dedicated to More, alongside other important Western thinkers.In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism, Eduard Bernstein stated that several groups during the English Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, agrarianist ideals and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Jean Meslier, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. During the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of François-Noël Babeuf, Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, and Sylvain Maréchal, all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism, according to James H. Billington.In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, and Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States, such as Brook Farm in 1841. In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. Revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 In 1917, the October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets in which the Bolsheviks had a majority. The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement, as Marx stated that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development; however, the Russian Empire was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry, and a minority of industrial workers. Marx warned against attempts "to transform my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophy theory of the arche générale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself", and stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule through the Obshchina. The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for socialist revolution before the capitalist mode of production was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, Bread, and Land", which tapped into the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in World War I, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the soviets.By November 1917, the Russian Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene the Russian Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, leaving the soviets in de facto control of the country. The Bolsheviks moved to hand power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in the October Revolution; after a few weeks of deliberation, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 to July 1918, while the right-wing faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party boycotted the soviets and denounced the October Revolution as an illegal coup. In the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, socialist parties totaled well over 70% of the vote. The Bolsheviks were clear winners in the urban centres, and took around two-thirds of the votes of soldiers on the Western Front, obtaining 23.3% of the vote; the Socialist Revolutionaries finished first on the strength of support from the country's rural peasantry, who were for the most part single issue voters, that issue being land reform, obtaining 37.6%, while the Ukrainian Socialist Bloc finished a distant third at 12.7%, and the Mensheviks obtained a disappointing fourth place at 3.0%.Most of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's seats went to the right-wing faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik–Left Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, a committee dominated by Lenin, who had previously supported a multi-party system of free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarianism." Some argued this was the beginning of the development of vanguardism as an hierarchical party–elite that controls society, which resulted in a split between anarchism and Marxism, and Leninist communism assuming the dominant position for most of the 20th century, excluding rival socialist currents.Other communists and Marxists, especially social democrats who favored the development of liberal democracy as a prerequisite to socialism, were critical of the Bolsheviks from the beginning due to Russia being seen as too backward for a socialist revolution. Council communism and left communism, inspired by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the wide proletarian revolutionary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally socialist states. Some left-wing parties, such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain, boasted of having called the Bolsheviks, and by extension those Communist states which either followed or were inspired by the Soviet Bolshevik model of development, establishing state capitalism in late 1917, as would be described during the 20th century by several academics, economists, and other scholars, or a command economy. Before the Soviet path of development became known as socialism, in reference to the two-stage theory, communists made no major distinction between the socialist mode of production and communism; it is consistent with, and helped to inform, early concepts of socialism in which the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Monetary relations in the form of exchange-value, profit, interest, and wage labor would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism.While Joseph Stalin stated that the law of value would still apply to socialism and that the Soviet Union was socialist under this new definition, which was followed by other Communist leaders, many other communists maintain the original definition and state that Communist states never established socialism in this sense. Lenin described his policies as state capitalism but saw them as necessary for the development of socialism, which left-wing critics say was never established, while some Marxist–Leninists state that it was established only during the Stalin era and Mao era, and then became capitalist states ruled by revisionists; others state that Maoist China was always state capitalist, and uphold People's Socialist Republic of Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin, who first stated to have achieved socialism with the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union. Communist states Soviet Union War communism was the first system adopted by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War as a result of the many challenges. Despite communism in the name, it had nothing to do with communism, with strict discipline for workers, strike actions forbidden, obligatory labor duty, and military-style control, and has been described as simple authoritarian control by the Bolsheviks to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology. The Soviet Union was established in 1922. Before the broad ban in 1921, there were several factions in the Communist party, more prominently among them the Left Opposition, the Right Opposition, and the Workers' Opposition, which debated on the path of development to follow. The Left and Workers' oppositions were more critical of the state-capitalist development and the Workers' in particular was critical of bureaucratization and development from above, while the Right Opposition was more supporting of state-capitalist development and advocated the New Economic Policy. Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline. Trotskyism overtook the left communists as the main dissident communist current, while more libertarian communisms, dating back to the libertarian Marxist current of council communism, remained important dissident communisms outside the Soviet Union. Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline. The Great Purge of 1936–1938 was Joseph Stalin's attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the Moscow trials, many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov, and Nikolai Bukharin, were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed.The devastation of World War II resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing, and transportation as well as the demobilization and migration of millions of soldiers and civilians. In the midst of this turmoil during the winter of 1946–1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century. There was no serious opposition to Stalin as the secret police continued to send possible suspects to the gulag. Relations with the United States and Britain went from friendly to hostile, as they denounced Stalin's political controls over eastern Europe and his Berlin Blockade. By 1947, the Cold War had begun. Stalin himself believed that capitalism was a hollow shell and would crumble under increased non-military pressure exerted through proxies in countries like Italy. He greatly underestimated the economic strength of the West and instead of triumph saw the West build up alliances that were designed to permanently stop or contain Soviet expansion. In early 1950, Stalin gave the go-ahead for North Korea's invasion of South Korea, expecting a short war. He was stunned when the Americans entered and defeated the North Koreans, putting them almost on the Soviet border. Stalin supported China's entry into the Korean War, which drove the Americans back to the prewar boundaries, but which escalated tensions. The United States decided to mobilize its economy for a long contest with the Soviets, built the hydrogen bomb, and strengthened the NATO alliance that covered Western Europe.According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate the nation's superpower status and in the face of his growing physical decrepitude, to maintain his own hold on total power. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression yet was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists, and began major institutional innovations. In the teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death.For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, Stalin is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder. China After the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 as the Nationalist government headed by the Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan. In 1950–1953, China engaged in a large-scale, undeclared war with the United States, South Korea, and United Nations forces in the Korean War. While the war ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. At first, there was close cooperation with Stalin, who sent in technical experts to aid the industrialization process along the line of the Soviet model of the 1930s. After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with Moscow soured—Mao thought Stalin's successors had betrayed the Communist ideal. Mao charged that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of a "revisionist clique" which had turned against Marxism and Leninism and was now setting the stage for the restoration of capitalism. The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. Both began forging alliances with communist supporters around the globe, thereby splitting the worldwide movement into two hostile camps.Rejecting the Soviet model of rapid urbanization, Mao Zedong and his top aide Deng Xiaoping launched the Great Leap Forward in 1957–1961 with the goal of industrializing China overnight, using the peasant villages as the base rather than large cities. Private ownership of land ended and the peasants worked in large collective farms that were now ordered to start up heavy industry operations, such as steel mills. Plants were built in remote locations, due to the lack of technical experts, managers, transportation, or needed facilities. Industrialization failed, and the main result was a sharp unexpected decline in agricultural output, which led to mass famine and millions of deaths. The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues: "Enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster." Put in charge of rescuing the economy, Deng adopted pragmatic policies that the idealistic Mao disliked. For a while, Mao was in the shadows but returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).The Cultural Revolution was an upheaval that targeted intellectuals and party leaders from 1966 through 1976. Mao's goal was to purify communism by removing pro-capitalists and traditionalists by imposing Maoist orthodoxy within the Chinese Communist Party. The movement paralyzed China politically and weakened the country economically, culturally, and intellectually for years. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power, and either imprisoned, killed, or most often, sent to work as farm laborers. Mao insisted that those he labelled revisionists be removed through violent class struggle. The two most prominent militants were Marshall Lin Biao of the army and Mao's wife Jiang Qing. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a "capitalist road", most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period, Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. After Mao's death in 1976, the survivors were rehabilitated and many returned to power.Mao's government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions. Mao has also been praised for transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and life expectancy. Cold War Its leading role in World War II saw the emergence of the industrialized Soviet Union as a superpower. Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. A Marxist–Leninist government was also created under Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia; Tito's independent policies led to the Tito–Stalin split and expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform in 1948, and Titoism was branded deviationist. Albania also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state following the Albanian–Soviet split in 1960, resulting from an ideological fallout between Enver Hoxha, a Stalinist, and the Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev, who enacted a period of de-Stalinization and re-approached diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia in 1976. The Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China, which would follow its own ideological path of development following the Sino-Soviet split. Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of the 20th century.In Western Europe, communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. There were also many developments in libertarian Marxism, especially during the 1960s with the New Left. By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western communist parties had criticized many of the actions of communist states, distanced from them, and developed a democratic road to socialism, which became known as Eurocommunism. This development was criticized by more orthodox supporters of the Soviet Union as amounting to social democracy.Since 1957, communists have been frequently voted into power in the Indian state of Kerala.In 1959, Cuban communist revolutionaries overthrew Cuba's previous government under the dictator Fulgencio Batista. The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, ruled Cuba from 1959 until 2008. Dissolution of the Soviet Union With the fall of the Warsaw Pact after the Revolutions of 1989, which led to the fall of most of the former Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union) resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers, including control of the Cheget, to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December 1991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Post-Soviet communism As of 2023, states controlled by Marxist–Leninist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Fall of Communism, there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as neo-Stalinists, who remained committed to orthodox Marxism–Leninism, and those, such as The Left in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism; other ruling Communist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social-democratic parties. Outside Communist states, reformed Communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning government or regional coalitions, including in the former Eastern Bloc. In Nepal, Communists (CPN UML and Nepal Communist Party) were part of the 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly, which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with other communists, Marxist–Leninists, and Maoists (CPN Maoist), social democrats (Nepali Congress), and others as part of their People's Multiparty Democracy. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation has some supporters, but is reformist rather than revolutionary, aiming to lessen the inequalities of Russia's market economy.Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 8% in 2001. After losing Soviet subsidies and support, Vietnam and Cuba have attracted more foreign investment to their countries, with their economies becoming more market-oriented. North Korea, the last Communist country that still practices Soviet-style Communism, is both repressive and isolationist. Theory Communist political thought and theory are diverse but share several core elements. The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism or Leninism but non-Marxist versions of communism also exist, such as anarcho-communism and Christian communism, which remain partly influenced by Marxist theories, such as libertarian Marxism and humanist Marxism in particular. Common elements include being theoretical rather than ideological, identifying political parties not by ideology but by class and economic interest, and identifying with the proletariat. According to communists, the proletariat can avoid mass unemployment only if capitalism is overthrown; in the short run, state-oriented communists favor state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy as a means to defend the proletariat from capitalist pressure. Some communists are distinguished by other Marxists in seeing peasants and smallholders of property as possible allies in their goal of shortening the abolition of capitalism.For Leninist communism, such goals, including short-term proletarian interests to improve their political and material conditions, can only be achieved through vanguardism, an elitist form of socialism from above that relies on theoretical analysis to identify proletarian interests rather than consulting the proletarians themselves, as is advocated by libertarian communists. When they engage in elections, Leninist communists' main task is that of educating voters in what are deemed their true interests rather than in response to the expression of interest by voters themselves. When they have gained control of the state, Leninist communists' main task was preventing other political parties from deceiving the proletariat, such as by running their own independent candidates. This vanguardist approach comes from their commitments to democratic centralism in which communists can only be cadres, i.e. members of the party who are full-time professional revolutionaries, as was conceived by Vladimir Lenin. Marxist communism Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand social class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist theory exists. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism but does not model an ideal society based on the design of intellectuals, whereby communism is seen as a state of affairs to be established based on any intelligent design; rather, it is a non-idealist attempt at the understanding of material history and society, whereby communism is the expression of a real movement, with parameters that are derived from actual life.According to Marxist theory, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited proletariat—a class of wage laborers employed to produce goods and services—and the bourgeoisie—the ruling class that owns the means of production and extracts its wealth through appropriation of the surplus product produced by the proletariat in the form of profit. This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production, results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness. In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a proletarian revolution which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the socialist mode of production based on social ownership of the means of production, "To each according to his contribution", and production for use. As the productive forces continued to advance, the communist society, i.e. a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership, follows the maxim "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts, which has then led to contradictory conclusions. There is a movement toward the recognition that historical materialism and dialectical materialism remain the fundamental aspects of all Marxist schools of thought. Marxism–Leninism and its offshoots are the most well-known of these and have been a driving force in international relations during most of the 20th century.Classical Marxism is the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Marx and Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Leninism and Marxism–Leninism. Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became the official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until World War I in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify, and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism. The philosophy of orthodox Marxism includes the understanding that material development (advances in technology in the productive forces) is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. feudalism, capitalism, and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions. This revolutionary change is the vehicle for fundamental society-wide changes and ultimately leads to the emergence of new economic systems. As a term, orthodox Marxism represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations. Marxist concepts Class conflict and historical materialism At the root of Marxism is historical materialism, the materialist conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode of production and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the Industrial Revolution ushered the world into the new capitalist mode of production. Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership of instruments used in production; however, because machinery was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, and making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses private ownership of the means of production, earning profit via the surplus value generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie.According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within feudalism captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only the feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal ruling class out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished. Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through the common ownership of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into communism as a new mode of production. In between capitalism and communism, there is the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is the defeat of the bourgeois state but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production. This dictatorship, based on the Paris Commune's model, is to be the most democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage. Critique of political economy Critique of political economy is a form of social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resource allocation and income distribution in the economy. Communists, such as Marx and Engels, are described as prominent critics of political economy. The critique rejects economists' use of what its advocates believe are unrealistic axioms, faulty historical assumptions, and the normative use of various descriptive narratives. They reject what they describe as mainstream economists' tendency to posit the economy as an a priori societal category. Those who engage in critique of economy tend to reject the view that the economy and its categories is to be understood as something transhistorical. It is seen as merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources. They argue that it is a relatively new mode of resource distribution, which emerged along with modernity.Critics of economy critique the given status of the economy itself, and do not aim to create theories regarding how to administer economies. Critics of economy commonly view what is most commonly referred to as the economy as being bundles of metaphysical concepts, as well as societal and normative practices, rather than being the result of any self-evident or proclaimed economic laws. They also tend to consider the views which are commonplace within the field of economics as faulty, or simply as pseudoscience. Into the 21st century, there are multiple critiques of political economy; what they have in common is the critique of what critics of political economy tend to view as dogma, i.e. claims of the economy as a necessary and transhistorical societal category. Marxian economics Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by cutting employee's wages, social benefits, and pursuing military aggression. The communist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's new mode of production through workers' revolution. According to Marxian crisis theory, communism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity. Socialization versus nationalization An important concept in Marxism is socialization, i.e. social ownership, versus nationalization. Nationalization is state ownership of property whereas socialization is control and management of property by society. Marxism considers the latter as its goal and considers nationalization a tactical issue, as state ownership is still in the realm of the capitalist mode of production. In the words of Friedrich Engels, "the transformation ... into State-ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. ... State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution." This has led Marxist groups and tendencies critical of the Soviet model to label states based on nationalization, such as the Soviet Union, as state capitalist, a view that is also shared by several scholars. Leninist communism Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a revolutionary vanguard party, as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in the Russian Empire (1721–1917).Leninist revolutionary leadership is based upon The Communist Manifesto (1848), identifying the Communist party as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, the Bolsheviks viewed history through the theoretical framework of dialectical materialism, which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to instituting socialism; and as the revolutionary national government, to realize the socio-economic transition by all means. Marxism–Leninism Marxism–Leninism is a political ideology developed by Joseph Stalin. According to its proponents, it is based on Marxism and Leninism. It describes the specific political ideology which Stalin implemented in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in a global scale in the Comintern. There is no definite agreement between historians about whether Stalin actually followed the principles of Marx and Lenin. It also contains aspects which according to some are deviations from Marxism such as socialism in one country. Marxism–Leninism was the official ideology of 20th-century Communist parties (including Trotskyist), and was developed after the death of Lenin; its three principles were dialectical materialism, the leading role of the Communist party through democratic centralism, and a planned economy with industrialization and agricultural collectivization. Marxism–Leninism is misleading because Marx and Lenin never sanctioned or supported the creation of an -ism after them, and is revealing because, being popularized after Lenin's death by Stalin, it contained those three doctrinal and institutionalized principles that became a model for later Soviet-type regimes; its global influence, having at its height covered at least one-third of the world's population, has made Marxist–Leninist a convenient label for the Communist bloc as a dynamic ideological order.During the Cold War, Marxism–Leninism was the ideology of the most clearly visible communist movement and is the most prominent ideology associated with communism. Social fascism was a theory supported by the Comintern and affiliated Communist parties during the early 1930s, which held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because it stood in the way of a dictatorship of the proletariat, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model. At the time, leaders of the Comintern, such as Stalin and Rajani Palme Dutt, stated that capitalist society had entered the Third Period in which a proletariat revolution was imminent but could be prevented by social democrats and other fascist forces. The term social fascist was used pejoratively to describe social-democratic parties, anti-Comintern and progressive socialist parties and dissenters within Comintern affiliates throughout the interwar period. The social fascism theory was advocated vociferously by the Communist Party of Germany, which was largely controlled and funded by the Soviet leadership from 1928.Within Marxism–Leninism, anti-revisionism is a position which emerged in the 1950s in opposition to the reforms and Khrushchev Thaw of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Where Khrushchev pursued an interpretation that differed from Stalin, the anti-revisionists within the international communist movement remained dedicated to Stalin's ideological legacy and criticized the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and his successors as state capitalist and social imperialist due to its hopes of achieving peace with the United States. The term Stalinism is also used to describe these positions but is often not used by its supporters who opine that Stalin practiced orthodox Marxism and Leninism. Because different political trends trace the historical roots of revisionism to different eras and leaders, there is significant disagreement today as to what constitutes anti-revisionism. Modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories. Some uphold the works of Stalin and Mao Zedong and some the works of Stalin while rejecting Mao and universally tend to oppose Trotskyism. Others reject both Stalin and Mao, tracing their ideological roots back to Marx and Lenin. In addition, other groups uphold various less-well-known historical leaders such as Enver Hoxha, who also broke with Mao during the Sino-Albanian split. Social imperialism was a term used by Mao to criticize the Soviet Union post-Stalin. Mao stated that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade. Hoxha agreed with Mao in this analysis, before later using the expression to also condemn Mao's Three Worlds Theory. Stalinism Stalinism represents Stalin's style of governance as opposed to Marxism–Leninism, the socioeconomic system and political ideology implemented by Stalin in the Soviet Union, and later adapted by other states based on the ideological Soviet model, such as central planning, nationalization, and one-party state, along with public ownership of the means of production, accelerated industrialization, pro-active development of society's productive forces (research and development), and nationalized natural resources. Marxism–Leninism remained after de-Stalinization whereas Stalinism did not. In the last letters before his death, Lenin warned against the danger of Stalin's personality and urged the Soviet government to replace him. Until the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Communist party referred to its own ideology as Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism.Marxism–Leninism has been criticized by other communist and Marxist tendencies, which state that Marxist–Leninist states did not establish socialism but rather state capitalism. According to Marxism, the dictatorship of the proletariat represents the rule of the majority (democracy) rather than of one party, to the extent that the co-founder of Marxism, Friedrich Engels, described its "specific form" as the democratic republic. According to Engels, state property by itself is private property of capitalist nature, unless the proletariat has control of political power, in which case it forms public property. Whether the proletariat was actually in control of the Marxist–Leninist states is a matter of debate between Marxism–Leninism and other communist tendencies. To these tendencies, Marxism–Leninism is neither Marxism nor Leninism nor the union of both but rather an artificial term created to justify Stalin's ideological distortion, forced into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Comintern. In the Soviet Union, this struggle against Marxism–Leninism was represented by Trotskyism, which describes itself as a Marxist and Leninist tendency. Trotskyism Trotskyism, developed by Leon Trotsky in opposition to Stalinism, is a Marxist and Leninist tendency that supports the theory of permanent revolution and world revolution rather than the two-stage theory and Stalin's socialism in one country. It supported another communist revolution in the Soviet Union and proletarian internationalism.Rather than representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, Trotsky claimed that the Soviet Union had become a degenerated workers' state under the leadership of Stalin in which class relations had re-emerged in a new form. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution—rather than socialism in one country—and support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles. Struggling against Stalin for power in the Soviet Union, Trotsky and his supporters organized into the Left Opposition, the platform of which became known as Trotskyism.Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. While in exile, Trotsky continued his campaign against Stalin, founding in 1938 the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City on Stalin's orders. Trotskyist currents include orthodox Trotskyism, third camp, Posadism, and Pabloism. Maoism Maoism is the theory derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong. Developed from the 1950s until the Deng Xiaoping Chinese economic reform in the 1970s, it was widely applied as the guiding political and military ideology of the Communist Party of China and as the theory guiding revolutionary movements around the world. A key difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism–Leninism is that peasants should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy which is led by the working class. Three common Maoist values are revolutionary populism, being practical, and dialectics.The synthesis of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism, which builds upon the two individual theories as the Chinese adaption of Marxism–Leninism, did not occur during the life of Mao. After de-Stalinization, Marxism–Leninism was kept in the Soviet Union, while certain anti-revisionist tendencies like Hoxhaism and Maoism stated that such had deviated from its original concept. Different policies were applied in Albania and China, which became more distanced from the Soviet Union. From the 1960s, groups who called themselves Maoists, or those who upheld Maoism, were not unified around a common understanding of Maoism, instead having their own particular interpretations of the political, philosophical, economical, and military works of Mao. Its adherents claim that as a unified, coherent higher stage of Marxism, it was not consolidated until the 1980s, first being formalized by the Shining Path in 1982. Through the experience of the people's war waged by the party, the Shining Path were able to posit Maoism as the newest development of Marxism. Eurocommunism Eurocommunism was a revisionist trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties, claiming to develop a theory and practice of social transformation more relevant to their region. Especially prominent within the French Communist Party, Italian Communist Party, and Communist Party of Spain, Communists of this nature sought to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union and its All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) during the Cold War. Eurocommunists tended to have a larger attachment to liberty and democracy than their Marxist–Leninist counterparts. Enrico Berlinguer, general secretary of Italy's major Communist party, was widely considered the father of Eurocommunism. Libertarian Marxist communism Libertarian Marxism is a broad range of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives such as Stalinism and Maoism, as well as Trotskyism. Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France, emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main derivatives of libertarian socialism.Aside from left communism, libertarian Marxism includes such currents as autonomism, communization, council communism, De Leonism, the Johnson–Forest Tendency, Lettrism, Luxemburgism Situationism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity, the World Socialist Movement, and workerism, as well as parts of Freudo-Marxism, and the New Left. Moreover, libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Antonie Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Daniel Guérin, and Yanis Varoufakis, the latter of whom claims that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist. Council communism Council communism is a movement that originated from Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s, whose primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany. It continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both libertarian Marxism and libertarian socialism. The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, which are composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. Council communists oppose the perceived authoritarian and undemocratic nature of central planning and of state socialism, labelled state capitalism, and the idea of a revolutionary party, since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party would necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, produced through a federation of workers' councils. In contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist communism, the central argument of council communism is that democratic workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural forms of working-class organizations and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the reformist and the Leninist communist ideologies, which respectively stress parliamentary and institutional government by applying social reforms on the one hand, and vanguard parties and participative democratic centralism on the other. Left communism Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas and practices espoused, particularly following the series of revolutions that brought World War I to an end by Bolsheviks and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its first congress (March 1919) and during its second congress (July–August 1920).Left communists represent a range of political movements distinct from Marxist–Leninists, whom they largely view as merely the left-wing of capital, from anarcho-communists, some of whom they consider to be internationalist socialists, and from various other revolutionary socialist tendencies, such as De Leonists, whom they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances. Bordigism is a Leninist left-communist current named after Amadeo Bordiga, who has been described as being "more Leninist than Lenin", and considered himself to be a Leninist. Other types of communism Anarcho-communism Anarcho-communism is a libertarian theory of anarchism and communism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production; direct democracy; and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Anarcho-communism differs from Marxism in that it rejects its view about the need for a state socialism phase prior to establishing communism. Peter Kropotkin, the main theorist of anarcho-communism, stated that a revolutionary society should "transform itself immediately into a communist society", that it should go immediately into what Marx had regarded as the "more advanced, completed, phase of communism". In this way, it tries to avoid the reappearance of class divisions and the need for a state to be in control.Some forms of anarcho-communism, such as insurrectionary anarchism, are egoist and strongly influenced by radical individualism, believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian nature at all. Most anarcho-communists view anarchist communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society. Christian communism Christian communism is a theological and political theory based upon the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ compel Christians to support religious communism as the ideal social system. Although there is no universal agreement on the exact dates when communistic ideas and practices in Christianity began, many Christian communists state that evidence from the Bible suggests that the first Christians, including the Apostles in the New Testament, established their own small communist society in the years following Jesus' death and resurrection.Many advocates of Christian communism state that it was taught by Jesus and practiced by the apostles themselves, an argument that historians and others, including anthropologist Roman A. Montero, scholars like Ernest Renan, and theologians like Charles Ellicott and Donald Guthrie, generally agree with. Christian communism enjoys some support in Russia. Russian musician Yegor Letov was an outspoken Christian communist, and in a 1995 interview he was quoted as saying: "Communism is the Kingdom of God on Earth." Analysis Reception Emily Morris from University College London wrote that because Karl Marx's writings have inspired many movements, including the Russian Revolution of 1917, communism is "commonly confused with the political and economic system that developed in the Soviet Union" after the revolution. Morris also wrote that Soviet-style communism "did not 'work'." due to "an over-centralised, oppressive, bureaucratic and rigid economic and political system." Historian Andrzej Paczkowski summarized communism as "an ideology that seemed clearly the opposite, that was based on the secular desire of humanity to achieve equality and social justice, and that promised a great leap forward into freedom." In contrast, Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises argued that by abolishing free markets, communist officials would not have the price system necessary to guide their planned production.Anti-communism developed as soon as communism became a conscious political movement in the 19th century, and anti-communist mass killings have been reported against alleged communists, or their alleged supporters, which were committed by anti-communists and political organizations or governments opposed to communism. The communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. Many of these anti-communist mass killing campaigns, primarily during the Cold War, were supported by the United States and its Western Bloc allies, including those who were formally part of the Non-Aligned Movement, such as the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 and Operation Condor in South America. Excess mortality in Communist states Many authors have written about excess deaths under Communist states and mortality rates, such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Some authors posit that there is a Communist death toll, whose death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them, ranging from lows of 10–20 million to highs over 100 million. The higher estimates have been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated; they are also criticized for being inaccurate due to incomplete data, inflated by counting any excess death, making an unwarranted link to communism, and the grouping and body-counting itself. Higher estimates account for actions that Communist governments committed against civilians, including executions, human-made famines, and deaths that occurred during, or resulted from, imprisonment, and forced deportations and labor. Higher estimates are criticized for being based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable, skewed to higher possible values, and that victims of civil wars, the Holodomor and other famines, and war-related events should not be included. Others have argued that, while certain estimates may not be accurate, "quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes."There is no consensus among genocide scholars and scholars of Communism about whether some or all the events constituted a genocide or mass killing. Among genocide scholars, there is no consensus on a common terminology, and the events have been variously referred to as excess mortality or mass deaths; other terms used to define some of such killings include classicide, crimes against humanity, democide, genocide, politicide, holocaust, mass killing, and repression. These scholars state that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings; Benjamin Valentino proposes the category of Communist mass killing, alongside colonial, counter-guerrilla, and ethnic mass killing, as a subtype of dispossessive mass killing to distinguish it from coercive mass killing. Genocide scholars do not consider ideology, or regime-type, as an important factor that explains mass killings. Some authors, such as John Gray, Daniel Goldhagen, and Richard Pipes, consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings. Some connect killings in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao Zedong's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia on the basis that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot; in all cases, scholars say killings were carried out as part of a policy of an unbalanced modernization process of rapid industrialization.Some authors and politicians, such as George G. Watson, allege that genocide was dictated in otherwise forgotten works of Karl Marx. Many commentators on the political right point to the mass deaths under Communist states, claiming them as an indictment of communism. Opponents of this view argue that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by communism itself, and point to mass deaths in wars and famines that they argue were caused by colonialism, capitalism, and anti-communism as a counterpoint to those killings. According to Dovid Katz and other historians, a historical revisionist view of the double genocide theory, equating mass deaths under Communist states with the Holocaust, is popular in Eastern European countries and the Baltic states, and their approaches of history have been incorporated in the European Union agenda, among them the Prague Declaration in June 2008 and the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, which was proclaimed by the European Parliament in August 2008 and endorsed by the OSCE in Europe in July 2009. Among many scholars in Western Europe, the comparison of the two regimes and equivalence of their crimes has been, and still is, widely rejected. Memory and legacy Criticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories, namely that criticism of Communist party rule that concerns with the practical aspects of 20th-century Communist states, and criticism of Marxism and communism generally that concerns its principles and theory. Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between the communist-sympathetic or anti-anti-communist political left and the anti-communism of the political right. Critics of communism on the political right point to the excess deaths under Communist states as an indictment of communism as an ideology. Defenders of communism on the political left say that the deaths were caused by specific authoritarian regimes and not communism as an ideology, while also pointing to anti-communist mass killings and deaths in wars that they argue were caused by capitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to the deaths under Communist states.Memory studies have been done on how the events are memorized. According to Kristen R. Ghodsee and Scott Sehon, on the political left, there are "those with some sympathy for socialist ideals and the popular opinion of hundreds of millions of Russian and east European citizens nostalgic for their state socialist pasts.", while on the political right, there are "the committed anti-totalitarians, both east and west, insisting that all experiments with Marxism will always and inevitably end with the gulag." The "victims of Communism" concept, has become accepted scholarship, as part of the double genocide theory, in Eastern Europe and among anti-communists in general; it is rejected by some Western European and other scholars, especially when it is used to equate Communism and Nazism, which is seen by scholars as a long-discredited perspective. The narrative posits that famines and mass deaths by Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that communism, as "the deadliest ideology in history", or in the words of Jonathan Rauch as "the deadliest fantasy in human history", represents the greatest threat to humanity. Proponents posit an alleged link between communism, left-wing politics, and socialism with genocide, mass killing, and totalitarianism, with some authors, such as George Watson, advocating a common history stretching from Marx to Adolf Hitler. Some right-wing authors allege that Marx was responsible for Nazism and the Holocaust.Some authors, as Stéphane Courtois, propose a theory of equivalence between class and racial genocide. It is supported by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, with 100 million being the most common estimate used from The Black Book of Communism despite some of the authors of the book distancing themselves from the estimates made by Stephen Courtois. Various museums and monuments have been constructed in remembrance of the victims of Communism, with support of the European Union and various governments in Canada, Eastern Europe, and the United States. Works such as The Black Book of Communism and Bloodlands legitimized debates on the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, and by extension communism, and the former work in particular was important in the criminalization of communism. According to Freedom House, Communism is "considered one of the two great totalitarian movements of the 20th century", the other being Nazism, but added that "there is an important difference in how the world has treated these two execrable phenomena.":The failure of Communist governments to live up to the ideal of a communist society, their general trend towards increasing authoritarianism, their bureaucracy, and the inherent inefficiencies in their economies have been linked to the decline of communism in the late 20th century. Walter Scheidel stated that despite wide-reaching government actions, Communist states failed to achieve long-term economic, social, and political success. The experience of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the North Korean famine, and alleged economic underperformance when compared to developed free market systems are cited as examples of Communist states failing to build a successful state while relying entirely on what they view as orthodox Marxism. Despite those shortcomings, Philipp Ther stated that there was a general increase in the standard of living throughout Eastern Bloc countries as the result of modernization programs under Communist governments.Most experts agree there was a significant increase in mortality rates following the years 1989 and 1991, including a 2014 World Health Organization report which concluded that the "health of people in the former Soviet countries deteriorated dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet Union." Post-Communist Russia during the IMF-backed economic reforms of Boris Yeltsin experienced surging economic inequality and poverty as unemployment reached double digits by the early to mid 1990s. By contrast, the Central European states of the former Eastern Bloc–Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia–showed healthy increases in life expectancy from the 1990s onward, compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation under Communism. Bulgaria and Romania followed this trend after the introduction of more serious economic reforms in the late 1990s. The economies of Eastern Bloc countries had previously experienced stagnation in the 1980s under Communism. A common expression throughout Eastern Europe after 1989 was "everything they told us about communism was a lie, but everything they told us about capitalism was true.": 192  The right-libertarian think tank Cato Institute has stated that the analyses done of post-communist countries in the 1990s were "premature" and "that early and rapid reformers by far outperformed gradual reformers" on GDP per capita, the United Nations Human Development Index and political freedom, in addition to developing better institutions. The institute also stated that the process of privatization in Russia was "deeply flawed" due to Russia's reforms being "far less rapid" than those of Central Europe and the Baltic states.The average post-Communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005. However, Branko Milanović wrote in 2015 that following the end of the Cold War, many of those countries' economies declined to such an extent during the transition to capitalism that they have yet to return to the point they were prior to the collapse of communism. Several scholars state that the negative economic developments in post-Communist countries after the fall of Communism led to increased nationalist sentiment and nostalgia for the Communist era. In 2011, The Guardian published an analysis of the former Soviet countries twenty years after the fall of the USSR. They found that "GDP fell as much as 50 percent in the 1990s in some republics... as capital flight, industrial collapse, hyperinflation and tax avoidance took their toll", but that there was a rebound in the 2000s, and by 2010 "some economies were five times as big as they were in 1991." Life expectancy has grown since 1991 in some of the countries, but fallen in others; likewise, some held free and fair elections, while others remained authoritarian. By 2019, the majority of people in most Eastern European countries approved of the shift to multiparty democracy and a market economy, with approval being highest among residents of Poland and residents in the territory of what was once East Germany, and disapproval being the highest among residents of Russia and Ukraine. In addition, 61 percent said that standards of living were now higher than they had been under Communism, while only 31 percent said that they were worse, with the remaining 8 percent saying that they did not know or that standards of living had not changed.According to Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker in their book Communism's Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes, citizens of post-Communist countries are less supportive of democracy and more supportive of government-provided social welfare. They also found that those who lived under Communist rule were more likely to be left-authoritarian (referencing the right-wing authoritarian personality) than citizens of other countries. Those who are left-authoritarian in this sense more often tend to be older generations that lived under Communism. In contrast, younger post-Communist generations continue to be anti-democratic but are not as left-wing ideologically, which in the words of Pop-Eleches and Tucker "might help explain the growing popularity of right-wing populists in the region."Conservatives, liberals, and social democrats generally view 20th-century Communist states as unqualified failures. Political theorist and professor Jodi Dean argues that this limits the scope of discussion around political alternatives to capitalism and neoliberalism. Dean argues that, when people think of capitalism, they do not consider what are its worst results (climate change, economic inequality, hyperinflation, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, the robber barons, and unemployment) because the history of capitalism is viewed as dynamic and nuanced; the history of communism is not considered dynamic or nuanced, and there is a fixed historical narrative of communism that emphasizes authoritarianism, the gulag, starvation, and violence. Ghodsee, along with the historians Gary Gerstle and Walter Scheidel, suggest that the rise and fall of communism had a significant impact on the development and decline of labor movements and social welfare states in the United States and other Western societies. Gerstle argues that organized labor in the United States was strongest when the threat of communism reached its peak, and the decline of both organized labor and the welfare state coincided with the collapse of communism. Both Gerstle and Scheidel posit that as economic elites in the West became more fearful of possible communist revolutions in their own societies, especially as the tyranny and violence associated with communist governments became more apparent, the more willing they were to compromise with the working class, and much less so once the threat waned. See also Works References Citations Explanatory footnotes Quotes Bibliography Further reading Adami, Stefano; Marrone, G., eds. (2006). "Communism". Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies (1st ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-57958-390-3. Daniels, Robert Vincent (1994). A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse. University Press of New England. ISBN 978-0-87451-678-4. Daniels, Robert Vincent (2007). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-30010-649-7. Dean, Jodi (2012). The Communist Horizon. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-84467-954-6. Dirlik, Arif (1989). Origins of Chinese Communism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-505454-5. Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl (1998) [1848]. The Communist Manifesto (reprint ed.). Signet Classics. ISBN 978-0-451-52710-3. Fitzpatrick, Sheila (2007). "Revisionism in Soviet History". History and Theory. 46 (4): 77–91. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2303.2007.00429.x. JSTOR 4502285.. Historiographical essay that covers the scholarship of the three major schools: totalitarianism, revisionism, and post-revisionism. Forman, James D. (1972). Communism: From Marx's Manifesto to 20th-century Reality. Watts. ISBN 978-0-531-02571-0. Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola; Schündeln, Matthias (2020). "The Long-Term Effects of Communism in Eastern Europe". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 34 (2): 172–191. doi:10.1257/jep.34.2.172. S2CID 219053421.. (PDF version) Furet, François (2000). The Passing of An Illusion: The Idea of Communism In the Twentieth Century. Translated by Kan, D. (English ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-27341-9. Fürst, Juliane; Pons, Silvio [in Italian]; Selden, Mark, eds. (2017). "Endgames? Late Communism in Global Perspective, 1968 to the Present". The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-31650-159-7. Gerlach, Christian; Six, Clemens, eds. (2020). The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3030549657. Gregor, A. J. (2014). Marxism and the Making of China: A Doctrinal History. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-37949-8. Henry, Michel (2014) [1991]. From Communism to Capitalism. Translated by Davidson, Scott. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-472-52431-7. Laybourn, Keith; Murphy, Dylan (1999). Under the Red Flag: A History of Communism in Britain (illustrated, hardcover ed.). Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-75091-485-7. Lovell, Julia (2019). Maoism: A Global History. Bodley Head. ISBN 978-184792-250-2. Morgan, W. John (2003). Communists on Education and Culture 1848–1948. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-48586-6. Morgan, W. John (December 2005). "Communism, Post-Communism, and Moral Education". The Journal of Moral Education. 34 (4). ISSN 1465-3877.. ISSN 0305-7240 (print). Naimark, Norman; Pons, Silvio [in Italian], eds. (2017). "The Socialist Camp and World Power 1941–1960s". The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-31645-985-0. Pipes, Richard (2003). Communism: A History (reprint ed.). Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-81296-864-4. Pons, Silvio [in Italian] (2014). The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism 1917–1991 (English, hardcover ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19965-762-9. Pons, Silvio [in Italian]; Service, Robert, eds. (2010). A Dictionary of 20th Century Communism (hardcover ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-69113-585-4. Pons, Silvio [in Italian]; Smith, Stephen A., eds. (2017). "World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941". The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-31613-702-4. Pop-Eleches, Grigore; Tucker, Joshua A. (2017). Communism's Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes (hardcover ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-69117-558-4. Priestland, David (2009). The Red Flag: A History of Communism. Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-80214-512-3. Sabirov, Kharis Fatykhovich (1987). What Is Communism? (English ed.). Progress Publishers. ISBN 978-0-82853-346-1. Service, Robert (2010). Comrades!: A History of World Communism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-67404-699-3. Shaw, Yu-ming (2019). Changes And Continuities In Chinese Communism: Volume I: Ideology, Politics, and Foreign Policy (hardcover ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-36716-385-3. Zinoviev, Alexandre (1984) [1980]. The Reality of Communism. Schocken Books. ISBN 978-0-80523-901-0. External links "Communism" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. Retrieved 18 August 2021. "Communism". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 18 August 2021. Libertarian Communist Library at Libcom.org contains almost 20,000 articles, books, pamphlets, and journals on libertarian communism. Archived 11 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 18 August 2021. One example being "Marx on the Russian Mir, and misconceptions by Marxists". Lindsay, Samuel McCune (1905). "Communism" . New International Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18 August 2021. The Radical Pamphlet Collection at the Library of Congress contains materials on the topic of communism. Retrieved 18 August 2021. Winstanley, Gerrard (1649). "The True Levellers Standard Advanced, the Diggers' Manifesto". Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Roger Lovejoy. See also "The True Levellers Standard Advanced: Or, The State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men" from Kingston University London's Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 18 August 2021.

co-benefits of climate change mitigation

Co-benefits of climate change mitigation are the benefits related to mitigation measures which reduce greenhouse gas emissions or enhance carbon sinks. From an economic perspective, co-benefits can enhance increased employment through carbon tax revenues and the implementation of renewable energy. A higher share of renewables can additionally lead to more energy security. Socioeconomic co-benefits have been analysed such as energy access in rural areas and improved rural livelihoods.Apart from climate protection, mitigation policies can foster additional ecological co-benefits but also risks with regards to soil conservation, fertility, biodiversity and wildlife habitat. Further, mitigation policies bear opportunities for capacity building, participation and forest governance for local communities. Definition In general, the term co-benefits refers to "simultaneously meeting several interests or objectives resulting from a political intervention, private sector investment or a mix thereof". Opportunistic co-benefits appear as auxiliary or side effect while focusing on a central objective or interest. Strategic co-benefits result from a deliberate effort to seizing several opportunities (e.g., economic, business, social, environmental) with a single purposeful intervention."Co-benefits, also often referred to as ancillary benefits, have been addressed in scientific literature and were firstly dominated by studies that describe how lower GHG emissions lead to better air quality and consequently impact human health positively. The scope of co-benefits research expanded to its economic, social, ecological and political implications. Main co-benefits for people How mitigation is carried out will likely determine its impacts on living standards, as well as future levels of inequality and poverty. Clean air Climate change mitigation policies can lead to lower emissions of co-emitted air pollutants, for instance by shifting away from fossil fuel combustion. In addition, gases such as black carbon and methane contribute both to global warming and to air pollution, such that their mitigation can bring benefits in terms of limiting global temperature increases as well as improving air quality. Implementation of the climate pledges made in the run-up to the Paris Agreement could therefore have significant benefits for human health by improving air quality. The replacement of coal-based energy with renewables can lower the number of premature deaths caused by air pollution. A higher share of renewable energy and consequently less coal-related respiratory diseases can decrease health costs. Active lifestyle Biking reduces greenhouse gas emissions while reducing the effects of a sedentary lifestyle at the same time According to PLoS Medicine: "obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, which are in part related to physical inactivity, may be reduced by a switch to low-carbon transport—including walking and cycling." Health Climate change adaptation Employment and economic development Co-benefits can positively impact employment, industrial development, states' energy independence and energy self-consumption. The deployment of renewable energies can foster job opportunities. Depending on the country and deployment scenario, replacing coal power plants with renewable energy can more than double the number of jobs per average MW capacity. Investments in renewable energies, especially in solar- and wind energy, can boost the value of production. Countries which rely on energy imports can enhance their energy independence and ensure supply security by deploying renewables. National energy generation from renewables lowers the demand for fossil fuel imports which scales up annual economic saving. Households and businesses can additionally benefit from investments in renewable energy. The deployment of rooftop solar and PV-self-consumption creates incentives for low-income households and can support annual savings for the residential sector. Energy access Positive secondary effects from mitigation strategies can also occur for energy access. Rural areas which are not fully electrified can benefit from the deployment of renewable energies. Solar-powered mini-grids can remain economically viable, cost-competitive and reduce the number of power cuts. Energy reliability has additional social implications: stable electricity improves the quality of education. History Positive secondary effects that occur from climate mitigation and adaptation measures have been mentioned in research since the 1990s.The IPCC pointed out in 2007: "Co-benefits of GHG mitigation can be an important decision criteria in analyses carried out by policy-makers, but they are often neglected." And often the co-benefits are "not quantified, monetised or even identified by businesses and decision-makers". Appropriate consideration of co-benefits can greatly "influence policy decisions concerning the timing and level of mitigation action", and there can be "significant advantages to the national economy and technical innovation".The IPCC first mentioned the role of co-benefits in 2001, followed by its fourth and fifth assessment cycle stressing improved working environment, reduced waste, health benefits and reduced capital expenditures. In the early 2000s the OECD was further fostering its efforts in promoting ancillary benefits. During the past decade, co-benefits have been discussed by several other international organisations: The International Energy Agency (IEA) spelled out the "multiple benefits approach" of energy efficiency while the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) operationalised the list of co-benefits of the renewable energy sector. Relevance for international agreements The UNFCCC's Paris Agreement acknowledges mitigation co-benefits from Parties' action plans. Co-benefits have been integrated in official national policy documents such as India's National Action Plan on Climate Change or the updated Vietnamese National Determined Contributions. Risks == References ==

wildfire

A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire (in Australia), desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire. Some natural forest ecosystems depend on wildfire. Wildfires are distinct from beneficial human usage of wildland fire, called controlled or prescribed burning, although controlled burns can turn into wildfires. Modern forest management often engages in prescribed burns to mitigate risk and promote natural forest cycles. Wildfires are often classified by characteristics like cause of ignition, physical properties, combustible material present, and the effect of weather on the fire. Wildfire behavior and severity result from a combination of factors such as available fuels, physical setting, and weather. Climatic cycles with wet periods that create substantial fuels, followed by drought and heat, often proceed severe wildfires. These cycles have been intensified by climate change.Naturally occurring wildfires may have beneficial effects on native vegetation, animals, and ecosystems that have evolved with fire. Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for growth and reproduction. Some natural forests are dependent on wildfire. High-severity wildfires may create complex early seral forest habitat (also called "snag forest habitat"), which may have higher species richness and diversity than an unburned old forest. Human societies can be severely impacted by fires. Effects include the direct health impacts of smoke and fire, destruction of property (especially in wildland–urban interfaces) economic and ecosystem services losses, and contamination of water and soil.Wildfires are among the most common forms of natural disaster in some regions, including Siberia, California, British Columbia, and Australia. Areas with Mediterranean climates or in the taiga biome are particularly susceptible. At a global level, human practices have made the impacts of wildfire worse, with a doubling in land area burned by wildfires compared to natural levels. Humans have impacted wildfire through climate change, land-use change, and wildfire suppression. The increase in severity of fires in the US creates a positive feedback loop by releasing naturally sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere, increasing the atmosphere's greenhouse effect thereby contributing to climate change. Ignition The initial ignition of a fire is usually evaluated for natural or human causes. Natural The following actions can ignite wildfires naturally, without the involvement of humans: lightning, volcanic eruption, sparks from rock falls, spontaneous combustion. Human activity Sources of human-caused fire may include arson, accidental ignition, or the uncontrolled use of fire in land-clearing and agriculture such as the slash-and-burn farming in Southeast Asia. In the tropics, farmers often practice the slash-and-burn method of clearing fields during the dry season. In middle latitudes, the most common human causes of wildfires are equipment generating sparks (chainsaws, grinders, mowers, etc.), overhead power lines, and arson.Arson may account for over 20% of human caused fires. However, in the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season "an independent study found online bots and trolls exaggerating the role of arson in the fires." In the 2023 Canadian wildfires false claims of arson gained traction on social media; however, arson is generally not a main cause of wildfires in Canada. In California, generally 6–10% of wildfires annually are arson. Coal seam fires burn in the thousands around the world, such as those in Burning Mountain, New South Wales; Centralia, Pennsylvania; and several coal-sustained fires in China. They can also flare up unexpectedly and ignite nearby flammable material. Spread The spread of wildfires varies based on the flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content, and weather conditions. Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight and water for plant growth. Overall, fire types can be generally characterized by their fuels as follows: Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots, duff on the forest floor, and other buried organic matter. Ground fires typically burn by smoldering, and can burn slowly for days to months, such as peat fires in Kalimantan and Eastern Sumatra, Indonesia, which resulted from a riceland creation project that unintentionally drained and dried the peat. Crawling or surface fires are fueled by low-lying vegetative matter on the forest floor such as leaf and timber litter, debris, grass, and low-lying shrubbery. This kind of fire often burns at a relatively lower temperature than crown fires (less than 400 °C (752 °F)) and may spread at slow rate, though steep slopes and wind can accelerate the rate of spread. This fuel type is especially susceptible to ignition due to spotting (see below). Ladder fires consume material between low-level vegetation and tree canopies, such as small trees, downed logs, and vines. Kudzu, Old World climbing fern, and other invasive plants that scale trees may also encourage ladder fires. Crown, canopy, or aerial fires burn suspended material at the canopy level, such as tall trees, vines, and mosses. The ignition of a crown fire, termed crowning, is dependent on the density of the suspended material, canopy height, canopy continuity, sufficient surface and ladder fires, vegetation moisture content, and weather conditions during the blaze. Stand-replacing fires lit by humans can spread into the Amazon rain forest, damaging ecosystems not particularly suited for heat or arid conditions. Physical properties Wildfires occur when all the necessary elements of a fire triangle come together in a susceptible area: an ignition source is brought into contact with a combustible material such as vegetation that is subjected to enough heat and has an adequate supply of oxygen from the ambient air. A high moisture content usually prevents ignition and slows propagation, because higher temperatures are needed to evaporate any water in the material and heat the material to its fire point.Dense forests usually provide more shade, resulting in lower ambient temperatures and greater humidity, and are therefore less susceptible to wildfires. Less dense material such as grasses and leaves are easier to ignite because they contain less water than denser material such as branches and trunks. Plants continuously lose water by evapotranspiration, but water loss is usually balanced by water absorbed from the soil, humidity, or rain. When this balance is not maintained, often as a consequence of droughts, plants dry out and are therefore more flammable.A wildfire front is the portion sustaining continuous flaming combustion, where unburned material meets active flames, or the smoldering transition between unburned and burned material. As the front approaches, the fire heats both the surrounding air and woody material through convection and thermal radiation. First, wood is dried as water is vaporized at a temperature of 100 °C (212 °F). Next, the pyrolysis of wood at 230 °C (450 °F) releases flammable gases. Finally, wood can smolder at 380 °C (720 °F) or, when heated sufficiently, ignite at 590 °C (1,000 °F). Even before the flames of a wildfire arrive at a particular location, heat transfer from the wildfire front warms the air to 800 °C (1,470 °F), which pre-heats and dries flammable materials, causing materials to ignite faster and allowing the fire to spread faster. High-temperature and long-duration surface wildfires may encourage flashover or torching: the drying of tree canopies and their subsequent ignition from below. Wildfires have a rapid forward rate of spread (FROS) when burning through dense uninterrupted fuels. They can move as fast as 10.8 kilometres per hour (6.7 mph) in forests and 22 kilometres per hour (14 mph) in grasslands. Wildfires can advance tangential to the main front to form a flanking front, or burn in the opposite direction of the main front by backing. They may also spread by jumping or spotting as winds and vertical convection columns carry firebrands (hot wood embers) and other burning materials through the air over roads, rivers, and other barriers that may otherwise act as firebreaks. Torching and fires in tree canopies encourage spotting, and dry ground fuels around a wildfire are especially vulnerable to ignition from firebrands. Spotting can create spot fires as hot embers and firebrands ignite fuels downwind from the fire. In Australian bushfires, spot fires are known to occur as far as 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the fire front.Especially large wildfires may affect air currents in their immediate vicinities by the stack effect: air rises as it is heated, and large wildfires create powerful updrafts that will draw in new, cooler air from surrounding areas in thermal columns. Great vertical differences in temperature and humidity encourage pyrocumulus clouds, strong winds, and fire whirls with the force of tornadoes at speeds of more than 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). Rapid rates of spread, prolific crowning or spotting, the presence of fire whirls, and strong convection columns signify extreme conditions. Intensity variations during day and night Intensity also increases during daytime hours. Burn rates of smoldering logs are up to five times greater during the day due to lower humidity, increased temperatures, and increased wind speeds. Sunlight warms the ground during the day which creates air currents that travel uphill. At night the land cools, creating air currents that travel downhill. Wildfires are fanned by these winds and often follow the air currents over hills and through valleys. Fires in Europe occur frequently during the hours of 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. Wildfire suppression operations in the United States revolve around a 24-hour fire day that begins at 10:00 a.m. due to the predictable increase in intensity resulting from the daytime warmth. Climate change effects Increasing risks due to heat waves and droughts Climate variability including heat waves, droughts, and El Niño, and regional weather patterns, such as high-pressure ridges, can increase the risk and alter the behavior of wildfires dramatically. Years of high precipitation can produce rapid vegetation growth, which when followed by warmer periods can encourage more widespread fires and longer fire seasons. High temperatures dry out the fuel loads and make them more flammable, increasing tree mortality and posing significant risks to global forest health. Since the mid-1980s, in the Western US, earlier snowmelt and associated warming has also been associated with an increase in length and severity of the wildfire season, or the most fire-prone time of the year. A 2019 study indicates that the increase in fire risk in California may be partially attributable to human-induced climate change.In the summer of 1974–1975 (southern hemisphere), Australia suffered its worst recorded wildfire, when 15% of Australia's land mass suffered "extensive fire damage". Fires that summer burned up an estimated 117 million hectares (290 million acres; 1,170,000 square kilometres; 450,000 square miles). In Australia, the annual number of hot days (above 35 °C) and very hot days (above 40 °C) has increased significantly in many areas of the country since 1950. The country has always had bushfires but in 2019, the extent and ferocity of these fires increased dramatically. For the first time catastrophic bushfire conditions were declared for Greater Sydney. New South Wales and Queensland declared a state of emergency but fires were also burning in South Australia and Western Australia.In 2019, extreme heat and dryness caused massive wildfires in Siberia, Alaska, Canary Islands, Australia, and in the Amazon rainforest. The fires in the latter were caused mainly by illegal logging. The smoke from the fires expanded on huge territory including major cities, dramatically reducing air quality. As of August 2020, the wildfires in that year were 13% worse than in 2019 due primarily to climate change, deforestation and agricultural burning. The Amazon rainforest's existence is threatened by fires. Record-breaking wildfires in 2021 occurred in Turkey, Greece and Russia, thought to be linked to climate change. Carbon dioxide and other emissions from fires Wildfires release large amounts of carbon dioxide, black and brown carbon particles, and ozone precursors such as volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the atmosphere. These emissions affect radiation, clouds, and climate on regional and even global scales. Wildfires also emit substantial amounts of semi-volatile organic species that can partition from the gas phase to form secondary organic aerosol (SOA) over hours to days after emission. In addition, the formation of the other pollutants as the air is transported can lead to harmful exposures for populations in regions far away from the wildfires. While direct emissions of harmful pollutants can affect first responders and residents, wildfire smoke can also be transported over long distances and impact air quality across local, regional, and global scales.Over the past century, wildfires have accounted for 20–25% of global carbon emissions, the remainder from human activities. Global carbon emissions from wildfires through August 2020 equaled the average annual emissions of the European Union. In 2020, the carbon released by California's wildfires was significantly larger than the state's other carbon emissions.Forest fires in Indonesia in 1997 were estimated to have released between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatonnes (0.89 and 2.83 billion short tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is between 13%–40% of the annual global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.In June and July 2019, fires in the Arctic emitted more than 140 megatons of carbon dioxide, according to an analysis by CAMS. To put that into perspective this amounts to the same amount of carbon emitted by 36 million cars in a year. The recent wildfires and their massive CO2 emissions mean that it will be important to take them into consideration when implementing measures for reaching greenhouse gas reduction targets accorded with the Paris climate agreement. Due to the complex oxidative chemistry occurring during the transport of wildfire smoke in the atmosphere, the toxicity of emissions was indicated to increase over time.Atmospheric models suggest that these concentrations of sooty particles could increase absorption of incoming solar radiation during winter months by as much as 15%. The Amazon is estimated to hold around 90 billion tons of carbon. As of 2019, the earth's atmosphere has 415 parts per million of carbon, and the destruction of the Amazon would add about 38 parts per million.Some research has shown wildfire smoke can have a cooling effect.Research in 2007 stated that black carbon in snow changed temperature three times more than atmospheric carbon dioxide. As much as 94 percent of Arctic warming may be caused by dark carbon on snow that initiates melting. The dark carbon comes from fossil fuels burning, wood and other biofuels, and forest fires. Melting can occur even at low concentrations of dark carbon (below five parts per billion)”. Prevention Wildfire prevention refers to the preemptive methods aimed at reducing the risk of fires as well as lessening its severity and spread. Prevention techniques aim to manage air quality, maintain ecological balances, protect resources, and to affect future fires. Prevention policies must consider the role that humans play in wildfires, since, for example, 95% of forest fires in Europe are related to human involvement.Wildfire prevention programs around the world may employ techniques such as wildland fire use (WFU) and prescribed or controlled burns. Wildland fire use refers to any fire of natural causes that is monitored but allowed to burn. Controlled burns are fires ignited by government agencies under less dangerous weather conditions. Other objectives can include maintenance of healthy forests, rangelands, and wetlands, and support of ecosystem diversity. Strategies for wildfire prevention, detection, control and suppression have varied over the years. One common and inexpensive technique to reduce the risk of uncontrolled wildfires is controlled burning: intentionally igniting smaller less-intense fires to minimize the amount of flammable material available for a potential wildfire. Vegetation may be burned periodically to limit the accumulation of plants and other debris that may serve as fuel, while also maintaining high species diversity. While other people claim that controlled burns and a policy of allowing some wildfires to burn is the cheapest method and an ecologically appropriate policy for many forests, they tend not to take into account the economic value of resources that are consumed by the fire, especially merchantable timber. Some studies conclude that while fuels may also be removed by logging, such thinning treatments may not be effective at reducing fire severity under extreme weather conditions.Building codes in fire-prone areas typically require that structures be built of flame-resistant materials and a defensible space be maintained by clearing flammable materials within a prescribed distance from the structure. Communities in the Philippines also maintain fire lines 5 to 10 meters (16 to 33 ft) wide between the forest and their village, and patrol these lines during summer months or seasons of dry weather. Continued residential development in fire-prone areas and rebuilding structures destroyed by fires has been met with criticism. The ecological benefits of fire are often overridden by the economic and safety benefits of protecting structures and human life. Detection The demand for timely, high-quality fire information has increased in recent years. Fast and effective detection is a key factor in wildfire fighting. Early detection efforts were focused on early response, accurate results in both daytime and nighttime, and the ability to prioritize fire danger. Fire lookout towers were used in the United States in the early 20th century and fires were reported using telephones, carrier pigeons, and heliographs. Aerial and land photography using instant cameras were used in the 1950s until infrared scanning was developed for fire detection in the 1960s. However, information analysis and delivery was often delayed by limitations in communication technology. Early satellite-derived fire analyses were hand-drawn on maps at a remote site and sent via overnight mail to the fire manager. During the Yellowstone fires of 1988, a data station was established in West Yellowstone, permitting the delivery of satellite-based fire information in approximately four hours.Public hotlines, fire lookouts in towers, and ground and aerial patrols can be used as a means of early detection of forest fires. However, accurate human observation may be limited by operator fatigue, time of day, time of year, and geographic location. Electronic systems have gained popularity in recent years as a possible resolution to human operator error. These systems may be semi- or fully automated and employ systems based on the risk area and degree of human presence, as suggested by GIS data analyses. An integrated approach of multiple systems can be used to merge satellite data, aerial imagery, and personnel position via Global Positioning System (GPS) into a collective whole for near-realtime use by wireless Incident Command Centers. Local sensor networks A small, high risk area that features thick vegetation, a strong human presence, or is close to a critical urban area can be monitored using a local sensor network. Detection systems may include wireless sensor networks that act as automated weather systems: detecting temperature, humidity, and smoke. These may be battery-powered, solar-powered, or tree-rechargeable: able to recharge their battery systems using the small electrical currents in plant material. Larger, medium-risk areas can be monitored by scanning towers that incorporate fixed cameras and sensors to detect smoke or additional factors such as the infrared signature of carbon dioxide produced by fires. Additional capabilities such as night vision, brightness detection, and color change detection may also be incorporated into sensor arrays.The Department of Natural Resources signed a contract with PanoAI for the installation of 360 degree 'rapid detection' cameras around the Pacific northwest, which are mounted on cell towers and are capable of 24/7 monitoring of a 15 mile radius. Additionally, Sensaio Tech, based in Brazil and Toronto, has released a sensor device that continuously monitors 14 different variables common in forests, ranging from soil temperature to salinity. This information is connected live back to clients through dashboard visualizations, while mobile notifications are provided regarding dangerous levels. Satellite and aerial monitoring Satellite and aerial monitoring through the use of planes, helicopter, or UAVs can provide a wider view and may be sufficient to monitor very large, low risk areas. These more sophisticated systems employ GPS and aircraft-mounted infrared or high-resolution visible cameras to identify and target wildfires. Satellite-mounted sensors such as Envisat's Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer and European Remote-Sensing Satellite's Along-Track Scanning Radiometer can measure infrared radiation emitted by fires, identifying hot spots greater than 39 °C (102 °F). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hazard Mapping System combines remote-sensing data from satellite sources such as Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) for detection of fire and smoke plume locations. However, satellite detection is prone to offset errors, anywhere from 2 to 3 kilometers (1 to 2 mi) for MODIS and AVHRR data and up to 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) for GOES data. Satellites in geostationary orbits may become disabled, and satellites in polar orbits are often limited by their short window of observation time. Cloud cover and image resolution may also limit the effectiveness of satellite imagery. Global Forest Watch provides detailed daily updates on fire alerts.In 2015 a new fire detection tool is in operation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS) which uses data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite to detect smaller fires in more detail than previous space-based products. The high-resolution data is used with a computer model to predict how a fire will change direction based on weather and land conditions.In 2014, an international campaign was organized in South Africa's Kruger National Park to validate fire detection products including the new VIIRS active fire data. In advance of that campaign, the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa, an early adopter of the VIIRS 375 m fire product, put it to use during several large wildfires in Kruger. There have also been numerous companies and start-ups releasing new drone technology, many of which use AI. Data Blanket, a Seattle-based startup backed by Bill Gates, has developed drones capable of performing self-guided flights in order to conduct comprehensive assessments of wildfires and the surrounding site, providing real-time and critical information such as local vegetation and fuels. The drones are equipped with RGB and infrared cameras, AI-based computational software, 5G/Wi-Fi, and advanced navigational features. Data Blanket has also stated that its system will eventually be capable of producing micro-weather data, further supporting firefighter efforts by delivering crucial information. Additionally, scientists from Imperial College London and Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have designed the experimental 'FireDrone', which can handle temperatures of up to 200C for 10 minutes. Another company, the German-based Orora Tech, as of 2023 has two satellites in orbit packaged with infrared sensors that are capable of quickly detecting temperature and soil anomalies, with the ability to predict the likely growth and spread rate of a fire in comparison to others. The company has stated that it will be capable of scanning the earth 48 times per day by 2026. Artificial intelligence Between 2022–2023, wildfires throughout North America prompted an uptake in the delivery and design of various technologies using artificial intelligence for early detection, prevention, and prediction of wildfires. Suppression Wildfire suppression depends on the technologies available in the area in which the wildfire occurs. In less developed nations the techniques used can be as simple as throwing sand or beating the fire with sticks or palm fronds. In more advanced nations, the suppression methods vary due to increased technological capacity. Silver iodide can be used to encourage snow fall, while fire retardants and water can be dropped onto fires by unmanned aerial vehicles, planes, and helicopters. Complete fire suppression is no longer an expectation, but the majority of wildfires are often extinguished before they grow out of control. While more than 99% of the 10,000 new wildfires each year are contained, escaped wildfires under extreme weather conditions are difficult to suppress without a change in the weather. Wildfires in Canada and the US burn an average of 54,500 square kilometers (13,000,000 acres) per year.Above all, fighting wildfires can become deadly. A wildfire's burning front may also change direction unexpectedly and jump across fire breaks. Intense heat and smoke can lead to disorientation and loss of appreciation of the direction of the fire, which can make fires particularly dangerous. For example, during the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana, United States, thirteen smokejumpers died when they lost their communication links, became disoriented, and were overtaken by the fire. In the Australian February 2009 Victorian bushfires, at least 173 people died and over 2,029 homes and 3,500 structures were lost when they became engulfed by wildfire. Costs of wildfire suppression The suppression of wild fires takes up a large amount of a country's gross domestic product which directly affects the country's economy. While costs vary wildly from year to year, depending on the severity of each fire season, in the United States, local, state, federal and tribal agencies collectively spend tens of billions of dollars annually to suppress wildfires. In the United States, it was reported that approximately $6 billion was spent between 2004–2008 to suppress wildfires in the country. In California, the U.S. Forest Service spends about $200 million per year to suppress 98% of wildfires and up to $1 billion to suppress the other 2% of fires that escape initial attack and become large. Wildland firefighting safety Wildland fire fighters face several life-threatening hazards including heat stress, fatigue, smoke and dust, as well as the risk of other injuries such as burns, cuts and scrapes, animal bites, and even rhabdomyolysis. Between 2000 and 2016, more than 350 wildland firefighters died on-duty.Especially in hot weather conditions, fires present the risk of heat stress, which can entail feeling heat, fatigue, weakness, vertigo, headache, or nausea. Heat stress can progress into heat strain, which entails physiological changes such as increased heart rate and core body temperature. This can lead to heat-related illnesses, such as heat rash, cramps, exhaustion or heat stroke. Various factors can contribute to the risks posed by heat stress, including strenuous work, personal risk factors such as age and fitness, dehydration, sleep deprivation, and burdensome personal protective equipment. Rest, cool water, and occasional breaks are crucial to mitigating the effects of heat stress.Smoke, ash, and debris can also pose serious respiratory hazards for wildland firefighters. The smoke and dust from wildfires can contain gases such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde, as well as particulates such as ash and silica. To reduce smoke exposure, wildfire fighting crews should, whenever possible, rotate firefighters through areas of heavy smoke, avoid downwind firefighting, use equipment rather than people in holding areas, and minimize mop-up. Camps and command posts should also be located upwind of wildfires. Protective clothing and equipment can also help minimize exposure to smoke and ash.Firefighters are also at risk of cardiac events including strokes and heart attacks. Firefighters should maintain good physical fitness. Fitness programs, medical screening and examination programs which include stress tests can minimize the risks of firefighting cardiac problems. Other injury hazards wildland firefighters face include slips, trips, falls, burns, scrapes, and cuts from tools and equipment, being struck by trees, vehicles, or other objects, plant hazards such as thorns and poison ivy, snake and animal bites, vehicle crashes, electrocution from power lines or lightning storms, and unstable building structures. Fire retardants Fire retardants are used to slow wildfires by inhibiting combustion. They are aqueous solutions of ammonium phosphates and ammonium sulfates, as well as thickening agents. The decision to apply retardant depends on the magnitude, location and intensity of the wildfire. In certain instances, fire retardant may also be applied as a precautionary fire defense measure.Typical fire retardants contain the same agents as fertilizers. Fire retardants may also affect water quality through leaching, eutrophication, or misapplication. Fire retardant's effects on drinking water remain inconclusive. Dilution factors, including water body size, rainfall, and water flow rates lessen the concentration and potency of fire retardant. Wildfire debris (ash and sediment) clog rivers and reservoirs increasing the risk for floods and erosion that ultimately slow and/or damage water treatment systems. There is continued concern of fire retardant effects on land, water, wildlife habitats, and watershed quality, additional research is needed. However, on the positive side, fire retardant (specifically its nitrogen and phosphorus components) has been shown to have a fertilizing effect on nutrient-deprived soils and thus creates a temporary increase in vegetation. Modeling Impacts on the natural environment On the atmosphere Most of Earth's weather and air pollution resides in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere that extends from the surface of the planet to a height of about 10 kilometers (6 mi). The vertical lift of a severe thunderstorm or pyrocumulonimbus can be enhanced in the area of a large wildfire, which can propel smoke, soot (black carbon), and other particulate matter as high as the lower stratosphere. Previously, prevailing scientific theory held that most particles in the stratosphere came from volcanoes, but smoke and other wildfire emissions have been detected from the lower stratosphere. Pyrocumulus clouds can reach 6,100 meters (20,000 ft) over wildfires. Satellite observation of smoke plumes from wildfires revealed that the plumes could be traced intact for distances exceeding 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi). Computer-aided models such as CALPUFF may help predict the size and direction of wildfire-generated smoke plumes by using atmospheric dispersion modeling.Wildfires can affect local atmospheric pollution, and release carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Wildfire emissions contain fine particulate matter which can cause cardiovascular and respiratory problems. Increased fire byproducts in the troposphere can increase ozone concentrations beyond safe levels. On ecosystems Wildfires are common in climates that are sufficiently moist to allow the growth of vegetation but feature extended dry, hot periods. Such places include the vegetated areas of Australia and Southeast Asia, the veld in southern Africa, the fynbos in the Western Cape of South Africa, the forested areas of the United States and Canada, and the Mediterranean Basin. High-severity wildfire creates complex early seral forest habitat (also called “snag forest habitat”), which often has higher species richness and diversity than unburned old forest. Plant and animal species in most types of North American forests evolved with fire, and many of these species depend on wildfires, and particularly high-severity fires, to reproduce and grow. Fire helps to return nutrients from plant matter back to the soil. The heat from fire is necessary to the germination of certain types of seeds, and the snags (dead trees) and early successional forests created by high-severity fire create habitat conditions that are beneficial to wildlife. Early successional forests created by high-severity fire support some of the highest levels of native biodiversity found in temperate conifer forests. Post-fire logging has no ecological benefits and many negative impacts; the same is often true for post-fire seeding.Although some ecosystems rely on naturally occurring fires to regulate growth, some ecosystems suffer from too much fire, such as the chaparral in southern California and lower-elevation deserts in the American Southwest. The increased fire frequency in these ordinarily fire-dependent areas has upset natural cycles, damaged native plant communities, and encouraged the growth of non-native weeds. Invasive species, such as Lygodium microphyllum and Bromus tectorum, can grow rapidly in areas that were damaged by fires. Because they are highly flammable, they can increase the future risk of fire, creating a positive feedback loop that increases fire frequency and further alters native vegetation communities.In the Amazon rainforest, drought, logging, cattle ranching practices, and slash-and-burn agriculture damage fire-resistant forests and promote the growth of flammable brush, creating a cycle that encourages more burning. Fires in the rainforest threaten its collection of diverse species and produce large amounts of CO2. Also, fires in the rainforest, along with drought and human involvement, could damage or destroy more than half of the Amazon rainforest by 2030. Wildfires generate ash, reduce the availability of organic nutrients, and cause an increase in water runoff, eroding other nutrients and creating flash flood conditions. A 2003 wildfire in the North Yorkshire Moors burned off 2.5 square kilometers (600 acres) of heather and the underlying peat layers. Afterwards, wind erosion stripped the ash and the exposed soil, revealing archaeological remains dating to 10,000 BC. Wildfires can also have an effect on climate change, increasing the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere and inhibiting vegetation growth, which affects overall carbon uptake by plants. On waterways Debris and chemical runoff into waterways after wildfires can make drinking water sources unsafe. Though it is challenging to quantify the impacts of wildfires on surface water quality, research suggests that the concentration of many pollutants increases post-fire. The impacts occur during active burning and up to years later. Increases in nutrients and total suspended sediments can happen within a year while heavy metal concentrations may peak 1-2 years after a wildfire. Benzene is one of many chemicals that have been found in drinking water systems after wildfires. Benzene can permeate certain plastic pipes and thus require long times to be removed from the water distribution infrastructure. Researchers estimated that, in worst case scenarios, more than 286 days of constant flushing of a contaminated HDPE service line were needed to reduce benzene below safe drinking water limits. Temperature increases caused by fires, including wildfires, can cause plastic water pipes to generate toxic chemicals such as benzene. On plant and animals Impacts on humans Wildfire risk is the chance that a wildfire will start in or reach a particular area and the potential loss of human values if it does. Risk is dependent on variable factors such as human activities, weather patterns, availability of wildfire fuels, and the availability or lack of resources to suppress a fire. Wildfires have continually been a threat to human populations. However, human-induced geographic and climatic changes are exposing populations more frequently to wildfires and increasing wildfire risk. It is speculated that the increase in wildfires arises from a century of wildfire suppression coupled with the rapid expansion of human developments into fire-prone wildlands. Wildfires are naturally occurring events that aid in promoting forest health. Global warming and climate changes are causing an increase in temperatures and more droughts nationwide which contributes to an increase in wildfire risk. Airborne hazards The most noticeable adverse effect of wildfires is the destruction of property. However, hazardous chemicals released also significantly impact human health.Wildfire smoke is composed primarily of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Other common components present in lower concentrations are carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and benzene. Small airborne particulates (in solid form or liquid droplets) are also present in smoke and ash debris. 80–90% of wildfire smoke, by mass, is within the fine particle size class of 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller.Carbon dioxide in smoke poses a low health risk due to its low toxicity. Rather, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter, particularly 2.5 µm in diameter and smaller, have been identified as the major health threats. High levels of heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and copper were found in the ash debris following the 2007 Californian wildfires. A national clean-up campaign was organised in fear of the health effects from exposure. In the devastating California Camp Fire (2018) that killed 85 people, lead levels increased by around 50 times in the hours following the fire at a site nearby (Chico). Zinc concentration also increased significantly in Modesto, 150 miles away. Heavy metals such as manganese and calcium were found in numerous California fires as well. Other chemicals are considered to be significant hazards but are found in concentrations that are too low to cause detectable health effects.The degree of wildfire smoke exposure to an individual is dependent on the length, severity, duration, and proximity of the fire. People are exposed directly to smoke via the respiratory tract through inhalation of air pollutants. Indirectly, communities are exposed to wildfire debris that can contaminate soil and water supplies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed the air quality index (AQI), a public resource that provides national air quality standard concentrations for common air pollutants. The public can use it to determine their exposure to hazardous air pollutants based on visibility range. Health effects Wildfire smoke contains particulates that may have adverse effects upon the human respiratory system. Evidence of the health effects should be relayed to the public so that exposure may be limited. The evidence can also be used to influence policy to promote positive health outcomes.Inhalation of smoke from a wildfire can be a health hazard. Wildfire smoke is composed of combustion products i.e. carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor, particulate matter, organic chemicals, nitrogen oxides and other compounds. The principal health concern is the inhalation of particulate matter and carbon monoxide.Particulate matter (PM) is a type of air pollution made up of particles of dust and liquid droplets. They are characterized into three categories based on particle diameter: coarse PM, fine PM, and ultrafine PM. Coarse particles are between 2.5 micrometers and 10 micrometers, fine particles measure 0.1 to 2.5 micrometers, and ultrafine particle are less than 0.1 micrometer. lmpact on the body upon inhalation varies by size. Coarse PM is filtered by the upper airways and can accumulate and cause pulmonary inflammation. This can result in eye and sinus irritation as well as sore throat and coughing. Coarse PM is often composed of heavier and more toxic materials that lead to short-term effects with stronger impact.Smaller PM moves further into the respiratory system creating issues deep into the lungs and the bloodstream. In asthma patients, PM2.5 causes inflammation but also increases oxidative stress in the epithelial cells. These particulates also cause apoptosis and autophagy in lung epithelial cells. Both processes damage the cells and impact cell function. This damage impacts those with respiratory conditions such as asthma where the lung tissues and function are already compromised. Particulates less than 0.1 micrometer are called ultrafine particle (UFP). It is a major component of wildfire smoke. UFP can enter the bloodstream like PM2.5-0.1 however studies show that it works into the blood much quicker. The inflammation and epithelial damage done by UFP has also shown to be much more severe. PM2.5 is of the largest concern in regards to wildfire. This is particularly hazardous to the very young, elderly and those with chronic conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis and cardiovascular conditions. The illnesses most commonly associated with exposure to fine PM from wildfire smoke are bronchitis, exacerbation of asthma or COPD, and pneumonia. Symptoms of these complications include wheezing and shortness of breath and cardiovascular symptoms include chest pain, rapid heart rate and fatigue. Asthma exacerbation Several epidemiological studies have demonstrated a close association between air pollution and respiratory allergic diseases such as bronchial asthma.An observational study of smoke exposure related to the 2007 San Diego wildfires revealed an increase both in healthcare utilization and respiratory diagnoses, especially asthma among the group sampled. Projected climate scenarios of wildfire occurrences predict significant increases in respiratory conditions among young children. PM triggers a series of biological processes including inflammatory immune response, oxidative stress, which are associated with harmful changes in allergic respiratory diseases.Although some studies demonstrated no significant acute changes in lung function among people with asthma related to PM from wildfires, a possible explanation for these counterintuitive findings is the increased use of quick-relief medications, such as inhalers, in response to elevated levels of smoke among those already diagnosed with asthma.There is consistent evidence between wildfire smoke and the exacerbation of asthma.Asthma is one of the most common chronic disease among children in the United States, affecting an estimated 6.2 million children. Research on asthma risk focuses specifically on the risk of air pollution during the gestational period. Several pathophysiology processes are involved in this. Considerable airway development occurs during the 2nd and 3rd trimesters and continues until 3 years of age. It is hypothesized that exposure to these toxins during this period could have consequential effects, as the epithelium of the lungs during this time could have increased permeability to toxins. Exposure to air pollution during parental and pre-natal stage could induce epigenetic changes which are responsible for the development of asthma. Studies have found significant association between PM2.5, NO2 and development of asthma during childhood despite heterogeneity among studies. Furthermore, maternal exposure to chronic stressors is most likely present in distressed communities, and as this can be correlated with childhood asthma, it may further explain links between early childhood exposure to air pollution, neighborhood poverty, and childhood risk. Carbon monoxide danger Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless gas that can be found at the highest concentration at close proximity to a smoldering fire. Thus, it is a serious threat to the health of wildfire firefighters. CO in smoke can be inhaled into the lungs where it is absorbed into the bloodstream and reduces oxygen delivery to the body's vital organs. At high concentrations, it can cause headaches, weakness, dizziness, confusion, nausea, disorientation, visual impairment, coma, and even death. Even at lower concentrations, such as those found at wildfires, individuals with cardiovascular disease may experience chest pain and cardiac arrhythmia. A recent study tracking the number and cause of wildfire firefighter deaths from 1990 to 2006 found that 21.9% of the deaths occurred from heart attacks.Another important and somewhat less obvious health effect of wildfires is psychiatric diseases and disorders. Both adults and children from various countries who were directly and indirectly affected by wildfires were found to demonstrate different mental conditions linked to their experience with the wildfires. These include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and phobias. Epidemiology The Western US has seen an increase in both the frequency and intensity of wildfires over the last several decades. This has been attributed to the arid climate of there and the effects of global warming. An estimated 46 million people were exposed to wildfire smoke from 2004 to 2009 in the Western US. Evidence has demonstrated that wildfire smoke can increase levels of airborne particulate.The EPA has defined acceptable concentrations of PM in the air, through the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and monitoring of ambient air quality has been mandated. Due to these monitoring programs and the incidence of several large wildfires near populated areas, epidemiological studies have been conducted and demonstrate an association between human health effects and an increase in fine particulate matter due to wildfire smoke. An increase in PM smoke emitted from the Hayman fire in Colorado in June 2002, was associated with an increase in respiratory symptoms in patients with COPD. Looking at the wildfires in Southern California in 2003, investigators have shown an increase in hospital admissions due to asthma symptoms while being exposed to peak concentrations of PM in smoke. Another epidemiological study found a 7.2% (95% confidence interval: 0.25%, 15%) increase in risk of respiratory related hospital admissions during smoke wave days with high wildfire-specific particulate matter 2.5 compared to matched non-smoke-wave days.Children participating in the Children's Health Study were also found to have an increase in eye and respiratory symptoms, medication use and physician visits. Mothers who were pregnant during the fires gave birth to babies with a slightly reduced average birth weight compared to those who were not exposed. Suggesting that pregnant women may also be at greater risk to adverse effects from wildfire. Worldwide, it is estimated that 339,000 people die due to the effects of wildfire smoke each year. Besides the size of PM, their chemical composition should also be considered. Antecedent studies have demonstrated that the chemical composition of PM2.5 from wildfire smoke can yield different estimates of human health outcomes as compared to other sources of smoke such as solid fuels. Post-fire risks After a wildfire, hazards remain. Residents returning to their homes may be at risk from falling fire-weakened trees. Humans and pets may also be harmed by falling into ash pits. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also reports that wildfires cause significant damage to electric systems, especially in dry regions.Other post-fire risks, can increase if other extreme weather follows. For example, wildfires make soil less able to absorb precipitation, so heavy rainfall can result in more severe flooding and damages like mud slides. At-risk groups Firefighters Firefighters are at greatest risk for acute and chronic health effects resulting from wildfire smoke exposure. Due to firefighters' occupational duties, they are frequently exposed to hazardous chemicals at close proximity for longer periods of time. A case study on the exposure of wildfire smoke among wildland firefighters shows that firefighters are exposed to significant levels of carbon monoxide and respiratory irritants above OSHA-permissible exposure limits (PEL) and ACGIH threshold limit values (TLV). 5–10% are overexposed.Between 2001 and 2012, over 200 fatalities occurred among wildland firefighters. In addition to heat and chemical hazards, firefighters are also at risk for electrocution from power lines; injuries from equipment; slips, trips, and falls; injuries from vehicle rollovers; heat-related illness; insect bites and stings; stress; and rhabdomyolysis. Residents Residents in communities surrounding wildfires are exposed to lower concentrations of chemicals, but they are at a greater risk for indirect exposure through water or soil contamination. Exposure to residents is greatly dependent on individual susceptibility. Vulnerable persons such as children (ages 0–4), the elderly (ages 65 and older), smokers, and pregnant women are at an increased risk due to their already compromised body systems, even when the exposures are present at low chemical concentrations and for relatively short exposure periods. They are also at risk for future wildfires and may move away to areas they consider less risky.Wildfires affect large numbers of people in Western Canada and the United States. In California alone, more than 350,000 people live in towns and cities in "very high fire hazard severity zones".Direct risks to building residents in fire-prone areas can be moderated through design choices such as choosing fire-resistant vegetation, maintaining landscaping to avoid debris accumulation and to create firebreaks, and by selecting fire-retardant roofing materials. Potential compounding issues with poor air quality and heat during warmer months may be addressed with MERV 11 or higher outdoor air filtration in building ventilation systems, mechanical cooling, and a provision of a refuge area with additional air cleaning and cooling, if needed. History The first evidence of wildfires is fossils of the giant fungi Prototaxites preserved as charcoal, discovered in South Wales and Poland, dating to the Silurian period (about 430 million years ago). Smoldering surface fires started to occur sometime before the Early Devonian period 405 million years ago. Low atmospheric oxygen during the Middle and Late Devonian was accompanied by a decrease in charcoal abundance. Additional charcoal evidence suggests that fires continued through the Carboniferous period. Later, the overall increase of atmospheric oxygen from 13% in the Late Devonian to 30–31% by the Late Permian was accompanied by a more widespread distribution of wildfires. Later, a decrease in wildfire-related charcoal deposits from the late Permian to the Triassic periods is explained by a decrease in oxygen levels.Wildfires during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods followed patterns similar to fires that occur in modern times. Surface fires driven by dry seasons are evident in Devonian and Carboniferous progymnosperm forests. Lepidodendron forests dating to the Carboniferous period have charred peaks, evidence of crown fires. In Jurassic gymnosperm forests, there is evidence of high frequency, light surface fires. The increase of fire activity in the late Tertiary is possibly due to the increase of C4-type grasses. As these grasses shifted to more mesic habitats, their high flammability increased fire frequency, promoting grasslands over woodlands. However, fire-prone habitats may have contributed to the prominence of trees such as those of the genera Eucalyptus, Pinus and Sequoia, which have thick bark to withstand fires and employ pyriscence. Human involvement The human use of fire for agricultural and hunting purposes during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic ages altered pre-existing landscapes and fire regimes. Woodlands were gradually replaced by smaller vegetation that facilitated travel, hunting, seed-gathering and planting. In recorded human history, minor allusions to wildfires were mentioned in the Bible and by classical writers such as Homer. However, while ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman writers were aware of fires, they were not very interested in the uncultivated lands where wildfires occurred. Wildfires were used in battles throughout human history as early thermal weapons. From the Middle ages, accounts were written of occupational burning as well as customs and laws that governed the use of fire. In Germany, regular burning was documented in 1290 in the Odenwald and in 1344 in the Black Forest. In the 14th century Sardinia, firebreaks were used for wildfire protection. In Spain during the 1550s, sheep husbandry was discouraged in certain provinces by Philip II due to the harmful effects of fires used in transhumance. As early as the 17th century, Native Americans were observed using fire for many purposes including cultivation, signaling, and warfare. Scottish botanist David Douglas noted the native use of fire for tobacco cultivation, to encourage deer into smaller areas for hunting purposes, and to improve foraging for honey and grasshoppers. Charcoal found in sedimentary deposits off the Pacific coast of Central America suggests that more burning occurred in the 50 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas than after the colonization. In the post-World War II Baltic region, socio-economic changes led more stringent air quality standards and bans on fires that eliminated traditional burning practices. In the mid-19th century, explorers from HMS Beagle observed Australian Aborigines using fire for ground clearing, hunting, and regeneration of plant food in a method later named fire-stick farming. Such careful use of fire has been employed for centuries in lands protected by Kakadu National Park to encourage biodiversity.Wildfires typically occur during periods of increased temperature and drought. An increase in fire-related debris flow in alluvial fans of northeastern Yellowstone National Park was linked to the period between AD 1050 and 1200, coinciding with the Medieval Warm Period. However, human influence caused an increase in fire frequency. Dendrochronological fire scar data and charcoal layer data in Finland suggests that, while many fires occurred during severe drought conditions, an increase in the number of fires during 850 BC and 1660 AD can be attributed to human influence. Charcoal evidence from the Americas suggested a general decrease in wildfires between 1 AD and 1750 compared to previous years. However, a period of increased fire frequency between 1750 and 1870 was suggested by charcoal data from North America and Asia, attributed to human population growth and influences such as land clearing practices. This period was followed by an overall decrease in burning in the 20th century, linked to the expansion of agriculture, increased livestock grazing, and fire prevention efforts. A meta-analysis found that 17 times more land burned annually in California before 1800 compared to recent decades (1,800,000 hectares/year compared to 102,000 hectares/year).According to a paper published in the journal Science, the number of natural and human-caused fires decreased by 24.3% between 1998 and 2015. Researchers explain this as a transition from nomadism to settled lifestyle and intensification of agriculture that lead to a drop in the use of fire for land clearing.Increases of certain tree species (i.e. conifers) over others (i.e. deciduous trees) can increase wildfire risk, especially if these trees are also planted in monocultures Some invasive species, moved in by humans (i.e., for the pulp and paper industry) have in some cases also increased the intensity of wildfires. Examples include species such as Eucalyptus in California and gamba grass in Australia. Society and culture Wildfires have a place in many cultures. "To spread like wildfire" is a common idiom in English, meaning something that "quickly affects or becomes known by more and more people".Wildfire activity has been attributed as a major factor in the development of Ancient Greece. In modern Greece, as in many other regions, it is the most common natural disaster and figures prominently in the social and economic lives of its people.In 1937, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a nationwide fire prevention campaign, highlighting the role of human carelessness in forest fires. Later posters of the program featured Uncle Sam, characters from the Disney movie Bambi, and the official mascot of the U.S. Forest Service, Smokey Bear. The Smokey Bear fire prevention campaign has yielded one of the most popular characters in the United States; for many years there was a living Smokey Bear mascot, and it has been commemorated on postage stamps.There are also significant indirect or second-order societal impacts from wildfire, such as demands on utilities to prevent power transmission equipment from becoming ignition sources, and the cancelation or nonrenewal of homeowners insurance for residents living in wildfire-prone areas. See also Dry thunderstorm Fire-adapted communities Fire ecology List of wildfires Bushfires in Australia Wildfires in the United States Pyrogeography Remote Automated Weather Station Stubble burning Wildland–urban interface Wildfire risk indices: Forest fire weather index (Canada, France) Haines Index Keetch-Byram Drought Index McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index National Fire Danger Rating System (US) References Sources "Wildfire Statistics". Congressional Research Service. 2022. Retrieved 19 October 2022. Attribution This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service. This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Further reading "Frequently Asked Questions: Wildfire Emissions". California Air Resources Board. 10 October 2020. Retrieved 6 November 2023. External links Current global map of hotspots (fires, volcanos, flare stacks), and fine particulates. Note that hotspot pixels do not indicate size.

religion and environmentalism

Religion and environmentalism is an emerging interdisciplinary subfield in the academic disciplines of religious studies, religious ethics, the sociology of religion, and theology amongst others, with environmentalism and ecological principles as a primary focus. Within the context of Christianity, in the encyclical "Laudato si'", Pope Francis called to fight climate change and ecological degradation as a whole. He claimed that humanity is facing a severe ecological crisis and blamed consumerism and irresponsible development. The encyclical is addressed to "every person living on this planet." Buddhism includes many principles linked to sustainability. The Dalai Lama has consistently called for strong climate action, reforestation, preserving ecosystems, a reduction in meat consumption. He declared that if he will ever join a political party it will be the green party and if Buddha returned to our world now: "Buddha would be green." The leaders of Buddhism issued a special declaration calling on all believers to fight climate change and environmental destruction as a whole. General overview Crisis of values This subfield is founded on the understanding that, in the words of Iranian-American philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "the environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of values," and that religions, being a primary source of values in any culture, are thus implicated in the decisions humans make regarding the environment. For example, a 2020 study shows that religion, as the primary source of values for religious people, can help narrow the political gap between liberals and conservatives over environmental protection. Burden of guilt Historian Lynn White Jr. made the argument in a 1966 lecture before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, subsequently published in the journal Science, that Western Christianity, having de-sacralized and instrumentalized nature to human ends, bears a substantial "burden of guilt" for the contemporary environmental crisis. White's essay stimulated a flurry of responses, ranging from defenses of Christianity to qualified admissions to complete agreement with his analysis. Eastern religions and indigenous peoples Some proposed that Eastern religions, as well as those of indigenous peoples, neo-pagans, and others, offered more eco-friendly worldviews than Christianity. A third, more obscure camp, argued that while White's theory was indeed correct, this was actually a benefit to society, and that thinning the populations of weaker plant and animal species via environmental destruction would lead to the evolution of stronger, more productive creatures. See Kaitiaki in Māori religion. Religion and ecology By the 1990s, many scholars of religion had entered the debate and begun to generate a substantial body of literature discussing and analyzing how nature is valued in the world's various religious systems. A landmark event was a series of ten conferences on Religion and Ecology organized by Yale University professors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim and held at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996 to 1998. More than 800 international scholars, religious leaders, and environmentalists participated in the conference series. The conferences concluded at the United Nations and at the American Museum of Natural History with more than 1,000 people in attendance. Papers from the conferences were published in a series of ten books (The Religions of the World and Ecology Book Series), one for each of the world's major religious traditions. From these conferences, Tucker and Grim would form the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. The Forum has been instrumental in the creation of scholarship, in forming environmental policy, and in the greening of religion. In addition to their work with the Forum, Tucker and Grim's work continues in the Journey of the Universe film, book, and educational DVD series. It continues to be the largest international multireligious project of its kind. An active Religion and Ecology group has been in existence within the American Academy of Religion since 1991, and an increasing number of universities in North America and around the world are now offering courses on religion and the environment. Recent scholarship on the field of religion and ecology can be found in the peer-reviewed academic journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology and in reference works such as the encyclopedia The Spirit of Sustainability. Understanding the unique role religious leaders and faith-based communities have in play in the field of conservation, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) established its Sacred Earth: Faiths for Conservation initiative by partnering with faith groups to deliver effective and sustainable conservation strategies. Religion and nature Another landmark in the emerging field was the publication of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature in 2005, which was edited by Bron Taylor. Taylor also led the effort to form the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, which was established in 2006, and began publishing the quarterly Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture in 2007. Religions and the environment Interfaith cooperation In 2015 over 150 leaders from various faiths issued a joint statement to the UN Climate Summit in Paris 2015 ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21 in Paris in December 2015. In it they reiterated a statement made at the interfaith summit in New York made in September 2014: We as religious leaders: "stand together to express deep concern for the consequences of climate change on the earth and its people, all entrusted, as our faiths reveal, to our common care. Climate change is indeed a threat to life. Life is a precious gift we have received and that we need to care for".The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD), a non-profit organization based in Jerusalem, led by rabbi Yonatan Neril promotes cooperation between religions for ensuring sustainability. Buddhism Buddhism includes many principles linked to sustainability. The Dalai Lama has consistently called for strong climate action, reforestation, preserving ecosystems, and a reduction in meat consumption. He declared that if he will ever join a political party it will be the green party and if Buddha returned to our world now: "Buddha would be green." The leaders of Buddhism issued a special declaration calling on all believers to fight climate change and environmental destruction as a whole.The historical Buddha and other prominent Buddhist figures gave many teachings and instructions on the importance of caring for the environment. These narratives were later written down and compiled in the Buddhist sacred scriptures.Buddhism teaches that all things are interconnected on both gross and subtle levels. It teaches that by observing how everything in life happens due to causes and conditions coming together, we come to see how everything is interconnected in a complex web of causality. Because humans are entwined with natural systems, damage done upon the Earth is also harm done to humans. Through contemplation and investigation, we can begin to develop an understanding which takes us beyond mere intellectual understanding leading us towards realisation of more subtle and profound aspects of interdependent origination. When we have developed this true feeling of interconnectedness, it will naturally influence the way in which we relate to our external world. In the First Turning of the Dharma wheel, it is taught that attachment is a cause of suffering. Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, spent his life searching to understand what is human suffering, what is it causes and how can one liberate themself from this suffering.Just as we experience suffering so too do other sentient beings. It is from this basis that we can develop the aspiration to alleviate them from their suffering. Since beginningless time it is taught that at one time all beings have been our kind parents, so by wishing to repay their kindness we can come to develop compassion for all sentient beings, by developing the aspiration to relieve them of their suffering and the causes of suffering. Buddhism teaches that merely listening to and reading the words is not sufficient to bring about transformation within our minds. We need to contemplate them and then apply them to our daily lives. Developing compassion takes training and practice, but by developing habitual tendencies to bring benefit to others, a more healthy relationship with others and our environment will naturally develop.Buddha taught that a balance must be established between self-destruction and self-indulgence. These days much emphasis is placed on the economic and social aspects of life and environmental aspects are often overlooked. When human preferences are leveled by developing compassion and equanimity, there is balance and harmony within the mind which has an impact on our actions of body and speech. In summary, Buddhism provides a structured framework that creates not only short-term solutions to amending the broken relationship between humanity and nature, but it also teaches us how we can fulfill our ultimate collective aspirations. The Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama has done much to promote environmental awareness and support initiatives that help protect the environment.In a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of India Timothy J. Roemer, the Dalai Lama urged the U.S. to engage China on climate change in Tibet. The Dalai Lama has also been part of a series on discussions organised by the Mind and Life Institute; a non-profit organisation that specializes the relationship between science and Buddhism. The talks were partly about ecology, ethics, and interdependence, and issues on global warming were brought up.In 2010 he published the book Our Only Home: A Climate Appeal to the World and in January 2021 was engaged in conversation on The Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops with Greta Thunberg and leading scientists William Moomaw and Susan Natali The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje is a passionate environmentalist who often incorporates this theme into his teachings and public talksIn 2007 during the Kagyu Monlam Chenmo, he suggested that planting a single tree can be more beneficial than performing life release for many beings, and recommended that monasteries should plant one to two thousand trees. In addition he urged monks to practise restraint when sponsors offer technology upgrades.In 2008 he established the Khoryug network meaning "environment" in Tibetan. He helped to connect over 50 monasteries, nunneries and centres throughout India, Nepal and Bhutan in the Himalayas and South India, who jointly made the commitment to help protect the Himalayan region from environmental degradation by acting in sustainable and environmentally friendly ways. In 2008 he published Environmental Guidelines for Karma Kagyu Buddhist Monasteries, which address environmental issues such as forest, water, and wildlife protection, Waste management, and ways to tackle climate change by offering solutions based on the most recent scientific and practical knowledge available. In 2009, the Karmapa approached the WWF to assist the Khoryug network. As a result, more than 55 environmental projects such as solar panel installation were implemented by Khoryug monasteries.In 2009 he published the book The Future Is Now: Timely Advice for Creating a Better World which offers advice on caring for the environment. In 2015 he published the book The Heart is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out where he shares his vision for bringing social action into daily life, and in 2017 he published the book Interconnected: Embracing Life in Our Global Society which explores the interconnected relationships we have with family, community, and the rest of humanity, and how through these relationships we can become effective agents of social and ethical change. He also published a booklet entitled "One Hundred and Eight Things you can do to help the Environment" which was released on Earth Day, on 22 April 2009. At the second conference on environmental protection (3 to 8 October 2009, Gyuto Monastery), he stated For too long, people have behaved thoughtlessly and ignored the damage to the environment that they are creating and, if this continued there was a great danger that it would be too late to do anything. On 24 October 2009, Ogyen Trinley Dorje supported international climate action day at a gathering at McLeod Ganj in northern India.In 2014, during his first European world tour he said: We should never exploit the world we live in for the purpose of short-term benefits. Rather than considering the Earth as a material thing, we should consider it as a mother who nurtures us; from generation to generation we need this loving mother. In Spring 2015 he participated in a two-month tour of the United States, where he visited six major universities, and delivered public talks focusing on environmental protection and compassionate activism. At this time he was awarded Yale's prestigious Chubb Fellowship, and at The University of Redlands he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche was actively engaged in helping protect the environment. In the Tibetan Areas of China through the Rokpa charity, he established a programme of reforestation over a period of several years and in on the Holy Mountain of Drakkar he arranged for local people to be employed as rangers, to protect their local flora and fauna. Seeing that that new demand was driving the herbs used in Tibetan medicine close to extinction, he initiated a pioneering project to preserve them by bringing three young doctors to the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh to study horticulture and biodynamics. Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche works to spread environmental awareness through his teachings and public talks. He is the founder of The Holy Isle project on Holy Island, Firth of Clyde, which was purchased by the Rokpa Trust in 1992. Lama Yeshe's vision is to create a peaceful, sacred space, guided by environmental considerations for people of all faiths and religions. Since acquiring the island up to 50 thousand indigenous trees have been planted as part of the "Trees for Peace" project. This was developed in consultation with the Scottish Forestry Commission, the Scottish Office, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, and other environmental experts, and has helped to recreate a woodland habitat to support biodiversity. A designated nature reserve for native animals, birds, and sea life has been created on the east side of the island, and at the north end of the island, there is the Centre of World Peace and Health, whose design and construction are based upon environmental sustainability, sensitive to the ecology of its unique environment. In creating a place where humans and animals can live in peace and harmony, Holy Isle has become a model of environmentally friendly living. Thích Nhất Hạnh In 2014, Thích Nhất Hạnh addressed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: Our love and admiration for the Earth has the power to unite us and remove all boundaries, separation and discrimination. Centuries of individualism and competition have brought about tremendous destruction and alienation. We need to re-establish true communication–true communion–with ourselves, with the Earth, and with one another as children of the same mother. Christianity The status of nature in Christianity has been hotly debated, especially since historian Lynn White published the now classic "The historical roots of present-day ecologic crisis" in 1967. In it, White blames Christianity for the modern environmental crisis, which he concludes is largely due to the dominance of a Christian worldview in the West that is exploitative of nature in an unsustainable manner. He asserts that proponents of the Judeo-Christian ethic are anti-ecological, hostile towards nature, and view nature as something separate from humanity, to be exploited by mankind. This exploitative attitude, combined with new technology and the industrial revolution, has wreaked havoc on the natural world. Colonial forestry is a prime example of ecological destruction that also involves the destruction of native faiths. See the "Burden of guilt" section above. Catholic Church Pope Francis clearly demonstrated his concerns about protecting the environment and indigenous peoples in his first-ever address to an international audience in Brazil in 2013. Having heard about the plight of the Amazon rainforests in Brazil, he called for "respect and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man." Under his guidance, The Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM) was established, offering advice on how to live in harmony with our environment by transforming our lifestyles, as well as calling for bold public policies to tackle climate change.At the beginning of the 21st century, Pope Francis published the encyclical Laudato si', a document calling humanity to preserve the sustainability of the biosphere. The encyclical is taught in the academy of the Sustainable Development Goals The document is also called: "on care for our common home." In the encyclical, the pope calls to fight climate change and ecological degradation as a whole. He claims that humanity is facing a severe ecological crisis and blames consumerism and non-responsible development. The encyclical is addressed to "every person living on this planet." Latter Day Saint movement Mormon environmentalists find theological reasons for stewardship and conservationism through biblical and additional scriptural references including a passage from the Doctrine and Covenants: "And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion" (D&C 59:20). The Latter Day Saint movement has a complex relationship with environmental concerns, involving not only the religion but politics and economics. In terms of environmentally friendly policies, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a history of utilizing elements of conservationist policies for their meetinghouses.The church first placed solar panels on a church meetinghouse in the Tuamotu Islands in 2007. In 2010, the church unveiled five LEED certified meetinghouse prototypes that are that will be used as future meetinghouse designs around the world, the first one having been completed in 2010 in Farmington, Utah. Hinduism In Hinduism, practitioners and scholars find traditional approaches to the natural environment in such concepts as dharmic ethics or prakrti (material creation), the development of ayurveda, and readings of vedic literature. Hindu environmental activism also may be inspired by Gandhian philosophy and practical struggles, such as the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan and Chipko resistance to forestry policies in Uttar Pradesh, India.Mahatma Gandhi played a major role in Indian environmentalism and has been called the "father of Indian environmentalism". Gandhi's environmental thought parallels his social thoughts in that environmental sustainability and social inequalities should be managed in similar fashions. His non-violent teachings left a lasting impact, even agriculturally. Contemporary agrarian practices use the Bhagavad-Gita to establish practices that are deemed non-violent. Islam The Quran and the Prophetic Traditions [sayings and actions of Muhammad] make it clear that the environment is a blessing and a sign of the divine. The Quran refers to natural phenomena numerous times and compels readers to ponder over the environment as a reflection of the truth – a signpost to a designer. One can gain profound knowledge from nature, so human beings are to preserve it and look after it.The concept of humanity having 'Khilafah' or guardianship over the planet means that many Muslims believe that we should not exploit natural resources. The Quran refers to living beings as 'communities like yourselves' Some scholars have said that this entails that other living beings have rights. Sayings of Muhammad related to the environment: "If a Muslim plants a tree or sows seeds, and then a bird, or a person or an animal eats from it, it is regarded as a charitable gift for him." [Bukhari] The Companions [i.e. the disciples of the prophet] said, "O Messenger of God! Is there a reward for us in serving the animals?" He replied: "There is a reward for serving any living being." [Bukhari] "A woman entered the Fire because of a cat which she had tied, neither giving it food nor setting it free to eat from the vermin of the earth." [Bukhari] "The world is beautiful and verdant, and verily God, be He exalted, has made you His stewards in it, and He sees how you acquit yourselves." [Muslim] "Do not waste water, even if you are at a running stream." [Ibn Majah] "If the Hour (the day of Resurrection) is about to be established and one of you was holding a sapling, let him take advantage of even one second before the Hour is established to plant it." [Al-Albani]Verses of the Quran linked to environmental protection: "He is the One Who has placed you as successors [Khalifa] on earth ... so He may test you with what He has given you." "O Children of Adam! ... Eat and drink, but do not waste. Surely He does not like the wasteful." "...do not commit abuse on the earth, spreading corruption." "Indeed, We offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they all declined to bear it, being fearful of it. But humanity assumed it, for they are truly wrongful to themselves and ignorant of the consequences." "All living beings roaming the earth and winged birds soaring in the sky are communities like yourselves."One of the primary figures of the religion and environmentalism movement, Iranian Muslim philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr, details the theme of "man's total disharmony with his environment." Nasr believes that to overcome the environmental crisis there needs to be a recognition that "the whole of nature is descended from higher spiritual realms." According to Nasr, the desacralization of the West has led to the increase of ideology promoting dominion over the earth and its resources, which is contrary to Islamic thinking. According to conservationist and scholar Jonathan Benthall, Islam offers a useful perspective of environmentalism through two primary themes. The first is the "glory and logic of the cosmos and of the cyclical regeneration of life" that is visible through Qur'anic passages, particularly ones referencing stewardship (khalifa). The second theme Benthall references is the very environmental basis from which Islam was founded, "an environment where natural recourses, especially water, fruit trees, and livestock have always had to be carefully conserved to ensure human survival, a concern which is inevitably reflected in the Qur'an."Many Muslims have taken up climate activism. The Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science is a charity organization dedicated to offering up dialogues and encouraging activism that combines both Islamic perspectives and ecological sustainability. The organization's objectives are to generate a center for Islamic research that will also serve as a location with which to gather and experiment with new sustainable technologies.In Islam, the concept of a hima or "inviolate zone" refers to a piece of land that has been set aside to prevent cultivation or any use other than spiritual purposes. This concept, in addition to alternative interpretations of Islamic teachings, such as sufism, are found to be helpful in developing Islamic pro-environmental ethics. Judaism In Judaism, the natural world plays a central role in Jewish law, literature, and liturgical and other practices. Within the diverse arena of Jewish thought, beliefs vary widely about the human relation to the environment, though the rabbinic tradition has put Judaism primarily on an anthropocentric trajectory. However, a few contemporary Jewish thinkers and rabbis in the US and Israel emphasized that a central belief in Judaism is that the Man (Ha Adam – האדם whose root comes from Haadama (earth) – האדמה, in Hebrew language), should keep the Earth in the same state as he received it from God, its eternal and actual "owner" (especially for the land of Israel), thus the people today should avoid polluting it and keep it clean for the future generations. According to this opinion, Judaism is clearly in line with the principles of environmental protection and sustainable development. In Jewish law (halakhah), ecological concerns are reflected in Biblical protection for fruit trees, rules in the Mishnah against harming the public domain, Talmudic debate over noise and smoke damages, and contemporary responsa on agricultural pollution. In Conservative Judaism, there has been some attempt to adopt ecokashrut ideas developed in the 1970s by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. In addition, Jewish activists have recruited principles of halakhah for environmental purposes, such as the injunction against unnecessary destruction, known as bal tashkhit.In contemporary Jewish liturgy, ecological concerns have been promoted by adapting a kabbalistic ritual for the holiday of trees, Tu Bishvat. Biblical and rabbinic texts have been enlisted for prayers about the environment, especially in Orthodox Judaism and Jewish Renewal movements. In the U.S., a diverse coalition of Jewish environmentalists undertakes both educational and policy advocacy on such issues as biodiversity and global warming. Jewish environmentalists are drawn from all branches of religious life, ranging from Rabbi Arthur Waskow to the Orthodox group Canfei Nesharim. In Israel, secular Jews have formed numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations to protect nature and reduce pollution. While many Israeli environmental organizations make limited use of Jewish religious teachings, a few do approach Israel's environmental problems from a Jewish standpoint, including the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, named after Abraham Joshua Heschel. Taoism Taoism offers many ideas that are in line with environmentalism, such as wu wei, moderation, compassion and Taoist animism. Parallels were found between Taoism and deep ecology. Pioneer of environmentalism John Muir was called "the Taoist of the West". Rosenfeld wrote "Taoism is environmentalism". Jainism In Jainism, the ancient and perhaps timeless philosophical concepts, like Parasparopagraho Jivanam, were more recently compiled into a Jain Declaration on Nature, which describes the religion's inherent biocentrism and deep ecology. Sikhism In the Sikh faith, it is believed that one should treat air as one's Guru (the spiritual teacher), water as one's father and the earth as the Great Mother. (Guru Nanak Dev Ji in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scriptures of the Sikhs Page 8 Line 10.) More than five hundred and fifty years ago, Guru Nanak Dev Ji wrote in prayer on Page 8 Line 10 wrote, "We are all the children of air which is word of the Guru, water the Father, and earth the Great Mother who sustains us all." See also Animism Earth Day Sunday Ecotheology Environmental ethics Environmental racism Evangelical environmentalism Faith in Place Islamic environmentalism Judaism and environmentalism Religion and peacebuilding Resacralization of nature Spiritual ecology Stewardship (theology) References Further reading Religions of the world and ecology book series: Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds. Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryuken Williams, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997. Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-being of Earth and Humans. Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000. Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Berthrong, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. Daoism and Ecology: Ways Within a Cosmic Landscape. N. J. Girardot, James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water. Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000. Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community. John A. Grim, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust. Richard C. Foltz, Frederick M. Denny, Azizan Baharuddin, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003. Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life. Christopher Key Chapple, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002. Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002. Shinto and Ecology. Rosemarie Bernard, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004.Other texts: Tucker, Mary Evelyn. Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase. Chicago: Open Court, 2003. Merritt, Jonathan (2010). Green like God: unlocking the divine plan for our planet. New York: FaithWords. ISBN 978-0-446-55725-2. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man. Rev. ed. Chicago, Ill.: Kazi Publishers, 1997 [1967]. Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," Science 155 (1967): 1203–1207. Richard Foltz, ed., Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment: A Global Anthology, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002. Anand Veeraraj, Green History of Religion. Bangalore, India: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2006. Jens Koehrsen, "Religious Agency in Sustainability Transitions. Between Experimentation, Upscaling, and Regime Support." Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. Vol. 27, 2018. Sarah McFarland Taylor, "What If Religions Had Ecologies?: The Case for Reinhabiting Religious Studies." Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. Vol. 1.1 (Spring 2007). Bron Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (2 volumes) London: Continuum International Publishing Group; Elsergany, Ragheb. "Environment Rights in Islamic Civilization". english.islamstory.com. Watling, Tony (2009). Ecological imaginations in the world religions : an ethnographic analysis. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-1-84706-428-8. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment. David Edward, Edward Cooper, and S.P James. Ashgate Publishing, 2005. Dhrama Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism. Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft, eds. Shambhala, 2000. The Ethics of Nature. Celia E. Deane-Drummond John Wiley & Sons, 2004.Journals: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology

greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities intensify the greenhouse effect. This contributes to climate change. Carbon dioxide (CO2), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, is one of the most important factors in causing climate change. The largest emitters are China followed by the United States. The United States has higher emissions per capita. The main producers fueling the emissions globally are large oil and gas companies. Emissions from human activities have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 50% over pre-industrial levels. The growing levels of emissions have varied, but have been consistent among all greenhouse gases. Emissions in the 2010s averaged 56 billion tons a year, higher than any decade before. Total cumulative emissions from 1870 to 2017 were 425±20 GtC (1539 GtCO2) from fossil fuels and industry, and 180±60 GtC (660 GtCO2) from land use change. Land-use change, such as deforestation, caused about 31% of cumulative emissions over 1870–2017, coal 32%, oil 25%, and gas 10%.Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas resulting from human activities. It accounts for more than half of warming. Methane (CH4) emissions have almost the same short-term impact. Nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases (F-gases) play a lesser role in comparison. Electricity generation, heat and transport are major emitters; overall energy is responsible for around 73% of emissions. Deforestation and other changes in land use also emit carbon dioxide and methane. The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. The largest agricultural methane source is livestock. Agricultural soils emit nitrous oxide partly due to fertilizers. Similarly, fluorinated gases from refrigerants play an outsized role in total human emissions. The current CO2-equivalent emission rates averaging 6.6 tonnes per person per year, are well over twice the estimated rate 2.3 tons required to stay within the 2030 Paris Agreement increase of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over pre-industrial levels. Annual per capita emissions in the industrialized countries are typically as much as ten times the average in developing countries. The carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) serves as an indicator to compare the amount of greenhouse gases emitted over the entire life cycle from the production of a good or service along the supply chain to its final consumption. Carbon accounting (or greenhouse gas accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas an organization emits. Overview of main sources Relevant greenhouse gases The major anthropogenic (human origin) sources of greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane, three groups of fluorinated gases (sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs, sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)). Though the greenhouse effect is heavily driven by water vapor, human emissions of water vapor are not a significant contributor to warming. Although CFCs are greenhouse gases, they are regulated by the Montreal Protocol which was motivated by CFCs' contribution to ozone depletion rather than by their contribution to global warming. Note that ozone depletion has only a minor role in greenhouse warming, though the two processes are sometimes confused in the media. In 2016, negotiators from over 170 nations meeting at the summit of the United Nations Environment Programme reached a legally binding accord to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. Human activities Starting about 1750, industrial activity powered by fossil fuels began to significantly increase the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Emissions have grown rapidly since about 1950 with ongoing expansions in global population and economic activity following World War II. As of 2021, measured atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide were almost 50% higher than pre-industrial levels.Natural sources of carbon dioxide are nearly 20 times greater than sources due to human activity, but over periods longer than a few years natural sources are closely balanced by natural sinks, mainly photosynthesis of carbon compounds by plants and marine plankton. Absorption of terrestrial infrared radiation by longwave absorbing gases makes Earth a less efficient emitter. Therefore, in order for Earth to emit as much energy as is absorbed, global temperatures must increase.The main sources of greenhouse gases due to human activity (also called carbon sources) are: Burning of fossil fuels and deforestation: Burning fossil fuels is estimated to have emitted 62% of the human-caused greenhouse gases in 2015. The largest single source is coal-fired power stations, with 20% of greenhouse gases (GHG) as of 2021. Land use change (mainly deforestation in the tropics) accounts for about a quarter of total anthropogenic GHG emissions. Livestock enteric fermentation and manure management, paddy rice farming, land use and wetland changes, man-made lakes, pipeline losses, and covered vented landfill emissions leading to higher methane atmospheric concentrations. Many of the newer style fully vented septic systems that enhance and target the fermentation process also are sources of atmospheric methane. Use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in refrigeration systems, and use of CFCs and halons in fire suppression systems and manufacturing processes. Agricultural soils emit nitrous oxide (N2O) partly due to application of fertilizers. The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. The largest agricultural methane source is livestock. Cattle (raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power) are the animal species responsible for the most emissions, representing about 65% of the livestock sector's emissions. Global estimates Global greenhouse gas emissions are about 50 Gt per year and for 2019 have been estimated at 57 Gt CO2 eq including 5 Gt due to land use change. In 2019, approximately 34% [20 GtCO2-eq] of total net anthropogenic GHG emissions came from the energy supply sector, 24% [14 GtCO2-eq] from industry, 22% [13 GtCO2-eq]from agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU), 15% [8.7 GtCO2-eq] from transport and 6% [3.3 GtCO2-eq] from buildings.The current CO2-equivalent emission rates averaging 6.6 tonnes per person per year, are well over twice the estimated rate 2.3 tons required to stay within the 2030 Paris Agreement increase of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over pre-industrial levels.While cities are sometimes considered to be disproportionate contributors to emissions, per-capita emissions tend to be lower for cities than the averages in their countries.A 2017 survey of corporations responsible for global emissions found that 100 companies were responsible for 71% of global direct and indirect emissions, and that state-owned companies were responsible for 59% of their emissions.China is, by a significant margin, Asia's and the world's largest emitter: it emits nearly 10 billion tonnes each year, more than one-quarter of global emissions. Other countries with fast growing emissions are South Korea, Iran, and Australia (which apart from the oil rich Persian Gulf states, now has the highest per capita emission rate in the world). On the other hand, annual per capita emissions of the EU-15 and the US are gradually decreasing over time. Emissions in Russia and Ukraine have decreased fastest since 1990 due to economic restructuring in these countries.2015 was the first year to see both total global economic growth and a reduction of carbon emissions. High income countries compared to low income countries Annual per capita emissions in the industrialized countries are typically as much as ten times the average in developing countries.: 144  Due to China's fast economic development, its annual per capita emissions are quickly approaching the levels of those in the Annex I group of the Kyoto Protocol (i.e., the developed countries excluding the US).Africa and South America are both fairly small emitters: accounting for 3-4% of global emissions each. Both have emissions almost equal in size to international aviation and shipping. Calculations and reporting Variables There are several ways of measuring greenhouse gas emissions. Some variables that have been reported include: Definition of measurement boundaries: Emissions can be attributed geographically, to the area where they were emitted (the territory principle) or by the activity principle to the territory that produced the emissions. These two principles result in different totals when measuring, for example, electricity importation from one country to another, or emissions at an international airport. Time horizon of different gases: The contribution of given greenhouse gas is reported as a CO2 equivalent. The calculation to determine this takes into account how long that gas remains in the atmosphere. This is not always known accurately and calculations must be regularly updated to reflect new information. The measurement protocol itself: This may be via direct measurement or estimation. The four main methods are the emission factor-based method, mass balance method, predictive emissions monitoring systems, and continuous emissions monitoring systems. These methods differ in accuracy, cost, and usability. Public information from space-based measurements of carbon dioxide by Climate Trace is expected to reveal individual large plants before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.These measures are sometimes used by countries to assert various policy/ethical positions on climate change.: 94 The use of different measures leads to a lack of comparability, which is problematic when monitoring progress towards targets. There are arguments for the adoption of a common measurement tool, or at least the development of communication between different tools. Reporting Emissions may be tracked over long time periods, known as historical or cumulative emissions measurements. Cumulative emissions provide some indicators of what is responsible for greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration build-up.: 199 National accounts balance The national accounts balance tracks emissions based on the difference between a country's exports and imports. For many richer nations, the balance is negative because more goods are imported than they are exported. This result is mostly due to the fact that it is cheaper to produce goods outside of developed countries, leading developed countries to become increasingly dependent on services and not goods. A positive account balance would mean that more production was occurring within a country, so more operational factories would increase carbon emission levels.Emissions may also be measured across shorter time periods. Emissions changes may, for example, be measured against the base year of 1990. 1990 was used in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the base year for emissions, and is also used in the Kyoto Protocol (some gases are also measured from the year 1995).: 146, 149  A country's emissions may also be reported as a proportion of global emissions for a particular year. Another measurement is of per capita emissions. This divides a country's total annual emissions by its mid-year population.: 370  Per capita emissions may be based on historical or annual emissions.: 106–107 Embedded emissions One way of attributing greenhouse gas emissions is to measure the embedded emissions (also referred to as "embodied emissions") of goods that are being consumed. Emissions are usually measured according to production, rather than consumption. For example, in the main international treaty on climate change (the UNFCCC), countries report on emissions produced within their borders, e.g., the emissions produced from burning fossil fuels.: 179 : 1  Under a production-based accounting of emissions, embedded emissions on imported goods are attributed to the exporting, rather than the importing, country. Under a consumption-based accounting of emissions, embedded emissions on imported goods are attributed to the importing country, rather than the exporting, country. A substantial proportion of CO2 emissions is traded internationally. The net effect of trade was to export emissions from China and other emerging markets to consumers in the US, Japan, and Western Europe.: 4 Carbon footprint Emission intensity Emission intensity is a ratio between greenhouse gas emissions and another metric, e.g., gross domestic product (GDP) or energy use. The terms "carbon intensity" and "emissions intensity" are also sometimes used. Emission intensities may be calculated using market exchange rates (MER) or purchasing power parity (PPP).: 96  Calculations based on MER show large differences in intensities between developed and developing countries, whereas calculations based on PPP show smaller differences. Example tools and websites Carbon accounting (or greenhouse gas accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas an organization emits. Climate TRACE Historical trends Cumulative and historical emissions Cumulative anthropogenic (i.e., human-emitted) emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use are a major cause of global warming, and give some indication of which countries have contributed most to human-induced climate change. In particular, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for at least 150 years and up to 1000 years, whilst methane disappears within a decade or so, and nitrous oxides last about 100 years. The graph gives some indication of which regions have contributed most to human-induced climate change.: 15  When these numbers are calculated per capita cumulative emissions based on then-current population the situation is shown even more clearly. The ratio in per capita emissions between industrialized countries and developing countries was estimated at more than 10 to 1. Non-OECD countries accounted for 42% of cumulative energy-related CO2 emissions between 1890 and 2007.: 179–80  Over this time period, the US accounted for 28% of emissions; the EU, 23%; Japan, 4%; other OECD countries 5%; Russia, 11%; China, 9%; India, 3%; and the rest of the world, 18%.: 179–80 Overall, developed countries accounted for 83.8% of industrial CO2 emissions over this time period, and 67.8% of total CO2 emissions. Developing countries accounted for industrial CO2 emissions of 16.2% over this time period, and 32.2% of total CO2 emissions. However, what becomes clear when we look at emissions across the world today is that the countries with the highest emissions over history are not always the biggest emitters today. For example, in 2017, the UK accounted for just 1% of global emissions.In comparison, humans have emitted more greenhouse gases than the Chicxulub meteorite impact event which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.Transport, together with electricity generation, is the major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. Greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector continue to rise, in contrast to power generation and nearly all other sectors. Since 1990, transportation emissions have increased by 30%. The transportation sector accounts for around 70% of these emissions. The majority of these emissions are caused by passenger vehicles and vans. Road travel is the first major source of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, followed by aircraft and maritime. Waterborne transportation is still the least carbon-intensive mode of transportation on average, and it is an essential link in sustainable multimodal freight supply chains.Buildings, like industry, are directly responsible for around one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from space heating and hot water consumption. When combined with power consumption within buildings, this figure climbs to more than one-third.Within the EU, the agricultural sector presently accounts for roughly 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, with methane from livestock accounting for slightly more than half of 10%.Estimates of total CO2 emissions do include biotic carbon emissions, mainly from deforestation.: 94  Including biotic emissions brings about the same controversy mentioned earlier regarding carbon sinks and land-use change.: 93–94  The actual calculation of net emissions is very complex, and is affected by how carbon sinks are allocated between regions and the dynamics of the climate system. The graphic shows the logarithm of 1850–2019 fossil fuel CO2 emissions; natural log on left, actual value of Gigatons per year on right. Although emissions increased during the 170-year period by about 3% per year overall, intervals of distinctly different growth rates (broken at 1913, 1945, and 1973) can be detected. The regression lines suggest that emissions can rapidly shift from one growth regime to another and then persist for long periods of time. The most recent drop in emissions growth - by almost 3 percentage points - was at about the time of the 1970s energy crisis. Percent changes per year were estimated by piecewise linear regression on the log data and are shown on the plot; the data are from The Integrated Carbon Observation system. Changes since a particular base year The sharp acceleration in CO2 emissions since 2000 to more than a 3% increase per year (more than 2 ppm per year) from 1.1% per year during the 1990s is attributable to the lapse of formerly declining trends in carbon intensity of both developing and developed nations. China was responsible for most of global growth in emissions during this period. Localised plummeting emissions associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union have been followed by slow emissions growth in this region due to more efficient energy use, made necessary by the increasing proportion of it that is exported. In comparison, methane has not increased appreciably, and N2O by 0.25% y−1. Using different base years for measuring emissions has an effect on estimates of national contributions to global warming.: 17–18  This can be calculated by dividing a country's highest contribution to global warming starting from a particular base year, by that country's minimum contribution to global warming starting from a particular base year. Choosing between base years of 1750, 1900, 1950, and 1990 has a significant effect for most countries.: 17–18  Within the G8 group of countries, it is most significant for the UK, France and Germany. These countries have a long history of CO2 emissions (see the section on Cumulative and historical emissions). Data from Global Carbon Project The Global Carbon Project continuously releases data about CO2 emissions, budget and concentration. Emissions by type of greenhouse gas Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the dominant emitted greenhouse gas, while methane (CH4) emissions almost have the same short-term impact. Nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases (F-gases) play a lesser role in comparison. Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in CO2 equivalents determined by their global warming potential (GWP), which depends on their lifetime in the atmosphere. Estimations largely depend on the ability of oceans and land sinks to absorb these gases. Short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) including methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), tropospheric ozone and black carbon persist in the atmosphere for a period ranging from days to 15 years; whereas carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for millennia. Reducing SLCP emissions can cut the ongoing rate of global warming by almost half and reduce the projected Arctic warming by two-thirds.Greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 were estimated at 57.4 GtCO2e, while CO2 emissions alone made up 42.5 Gt including land-use change (LUC).While mitigation measures for decarbonization are essential on the longer term, they could result in weak near-term warming because sources of carbon emissions often also co-emit air pollution. Hence, pairing measures that target carbon dioxide with measures targeting non-CO2 pollutants – short-lived climate pollutants, which have faster effects on the climate, is essential for climate goals. Carbon dioxide (CO2) Fossil fuel: oil, gas and coal (89%) are the major driver of anthropogenic global warming with annual emissions of 35.6 GtCO2 in 2019.: 20  Cement production (4%) is estimated at 1.42 GtCO2 Land-use change (LUC) is the imbalance of deforestation and reforestation. Estimations are very uncertain at 4.5 GtCO2. Wildfires alone cause annual emissions of about 7 GtCO2 Non-energy use of fuels, carbon losses in coke ovens, and flaring in crude oil production. Methane (CH4) Methane has a high immediate impact with a 5-year global warming potential of up to 100. Given this, the current 389 Mt of methane emissions: 6  has about the same short-term global warming effect as CO2 emissions, with a risk to trigger irreversible changes in climate and ecosystems. For methane, a reduction of about 30% below current emission levels would lead to a stabilization in its atmospheric concentration. Fossil fuels (32%), again, account for most of the methane emissions including coal mining (12% of methane total), gas distribution and leakages (11%) as well as gas venting in oil production (9%).: 6 : 12  Livestock (28%) with cattle (21%) as the dominant source, followed by buffalo (3%), sheep (2%), and goats (1.5%).: 6, 23  Human waste and wastewater (21%): When biomass waste in landfills and organic substances in domestic and industrial wastewater is decomposed by bacteria in anaerobic conditions, substantial amounts of methane are generated.: 12  Rice cultivation (10%) on flooded rice fields is another agricultural source, where anaerobic decomposition of organic material produces methane.: 12 Nitrous oxide (N2O) N2O has a high GWP and significant Ozone Depleting Potential. It is estimated that the global warming potential of N2O over 100 years is 265 times greater than CO2. For N2O, a reduction of more than 50% would be required for a stabilization. Most emissions (56%) of nitrous oxide comes from agriculture, especially meat production: cattle (droppings on pasture), fertilizers, animal manure.: 12 Further contributions come from combustion of fossil fuels (18%) and biofuels as well as industrial production of adipic acid and nitric acid. F-gases Fluorinated gases include hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). They are used by switchgear in the power sector, semiconductor manufacture, aluminum production and a largely unknown source of SF6.: 38  Continued phase down of manufacture and use of HFCs under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol will help reduce HFC emissions and concurrently improve the energy efficiency of appliances that use HFCs like air conditioners, freezers and other refrigeration devices. Hydrogen Hydrogen leakages contribute to indirect global warming. When hydrogen is oxidized in the atmosphere, the result is an increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases in both the troposphere and the stratosphere. Hydrogen can leak from hydrogen production facilities as well as any infrastructure in which hydrogen is transported, stored, or consumed. Black carbon Black carbon is formed through the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuel, and biomass. It is not a greenhouse gas but a climate forcing agent. Black carbon can absorb sunlight and reduce albedo when deposited on snow and ice. Indirect heating can be caused by the interaction with clouds. Black carbon stays in the atmosphere for only several days to weeks. Emissions may be mitigated by upgrading coke ovens, installing particulate filters on diesel-based engines, reducing routine flaring, and minimizing open burning of biomass. Emissions by sector Global greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to different sectors of the economy. This provides a picture of the varying contributions of different types of economic activity to climate change, and helps in understanding the changes required to mitigate climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions can be divided into those that arise from the combustion of fuels to produce energy, and those generated by other processes. Around two thirds of greenhouse gas emissions arise from the combustion of fuels.Energy may be produced at the point of consumption, or by a generator for consumption by others. Thus emissions arising from energy production may be categorized according to where they are emitted, or where the resulting energy is consumed. If emissions are attributed at the point of production, then electricity generators contribute about 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If these emissions are attributed to the final consumer then 24% of total emissions arise from manufacturing and construction, 17% from transportation, 11% from domestic consumers, and 7% from commercial consumers. Around 4% of emissions arise from the energy consumed by the energy and fuel industry itself. The remaining third of emissions arise from processes other than energy production. 12% of total emissions arise from agriculture, 7% from land use change and forestry, 6% from industrial processes, and 3% from waste. Electricity generation Coal-fired power stations are the single largest emitter, with over 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. Although much less polluting than coal plants, natural gas-fired power plants are also major emitters, taking electricity generation as a whole over 25% in 2018. Notably, just 5% of the world's power plants account for almost three-quarters of carbon emissions from electricity generation, based on an inventory of more than 29,000 fossil-fuel power plants across 221 countries. In the 2022 IPCC report, it is noted that providing modern energy services universally would only increase greenhouse gas emissions by a few percent at most. This slight increase means that the additional energy demand that comes from supporting decent living standards for all would be far lower than current average energy consumption. Agriculture, forestry and land use Agriculture Deforestation Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. A study shows annual carbon emissions (or carbon loss) from tropical deforestation have doubled during the last two decades and continue to increase. (0.97 ±0.16 PgC per year in 2001–2005 to 1.99 ±0.13 PgC per year in 2015–2019) Land-use change Land-use change, e.g., the clearing of forests for agricultural use, can affect the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by altering how much carbon flows out of the atmosphere into carbon sinks. Accounting for land-use change can be understood as an attempt to measure "net" emissions, i.e., gross emissions from all sources minus the removal of emissions from the atmosphere by carbon sinks.: 92–93 There are substantial uncertainties in the measurement of net carbon emissions. Additionally, there is controversy over how carbon sinks should be allocated between different regions and over time.: 93  For instance, concentrating on more recent changes in carbon sinks is likely to favour those regions that have deforested earlier, e.g., Europe. In 1997, human-caused Indonesian peat fires were estimated to have released between 13% and 40% of the average annual global carbon emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Transport of people and goods Transportation accounts for 15% of emissions worldwide. Over a quarter of global transport CO2 emissions are from road freight, so many countries are further restricting truck CO2 emissions to help limit climate change.Maritime transport accounts for 3.5% to 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide. In 2022, the shipping industry's 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions made it "the sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter worldwide, ranking between Japan and Germany." Aviation Jet airliners contribute to climate change by emitting carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides, contrails and particulates.In 2018, global commercial operations generated 2.4% of all CO2 emissions.In 2020, approximately 3.5% of the overall human impacts on climate are from the aviation sector. The impact of the sector on climate in the late 20 years had doubled, but the part of the contribution of the sector in comparison to other sectors did not change because other sectors grew as well.Some representative figures for CO2 average direct emissions (not accounting for high-altitude radiative effects) of airliners expressed as CO2 and CO2 equivalent per passenger kilometer: Domestic, short distance, less than 463 km (288 mi): 257 g/km CO2 or 259 g/km (14.7 oz/mile) CO2e Long-distance flights: 113 g/km CO2 or 114 g/km (6.5 oz/mile) CO2e Buildings and construction In 2018, manufacturing construction materials and maintaining buildings accounted for 39% of carbon dioxide emissions from energy and process-related emissions. Manufacture of glass, cement, and steel accounted for 11% of energy and process-related emissions. Because building construction is a significant investment, more than two-thirds of buildings in existence will still exist in 2050. Retrofitting existing buildings to become more efficient will be necessary to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement; it will be insufficient to only apply low-emission standards to new construction. Buildings that produce as much energy as they consume are called zero-energy buildings, while buildings that produce more than they consume are energy-plus. Low-energy buildings are designed to be highly efficient with low total energy consumption and carbon emissions—a popular type is the passive house.The global design and construction industry is responsible for approximately 39 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Green building practices that avoid emissions or capture the carbon already present in the environment, allow for reduced footprint of the construction industry, for example, use of hempcrete, cellulose fiber insulation, and landscaping.In 2019, the building sector was responsible for 12 GtCO2-eq emissions. More than 95% of these emissions were carbon, and the remaining 5% were CH4, N2O, and halocarbon.Embodied carbon emissions, or upfront carbon emissions (UCE), are the result of creating and maintaining the materials that form a building. As of 2018, "Embodied carbon is responsible 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 28% of global building sector emissions ... Embodied carbon will be responsible for almost half of total new construction emissions between now and 2050."It has been suggested that buildings with "high carbon frames should be taxed like cigarettes" to create a presumption in favour of timber, stone, and other zero-carbon architectural design techniques." Industrial processes As of 2020 Secunda CTL is the world's largest single emitter, at 56.5 million tonnes CO2 a year.Around 6% of emissions are fugitive emissions, which are waste gases released by the extraction of fossil fuels. Steel and aluminum Steel and aluminum are key economic sectors for the carbon capture and storage. According to a 2013 study, "in 2004, the steel industry along emits about 590M tons of CO2, which accounts for 5.2% of the global anthropogenic GHG emissions. CO2 emitted from steel production primarily comes from energy consumption of fossil fuel as well as the use of limestone to purify iron oxides." Plastics Plastics are produced mainly from fossil fuels. It was estimated that between 3% and 4% of global GHG emissions are associated with plastics' life cycles. The EPA estimates as many as five mass units of carbon dioxide are emitted for each mass unit of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) produced—the type of plastic most commonly used for beverage bottles, the transportation produce greenhouse gases also. Plastic waste emits carbon dioxide when it degrades. In 2018 research claimed that some of the most common plastics in the environment release the greenhouse gases methane and ethylene when exposed to sunlight in an amount that can affect the earth climate.Due to the lightness of plastic versus glass or metal, plastic may reduce energy consumption. For example, packaging beverages in PET plastic rather than glass or metal is estimated to save 52% in transportation energy, if the glass or metal package is single-use, of course. In 2019 a new report "Plastic and Climate" was published. According to the report, the production and incineration of plastics will contribute in the equivalent of 850 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere in 2019. With the current trend, annual life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of plastics will grow to 1.34 billion tonnes by 2030. By 2050, the life cycle emissions of plastics could reach 56 billion tonnes, as much as 14 percent of the Earth's remaining carbon budget. The report says that only solutions which involve a reduction in consumption can solve the problem, while others like biodegradable plastic, ocean cleanup, using renewable energy in plastic industry can do little, and in some cases may even worsen it. Pulp and paper The global print and paper industry accounts for about 1% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from the pulp and paper industry are generated from the combustion of fossil fuels required for raw material production and transportation, wastewater treatment facilities, purchased power, paper transportation, printed product transportation, disposal and recycling. Various services Digital services In 2020, data centers (excluding cryptocurrency mining) and data transmission each used about 1% of world electricity. The digital sector produces between 2% and 4% of global GHG emissions, a large part of which is from chipmaking. However the sector reduces emissions from other sectors which have a larger global share, such as transport of people, and possibly buildings and industry.Mining for proof-of-work cryptocurrencies requires enormous amounts of electricity and consequently comes with a large carbon footprint. Proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero were estimated to have added between 3 million and 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere in the period from 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2017. By the end of 2021, Bitcoin was estimated to produce 65.4 million tonnes of CO2, as much as Greece, and consume between 91 and 177 terawatt-hours annually. Bitcoin is the least energy-efficient cryptocurrency, using 707.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity per transaction. Health care The healthcare sector produces 4.4–4.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.Based on the 2013 life cycle emissions in the health care sector, it is estimated that the GHG emissions associated with US health care activities may cause an additional 123,000 to 381,000 DALYs annually. Water supply and sanitation Tourism According to UNEP, global tourism is a significant contributor to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Emissions by other characteristics The responsibility for anthropogenic climate change differs substantially among individuals, e.g. between groups or cohorts. By type of energy source Generational Researchers report that, on average, the elderly played "a leading role in driving up greenhouse gas emissions in the past decade and are on the way to becoming the largest contributor" due to factors such as demographic transition, low informed concern about climate change and high expenditures on carbon-intensive products like energy which is used i.a. for heating rooms and private transport. They are less affected by climate change impacts, but have e.g. the same vote-weights for the available electoral options. By socio-economic class Fueled by the consumptive lifestyle of wealthy people, the wealthiest 5% of the global population has been responsible for 37% of the absolute increase in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It can be seen that there is a strong relationship between income and per capita carbon dioxide emissions. Almost half of the increase in absolute global emissions has been caused by the richest 10% of the population. In the newest report from the IPCC 2022, it states that the lifestyle consumptions of the poor and middle class in emerging economies produce approximately 5–50 times less the amount that the high class in already developed high-income countries. Variations in regional, and national per capita emissions partly reflect different development stages, but they also vary widely at similar income levels. The 10% of households with the highest per capita emissions contribute a disproportionately large share of global household greenhouse gas emissions.Studies find that the most affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts, and robust action by them is necessary for prospects of moving towards safer environmental conditions.According to a 2020 report by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute, the richest 1% of the global population have caused twice as much carbon emissions as the poorest 50% over the 25 years from 1990 to 2015. This was, respectively, during that period, 15% of cumulative emissions compared to 7%. The bottom half of the population is directly-responsible for less than 20% of energy footprints and consume less than the top 5% in terms of trade-corrected energy. The largest disproportionality was identified to be in the domain of transport, where e.g. the top 10% consume 56% of vehicle fuel and conduct 70% of vehicle purchases. However, wealthy individuals are also often shareholders and typically have more influence and, especially in the case of billionaires, may also direct lobbying efforts, direct financial decisions, and/or control companies. Methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions Governments have taken action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change. Countries and regions listed in Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (i.e., the OECD and former planned economies of the Soviet Union) are required to submit periodic assessments to the UNFCCC of actions they are taking to address climate change.: 3  Policies implemented by governments include for example national and regional targets to reduce emissions, promoting energy efficiency, and support for an energy transition. Projections for future emissions In October 2023, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a series of projections out to 2050 based on current ascertainable policy interventions. Unlike many integrated systems models in this field, emissions are allowed to float rather than be pinned to net‑zero in 2050. A sensitivity analysis varied key parameters, primarily future GDP growth (2.6% pa as reference, variously 1.8% and 3.4%) and secondarily technological learning rates, future crude oil prices, and similar exogenous inputs. The model results are far from encouraging. In no case did aggregate energy-related carbon emissions ever dip below 2022 levels (see figure 3 plot). The IEO2023 exploration provides a benchmark and suggests that far stronger action is needed. Country examples Lists of countries In 2019, China, the United States, India, the EU27+UK, Russia, and Japan - the world's largest CO2 emitters - together accounted for 51% of the population, 62.5% of global gross domestic product, 62% of total global fossil fuel consumption and emitted 67% of total global fossil CO2. Emissions from these five countries and the EU28 show different changes in 2019 compared to 2018: the largest relative increase is found for China (+3.4%), followed by India (+1.6%). On the contrary, the EU27+UK (-3.8%), the United States (-2.6%), Japan (-2.1%) and Russia (-0.8%) reduced their fossil CO2 emissions. United States United Arab Emirates The UAE was to host the COP28 from 30 November 2023 till 12 December 2023. But, the Emirates faced extensive criticism over its human rights and for appointing the head of an oil company (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company), Sultan Al Jaber, as the President-Designate of COP28. Human rights groups condemned Al Jaber’s appointment, saying he was incompatible with the role because ADNOC planned to expand its fossil fuel production, causing higher damage to the climate..Meanwhile, the UAE failed to submit its methane emission to the United Nations for almost a decade. Countries are required to submit their methane emission to the UN every two years since 2014. The powerful greenhouse gas, methane accounts for a quarter of global heating. The major source of methane is the leaks from fossil fuel exploitation. Al Jaber’s ADNOC also established a target for methane leak, which was much higher than it had already reached. In October 2022, ADNOC announced to decrease the methane emissions from oil and gas by 2025. In 2021, International Energy Agency reported ADNOC’s methane emission was 38,000 tonnes, which was 3% of the Emirates’ overall methane emissions. In 2019 research, the UAE’s methane leaks were at 3.3%. China India Society and culture Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic In 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4% or 2.3 billion tonnes globally. In April 2020, NOx emissions fell by up to 30%. In China, lockdowns and other measures resulted in a 26% decrease in coal consumption, and a 50% reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions rebounded later in the pandemic as many countries began lifting restrictions, with the direct impact of pandemic policies having a negligible long-term impact on climate change. See also References External links The official greenhouse gas emissions data of developed countries from the UNFCCC Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) from NOAA NOAA CMDL CCGG – Interactive Atmospheric Data Visualization NOAA CO2 data IPCC Website Official IPCC Sixth Assessment Report website

parable of the sower (novel)

Parable of the Sower is a 1993 speculative fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. It is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth heavily affected by climate change and social inequality. The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who can feel the pain of others and becomes displaced from her home. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has discovered and titled Earthseed. The main tenets of Earthseed are that "God is Change" and believers can "shape God" through conscious effort to influence the changes around them. Earthseed also teaches that it is humanity's destiny to inhabit other planets and spread the "seeds" of the Earth.Parable of the Sower was the winner of multiple awards, including the 1994 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and has been adapted into an opera and a graphic novel. Parable of the Sower has influenced music and essays on social justice as well as climate change. In 2021, it was picked by readers of the New York Times as the top science fiction nomination for the best book of the last 125 years.Parable of the Sower is the first in an unfinished series of novels, followed by Parable of the Talents in 1998. Plot Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, Parable of the Sower takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager. Her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and left Lauren with "hyper-empathy" or "sharing": the uncontrollable ability to feel the sensations she witnesses in others, particularly the abundant pain in her world. Lauren grows up in the remnants of a gated community in Robledo, California, twenty miles from Los Angeles, where she and her neighbors struggle but are separate from the abject poverty of the world outside. Outside of the community are numerous homeless and mutilated individuals who resent the community members for their relative affluence. Public services such as police or firefighters are untrustworthy, exploiting their positions for profit and making little effort to help. Lauren's father, a Baptist pastor, holds the community together through Baptist religion, mutual aid, and careful use of resources, such as making bread from acorns. However, Lauren is increasingly certain that despite all efforts, society will continue to deteriorate and the community will no longer be safe; Lauren secretly prepares to travel north, as many do in search of rare paid jobs. The newly elected radical, authoritarian President Donner loosens labor protections, creating a rise in company towns owned by foreign businesses. Lauren privately develops her own new belief system based on the belief that "God is Change" is the only lasting truth, and that humanity should "shape God" in order to aid themselves. She comes to call this religion Earthseed. Lauren's younger half-brother, Keith, rebelliously runs away to live outside the walls of the community. For a time, he survives by joining a group of ruthless thieves who value him for his rare literacy, but he is eventually found dead after torture. Later, Lauren's father disappears while leaving the community for work and is accepted as dead. When Lauren is eighteen in 2027, the community's security is breached in an organized attack by outsiders: most of the community is destroyed, looted, and murdered, including Lauren's family. She travels north, disguised as a man, with Harry Balter and Zahra Moss, two survivors from her community. Society outside the community walls has reverted to chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty. U.S. states have become akin to city-states with strict borders. Money still has value, but travelers constantly fear attacks for resources or by pyromaniac drug-users, cannibals, and wild dogs. Interracial relationships are stigmatized, women fear sexual assault, and slavery has returned in the form of indebted servitude. Lauren gathers people to protect along her journey and begins to share the Earthseed religion, which is developing into a collection of texts titled Earthseed: The Books of the Living. She believes that humankind's destiny is to travel beyond the deteriorating Earth and live on other planets, forcing humankind into its adulthood, and that Earthseed is preparation for this destiny. Lauren begins a relationship with Bankole, an older doctor who joins the group, and agrees to marry him. Bankole takes the group to the land he owns in northern California, where the group settles and Lauren founds the first Earthseed community, Acorn. Sequel novels The sequel to Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, was published in 1998. Butler began to write a third Parable novel, tentatively titled Parable of the Trickster, which would have focused on an Earthseed community's struggle to survive on a new planet. Along with the third novel, Butler was planning several others titled Parable of the Teacher, Parable of Chaos, and Parable of Clay. She began Parable of the Trickster after finishing Parable of the Talents, and mentioned her work on it in a number of interviews, but at some point encountered writer's block. She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in Fledgling (2005), her final novel. The various false starts for the novel can now be found among Butler's papers at the Huntington Library, as described in an article at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Butler died in 2006, leaving the series unfinished. Publication and award history Published by Four Walls Eight Windows in 1993, by Women's Press Ltd. in 1995, by Warner in 1995 and 2000, and by Seven Stories Press in 2017. 2020 – became a New York Times best seller on September 3, 2020, appearing on the Trade Paperback Fiction list. 1995 – nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novel 1994 – New York Times Notable Book of the Year Adaptations Parable of the Sower was adapted into an opera by American folk/blues musician Toshi Reagon in collaboration with her mother, singer and composer Bernice Johnson Reagon. The adaptation's libretto and musical score combine African-American spirituals, soul, rock and roll, and folk music. An early concert version of the opera was performed as part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival in New York City in 2015. The finished version had its world premiere in Abu Dhabi in November 2017 and has been performed in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Singapore, Amsterdam, and elsewhere.In 2020, Parable of the Sower was adapted into a graphic novel by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the team which had previously adapted Butler's novel Kindred, and published by Abrams ComicArts. The graphic novel was named to the Black Lives Matter Reading Lists compiled by the Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It went on to win the 2021 Ignyte Award for Best Comics Team and the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. In popular culture The work of hip hop/R&B duo THEESatisfaction was influenced by Octavia Butler. The third track from their 2012 album awE NaturalE, "Earthseed", contains themes from the Parable series: "Change there are few words / That you can say / We all watch things morphing everyday."In 2015, Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha co-edited Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a collection of 20 short stories and essays about social justice inspired by Butler. In June 2020, Brown and Toshi Reagon began hosting the podcast Octavia's Parables, which gives an in-depth dive into Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. See also Climate fiction Further reading Agusti, Clara Escoda. "The Relationship between Community and Subjectivity in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower.' Extrapolation 46.3 (Fall 2005): 351–359. Allen, Marlene D. "Octavia Butler's 'Parable' Novels and the 'Boomerang' of African American History". Callaloo 32. 4 2009, pp. 1353–1365. JSTOR 27743153. Andréolle, Donna Spalding. "Utopias of Old, Solutions for the New Millennium: A Comparative Study of Christian Fundamentalism in M. K. Wren's A Gift upon the Shore and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower." Utopian Studies 12.2 (2001): 114–123. JSTOR 20718319. Butler, Robert. "Twenty-First Century Journeys in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower." Contemporary African American Fiction: The Open Journey. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. 133–143. ISBN 9780838637876 Caputi, Jane. "Facing Change: African Mythic Origins in Octavia Butler's Parable Novels", Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. 366–369. ISBN 978-0299196240 Dubey, M. "Folk and Urban Communities in African-American Women's Fiction: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower." Studies in American Fiction 27. 1, 1999, pp. 103–128. Govan, Sandra. "The Parable of the Sower as Rendered by Octavia Butler: Lessons for Our Changing Times", FEMSPEC 4.2 (2004): 239–258. Grant-Britton, Lisbeth. "Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.” Women of Other Worlds: Excursions through Science Fiction and Feminism. Ed. Helen Merrick and Tess Williams. Nedlands, Australia: University of Western Australia Press, 1999. 280–294. ISBN 978-1876268329 Hampton, Gregory J. "Migration and Capital of the Body: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.” CLA Journal 49 (September 2005): 56–73. Harris, Trudier. "Balance? Octavia E. Butler s Parable of the Sower.” Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 153–171. ISBN 978-0312293031 Jablon, Madelyn. "Metafiction as Genre: Walter Mosley, Black Betty; Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower." Black Metafiction: Self Consciousness in African American Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997. 139–165. ISBN 978-0877455608 Jos, Philip H. "Fear and the Spiritual Realism of Octavia Butler's Earthseed", Utopian Studies 23. 2, 2012, pp. 408–429. JSTOR 10.5325/utopianstudies.23.2.0408. Lacey, Lauren. J. "Octavia Butler on Coping with Power in Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Fledgling." Critique 49.4 (Summer 2008): 379–394. Mayer, Sylvia. "Genre and Environmentalism: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Speculative Fiction, and the African American Slave Narrative", Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagination. Ed. Sylvia Mayer. Munster, Ger.: LIT, 2003. 175–196. ISBN 978-3825867324 Melzer, Patricia. "'All That You Touch You Change': Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents." Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Gale, 2008. Originally published in FEMSPEC 3.2 (2002): 31–52. Nilges, Mathias. "'We Need the Stars': Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butler's 'Parable of the Sower' and 'Parable of the Talents'", Callaloo 32.4, 2009, pp. 1332–1352. JSTOR 27743152. Phillips, Jerry. "The Institution of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 35.2/3 Contemporary African American Fiction and the Politics of Postmodernism (Spring–Summer, 2002), pp. 299–311. JSTOR 1346188. Stanford, Ann Folwell. "A Dream of Communitas: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents and Roads to the Possible." Bodies in a Broken World: Women Novelists of Color and the Politics of Medicine. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 196–218. ISBN 978-0807854808 Stillman, Peter G. "Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler's Parables", Utopian Studies 14.1 (2003): 15–35. JSTOR 20718544. Texter, Douglas W. "Of Gifted Children and Gated Communities: Paul Theroux's O-Zone and Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower." Utopian Studies 19. 3, 2008, pp. 457–484. JSTOR 20719921. References External links Parable of the Sower title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database [1] YouTube video of a map of the California odyssey in Parable of the Sower

poverty in africa

Poverty in Africa is the lack of provision to satisfy the basic human needs of certain people in Africa. African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity, such as income per capita or GDP per capita, despite a wealth of natural resources. In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having "Low Human Development" on the United Nations' (UN) Human Development Index were in Sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2019, 424 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were reportedly living in severe poverty. In 2022, 460 million people—an increase of 36 million in only three years—were anticipated to be living in extreme poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and war.In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries were in Africa. In many nations, GDP per capita is less than US$5200 per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less (according to World Bank data, by 2016 the island nation of Seychelles was the only African country with a GDP per capita above US$10,000 per year). In addition, Africa's share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does. Although GDP per capita incomes in Africa have also been steadily growing, measures are still far better in other parts of the world. Mismanagement of land Despite large amounts of arable land south of the Sahara Desert, small, individual land holdings are rare. In many nations, the land is subject to tribal ownership. Many nations lack a system of freehold landowning. In others, the laws prevent people from disadvantaged groups from owning land at all. Although often these laws are ignored, and land sales to disadvantaged groups occur, legal title to the land is not assured. As such, rural Africans rarely have clear title to their own land and have to survive as farm laborers. Unused land is plentiful but is often private property. Most African nations have very poor land registration systems, making squatting and land-theft common occurrences. This makes it difficult to get a mortgage or similar loan, as ownership of the property often cannot be established to the satisfaction of financiers.This system often gives an advantage to one native African group over another and is not just Europeans over Africans. For example, it was hoped that land reform in Zimbabwe would transfer land from European landowners to family farmers. Instead, it simply substituted native Africans with ties to the government for Europeans, leaving much of the population disadvantaged. Because of this abuse, foreign aid that was destined for land purchases was withdrawn. (See Land reform in Zimbabwe) Historically, such programs have been few and far between, with much foreign aid being concentrated on the raising of cash crops and large plantations rather than family farms.There is no consensus on what the optimal strategy for land use in Africa may be. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences have suggested great promise in relying on native crops as a means of improving Africa's food security. A report by Future Harvest suggests that traditionally used forage plants show the same promise. Supporting a different viewpoint is an article appearing in AgBioForum which suggests that smallholder farmers benefited substantially by planting a genetically modified variety of maize. In a similar vein is an article discussing the use of nontraditional crops for export published as part of the proceedings of a Purdue University symposium. Misused money Between 1960 and 1997, foreign nations sent over $500 billion (U.S.) to African nations in the form of direct aid. The consensus is that the money has had little long-term effect. The Cato Institute argues this is because, rather than increasing development, financial aid creates dependence on foreign investments. For example, as of 2005, the budgets of Ghana and Uganda were more than 50 percent aid-dependent. In 2002, then-president of Senegal, economist Abdoulaye Wade, stated, "'I've never seen a country develop itself through aid or credit. Countries that have developed - in Europe, America, Japan, Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore - have all believed in free markets. There is no mystery there. Africa took the wrong road after independence.''In addition, most African nations have owed substantial sums of money. However, a large percentage of the money was either invested in weapons (money that was spent back in developed nations, and provided little or no benefit to the native population) or was directly misappropriated by corrupt governments. As such, many newly democratic nations in Africa are saddled with debt run up by totalitarian regimes. Large debts usually result in little being spent on social services, such as education, pensions, or medical care. In addition, most of the debt currently owed (approximately $321 billion (U.S.) in 1996) represents only the interest portion on the debt, and far exceeds the amounts that were actually borrowed (although this is true of large debts in developed nations as well). Authors Leonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce estimate that from 1970 to 2008, capital flight from 33 sub-Saharan countries totalled $700 billion. Most African nations are pushing for debt relief, as they are effectively unable to maintain payments on debt without extending the debt payments indefinitely. However, most plans to forgive debt affect only the smallest nations, and large debtor nations, like Nigeria, are often excluded from such plans. What large sums of money that are in Africa are often used to develop mega-projects when the need is for smaller scale projects. For example, Ghana was the richest country in Africa when it obtained independence. However, a few years later, it had no foreign reserves of any consequence. The money was spent on large projects that turned out to be a waste of resources: The Akosombo Dam was built to supply electricity for the extraction of aluminium from bauxite. Unfortunately, Ghanaian ores turned out to be too low grade and the electricity is now used to process ores from other nations. Storage silos for the storage of cocoa were built to allow Ghana to take advantage of fluctuations in the commodity prices. Unfortunately, unprocessed cocoa does not react well to even short-term storage and the silos now sit empty.Another example of misspent money is the Aswan High Dam. The dam was supposed to have modernized Egypt and Sudan immediately. Instead, the block of the natural flow of the Nile River meant that the Nile's natural supply of nitrate fertilizer and organic material was blocked. Now, about one-third of the dam's electric output goes directly into fertilizer production for what was previously the most fertile area on the planet. Moreover, the dam is silting up and may cease to serve any useful purpose within the next few centuries. In addition, the Mediterranean Sea is slowly becoming more saline as the Nile River previously provided it with most of its new fresh water influx. Corruption is also a major problem in the region, although it is certainly not universal or limited to Africa. Many native groups in Africa prioritize family relationships over national identity, so people in authority often use nepotism and bribery for the benefit of their extended family group at the expense of their nations. For example, the Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko became notorious for corruption, nepotism, and the embezzlement of between US$4 billion and $15 billion during his reign. Despite this, corrupt governments often do better than authoritarian ones that replace them. For example, under Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, corruption was rife and poverty rampant. After his overthrow, corruption was lessened, but famine and military aggressiveness came to the fore. In any event, corruption both diverts aid money and foreign investment (which is usually sent to offshore banks outside of Africa), and puts a heavy burden on native populations forced to pay bribes to get basic government services. In the end, foreign aid may not even be helpful in the long run to many African nations. It often encourages them not to tax internal economic activities of multinational corporations within their borders to attract foreign investment. In addition, most African nations have at least some wealthy nationals, and foreign aid often allows them to avoid paying more than negligible taxes. As such, wealth redistribution and capital controls are often seen as a more appropriate way for African nations to stabilize funding for their government budgets and smooth out the boom and bust cycles that can often arise in a developing economy. However, this sort of strategy often leads to internal political dissent and capital flight. Sub-Saharan Africa's government debt rose from 28% of gross domestic product in 2012 to 50% of gross domestic product in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic caused it to rise to 57% of gross domestic product in 2021. Human resources A segment of Africa's population receive low wages or do not have stable employment. Real wages increased from 2006 to 2017, but the continent's average real wages has since been declining. As many as 85% of people in Africa subsist on less than $5.50 per day.Two-thirds of the labor force are men and one-third are women. Women on average receive lower wages than men.The International Labour Organization (ILO) recommends legislation and minimum wage policies to address low wages and wage inequalities in Africa. The ILO also encourages the promotion collective bargaining that covers a large part of worker population and addresses gender pay gaps.The widespread availability of cheap labor has often perpetuated policies that encourage inefficient agricultural and industrial practices, leaving Africa further impoverished. For example, author P.J. O'Rourke noted on his trip to Tanzania for his book Eat the Rich that gravel was produced with manual labor (by pounding rocks with tools), wherein almost everywhere else in the world machines did the same work far more cheaply and efficiently. He used Tanzania as an example of a nation with superb natural resources that nevertheless was among the poorest nations in the world. Education Education is also a major problem, even in the wealthier nations. Illiteracy rates are high although a good proportion of Africans speak at least two languages and a number speak three (generally their native language, a neighbouring or trade language, and a European language). Higher education is almost unheard of, although certain universities in Egypt and South Africa have excellent reputations. However, some African nations have a paucity of persons with university degrees, and advanced degrees are rare in most areas. As such, the continent, for the most part, lacks scientists, engineers, and even teachers. The seeming parody of aid workers attempting to teach trilingual people English is not entirely untrue. Disease The greatest mortality in Africa arises from preventable water-borne diseases, which affect infants and young children greater than any other group. The principal cause of these diseases is the regional water crisis, or lack of safe drinking water primarily stemming from mixing sewage and drinking water supplies.Much attention has been given to the prevalence of AIDS in Africa. 3,000 Africans die each day of AIDS and an additional 11,000 are infected. Less than one percent are actually treated. However, even with the widespread prevalence of AIDS (where infection rates can approach 30% among the sexually active population), and fatal infections such as the Ebola virus, other diseases are far more problematic. In fact, the situation with AIDS is improving in some nations as infection rates drop, and deaths from Ebola are rare. On the other hand, diseases once common but now almost unknown in most of the industrialized world, like malaria, tuberculosis, tapeworm and dysentery often claim far more victims, particularly among the young. Polio has made a comeback recently due to misinformation spread by anti-American Islamic groups in Nigeria. Diseases native to Africa, such as sleeping sickness, also resist attempts at elimination too. Poor infrastructure Clean potable water is rare in most of Africa (even those parts outside the sub-Saharan region) despite the fact that the continent is crossed by several major rivers and contains some of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. However, many of the major population centres are coastal, and few major cities have adequate sewage treatment systems. Although boiling water is a possibility, fuel for boiling is scarce as well. The problem is worst in Africa's rapidly growing cities, such as Cairo, Lagos and Kinshasa.Colonialism concentrated on connecting the coast with internal territories. As such, nearly none of Africa's roads and railways connect with each other in any meaningful way. Connecting Africa's extensive railway network has recently become a priority for African nations outside of southwest Africa, which has an integrated network.Transportation between neighbouring coastal settlements is nearly always by sea, no matter the topography of the land in between them. Even basic services like telecommunications are often treated the same way. For example, phone calls between Ghana and neighbouring Ivory Coast once had to be routed through Britain and France.Although Africa had numerous pre-European overland trade routes, few are suitable for modern transport such as trucks or railways, especially when they cross old European colonial borders. Another problem is that in many countries the roads, railway tracks, railway rolling stock, ships and ports are often old and badly maintained and many transportation systems have barely been updated and further developed since the end of colonialism. Conflict Despite other hot spots for war, Africa consistently remains among the top places for ongoing conflicts, consisting of both long-standing civil wars (e.g. Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo), ethnic conflicts that even resulted in genocides (e.g. the Rwandan genocide) and conflicts between countries. The long-standing civil wars are in part due to the border-drawing of the late 19th century's Scramble for Africa, which did not take into account the various ethnic groups due to lack of local knowledge and research. Post decolonization, the European-set borders were accepted by various leaders; however, there remains internal and cross-border struggles, and separatist concerns by popular demand to the governments as they transition to democracy, leading to fears of further destabilization.In recent years, religious conflicts have also increased, with Islamistic paramilitary terrorist groups like Boko Haram (Nigeria) and Al-Shabaab (Somalia) having committed many brutal, deadly terrorist acts that further decrease safety and prospects of development in the concerned regions. Despite a lack of basic social services or even the basic necessities of life, military forces are often well-financed and well-equipped.Acts of war and terrorism further harm the chances of development in the regions concerned as they do not only cause economic downturns but also cause severe damage to the often already underdeveloped infrastructure as well as government shutdowns, further worsen the often already tense safety situation and cause large numbers of refugees. As a result, Africa is full of refugees, who are often deliberately displaced by military forces during a conflict, rather than just having fled from war-torn areas. Although many refugees emigrate to open countries such as Germany, Canada, and the United States, the ones who do emigrate are often the most educated and skilled. The remainder often become a burden on neighbouring African nations that, while peaceful, are generally unable to deal with the logistical problems refugees pose as these nations are often already barely capable of fulfilling the needs of their own population.Civil war usually has the result of totally shutting down all government services. However, any conflict generally disrupts what trade or economy there is. Sierra Leone, which depends on diamonds for much of its economic activity, not only faces disruption in production (which reduces the supply), but a thriving black market in conflict diamonds, which drives down the price for what diamonds are produced. Climate change The link between climate change and poverty has been examined. Climate change is likely to increase the size, frequency, and unpredictability of natural hazards. However, there is nothing natural about the transformation of natural hazards into disasters. The severity of a disaster's impact is dependent on existing levels of vulnerability, the extent of exposure to disaster event and the nature of the hazard. A community’s risk to disaster is dynamic and will change over time. It is heavily influenced by the interplay between economic, socio-cultural and demographic factors, as well as skewed development, such as rapid and unplanned urbanisation.The level of poverty is a key determinant of disaster risk. Poverty increases propensity and severity of disasters and reduces peoples' capacity to recover and reconstruct. However, vulnerability is not just shaped to poverty, but linked to wider social, political and institutional factors, that govern entitlements and capabilities. Effects of poverty Africa's economic malaise is self-perpetuating, as it engenders more of the disease, warfare, misgovernment, and corruption that created it in the first place. Other effects of poverty have similar consequences. The most direct consequence of low GDP is Africa's low standard of living and quality of life. Except for a wealthy elite and the more prosperous peoples of South Africa and the Maghreb, Africans have very few consumer goods. Quality of life does not correlate exactly with a nation's wealth. Angola, for instance, reaps large sums annually from its diamond mines, but after years of civil war, conditions there remain poor. Radios, televisions, and automobiles are rare luxuries. Most Africans are on the far side of the digital divide and are cut off from communications technology and the Internet, however, use of mobile phones has been growing dramatically in recent years with 65% of Africans having access to a mobile phone as of 2011. Quality of life and human development are also low. African nations dominate the lower reaches of the UN Human Development Index. Infant mortality is high, while life expectancy, literacy, and education are all low. The UN also lowers the ranking of African states because the continent sees greater inequality than any other region. The best educated often choose to leave the continent for the West or the Persian Gulf to seek a better life. Catastrophes cause deadly periods of great shortages. The most damaging are the famines that have regularly hit the continent, especially the Horn of Africa. These have been caused by disruptions due to warfare, years of drought, and plagues of locusts.An average African faced annual inflation of over 60% from 1990 until 2002 in those few countries that account for inflation. At the high end, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo both saw triple-digit inflation throughout the period. Most African nations saw inflation of approximately 10% per year. See also Economy of Africa Causes of poverty in South Africa Poverty in Nigeria List of African millionaires List of countries by percentage of population living in poverty List of African countries by Human Development Index References Bibliography published in 20th centuryFounou-Tchuigoua, Bernard Food self-sufficiency: Crisis of the collective ideology African agriculture: The critical choices. United Nations University Press (1990) ISBN 0-86232-798-9 National Academy of Sciences Lost Crops of Africa:Grains ISBN 0-309-04990-3 publication announcement 4 March 1996 Milich, Lenard (1997) Food security in Pre-Colonial Hausalandpublished in the 21st centuryOkunlola, Paul (24 June 2002) Poverty and population in Lagos. People & the Planet Singh, B.P. (2002) Nontraditional crop production in Africa for export. p. 86–92. In: J. Janick and A. Whipkey (eds.), Trends in new crops and new uses. ASHS Press, Alexandria, VA. IRIN News Land reform in Southern Africa July 2003. IRIN News Zimbabwe: Land reform omits farm workers Land reform in Southern Africa July 2003. IRIN News South Africa: Land ownership remains racially skewed 24 May 2005. Gouse, Marnus et al. Three seasons of subsistence insect-resistant maize in South Africa: have smallholders benefited? AgBioForum Volume 9, No. 1 (2006) "Africa's middle class: Few and far between", The Economist, UK, 22 October 2015 External links Poverty in Africa from the World Bank African Development Bank Group. Poverty Reduction: Knowledge Products (publications) African Development Hindered by Vast US Corporate Interests in Continent’s Resources – video report by Democracy Now! UN-OHRLLS List of Least Developed Countries World Commission on Protected Areas (1995–2006) WCPA West and Central Africa RegionThe World Conservation Union

gender inequality

Gender inequality is the social phenomenon in which people are not treated equally on the basis of gender. This inequality can be caused by gender discrimination or sexism. The treatment may arise from distinctions regarding biology, psychology, or cultural norms prevalent in the society. Some of these distinctions are empirically grounded, while others appear to be social constructs. While current policies around the world cause inequality among individuals, it is women who are most affected. Gender inequality weakens women in many areas such as health, education, and business life. Studies show the different experiences of genders across many domains including education, life expectancy, personality, interests, family life, careers, and political affiliation. Gender inequality is experienced differently across different cultures and also affects non-binary people. Sex differences Biology Natural differences exist between the sexes based on biological and anatomic factors, mostly differing reproductive roles. These biological differences include chromosomes and hormonal differences. There is a natural difference also in the relative physical strengths (on average) of the sexes, both in the lower body and more pronouncedly in the upper-body, though this does not mean that any given man is stronger than any given woman. Men, on average, are taller, which provides both advantages and disadvantages. Women, on average, live significantly longer than men, though it is not clear to what extent this is a biological difference - see Life expectancy. Men have larger lung volumes and more circulating blood cells and clotting factors, while women have more circulating white blood cells and produce antibodies faster. Differences such as these are hypothesized to be an adaptation allowing for sexual specialization. Psychology Prenatal hormone exposure influences the extent to which a person exhibits typical masculine or feminine traits. Negligible differences between males and females exist in general intelligence. Women are significantly less likely to take risks than men. Men are also more likely than women to be aggressive, a trait influenced by prenatal and possibly current androgen exposure. It has been theorized that these differences combined with physical differences are an adaptation representing sexual division of labour. A second theory proposes sex differences in intergroup aggression represent adaptations in male aggression to allow for territory, resource and mate acquisition. Females are (on average) more empathetic than males, though this does not mean that any given woman is more empathetic than any given man. Men and women have better visuospatial and verbal memory, respectively. These changes are influenced by the male sex hormone testosterone, which increases visuospatial memory in both genders when administered.From birth, males and females are socialised differently, and experience different environments throughout their lives. Due to societal influence, gender often greatly influences many major characteristics in life; such as personality. Males and females are led on different paths due to the influences of gender role expectations and gender role stereotypes often before they are able to choose for themselves. For instance, in Western societies, the colour blue is commonly associated with boys, and they are often given toys that are associated with traditional masculine roles, such as machines and trucks. Girls are associated with the colour pink, and are given toys related to traditional feminine roles, such as dolls, dresses, and dollhouses. These influences by parents or other adult figures in the child's life encourage them to fit into these roles. This tends to affect personality, career paths, or relationships. Throughout life, males and females are seen as two very different species who have very different personalities and should stay on separate paths.Researcher Janet Hyde found that, although much research has traditionally focused on the differences between the genders, they are actually more alike than different, which is a position proposed by the gender similarities hypothesis. In the workplace Income disparities linked to job stratification Across the board, a number of industries are stratified across the genders. This is the result of a variety of factors. These include differences in education choices, preferred job and industry, work experience, number of hours worked, and breaks in employment (such as for bearing and raising children). Men also typically go into higher paid and higher risk jobs when compared to women. These factors result in 60% to 75% difference between men's and women's average aggregate wages or salaries, depending on the source. Various explanations for the remaining 25% to 40% have been suggested, including women's lower willingness and ability to negotiate salary and sexual discrimination. According to the European Commission direct discrimination only explains a small part of gender wage differences.In the United States, the average female's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as 78% of that of the average male. However, multiple studies from OECD, AAUW, and the US Department of Labor have found that pay rates between males and females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts, when wages were adjusted to different individual choices made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, and maternal/parental leave. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from deficiency in salary negotiating skills and sexual discrimination.Human capital theories refer to the education, knowledge, training, experience, or skill of a person which makes them potentially valuable to an employer. This has historically been understood as a cause of the gendered wage gap but is no longer a predominant cause as women and men in certain occupations tend to have similar education levels or other credentials. Even when such characteristics of jobs and workers are controlled for, the presence of women within a certain occupation leads to lower wages. This earnings discrimination is considered to be a part of pollution theory. This theory suggests that jobs which are predominated by women offer lower wages than do jobs simply because of the presence of women within the occupation. As women enter an occupation, this reduces the amount of prestige associated with the job and men subsequently leave these occupations. The entering of women into specific occupations suggests that less competent workers have begun to be hired or that the occupation is becoming deskilled. Men are reluctant to enter female-dominated occupations because of this and similarly resist the entrance of women into male-dominated occupations.The gendered income disparity can also be attributed in part to occupational segregation, where groups of people are distributed across occupations according to ascribed characteristics; in this case, gender. Occupational gender segregation can be understood to contain two components or dimensions; horizontal segregation and vertical segregation. With horizontal segregation, occupational sex segregation occurs as men and women are thought to possess different physical, emotional, and mental capabilities. These different capabilities make the genders vary in the types of jobs they are suited for. This can be specifically viewed with the gendered division between manual and non-manual labor. With vertical segregation, occupational sex segregation occurs as occupations are stratified according to the power, authority, income, and prestige associated with the occupation and women are excluded from holding such jobs.As women entered the workforce in larger numbers since the 1960s, occupations have become segregated based on the amount femininity or masculinity presupposed to be associated with each occupation. Census data suggests that while some occupations have become more gender integrated (mail carriers, bartenders, bus drivers, and real estate agents), occupations including teachers, nurses, secretaries, and librarians have become female-dominated while occupations including architects, electrical engineers, and airplane pilots remain predominately male in composition. Based on the census data, women occupy the service sector jobs at higher rates than men. Women's overrepresentation in service sector jobs, as opposed to jobs that require managerial work acts as a reinforcement of women and men into traditional gender roles that causes gender inequality. "The gender wage gap is an indicator of women's earnings compared with men's. It is figured by dividing the average annual earnings for women by the average annual earnings for men." (Higgins et al., 2014) Scholars disagree about how much of the male-female wage gap depends on factors such as experience, education, occupation, and other job-relevant characteristics. Sociologist Douglas Massey found that 41% remains unexplained, while CONSAD analysts found that these factors explain between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of the raw wage gap. CONSAD also noted that other factors such as benefits and overtime explain "additional portions of the raw gender wage gap". The glass ceiling effect is also considered a possible contributor to the gender wage gap or income disparity. This effect suggests that gender provides significant disadvantages towards the top of job hierarchies which become worse as a person's career goes on. The term glass ceiling implies that invisible or artificial barriers exist which prevent women from advancing within their jobs or receiving promotions. These barriers exist in spite of the achievements or qualifications of the women and still exist when other characteristics that are job-relevant such as experience, education, and abilities are controlled for. The inequality effects of the glass ceiling are more prevalent within higher-powered or higher income occupations, with fewer women holding these types of occupations. The glass ceiling effect also indicates the limited chances of women for income raises and promotion or advancement to more prestigious positions or jobs. As women are prevented by these artificial barriers, from either receiving job promotions or income raises, the effects of the inequality of the glass ceiling increase over the course of a woman's career.Statistical discrimination is also cited as a cause for income disparities and gendered inequality in the workplace. Statistical discrimination indicates the likelihood of employers to deny women access to certain occupational tracks because women are more likely than men to leave their job or the labor force when they become married or pregnant. Women are instead given positions that dead-end or jobs that have very little mobility.In developing countries such as the Dominican Republic, female entrepreneurs are statistically more prone to failure in business. In the event of a business failure women often return to their domestic lifestyle despite the absence of income. On the other hand, men tend to search for other employment as the household is not a priority.The gender earnings ratio suggests that there has been an increase in women's earnings comparative to men. Men's plateau in earnings began after the 1970s, allowing for the increase in women's wages to close the ratio between incomes. Despite the smaller ratio between men and women's wages, disparity still exists. Census data suggests that women's earnings are 71 percent of men's earnings in 1999.The gendered wage gap varies in its width among different races. Whites comparatively have the greatest wage gap between the genders. With whites, women earn 78% of the wages that white men do. With African Americans, women earn 90% of the wages that African American men do. There are some exceptions where women earn more than men: According to a survey on gender pay inequality by the International Trade Union Confederation, female workers in the Gulf state of Bahrain earn 40 percent more than male workers.In 2014, a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) reveals the wage gap between Cambodian women factory workers and other male counterparts. There was a US$25 monthly pay difference, suggesting that women have a much lower power and being devalued not only at home but also in the workplace. Professional education and careers The gender gap has narrowed to various degrees since the mid-1960s. Where some 5% of first-year students in professional programs were female in 1965, by 1985 this number had jumped to 40% in law and medicine, and over 30% in dentistry and business school. Before the highly effective birth control pill was available, women planning professional careers, which required a long-term, expensive commitment, had to "pay the penalty of abstinence or cope with considerable uncertainty regarding pregnancy". This control over their reproductive decisions allowed women to more easily make long-term decisions about their education and professional opportunities. Women are highly underrepresented on boards of directors and in senior positions in the private sector. Gender inequality in professional education is a global issue. Robet Meyers and Amy Griffin studied the underrepresentation of female international students in higher education. In 2019, on 43.6% of international students in the United States were women. The disparity is even greater in the STEM field. Additionally, with reliable birth control, young men and women had more reason to delay marriage. This meant that the marriage market available to any women who "delay[ed] marriage to pursue a career ... would not be as depleted. Thus the Pill could have influenced women's careers, college majors, professional degrees, and the age at marriage."Studies on sexism in science and technology fields have produced conflicting results. Moss-Racusin et al. found that science faculty of both sexes rated a male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than an identical female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. Williams and Ceci, however, found that science and technology faculty of both sexes "preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles" for tenure-track positions. Studies show parents are more likely to expect their sons, rather than their daughters, to work in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics field – even when their 15-year-old boys and girls perform at the same level in mathematics. There are more men than women trained as dentists, this trend has been changing.A survey by the U.K. Office for National Statistics in 2016 showed that in the health sector 56% of roles are held by women, while in teaching it is 68%. However equality is less evident in other area; only 30% of M.P.s are women and only 32% of finance and investment analysts. In the natural and social sciences 43% of employees are women, and in the environmental sector 42%.In an article by MacNell et al. (2014), researchers used an online course and falsified the names of assistant teachers to make students believe they had either a female or a male teaching assistant. At the end of the semester, they had the students complete a course evaluation. Regardless of whether the teaching assistant was actually male or female, assistants who were perceived as female received lower course evaluations overall with distinctly lower ratings in areas of promptness, praise, fairness, and professionalism.In an article titled "Gender Differences in Education, Career Choices and Labor Market Outcomes on a Sample of OECD Countries", the researchers focused their work on how both men and women differ from their studies, their focuses, and their objectives within their work. Women are seen to have higher chances to choose the humanities and health fields while decreasing their opportunities in the sciences and social sciences fields. This indicates that there is a larger impact on men's decisions about fields of study. Customer preference studies A 2010 study conducted by David R. Hekman and colleagues found that customers, who viewed videos featuring a black male, a white female, or a white male actor playing the role of an employee helping a customer, were 19 percent more satisfied with the white male employee's performance.This discrepancy with race can be found as early as 1947, when Kenneth Clark conducted a study in which black children were asked to choose between white and black dolls. White male dolls were the ones children preferred to play with. Gender pay differences Gender inequalities still exist as social problems and are still growing in places. In 2008, recently qualified female doctors in New York State had a starting salary $16,819 less than their male counterparts. An increase compared to the $3,600 difference of 1999. The pay discrepancy could not be explained by specialty choice, practice setting, work hours, or other characteristics. Nonetheless, some potentially significant factors like family or marital status were not evaluated. A case study carried out on Swedish medical doctors showed that the gender wage gap among physicians was greater in 2007 than in 1975.Wage discrimination is when an employer pays different wages to two seemingly similar employees, usually on the basis of gender or race. Kampelmann and Rycx (2016) explain two different explanations for the differences observed in wages. They explain that employer tastes and preferences for foreign workers and/or customers can translate into having a lower demand for them as a whole and as a result offering them lower wages, as well as the differences in career dynamics, whereas, if there is large differences between immigrant workers and "native" workers, it could lead to wage discrimination for immigrant workers. Within the discrimination of domestic to foreign workers there is also discrimination among foreign workers based on gender. Female migrant workers are faced with a "triple-discrimination". This "triple-discrimination" states that women foreign workers are more at risk to experience discrimination because they are women, unprotected workers, and migrant workers. At home Gender roles in parenting and marriage Gender roles are heavily influenced by biology, with male-female play styles correlating with sex hormones, sexual orientation, aggressive traits, and pain. Furthermore, females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia demonstrate increased masculinity and it has been shown that rhesus macaque children exhibit preferences for stereotypically male and female toys. Gender inequality in relationships Gender inequality in relationships has been growing over the years but for the majority of relationships, the power lies with the male. Even now men and women present themselves as divided along gender lines. A study done by Szymanowicz and Furnham, looked at the cultural stereotypes of intelligence in men and women, showing the gender inequality in self-presentation. This study showed that females thought if they revealed their intelligence to a potential partner, then it would diminish their chance with him. Men however would much more readily discuss their own intelligence with a potential partner. Also, women are aware of people's negative reactions to IQ, so they limit its disclosure to only trusted friends. Females would disclose IQ more often than men with the expectation that a real true friend would respond in a positive way. Intelligence continues to be viewed as a more masculine trait, than feminine trait. The article suggested that men might think women with a high IQ would lack traits that were desirable in a mate such as warmth, nurturance, sensitivity, or kindness. Another discovery was that females thought that friends should be told about one's IQ more so than males. However, males expressed doubts about the test's reliability and the importance of IQ in real life more so than women. The inequality is highlighted when a couple starts to decide who is in charge of family issues and who is primarily responsible for earning income. For example, in Londa Schiebinger's book, "Has Feminism Changed Science?", she claims that "Married men with families on average earn more money, live longer and happier, and progress faster in their careers", while "for a working woman, a family is a liability, extra baggage threatening to drag down her career." Furthermore, statistics had shown that "only 17 percent of the women who are full professors of engineering have children, while 82 percent of the men do." Attempts in equalizing household work Despite the increase in women in the labor force since the mid-1900s, traditional gender roles are still prevalent in American society. Many women are expected to put their educational and career goals on hold in order to raise a family, while their husbands become primary breadwinners. However, some women choose to work and also fulfill a perceived gender role of cleaning the house and caring for children. Despite the fact that certain households might divide chores more evenly, there is evidence supporting the issue that women have continued being the primary care-giver in family life even if they work full-time jobs. This evidence suggests that women who work outside the home often put an extra 18 hours a week doing household or childcare related chores as opposed to men who average 12 minutes a day in childcare activities. One study by van Hooff showed that modern couples, do not necessarily purposefully divide things like household chores along gender lines, but instead may rationalize it and make excuses. One excuse used is that women are more competent at household chores and have more motivation to do them, and some say the jobs men have are much more demanding. In The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry wrote in the 1970s that the "home became a place for the husband to go when he was not working ... it was the place where the wife was held in servitude." A study conducted by Sarah F. Berk, called "The Gender Factory", researched this aspect of gender inequality as well. Berk found that "household labor is about power". The reason the spouse performing less housework is not the spouse in power is simple; they have more free time than their counterpart; therefore, they are able to do more of what they want after the average workday. Gender roles have changed drastically over the past few decades. In an article taking the time period of 1920–1966, data was recorded which surmised that women spent most of their time tending the home and family. A study assessing changing gender roles between males and females showed that as women begin to spend less time in the house, men are taking over the role of the caretaker and spending more time with children as compared to their female counterparts. Robin A. Douthitt, author of the article, "The Division of Labor Within the Home: Have Gender Roles Changed?" concluded by saying, "(1) men do not spend significantly more time with children when their wives are employed and (2) employed women spend significantly less time in child care than their full-time homemaker counterparts (3) over a 10-year period both mothers and fathers are spending more total time with children." (703).Women bear a disproportionate burden when it comes to unpaid work. In the Asia and Pacific region, women spend 4.1 times more time in unpaid work than men do. Additionally, looking at 2019 data by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, the average time women spent in unpaid work is 264 minutes per day compared to men who spent 136 minutes per day. Although men spend more time in paid work, women still spend more time, in general, doing both paid and unpaid work. The numbers are 482.5 minutes per day for women and 454.4 minutes per day for men. These statistics show us that there is a double burden for women. Gender inequalities in relation to technology One survey showed that men rate their technological skills in activities such as basic computer functions and online participatory communication higher than women. However, this study was a self-reporting study, where men evaluate themselves on their own perceived capabilities. It thus is not data based on actual ability, but merely perceived ability, as participants' ability was not assessed. Additionally, this study is inevitably subject to the significant bias associated with self-reported data.In contrary to such findings, a carefully controlled study that analyzed data sets from 25 developing countries led to the consistent finding that the reason why fewer women access and use digital technology is a direct result of their unfavorable conditions and ongoing discrimination with respect to employment, education and income. When controlling for these variables, women turn out to be more active users of digital tools than men. This turns the alleged digital gender divide into an opportunity: given women's affinity for information and communications technology (ICT), and given that digital technologies are tools that can improve living conditions, ICT represents a concrete and tangible opportunity to tackle longstanding challenges of gender inequalities in developing countries, including access to employment, income, education and health services.Women are often drastically underrepresented within university technology and ICT focused programs while being overrepresented within social programs and humanities. Although data has shown women in western society generally outperform men in higher education, the labor markets of women often provide less opportunity and lower wages than that of men. Gender stereotypes and expectations may have an influence on the underrepresentation of women within technology and ICT focused programs and careers. Females are also underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at all levels of society. Fewer females are completing STEM school subjects, graduating with STEM degrees, being employed as STEM professionals, and holding senior leadership and academic positions in STEM. The gender pay gap, family role expectations, lack of visible role models or mentors, discrimination and harassment, and bias in hiring and promotion practices exacerbate this problem.Through socialization, women may feel obligated to choose programs with characteristics that emulate gender roles and stereotypes. Studies have shown domestic expectations may also lead to less opportunities in professional progression within the technology and ICT industry. Workplace practices of technology industries often include long, demanding hours which often conflict with gendered domestic expectations. This conflict leads to less opportunity and women opting for less demanding jobs. Gendered roles and expectations may cause discriminatory tendencies during the hiring process in which employers are reluctant to hire women as a way to avoid extra costs and benefits. Tech employers reluctance to hire women result in placing them in less demanding and opportune jobs, situating female employees in lower positions that are difficult to advance in. The lack of women and the existence of gender stereotypes within the technology industry often lead to discrimination and marginalization of women by colleagues and co-workers. Women often feel as though they are not taken seriously or feel unheard. Discrimination and gendered expectations often prevent or create difficulties for women to obtain higher positions within technology companies. Energy poverty Property inheritance Many countries have laws that give less inheritance of the ancestral property for women compared to men. Structural marginalization Gender inequalities often stem from social structures that have institutionalized conceptions of gender differences.Marginalization occurs on an individual level when someone feels as if they are on the fringes or margins of their respective society. This is a social process and displays how current policies in place can affect people. For example, media advertisements display young girls with easy bake ovens (promoting being a housewife) as well as with dolls that they can feed and change the diaper of (promoting being a mother). Gender stereotypes Cultural stereotypes, which can dictate specific roles, are engrained in both men and women and these stereotypes are a possible explanation for gender inequality and the resulting gendered wage disparity. Women have traditionally been viewed as being caring and nurturing and are designated to occupations which require such skills. While these skills are culturally valued, they were typically associated with domesticity, so occupations requiring these same skills are not economically valued. Men have traditionally been viewed as the main worker in the home, so jobs held by men have been historically economically valued and occupations predominated by men continue to be economically valued and earn higher wages.Gender Stereotypes influenced greatly by gender expectations, different expectations on gender influence how people determine their roles, appearance, behaviors, etc. When expectations of gender roles deeply rooted in people's mind, people' values and ideas started to be influenced and leading to situation of stereotypes, which actualize their ideas into actions and perform different standards labelling the behaviors of people. Gender stereotypes limit opportunities of different gender when their performance or abilities were standardizing according to their gender-at-birth, that women and men may encounter limitations and difficulties when challenging the society through performing behaviors that their gender is "not supposed" to perform. For example, men may receive judgments when they are trying to stay at home and finish housework and support their wives to go out and work instead, as men are expected to be work outside for earning money for the family. The traditional concepts of gender stereotypes are being challenged nowadays in different societies and improvement could be observed that men could also be responsible for housework, women could also be construction worker in some societies. It is still a long process when traditional concepts and values have deep-rooted in people's mind, that higher acceptance towards gender roles and characteristics is homely to be gradually developed. Biological fertilisation stereotypes Bonnie Spanier coined the term hereditary inequality. Her opinion is that some scientific publications depict human fertilization such that sperms seem to actively compete for the "passive" egg, even though in reality it is complicated (e.g. the egg has specific active membrane proteins that select sperm etc.) Sexism and discrimination Gender inequality can further be understood through the mechanisms of sexism. Discrimination takes place due to the prejudiced treatment of men and women based on gender alone. Sexism occurs when men and women are framed within two dimensions of social cognition. Discrimination also plays out with networking and in preferential treatment within the economic market. Men typically occupy positions of power in society. Due to socially accepted gender roles or preference to other men, males in power are more likely to hire or promote other men, thus discriminating against women. In the criminal justice system A 2008 study of three US district courts gave some explanations for gender disparity in sentencing: 1) that women are sentenced more leniently than men because they are convicted of less serious crimes and have less serious criminal records than men; that judges take personal factors relating to defendants (e.g. family responsibilities) into account; 2) that judges exercise chivalry or paternalism towards women in ways that discriminate against men; and 3) that apparent disparities are caused by the intersection of other factors, such as race (as data shows it is only white women rather than women of color that benefit from disparities).The study concluded that the second first explanation is not evidenced in their data, but were unable to confirm the other two. Sonja B. Starr conducted a study in the US, published in 2012, that found that the prison sentences that men serve are on average 63% longer than those that women serve when controlling for arrest offense and criminal history. Men's rights advocates have argued that men being over-represented in both those who commit murder and the victims of murder is evidence that men are being harmed by outmoded cultural attitudes.In 2022, Vicki Dabrowki and Emma Milne assessed female health care in the prison system in the United Kingdom. They found that there was an inconsistency in female and reproductive healthcare across prisons. More specifically, imprisoned women who had given birth reported feeling isolated and without access to healthcare professionals. Additionally, they reported a lack of access to feminine hygiene products.In a report by the Movement Advancement Project and Center for American Progress, researchers found that transgender people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. 21% of transgender women reported that they spent time in jail compared to 5% of all U.S. adults. The reason for this disproportionate rate was stated to be because transgender people are more likely to be put in vulnerable situations due to gender discrimination. Transgender people are more likely to face discrimination in the domains of housing, employment, healthcare, and identification documents, leading to higher interactions with the criminal justice system. The report also found transgender women are more likely to experience gendered violence while in prison. When transgender women were placed in men's prisons in California, 59% reported that they had been sexually assaulted compared to the 4.4% of all male-respondents. Otherwise said, Transgender women are 13 times more likely to be assaulted than incarcerated men. In television and film The New York Film Academy took a closer look at the women in Hollywood and gathered statistics from the top 500 films from 2007 to 2012, for their history and achievements, or lack of. There was a 5:1 ratio of men to women working in films. 30.8% of women having speaking characters, who may or may not have been a part of the 28.8% of women who were written to wear revealing clothing compared to the 7% of men who did, or the 26.2% of women who wore little to no clothing opposed to the 9.4% of men who did the same. A study analyzing five years of text from over 2,000 news sources found a similar 5:1 ratio of male to female names overall, and 3:1 for names in entertainment.Hollywood actresses are paid less than actors. Topping Forbes' highest paid actors list of 2013 was Robert Downey Jr. with $75 million. Angelina Jolie topped the highest paid actresses list with $33 million, which tied with Denzel Washington ($33 million) and Liam Neeson ($32 million), who were the last two on the top ten highest paid actors list.In the 2013 Academy Awards, 140 men were nominated for an award, but only 35 women were nominated. No woman was nominated for directing, cinematography, film editing, writing (original screenplay), or original score that year. Since the Academy Awards began in 1929, only seven women producers have won the Best Picture category (all of whom were co-producers with men), and only eight women have been nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Lina Wertmuller (1976), Jane Campion (1994), Sofia Coppola (2004), and Kathryn Bigelow (2012) were the only four women to be nominated for Best Director, with Bigelow being the first woman to win for her film The Hurt Locker. The Academy Awards' voters are 77% male.A group of Hollywood actors have launched their own social movement titled #AskMoreOfHim. This movement is built on the basis of men speaking out against sexual misconduct against females. A number of male activists, specifically in the film industry, have signed an open letter explaining their responsibility in the ownership of their actions, as well as calling out the actions of others. The letter has been signed and supported by Friends actor David Schwimmer, shown above, among many others. The Hollywood Reporter published their support saying, "We applaud the courage and pledge our support to the courageous women — and men, and gender non-conforming individuals — who have come forward to recount their experiences of harassment, abuse and violence at the hands of men in our country. As men, we have a special responsibility to prevent abuse from happening in the first place ... After all, the vast majority of sexual harassment, abuse and violence is perpetrated by men, whether in Hollywood or not." This accountability is set to change the way women are seen and treated in the film and television industry, hopefully ending in the closing of the gap women are experiencing in pay, promotion, and overall respect. This initiative was created in response to the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement, started by a single tweet, asked women to share their stories of sexual assault against men in a professional setting. Within one day, 30,000 women had used the hashtag sharing their stories. Many women feel as if they have more power in their voices than they ever had and are choosing to make personal claims that may have been brushed under the rug prior to the internet culture we're now living in. According to Time magazine, 95% of women in the film and entertainment industry report being sexually harassed by men in their industry. In addition to the #MeToo movement, women in industry are using #TimesUp, with the goal of aiming to help prevent sexual harassment in the workplace for victims who cannot afford their own resources. In sports The media gives more weight to men in sports news: according to a study by Sports Illustrated on the news in the sports media, women's sports account for only 5.7% of the news in the media by ESPN.Another problem that has been causing increasing controversy lately is wage inequality. The fact that male athletes earn more money than females in almost all sports branches is the focus of discussion. The argument most often presented as the reason for this issue is that men's sports provide more income. However, according to the arguments that offer more realistic evaluations, women and men are not given equal opportunities in the field of sports, and women start and continue sports at a disadvantage. Some work has been done recently to prevent this inequality. According to the statements made, countries such as the United States, Spain, Sweden and Brazil announced that men and women national football team athletes will receive equal pay. It can be said that these developments are the initial steps to end gender inequality in sports. Impact and counteractions Gender inequality and discrimination are argued to cause and perpetuate poverty and vulnerability in society as a whole. Household and intra-household knowledge and resources are key influences in individuals' abilities to take advantage of external livelihood opportunities or respond appropriately to threats. High education levels and social integration significantly improve the productivity of all members of the household and improve equity throughout society. Gender Equity Indices seek to provide the tools to demonstrate this feature of poverty.Poverty has many different factors, one of which is the gender wage gap. Women are more likely to be living in poverty and the wage gap is one of the causes.There are many difficulties in creating a comprehensive response. It is argued that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) fail to acknowledge gender inequality as a cross-cutting issue. Gender is mentioned in MDG3 and MDG5: MDG3 measures gender parity in education, the share of women in wage employment and the proportion women in national legislatures. MDG5 focuses on maternal mortality and on universal access to reproductive health. These targets are significantly off-track.Addressing gender inequality through social protection programmes designed to increase equity would be an effective way of reducing gender inequality, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Researchers at the ODI argue for the need to develop the following in social protection in order to reduce gender inequality and increase growth: Community childcare to give women greater opportunities to seek employment Support parents with the care costs (e.g. South African child/disability grants) Education stipends for girls (e.g. Bangladesh's Girls Education Stipend scheme) Awareness-raising regarding gender-based violence, which has surged globally in recent years, and other preventive measures, such as financial support for women and children escaping abusive environments (e.g. NGO pilot initiatives in Ghana) Inclusion of programme participants (women and men) in designing and evaluating social protection programmes Gender-awareness and analysis training for programme staff Collect and distribute information on coordinated care and service facilities (e.g. access to micro-credit and micro-entrepreneurial training for women) Developing monitoring and evaluation systems that include sex-disaggregated dataThe ODI maintains that society limits governments' ability to act on economic incentives.NGOs tend to protect women against gender inequality and structural violence. During war, combatants primarily target men. Both sexes die however, due to disease, malnutrition and incidental crime and violence, as well as the battlefield injuries which predominately affect men. A 2009 review of papers and data covering war related deaths disaggregated by gender concluded "It appears to be difficult to say whether more men or women die from conflict conditions overall." The ratio also depends on the type of war, for example in the Falklands War 904 of the 907 dead were men. Conversely figures for war deaths in 1990, almost all relating to civil war, gave ratios in the order of 1.3 males per female. Another opportunity to tackle gender inequality is presented by modern information and communication technologies. In a carefully controlled study, it has been shown that women embrace digital technology more than men. Given that digital information and communication technologies have the potential to provide access to employment, education, income, health services, participation, protection, and safety, among others (ICT4D), the natural affinity of women with these new communication tools provide women with a tangible bootstrapping opportunity to tackle social discrimination. A target of global initiatives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to enhance the use of enabling technology to promote the empowerment of women. Variations by country or culture Gender inequality is a result of the persistent discrimination of one group of people based upon gender and it manifests itself differently according to race, culture, politics, country, and economic situation. While gender discrimination happens to both men and women in individual situations, discrimination against women is more common. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rape and violence against women and girls is used as a tool of war. In Afghanistan, girls have had acid thrown in their faces for attending school. Considerable focus has been given to the issue of gender inequality at the international level by organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank, particularly in developing countries. The causes and effects of gender inequality vary geographically, as do methods for combating it. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2023, it will take exactly 131 years for the gender gap to close. Asia One example of the continued existence of gender inequality in Asia is the "missing girls" phenomenon. "Many families desire male children in order to ensure an extra source of income. In China, females are perceived as less valuable for labor and unable to provide sustenance." Moreover, gender inequality is also reflected in the educational aspect of rural China. Gender inequality exists because of gender stereotypes in rural China. For example, families may consider that it is useless for girls to acquire knowledge at school because they will marry someone eventually, and their major responsibility is to take care of housework.Furthermore, the current formal education in Asia might be also a result of the historical tendencies. For instance, insufficient supply and demand for education of women reflect the development of numeracy levels throughout Asia between 1900 and 1960. Regions like South and West Asia had low numeracy levels during the early and mid-20th century. As a consequence, there were no significant gender equality trends. East Asia in its turn was characterized by a high numeracy level and gender equality. The success of this region is related to the higher education and hence higher participation rate of females in the economic life of the region. China Gender inequality in China derives from deeply rooted Confucian beliefs about gender roles in society. Despite that, gender inequality in China was relatively modest before the beginning of the Chinese economic reform in 1978. The transition period to an economic system with market elements during the 1980s though was characterized by increasing gender inequality in China. On the other hand, the gender inequality was also influenced by the "One-child policy" because of the son preference. Nowadays women still face discrimination in China, despite the existence of state programs According to the United Nations Development Program, China was ranked 39 out of 162 countries on the Gender Inequality Index in 2018, while it was ranked 91 out of 187 in 2014. According to the World Economic Forum's global gender gap index, China's gap has widened and its rank has dropped to 106 out of 153 countries in 2020. It ranked last in terms of health and survival. According to Human Rights Watch, job discrimination remains a significant issue as 11% of postings specify a preference or requirement of men. In fact, Chinese women are often asked whether they expect to have children during interview as it is considered an obstacle to the job application, and as women generally retire around 40, it is difficult for them to advance. In addition, Chinese women earn 78.2% for every dollar paid to a man in 2019, according to a study conducted by Boss Zhipin. South Korea Gender inequality in South Korea is derived from deeply rooted patriarchal ideologies with specifically defined gender-roles. The gender-based stereotypes are often unchallenged and even encouraged by the government. South Korea has the lowest rank among OECD countries in The Economist's Glass Ceiling Index, which evaluates women's higher education, number of women in managerial positions and in parliament. The gap has improved in healthcare and education, but it is still prevalent in the economy and politics. In fact, out of 36 OECD countries, South Korea ranked 30 for women's employment in 2018. Victims of gender-based discrimination struggle to make a case and get justice as it is hard to prove gender discrimination and sometimes do not complain because they are afraid of the repercussions. The existing directives against gender discrimination are not effective because the law is weakly enforced and corporations do not comply. The inequality is even stronger in politics, with women holding 17% of the seats in the parliament. Cambodia A Cambodian said, "Men are gold, women are white cloth", emphasizing that women had a lower value and importance compared to men. In Cambodia, approximately 15% (485,000 hectares) of land was owned by women. In Asian culture, there is a stereotype that women usually have lower status than men because males carry on the family name and hold the responsibilities to take care of the family. Females have a less important role, mainly to carry out domestic chores, and taking care of husbands and children. Women are also the main victims of poverty as they have little or no access to education, low pay and low chances owning assets such as lands, homes or even basic items.In Cambodia, the Ministry of Women's Affairs (MoWA) was formed in 1998 with the role of improving women's overall power and status in the country. India India ranking remains low in gender equality measures by the World Economic Forum, although the rank has been improving in recent years. When broken down into components that contribute the rank, India performs well on political empowerment, but is scored near the bottom with China on sex-selective abortion. India also scores poorly on overall female to male literacy and health rankings. India with a 2013 ranking of 101 out of 136 countries had an overall score of 0.6551, while Iceland, the nation that topped the list, had an overall score of 0.8731 (no gender gap would yield a score of 1.0). Gender inequalities impact India's sex ratio, women's health over their lifetimes, their educational attainment, and economic conditions. It is a multifaceted issue that concerns men and women alike. The labor force participation rate of women was 80.7% in 2013. Nancy Lockwood of the Society for Human Resource Management, the world's largest human resources association with members in 140 countries, in a 2009 report wrote that female labor participation is lower than men, but has been rapidly increasing since the 1990s. Out of India's 397 million workers in 2001, 124 million were women, states Lockwood.India is on target to meet its Millennium Development Goal of gender parity in education before 2016. UNICEF's measures of attendance rate and Gender Equality in Education Index (GEEI) attempt to capture the quality of education. Despite some gains, India needs to triple its rate of improvement to reach GEEI score of 95% by 2015 under the Millennium Development Goals. A 1998 report stated that rural India girls continue to be less educated than the boys. Africa Although African nations have made considerable strides towards improving gender parity, the World Economic Forum's 2018 Global Gender Gap Index reported that sub-Saharan African and North African countries have only bridged 66% and 60% of their gender inequality. Women face considerable barriers to attending equal status to men in terms of property ownership, gainful employment, political power, credit, education, and health outcomes. In addition, women are disproportionately affected by poverty and HIV/AIDs because of their lack of access to resources and cultural influences. Other key issues are adolescent births, maternal mortality, gender-based violence, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. It's estimated that 50% of adolescent childbirths and 66% of all maternal deaths occurred in sub-Saharan African nations. Women have few rights and legal protections which have led to the highest numbers of child marriage and female genital mutilation than any other continent. Furthermore, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Lesotho, Mali, and Niger do not have any legal protections for gender-based domestic violence. Religion contributes to the gender inequality experienced by women in Africa. For example, religious norms in Nigeria limit women's ability to hold leadership roles and place blame on women who seek traditionally "male" roles Europe The Global Gender Gap Report put out by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2013 ranks nations on a scale of 0 to 1, with a score of 1.0 indicating full gender equality. A nation with 35 women and 65 men in political office would get a score of 0.538 as the WEF is measuring the gap between the two figures and not the actual percentage of women in a given category. While Europe holds the top four spots for gender equality, with Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden ranking first through fourth respectively, it also contains two nations ranked in the bottom 30 countries, Albania at 108 and Turkey at 120. The Nordic Countries, for several years, have been at the forefront of bridging the gap in gender inequality. Every Nordic country, aside from Denmark which is at 0.778, has reached above a 0.800 score. In contrast to the Nordic nations, the countries of Albania and Turkey continue to struggle with gender inequality. Albania and Turkey failed to break the top 100 nations in two of four and three of four factors, respectively. Gender is also an important aspect of economic inequality. Because women continue to hold lower-paying jobs, they earn 13% less than men on average across the European Union. According to European Quality of Life Survey and European Working Conditions Survey data, women in the European Union work more hours but for less pay. Adult men (including the retired) work an average of 23 hours per week, compared to 15 hours for women.The surveys found that while men spend up to 14 hours per week doing unpaid housework and caring for children and other family members, women spend up to 28 hours per week doing the same unpaid tasks. Women work up to six hours longer than men. If all unpaid work done by men and women at the EU median wage were to be valued, it would be worth nearly €6 trillion, or 40% of European gross domestic product. Western Europe Western Europe, a region most often described as comprising the non-communist members of post-WWII Europe, has, for the most part been doing well in eliminating the gender gap. Western Europe holds 12 of the top 20 spots on the Global Gender Gap Report for overall score. While remaining mostly in the top 50 nations, four Western European nations fall below that benchmark. Portugal is just outside of the top 50 at number 51 with score of 0.706 while Italy (71), Greece (81) and Malta (84) received scores of 0.689, 0.678 and 0.676, respectively.According to the United Nations, 21 EU's member states are in the top 30 in the world in terms of gender equality. However, since 2005, the European Union has slowly improved its gender equality score according to the European Institute for Gender Equality. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has raised gender inequality as one of the main human rights problems the European countries are facing and acknowledged the slow progress in bridging gender pay gap and addressing discrimination at work. According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, the EU seems to be the closest to gender equality in the health and money domains but has a more worrying score in the domain of power. As acknowledged by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the EU is only slowly progressing when it comes to tackling women's underrepresentation in political decision-making. The progress towards gender equality is uneven between member states. In fact, while Sweden and Denmark appear to be the most gender-equal societies, Greece and Hungary are far from it. Italy and Cyprus are the states which improved the most. Eastern Europe A large portion of Eastern Europe, a region most often described as the former communist members of post-WWII Europe, resides between 40th and 100th place in the Global Gender Gap Report. A few outlier countries include Lithuania, which jumped nine places (37th to 28th) from 2011 to 2013, Latvia, which has held the 12th spot for two consecutive years, Albania and Turkey. Russia According to United Nations Development Programme, Russia's gender inequality index is 0.255, ranking it 54 out of 162 countries in 2018. Women hold 16.1% of parliamentary seats and 96.3% have reached at least a secondary level of education. Researchers calculate the loss to the annual budget due to gender segregation to be roughly 40–50%. Although women hold prominent positions in Russia's government, traditional gender roles are still prevalent, and there is room for improvement when dealing with gender pay gap, domestic violence and sexual harassment. Turkey According to the 2020 Gender Decoupling Index, which was created by the World Economic Forum with data on education, participation in the economy, political representation and health, Turkey is 130th out of 153 countries. in line. In other words, Turkey is the country with the highest gender Decoupling after 23 countries, including sharia-governed countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and undeveloped African countries such as Mali, Togo and Gambia.According to TurkStat data, 57% of women in Turkey are happy. The happiness rate of men is at the level of 47.6%.The labor force participation rate of women in Turkey refers to the place of women in working life, this rate is 36.2% in Turkey; the OECD average is 63.6%. Turkey is one of the few countries not only among the OECD countries of which it is a member, but also in the whole world, where the participation rate of women in the labor force is the lowest. Dec. According to the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program dated 2016, the labor force participation rate of women is 49.6% on average in the world and is significantly higher than that of Turkey.It shows that female unemployment in Turkey (14%) is higher than the OECD average (9.8%). In other words, there is a serious danger of protection for women in Turkey.The unequal position of women in working life is also reflected in economic income inequality. Women's share of gross national income is lower than that of men in all countries. But gender income inequality in Turkey is higher than the inequality seen in the OECD and world averages. Gross national income per capita for women in Turkey is 39.3% of that for men; the OECD average is 59.6%, and the world average is 55.5%. United States The World Economic Forum measures gender equity through a series of economic, educational, and political benchmarks. It has ranked the United States as 19th (up from 31st in 2009) in terms of achieving gender equity. The US Department of Labor has indicated that in 2009, "the median weekly earnings of women who were full-time wage and salary workers was ... 80 percent of men's". The Department of Justice found that in 2009, "the percentage of female victims (26%) of intimate partner violence was about 5 times that of male victims (5%)". As of 2019, the average number of women killed by an intimate partner each day has gone up from three to around four. The United States ranks 41st in a ranking of 184 countries on maternal deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, below all other industrialized nations and a number of developing countries, and women are just 20% of members of the United States Congress. Economically, women are significantly underrepresented in prestigious and high paying occupations like company ownership and CEO roles, where they account for just 5.5% of the latter. Women are around 15% of self-made millionaires and 11.8% of billionaires. Political affiliations and behaviors Existing research on the topic of gender/sex and politics has found differences in political affiliation, beliefs, and voting behavior between men and women, although these differences vary across cultures. Gender is omnipresent in every culture, and while there are many factors to consider when labeling people "Democrat" or "Republican"—such as race and religion—gender is especially prominent in politics. Studying gender and political behavior poses challenges, as it can be difficult to determine if men and women actually differ in substantial ways in their political views and voting behavior, or if biases and stereotypes about gender cause people to make assumptions. However, trends in voting behavior among men and women have been proven through research. Research shows that women in postindustrial countries like the United States, Canada, and Germany primarily identified as conservative before the 1960s; however, as time has progressed and new waves of feminism have occurred, women have become more left-wing due to shared beliefs and values between women and parties more on the left. Women in these countries typically oppose war and the death penalty, favor gun control, support environment protection, and are more supportive of programs that help people of lower socioeconomic statuses. Voting behaviors of men have not experienced as drastic of a shift over the last fifty years as women in their voting behavior and political affiliations. These behaviors tend to consistently be more conservative than women overall. These trends change with every generation, and factors such as culture, race, and religion also must be considered when discussing political affiliation. These factors make the connection between gender and political affiliation complex due to intersectionality.Candidate gender also plays a role in voting behavior. Women candidates are far more likely than male candidates to be scrutinized and have their competence questioned by both men and women when they are seeking information on candidates in the beginning stages of election campaigns. Democrat male voters tend to seek more information about female Democrat candidates over male Democrat candidates. Female Republican voters tend to seek more information about female Republican candidates. For this reason, female candidates in either party typically need to work harder to prove themselves competent more than their male counterparts. Challenges to women in politics Overall, politics in the United States is dominated by men, which can pose many challenges to women who decide to enter the political sphere. As the number of women participants in politics continue to increase around the world, the gender of female candidates serves as both a benefit and a hindrance within their campaign themes and advertising practices. The overarching challenge seems to be that—no matter their actions—women are unable to win in the political sphere as different standards are used to judge them when compared to their male counterparts.One area in particular that exemplifies varying perceptions between male and female candidates is the way female candidates decide to dress and how their choice is evaluated. When women decide to dress more masculine, they are perceived as being "conspicuous". When they decide to dress more feminine, they are perceived as "deficient". At the same time, however, women in politics are generally expected to adhere to the masculine standard, thereby validating the idea that gender is binary and that power is associated with masculinity. As illustrated by the points above, these simultaneous, mixed messages create a "double-bind" for women. Some scholars go on to claim that this masculine standard represents symbolic violence against women in politics.Political knowledge is a second area where male and female candidates are evaluated differently and where political science research has consistently shown women with a lower level of knowledge than their male counterparts. One reason for this finding is the argument that there are different areas of political knowledge that different groups consider. Due to this line of thought, scholars are advocating the replacement of traditional political knowledge with gender-relevant political knowledge because women are not as politically disadvantaged as it may appear.A third area that affects women's engagement in politics is their low level of political interest and perception of politics as a "men's game". Despite female candidates' political contributions being equal to that of male candidates, research has shown that women perceive more barriers to office in the form of rigorous campaigns, less overall recruitment, inability to balance office and family commitments, hesitancy to enter competitive environments, and a general lack of belief in their own merit and competence. Male candidates are evaluated most heavily on their achievements, while female candidates are evaluated on their appearance, voice, verbal dexterity, and facial features in addition to their achievements. Steps needed for change Several forms of action have been taken to combat institutionalized sexism. People are beginning to speak up or "talk back" in a constructive way to expose gender inequality in politics, as well as gender inequality and under-representation in other institutions. Researchers who have delved into the topic of institutionalized sexism in politics have introduced the term "undoing gender". This term focuses on education and an overarching understanding of gender by encouraging "social interactions that reduce gender difference". Some feminists argue that "undoing gender" is problematic because it is context-dependent and may actually reinforce gender. For this reason, researchers suggest "doing gender differently" by dismantling gender norms and expectations in politics, but this can also depend on culture and level of government (e.g. local versus federal).Another key to combating institutionalized sexism in politics is to diffuse gender norms through "gender-balanced decision-making", particularly at the international level, which "establishes expectations about appropriate levels of women in decision-making positions." In conjunction with this solution, scholars have started placing emphasis on "the value of the individual and the importance of capturing individual experience". This is done throughout a candidate's political career—whether that candidate is male or female—instead of the collective male or female candidate experience. Five recommended areas of further study for examining the role of gender in U.S. political participation are (1) realizing the "intersection between gender and perceptions"; (2) investigating the influence of "local electoral politics"; (3) examining "gender socialization"; (4) discerning the connection "between gender and political conservatism"; and (5) recognizing the influence of female political role models in recent years. Due to the fact that gender is intricately entwined in every societal institution, gender in politics can only change once gender norms in other institutions change, as well. See also References Bibliography Seftaoui, Jamila, ed. (2011). Mending inequalities: men and gender equality in the OSCE region. OSCE. p. 94. ISBN 9789292345440. OCLC 839098547. Bojarska, Katarzyna (2012). "Responding to lexical stimuli with gender associations: A Cognitive–Cultural Model". Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 32: 46–61. doi:10.1177/0261927X12463008. S2CID 145006661. Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez, Math on trial. How numbers get used and abused in the courtroom, Basic Books, 2013. ISBN 978-0-465-03292-1. (Sixth chapter: "Math error number 6: Simpson's paradox. The Berkeley sex bias case: discrimination detection"). Higgins, M. and Reagan, M. (n.d). The gender wage gap, 9th ed. North Mankato: Abdo Publishing, pp. 9–11

stern review

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released for the Government of the United Kingdom on 30 October 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE) and also chair of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) at Leeds University and LSE. The report discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy. Although not the first economic report on climate change, it is significant as the largest and most widely known and discussed report of its kind.The Review states that climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics. The Review provides prescriptions including environmental taxes to minimise the economic and social disruptions. The Stern Review's main conclusion is that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change far outweigh the costs of not acting. The Review points to the potential impacts of climate change on water resources, food production, health, and the environment. According to the Review, without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. Including a wider range of risks and impacts could increase this to 20% of GDP or more, also indefinitely. Stern believes that 5–6 degrees of temperature increase is "a real possibility".The Review proposes that one per cent of global GDP per annum is required to be invested to avoid the worst effects of climate change. In June 2008, Stern increased the estimate for the annual cost of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550 ppm CO2e to 2% of GDP to account for faster than expected climate change.There has been a mixed reaction to the Stern Review from economists. Several economists have been critical of the Review, for example, a paper by Byatt et al. (2006) describes the Review as "deeply flawed". Some economists (such as Brad DeLong and John Quiggin) have supported the Review. Others have criticised aspects of Review's analysis, but argued that some of its conclusions might still be justified based on other grounds, e.g., see papers by Martin Weitzman (2007) and Dieter Helm (2008). Summary of the Review's main conclusions The executive summary states: The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs. The scientific evidence points to increasing risks of serious, irreversible impacts from climate change associated with business-as-usual (BAU) paths for emissions. Climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world—access to water, food production, health, and use of land and the environment. The impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed—the poorest countries and people will suffer earliest and most. And if and when the damages appear it will be too late to reverse the process. Thus we are forced to look a long way ahead. Climate change may initially have small positive effects for a few developed countries, but it is likely to be very damaging for the much higher temperature increases expected by mid-to-late century under BAU scenarios. Integrated assessment modelling provides a tool for estimating the total impact on the economy; our estimates suggest that this is likely to be higher than previously suggested. Emissions have been, and continue to be, driven by economic growth; yet stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere is feasible and consistent with continued growth. "Central estimates of the annual costs of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550ppm CO2e are around 1% of global GDP, if we start to take strong action now. [...] It would already be very difficult and costly to aim to stabilise at 450ppm CO2e. If we delay, the opportunity to stabilise at 500–550ppm CO2e may slip away." The transition to a low-carbon economy will bring challenges for competitiveness but also opportunities for growth. Policies to support the development of a range of low-carbon and high-efficiency technologies are required urgently. Establishing a carbon price, through tax, trading or regulation, is an essential foundation for climate change policy. Creating a broadly similar carbon price signal around the world, and using carbon finance to accelerate action in developing countries, are urgent priorities for international co-operation. Adaptation policy is crucial for dealing with the unavoidable impacts of climate change, but it has been under-emphasised in many countries. An effective response to climate change will depend on creating the conditions for international collective action. There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if strong collective action starts now. Background On 19 July 2005 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown announced that he had asked Sir Nicholas Stern to lead a major review of the economics of climate change, to understand more comprehensively the nature of the economic challenges and how they can be met, in the UK and globally. The Stern Review was prepared by a team of economists at HM Treasury; independent academics were involved as consultants only. The scientific content of the Review was reviewed by experts from the Walker Institute.The Stern review was not released for regular peer-review, since the UK Government doesn't undertake peer review on commissioned reviews. Papers were published and presentations held, that outlined the approach in the months preceding the release. Positive critical response The Stern Review attracted positive attention from several sectors. Pia Hansen, a European Commission Spokeswoman, said doing nothing is not an option, "we must act now". Simon Retallack of the UK think tank IPPR said "This [Review] removes the last refuge of the 'do-nothing' approach on climate change, particularly in the US." Tom Delay of The Carbon Trust said "The Review offers a huge business opportunity." Richard Lambert, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, said that a global system of carbon trading is "urgently needed". Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace said "Now the government must act and, among other things, invest in efficient decentralised power stations and tackle the growth of aviation."Asset managers F&C look to the business opportunities and say "this is an unprecedented opportunity to generate real value for our clients". Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, was optimistic about the opportunities for industry to meet demands created by investment in technology to combat climate change. The Prince of Wales' Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, formed by 14 of UK's leading companies shared this hope. Chairman of Shell UK, James Smith, expressed the hope of the group that business and Government would discuss how Britain could obtain "first mover advantage" in what he described as "massive new global market".On 1 November 2006, Australian Prime Minister John Howard responded by announcing that A$60 million would be allotted to projects to help cut greenhouse gas emissions while reiterating that Australia would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Much of this funding was directed at the non-renewable coal industry. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, stated that the Review demonstrated that scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous" if the world failed to act. The UK Treasury, which commissioned the report, simultaneously published a document of favourable comments on the Review. Those quoted include: Paul Wolfowitz, former President of the World Bank Claude Mandil, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency Kirit Parikh, Member, Planning Commission, Government of India Adair Turner, Former Director of UK Confederation of British Industry and Economic Advisor to Sustainable Development Commission Sir Rod Eddington, Adviser to the UK Government on the long term links between transport and economic growth, and former chief executive of British AirwaysSeveral academic economists are also quoted praising the Review (see Response of economists). Negative critical response The Stern Review has received various critical responses. Some economists have argued that the Review overestimates the present value of the costs of climate change, and underestimates the costs of emission reduction. Other critics have argued that the economic cost of the proposals put forward by Stern would be severe, or that the scientific consensus view on global warming, on which Stern relied, is incorrect. By contrast, some argue that the Review emission reduction targets are too weak, and that the climate change damage estimates in the Review are too small. General criticisms In an article in the Daily Telegraph (2006), Ruth Lea, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, questions the scientific consensus on climate change on which the Stern Review is based. She says that "authorities on climate science say that the climate system is far too complex for modest reductions in one of the thousands of factors involved in climate change (i.e., carbon emissions) to have a predictable effect in magnitude, or even direction." Lea questions the long-term economic projections made in the Review, commenting that economic forecasts for just two or three years ahead are usually wrong. Lea goes on to describe the problem of drawing conclusions from combining scientific and economic models as "monumentally complex", and doubts whether the international co-operation on climate change, as argued for in the Review, is really possible. In conclusion, Lea says that the real motive behind the Review is to justify increased tax on fuels.Yohe and Tol (2007) described Lea's article as a climate sceptics "scattershot approach" aiming to confuse the public by questioning the causal role of CO2, by emphasising the complexity of making economic predictions and by attributing a motive for Stern's conclusions.Miles Templeman, Director-General of the Institute of Directors, said: "Without countries like the US, China or India, making decisive commitments, UK competitiveness will undoubtedly suffer if we act alone. This would be bad for business, bad for the economy and ultimately bad for our climate." Prof. Bill McGuire of Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre said that Stern may have greatly underestimated the effects of global warming. David Brown and Leo Peskett of the Overseas Development Institute, a UK think-tank on international development, argued that the key proposals in relation to how to use forests to tackle climate change may prove difficult to implement:Radical ideas are needed not only at the level of understandings but also of forward strategies. The Stern Review is much stronger on the former than the latter, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered on implementation, particularly the downstream practicalities of bringing avoided deforestation into climate mitigation efforts. Soon after publication of the Stern Review, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson gave a lecture at the Centre for Policy Studies, briefly criticising the Review and warning of what he called "eco-fundamentalism". In 2008, Lawson gave evidence before the House of Commons Treasury Select committee, criticising the Review.Environmental writer Bjørn Lomborg criticised the Stern Review in OpinionJournal: Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest [...] falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off. Reason magazine's science correspondent Ronald Bailey describes the "destructive character" of the Stern Review's policy proposals, saying that "Surely it is reasonable to argue that if one wants to help future generations deal with climate change, the best policies would be those that encouraged economic growth. This would endow future generations with the wealth and superior technologies that could be used to handle whatever comes at them including climate change. [...] So hurrying the process of switching from carbon-based fuels along by boosting energy costs means that humanity will have to delay buying other good things such as clean water, better sanitation, more and better food, and more education."Commenting on the Review's suggested increases in environmental tax, the British Chambers of Commerce have pointed to the dangers to business of additional taxation. Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a United States libertarian think-tank, criticised Stern's conclusion, taking a calculation by himself:Stern's investment advice makes sense only if you think that warming will hammer GDP by 10% a year. You don't gain much at all from emission cuts, however, if you think GDP will only drop by 5% a year if we do nothing. And if you think warming will only cost the global economy 2% of GDP every year, [...] then Stern's investment advice is [sheer] lunacy. In the BBC radio programme The Investigation, a number of economists and scientists argued that Stern assumptions in the Review are far more pessimistic than those made by most experts in the field, and that the Review's conclusions are at odds with the mainstream view (Cox and Vadon, 2007).In his paper on the Jevons' Paradox, which states that improvements in energy-efficiency of technologies can potentially increase greenhouse gas emission, Steve Sorrel concludes with "A prerequisite for all the above is a recognition that rebound effects matter and need to be taken seriously. Something is surely amiss when such in-depth and comprehensive studies as the Stern(2007) review overlook this topic altogether." This criticism was rejected by the authors. They noted that by recommending a comprehensive global carbon price (see Summary above) the Stern Review proposed the most powerful mechanism for staunching the rebound effect. A carbon price imposes a wedge between the supply price received by producers and demand price paid by consumers thereby prompting substitution away from carbon-intensive activities. This insures that the substitution effect offsets the income effect. In contrast to those who argued that the Stern Review was too pessimistic or 'alarmist', others argued that it did not go far enough. John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York in The Ecological Rift (2010) give considerable attention to the Stern Review, noting that the targets of 550 ppm imply a global temperature increase of at least 3 °C "well beyond what climate science consider dangerous, and which would bring the earth's average global temperature to a height last seen in the middle Pliocene around 3 million years ago" (p. 154). They posit that the basis for such high targets is "economics, pure and simple" (p. 155), that is, stronger emissions cuts were seen by the Stern Review authors as "prohibitive, destabilizing capitalism itself" (p. 155). "All of this signals that any reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions beyond around 1 per cent per year would make it virtually impossible to maintain strong economic growth—the bottom line of the capitalism economy. Consequently, in order to keep the treadmill of accumulation going the world needs to risk environmental Armageddon" (p. 156). Stern report misused climate change study According to the Sunday Times article "Climate change study was 'misused'", the Stern report 'misused' disaster analysts research by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy. The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: "New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement. [...] If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%–1% of world GDP by the middle of the century." According to Muir-Wood "said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence". Response of economists Discounting One of the issues debated among economists was the discount rate used in the Review. Discounting is used by economists to compare economic impacts occurring at different times. Discounting was used by Stern in his calculation of the possible economic damages of future climate change. Marginal climate change damages were calculated for a "business-as-usual" greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions pathway. Residual climate change damages (at the margin) were also calculated for other emissions pathways, especially one peaking at 450 ppm CO2e GHG concentration.There are four main reasons commonly proposed by economists for placing a lower value on consumption occurring in the future rather than in the present: future consumption should be discounted simply because it takes place in the future and people generally prefer the present to the future (inherent discounting) consumption levels will be higher in the future, so the marginal utility of additional consumption will be lower future consumption levels are uncertain improved technology of the future will make it easier to address global warming concernsUsing a high discount rate decreases the assessed benefit of actions designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Stern Review did not use a single discount rate, but applied a stochastic approach whereby the discount rate varied with the expected outcomes, reflecting the interaction between growth and the elasticity of marginal utility, in line with Frank Ramsey's growth model. The Stern Review's average discount rate for climate change damages is approximately 1.4%, which, at the time of the Review, was lower than that used in most previous economic studies on climate change. Accounting for risk in the stochastic framework, however, means the expected mean or certainty equivalent discount rate will be below the discount rate for the mean expected outcome (Dietz, 2008, p. 11). In other words, accounting for risk means a greater weight is applied to worst case outcomes, as per the insurance market. Inherent discounting Debate over the Stern Review initially focused on the first of these points. In the Review, Stern used a social discount rate based on the "Ramsey" formula, which includes a term for inherent discounting, also called the pure rate of time preference (PTP-rate): where s is the social discount rate, γ the PTP-rate, η the marginal elasticity of utility, and g the rate of growth of per-capita consumption (Dietz, 2008, p. 10). Stern accepts the case for discounting, but argues that applying a PTP-rate of anything much more than zero to social policy choice is ethically inappropriate. His view is supported by a number of economists, including Geoffrey Heal, Thomas Sterner,William Cline, and Brad DeLong. Cline wrote a book on global warming, published in 1992, where he made similar ethical choices to Stern for discounting. DeLong, echoing Frank Ramsey and Tjalling Koopmans, wrote "My view—which I admit may well be wrong—of this knotty problem is that we are impatient in the sense of valuing the present and near-future much more than we value the distant future, but that we shouldn't do so." Hal Varian stated that the choice of discount rate was an inherently ethical judgement for which there was no definitive answer.William Nordhaus, of Yale University, who has done several studies on the economics of global warming, criticised the Review for its use of a low discount rate: The Review's unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of assumptions that are more consistent with today's marketplace real interest rates and savings rates. Hence, the central questions about global-warming policy—how much, how fast, and how costly—remain open. The Review informs but does not answer these fundamental questions. The difference between Stern's estimates and those of Nordhaus can largely (though not entirely) be explained by the difference in the PTP-rate. Previous studies by Nordhaus and others have adopted PTP-rates of up to 3 per cent, implying that (other things being equal) an environmental cost or benefit occurring 25 years in the future is worth about half as much as the same benefit today. Richard Tol argues that in estimating discounting rates and the consequent social cost of carbon, the assumptions that must be made about the remote future are so uncertain that they are essentially arbitrary. Consequently, the assumptions made dominate the results and with a low discount rate the social cost of carbon is also arbitrary.In an appearance before the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee (2008), Stern was asked about the discount rate used in the Review: Stern: [...] We are in pretty good company here in that [the distinguished economists] Solow, Sen, Keynes, Ramsey and all kinds of people have adopted the approach to pure time discounting that we have adopted. It is not particularly unusual. John Roemer, Humberto Llavador and Joaquim Silvestre have argued that an analysis of the problem must consider both the ethical and economic issues associated with discounting. They have made the claim that high rates of discounting as the ones proposed by Nordhaus are only consistent with the infinitely-lived-representative-agent approach to economic modelling. Intergenerational justice would require more realistic assumption: one particular view is what they call the "sustainabilitarian" approach, which seeks to maximise present consumption subject to the constraint that future generations enjoy a quality of life at least as good as that enjoyed by the current generation. They support the discount factors used in the Stern analysis, particularly the view that discounting should reflect only the probability that the world will end at a given future date, and not the "impatience" of an infinitely lived representative consumer.) Treatment of uncertainty Uncertainty about future consumption may be addressed either through adjustments to the discount rate or by replacing uncertain flows of consumption with certainty equivalent flows. Stern adopted the latter approach, but was criticised by Tol and Yohe (2006) for double counting, a claim rejected by the Stern Review team (Dietz et al., 2007, pp. 138–139). Whilst critical of Stern's discounting, Martin Weitzman has argued that standard discounting procedures are inherently incapable of dealing with extreme, low-probability events, such as the risk of catastrophic climate change. Future consumption will be higher With increasing average consumption in future, the marginal utility of consumption will decline. The elasticity of the marginal utility of consumption (part of the social discount rate) may be interpreted as a measure of aversion to inequality. Partha Dasgupta has criticised the Stern Review for parametric choices that, he argues, are inadequately sensitive to inequality. In subsequent debate, Stern has conceded the case for a higher elasticity, but noted that this would call for much more extensive redistribution of income within the current generation (Dietz et al. 2007. pp. 135–137). Improved technology As far as discounting is concerned, the effects of improved technology work through increased consumption and do not need to be treated separately. However, specification of an optimal response to climate change will depend on assumptions about improvements in technology and the extent to which such improvements will be induced by policies that increase the cost of emissions. Market rates Both supporters and opponents of Stern's discount rate have used comparisons with market rates of return on capital to justify their position. Robert Mendelsohn of Yale University is a critic of the Review and has said: [...] investments in mitigation that cannot even earn a positive rate of return will be worth far less to future generations than those same dollars invested in the market. Placing climate change before investments in other important nonmarket services such as conservation, health, education, security, and transportation also cannot be justified in the name of future generations. From the perspective of future generations, it is in their interest that all investments earn the same rate of return. The ethical justification for intentionally overspending on selective projects with low rates of return is weak indeed. Nordhaus has been very critical of the Ramsey zero pure time preference on the basis of utilitarian ethical stance. He takes a strictly market based view of intergenerational projects arguing that the social rate of time preference reflects the rate of return observed in the marketplace. Nordhaus also raised his view that the present generation will have to forgo a large amount of consumption now for the benefit of future generations who will be much richer than the present generation. Dasgupta argues that there is some confusion in the Stern review about the underlying rationale for the selection of the Ramsey parameters. He states that the review mixes both market returns on investment with parameters selected on ethical grounds. The discount rate chosen by Stern is close to the real interest rate for government bonds. The higher rates preferred by Stern's critics are closer to the weighted average cost of capital for private investment; see the extensive review by Frederick et al. (2002) According to Quiggin, the difference between the two is determined by the equity premium. Quiggin says that there is no generally accepted theory accounting for the observed magnitude of the equity premium and hence no easy way of determining which approach, if either, should be regarded as the appropriate market comparator. General comments HM Treasury have issued a document where several economists are quoted praising the Stern Review, including Robert Solow, James Mirrlees, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs and Stiglitz have also written favourable articles on the Review.Richard Tol, an environmental economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute, is highly critical of the Stern Review, and has said that "If a student of mine were to hand in this report [the Stern Review] as a Masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a 'D' for diligence; but more likely I would give him an 'F' for fail (Cox and Vadon, 2007). There is a whole range of very basic economics mistakes that somebody who claims to be a Professor of Economics simply should not make. [...] Stern consistently picks the most pessimistic for every choice that one can make. He overestimates through cherry-picking, he double counts particularly the risks and he underestimates what development and adaptation will do to impacts." Tol has referred to the Stern Review as "populist science." In a paper published in 2008, Tol showed that the Stern Review's estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC) along a "business-as-usual" emissions pathway was an outlier in the economics literature. Harvard economist Martin Weitzman has written a paper on the Stern Review (Weitzman, 2007). In this paper, Weitzman described himself as "skeptical" in regards to the discount rate used by Stern in the Review's formal (aggregated) assessment of climate change. One of Weitzman's conclusions was that Stern deserved credit for increasing public awareness on the dangers of climate change. However, Weitzman also commented that: [...] in my opinion, Stern deserves a measure of discredit for giving readers an authoritative-looking impression that seemingly objective best-available-practice professional economic analysis robustly supports its conclusions, instead of more openly disclosing the full extent to which the Review's radical policy recommendations depend upon controversial extreme assumptions and unconventional discount rates that most mainstream economists would consider much too low According to a paper Weitzman (2007), the Stern Review is "right for the wrong reasons".At a seminar held in 2006, Cambridge economist Partha Dasgupta commented on the Stern Review. Dasgupta (2006, p. 1) described the Review as "a long and impressive document", but felt that the authors had treated the issue of intergenerational equity (via the social discount rate) "cavalierly". Dasgupta (2006, pp. 6–7) accepted the Review's argument for a PTP-rate of 0.1%, but did not accept Stern's choice of 1 for the elasticity of marginal utility. He argued this point by calculating a saving rate of 97.5% based on the Review's values for the PTP-rate and elasticity of marginal utility. Dasgupta stated that "[a] 97.5% savings rate is so patently absurd that we must reject it out of hand." The calculation by Dasgupta was based on a model which had a deterministic economy, constant population, and no technological change. Dasgupta's calculation was later cited by Berkeley economist Hal Varian. Writing in the New York Times newspaper, Varian commented "Sir Partha's stripped-down model leaves out uncertainty, technological change and population growth, but even so, such a high savings rate is totally implausible." Varian also questioned whether or not it was ethical for the current generation to transfer wealth to future generations (via investment in mitigation), who, given Stern's assumptions, would be much wealthier than we presently are. Smith (2009) responded to Dasgupta's criticism of the Stern Review's implied savings rate. She showed that the rates of PTP and risk aversion in the Stern Review are consistent with saving rates of 25–32% rather than 97.5% when a macroeconomic model with the production function actually used by Stern and Nordhaus is used. According to Dietz (2008, pp. 10–11), Varian's analysis had apparently confused the PTP-rate with the social discount rate. The PTP-rate, if positive, discounts the welfare of future generations even if they are poorer than the current generation. The social discount rate used by Stern, however, accounts for the possible increased wealth (consumption) of future generations through the product ηg (see the formula cited in the section on inherent discounting). Terry Barker of the Tyndall Centre Climate Change Research wrote a paper (Barker, 2008) supportive of the Review. Barker was critical of how some economists have applied cost-benefit analysis to climate change: [...] the Stern Review considers cost-benefit analysis as a marginal analysis inappropriately applied to a non-marginal multi-disciplinary systemic problem (p. 50). Both Stern (p. 163) and the IPCC Reports after 1995 take a multi-criteria approach rather than a narrowly monetary one and question cost-benefit analysis. This is one reason for the intemperate response from some traditional economists to the Stern Review Eric Neumayer (2007) of the London School of Economics thought that the Review could have argued for emission reductions based on the non-substitutable loss of natural capital. Neumayer argued that the real issue is the non-substitutable loss of natural capital, that is to what extent climate change inflicts irreversible and non-substitutable damage to and loss of natural capital. Economists define natural capital as the multiple and various services of nature from which humans benefit- from natural resources to pollution absorption and environmental amenities.Dieter Helm (2008) of Oxford University was critical of the Review's analysis but accepted its conclusion of the urgent need to reduce emissions. Helm justified this on the grounds that future damages to the environment would probably not be fully compensated for by increases in man-made capital. The draft report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review, a similar study conducted in Australia in 2008 by Ross Garnaut broadly endorsed the approach undertaken by Stern, but concluded, in the light of new information, that Stern had underestimated the severity of the problem and the extent of the cuts in emissions that were required to avoid dangerous climate change. The Yale Symposium In 2007, a symposium was held at Yale University on the Stern Review, with talks by several economists, including Nordhaus and Stern (Yale Symposium, 2007). Stern presented the basic conclusions of the Review, and commented on some of the criticisms of it made by other speakers. Chris Hope of Cambridge University explained how the damage estimates in the Review were calculated. Hope designed the PAGE2002 integrated assessment model that was used in the Review. Hope explained what would happen to the Stern Review's damage estimates if they were made using different assumptions, for example, a higher discount rate. Hope also pointed to the assumptions used in the model to do with adaptation. In his talk, Nordhaus criticised the fact that the Stern Review had not been subject to a peer-review, and repeated earlier criticisms of the Review's discount rate. William Cline of the Peterson Institute supported the Review's general conclusions, but was uncomfortable about how most (greater than 90%) of the Review's monetised damages of climate change occur after 2200. Cline noted that the Review's large cost-benefit ratio for mitigation policy allows room for these long-term costs to be reduced substantially but still support aggressive action to reduce emissions. Robert Mendelsohn was critical of the way the Stern justified his suggested mitigation policy in the Review. Mendelsohn said that rather than finding an optimal policy, the Review presented a choice of policy versus no-policy. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University questioned some of the assumptions used in Nordhaus's integrated assessment model (DICE) of climate change. Sachs was supportive of Stern's cost estimates of climate change mitigation. In response to these talks, Stern accepted Cline's comment about the weighting of future damages, and said that the weighting of these damages could be reduced by the increasing the size of the elasticity of marginal utility in the social discount rate. With regards to criticisms of the discount rate, Stern accepted that differences of opinion could exist on his ethical choice for the PTP-rate (Yale Symposium, 2007, p. 118). Other comments by Stern included what he viewed as confusion over what he had suggested as a possible level for a carbon tax. According to Stern, the tax will not necessarily be the same as the social cost of carbon due to distortions and uncertainties in the economy (p. 121). His suggested tax rate was in the range of 25 to 30 dollars per ton of carbon. Stern did not accept Mendelsohn's argument that the Review presented a choice of policy versus no policy. Stern commented that the arguments for his recommended stabilisation range were included in Chapter 13 of the Review (pp. 124–125). The costs of mitigation Economists have different views over the cost estimates of climate change mitigation given in the Review. Paul Ekins of King's College London (Treasury Committee, 2008) has said that Stern's central mitigation cost estimate is "reasonable", but economists Robert Mendelsohn and Dieter Helm have commented that the estimate is probably too low. According to Mendelsohn, the Stern Review is far too optimistic about mitigation costs, stating that "[one] of the depressing things about the greenhouse gas problem is that the cost of eliminating it is quite high. We will actually have to sacrifice a great deal to cut emissions dramatically" (Mendelsohn, 2007).Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University George Reisman has said that "Any serious consideration of the proposals made in the Stern Review for radically reducing carbon technology and the accompanying calls for immediacy in enacting them makes clear in a further way how utterly impractical the environmentalist program for controlling global warming actually is. The fundamental impracticality of the program, of course, lies in its utterly destructive character."In a response to a paper by members of the Stern Review team, John Weyant of Stanford University commented on how the cost estimate of mitigation used in the Review was based on idealised models (Mendelsohn et al., 2008). Weyant wrote that his own high short-run cost projection for stabilisation, of possibly 10% GDP, resulted "primarily from institutional pessimism rather than technological pessimism." Comparison with climate damages Nobel prize winner Kenneth Arrow has commented on the Stern Review in the Economist's Voice (Arrow, 2007a) and for Project Syndicate (Arrow, 2007b): Critics of the Stern Review don't think serious action to limit CO2 emissions is justified, because there remains substantial uncertainty about the extent of the costs of global climate change, and because these costs will be incurred far in the future. However, I believe that Stern's fundamental conclusion is justified: we are much better off reducing CO2 emissions substantially than risking the consequences of failing to act, even if, unlike Stern, one heavily discounts uncertainty and the future. Arrow analysed the Stern Review's conclusions by looking at the Review's central estimate of GHG stabilisation costs of 1% GNP, and high-end climate damages of 20% GNP (Arrow, 2007a, pp. 4–5). As part of the Ramsay formula for the social discount rate, Arrow chose a value of 2 for the marginal elasticity of utility, while in the Review, Stern chose a value of 1. According to Arrow, Stern's recommended stabilisation target passes a cost-benefit test even when considerably higher PTP-rate (up to around 8%) than Stern's (0.1%) is used. Arrow acknowledged that his argument depended on Stern's stabilisation central cost estimate being correct. Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University noted that Stern's estimates of business-as-usual climate damages were given in terms of per capita consumption equivalents, but Stern's costs of mitigation were given in terms of a percentage reduction in gross world product. Yohe stated that the two different measures are "not really at all comparable". Yohe commented on how the Review gives the impression that all climate damages can be avoided through the investment of 1% of world GDP in mitigation. This, however, would still lead to global warming (as per the Review's 550 ppm CO2e mitigation target) of around 1.5 to 4.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. Significant portions of climate damages would therefore still persist with Stern's mitigation target. To measure the benefit of Stern's mitigation target, the residual climate damages from mitigation would need to be subtracted from Stern's business-as-usual climate damages. Ecological Economic Critique The main criticisms cited above concern the details of calculations and modelling choices within an orthodox economic framing of the world and mostly try to argue against substantive greenhouse gas mitigation. Ecological economists accept the need for serious action but reject the reasoning of economic commensuration of costs and benefits, the probabilistic approach to uncertainty and the application of a utilitarian intergenerational calculus. Their criticism applies equally to the likes of Nordhaus and Tol. The orthodox economic debate is seen as a distraction from the basic ethical issues e.g. discounting instead of justice. A more fundamental criticism of the Stern report is that it raises a series of problems which it totally fails to address because of its orthodox approach. It simultaneously ignores a range of critical literature from ecological economics and environmental ethics which challenges such orthodox thinking. Stern as an orthodox economist squeezes all matters and concepts into a narrow mathematical formalism which heterodox economists, such as Tony Lawson, point out fails to address economic and social reality.In conventional cost-benefit analysis, biodiversity and ecosystem services that are not valued as losses are difficult to quantify. Neumayer argues that the real issue is non-substitutable loss of natural capital; to what extent climate change inflicts irreversible and non-substitutable damage to and loss of natural capital. For example, it would be difficult to quantify the loss of coral reefs, biodiversity loss, or species extinction. Dietz points out that in many Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), health and ecosystem impacts are not included because the monetary valuation of these impacts is "speculative and uncertain". Dasgupta (2008) also points out most models do not consider natural capital. Although recent studies on ecosystem services have made gains in monetising the value of ecosystems, more recent studies on ecosystem services suggest the Stern Review underestimates the need for mitigation action as it is difficult for models to quantify the collapse of ecosystem services under climate change. Thus, ecological economist Clive Spash has questioned whether the report is nothing more than an exercise in rhetoric. Spash notes that a range of serious problems challenging economic analysis is raised or mentioned in the report including: strong uncertainty, incommensurability, plural values, non-utilitarian ethics, rights, distributional inequity, poverty, and treatment of future generations. How then can this report, acknowledging so many of those aspects of climate change that render orthodox economic analysis unsuitable for generating policy recommendations, go ahead to conduct a global cost-benefit calculation based on microeconomic theory and make that the foundation for its policy recommendations? Spash has argued that issues are suppressed and sidelined in a careful and methodical manner, with the pretense they have been addressed by 'state of the art' solutions. Meanwhile, the authors maintain allegiance to an economic orthodoxy which perpetuates the dominant political myth that traditional economic growth can be both sustained and answer all our problems. Besides perpetuating myths, this diverts attention away from alternative approaches, away from ethical debates over harming the innocent, the poor and future generations, and away from the fundamental changes needed to tackle the very real and serious problems current economic systems pose for environmental systems. In addition the policy recommendation of carbon trading is seen as deeply flawed for also failing to take account of social, ecological and economic reality. Response to criticisms The Stern Review team have responded to criticisms of the Review in a number of papers. In these papers, they reassert their view that early and strong action on climate change is necessary: The case for strong and urgent action set out in the Review is based, first, on the severe risks that the science now identifies (together with the additional uncertainties [...] that it points to but that are difficult to quantify) and, second, on the ethics of the responsibilities of existing generations in relation to succeeding generations. It is these two things that are crucial: risk and ethics. Different commentators may vary in their emphasis, but it is the two together that are crucial. Jettison either one and you will have a much reduced programme for action—and if you judge risks to be small and attach little significance to future generations you will not regard global warming as a problem. It is surprising that the earlier economic literature on climate change did not give risk and ethics the attention they so clearly deserve, and it is because we chose to make them central and explicit that we think we were right for the right reasons. Members of the Stern Review team have also given several talks that have covered criticisms of the Review. A talk given by Dimitri Zenghelis at the Tyndall Centre looked at criticisms of the Review and presented an overview of its main findings. In an official letter (2008), Joan Ruddock MP of the UK Government, dismisses the criticisms of the Review made by several economists, which, in her view, show "a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of formal, highly aggregated economic modelling in evaluating a policy issue". Stern's later comments In April 2008 Stern said that the severity of his findings were vindicated by the 2007 IPCC report and admitted that in the Stern Review, "We underestimated the risks [...] we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases [...] and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases". In June 2008, Stern said that because climate change is happening faster than predicted, the cost to reduce carbon would be even higher, of about 2% of GDP instead of the 1% in the original report.In an interview at the 2013 World Economic Forum, Stern said "Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then" in the 2006 Review. He now believes we are "on track for something like four degrees". See also Climate change in the United Kingdom Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Economics of global warming Garnaut Climate Change Review Global warming controversy Politics of global warming World Energy Outlook Prosperity Without Growth References Further reading Barker, Terry (August 2008). "Special Topic: The Stern Review Debate". Climatic Change. 89 (3–4): 173–449. Bibcode:2008ClCh...89..173B. doi:10.1007/s10584-008-9433-x. ISSN 1573-1480. S2CID 54026931. Howarth, R.B. (April 2009). "Policy Brief No. 3: Discounting, Uncertainty, and Climate Change" (PDF). Economics for Equity and the Environment website. Retrieved 20 May 2009. Jensen, P.H. and E. Webster (2007), Australian Economic Review 40(2):421–431 External links Full text of the Stern Review, from HM Treasury Full text of the Stern Review, archived on Wayback Machine The Economics of Climate Change – The Stern Review Economist.zoom: How to value a grandchild, 4 Dec 2006 Summary of key findings from the report Gail Whiteman's findings of economic costs of arctic methane release added to the Stern review "The Stern gang", linked index of resources. Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy Videos: The RIBA Trust Annual Lecture: Lord Stern (part of the International Dialogues: Architecture and Climate Change talks series)In the media 2 November 2006, The Economist: Stern warning 6 November 2006, Der Spiegel: The Day the Climate Changed 10 January 2007, BBC: Chrysler Boss says Stern Report is based on dubious economics

bill & melinda gates foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported as of 2020 to be the second largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $69 billion in assets. On his 43rd birthday, Bill Gates gave the foundation $1 billion. The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S. Key individuals of the foundation include Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Warren Buffett, chief executive officer Mark Suzman, and Michael Larson.The BMGF had an endowment of approximately $67.3 billion as of December 31, 2022. The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in venture philanthropy, though the foundation itself notes that the philanthropic role has limitations. In 2007, its founders were ranked as the second most generous philanthropists in the U.S., behind Warren Buffett. As of 2018, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates had donated around $36 billion to the foundation. Since its founding, the foundation has endowed and supported a broad range of social, health, and education developments, including the establishment of the Gates Cambridge Scholarships at Cambridge University. History In 1994, the foundation was formed as the William H. Gates Foundation. In May 2002, the foundation purchased stocks in pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced his plans to transition out of a day-to-day role with Microsoft, effective July 31, 2008, to allow him to devote more time to working with the foundation. The first CEO of the foundation, until she stepped down in 2008, was Patty Stonesifer.In 2005, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, along with the Irish rock musician Bono, were named by Time as Persons of the Year 2005 for their outstanding charitable work. In the case of the Gates, the work referenced was that of BMGF. On 12 May 2008 it was announced that Jeff Raikes would replace Stonesifer as the CEO of the BMGF.In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he urged the students to take on the hard problems of the world. He also explained the nature and philosophy of his philanthropic endeavours.In 2010, the foundation's founders started the Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, entitled "Transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world."A 2011 survey of grantees found that many believed the foundation did not make its goals and strategies clear and sometimes did not understand those of the grantees; that the foundation's decision-making and grantmaking procedures were too opaque; and that its communications could be more consistent and responsive. The foundation's response was to improve the clarity of its explanations, make "orientation calls" to grantees upon awarding grants, tell grantees who their foundation contact is, give timely feedback when they receive a grantee report, and establish a way for grantees to provide anonymous or attributed feedback to the foundation. The foundation also launched a podcast series.In October 2013, the BMGF announced that it would join the International Aid Transparency Initiative.In December 2013 Susan Desmond-Hellmann, president of product development for Genentech before its acquisition by Roche Pharmaceuticals, was announced as BMGF's next CEO. She replaced Jeff Raikes on 1 May 2014.In February 2014 Hillary Clinton launched a partnership between the foundation and the Clinton Foundation to gather and study data on the progress of women and girls around the world since the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. This is called "No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project".In October 2019, the BMGF partnered with the World Economic Forum to host the tabletop exercise called Event 201 in New York City.In February 2020, BMGF CEO Desmond-Hellmann was replaced "for health and family reasons" by Mark Suzman.As early as 2012, there were reports afoot that the BMGF was acting as a fund aggregator for wealthy donors: the name recognition associated with BMGF caused more money to be placed than an anonymous control. This was particularly useful during the COVID-19 pandemic because the BMGF already knew which organizations were working in the field and able to receive funds.When former President Trump threatened to defund the WHO in summer 2020 over concerns that it was too "deferential" to the Chinese Communist Party, because the BMGF constituted at that time the second-ranked contributor to the WHO, concerns were raised in the charity and academic sector that the BMGF might conceivably bias the WHO in the pursuit of its ideology. In the most timely accounting period, the BMGF provided 45% of the WHO's NGO funds, or in other words 12% of the total operating expenditure of the WHO.It was revealed after the fact that the BMGF had contributed US$1.553 billion to the GAVI over the five years 2016 to 2020. The BMGF was the number two ranked contributor. At the Global Vaccine Summit in June 2020, the BMGF pledged $1.6 billion (or just under 20% of the total) for the subsequent five years.In May 2022, the Gates Foundation announced the commitment of $125 million to aid in ending the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and to aid in preparing for future pandemics. In total since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the Gates Foundation has committed more than $2 billion to COVID-19 response efforts. Warren Buffett donations On June 25, 2006, Warren Buffett pledged to give the foundation approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares (then valued at $3,071 each, before a 50–1 stock split in 2010) spread over multiple years through annual contributions, with the first year's donation of 500,000 shares being worth approximately $1.5 billion. Buffett set conditions so that these contributions do not simply increase the foundation's endowment, but effectively work as a matching contribution, doubling the foundation's annual giving. Bloomberg News noted, "Buffett's gift came with three conditions for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and active in its administration; it must continue to qualify as a charity; and each year it must give away an amount equal to the previous year's Berkshire gift, plus an additional amount equal to 5 percent of net assets. Buffett gave the foundation two years to abide by the third requirement." The Gates Foundation received 5% (500,000) of the shares in July 2006 and will receive 5% of the remaining earmarked shares in the July of each following year (475,000 in 2007, 451,250 in 2008).In July 2018, Buffet announced another donation of his company's Class B stock, this time worth $2 billion, to the Gates Foundation. Lifespan In October 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was split into two entities: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the endowment assets and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which "... conducts all operations and grantmaking work, and it is the entity from which all grants are made". Also announced was the decision to spend all of the foundation's resources within 50 years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths. This was later lowered to within 20 years of their death. This would close the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and effectively end the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the 2006 announcement, it was reiterated that Warren Buffett "... has stipulated that the proceeds from the Berkshire Hathaway shares he still owns at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within 10 years after his estate has been settled".The plan to close the Foundation Trust is in contrast to most large charitable foundations that have no set closure date. This is intended to lower administrative costs over the years of the Foundation Trust's life and ensure that the Foundation Trust does not fall into a situation where the vast majority of its expenditures are on administrative costs, including salaries, with only token amounts contributed to charitable causes.In July 2021, the foundation agreed on a back-up plan in the event that its co-chairs cannot work together due to their recent divorce. The deal gives Bill and Melinda a two-year trial, after which Ms. Gates could resign from the organization as well as receiving personal resources from her ex-husband for her own charity work. Activities Program areas and grant database To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation must donate funds equal to at least five percent of its assets each year. As of April 2014, the foundation is organized into four program areas under chief executive officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who "sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners": Global Development Division Global Health Division United States Division Global Policy & Advocacy Division Global Growth & Opportunity DivisionThe foundation maintains an online database of grants. Open access policy In November 2014, the Gates Foundation announced that they were adopting an open access (OA) policy for publications and data, "to enable the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded by the foundation, including any underlying data sets". Its terms have been called the most stringent among similar OA policies. As of January 1, 2015, their Open Access policy is effective for all new agreements. In March 2017, it was confirmed that the open access policy, Gates Open Research, would be based on the same initiative launched in 2016 by Wellcome Trust in their Wellcome Open Research policy launched in partnership with F1000 Research.The Gates Foundation supported Our World in Data, one of the world's largest open-access publications. Bill Gates called the publication his "favorite website".Our World in Data is a scientific online publication, based at the University of Oxford, that studies how to make progress against large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, and inequality. The mission of Our World in Data is to present "research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems". Funds for grants in developing countries The following table lists the BMGF's committed funding as recorded in their International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publications. The BMGF announced in October 2013 that it would join the IATI. The IATI publications only include a subset of BMGF grants (mainly excluding grants to developed countries), and contain few grants before 2009 (which are entirely excluded from the table). The BMGF states on the IATI Registry site that "reporting starts from 2009 and excludes grants related to our US programs and grants that if published could harm our employees, grantees, partners, or the beneficiaries of our work". The following table lists the top receiving organizations to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed funding, between 2009 and 2015. The table again only includes grants recorded in the Gates Foundation's IATI publications. According to the OECD, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided US$4.1 billion for development in 2019. Financials The foundation explains on its website that its trustees divided the organization into two entities: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The foundation section, based in Seattle, US, "focuses on improving health and alleviating extreme poverty", and its trustees are currently Bill and Melinda Gates; Warren Buffett announced his resignation as a trustee on June 23, 2021. The trust section manages "the investment assets and transfer proceeds to the foundation as necessary to achieve the foundation's charitable goals"—it holds the assets of Bill and Melinda Gates, who are the sole trustees, and receives contributions from Buffett.The foundation posts its audited financial statements and 990-PF forms on the "Financials" section of its website as they become available. At the end of 2012, the foundation registered a cash sum of $4,998,000, down from $10,810,000 at the end of 2011. Unrestricted net assets at the end of 2012 were worth $31,950,613,000, while total assets were worth $37,176,777,000. Trust investments As of 30 September 2018, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the trust owned the following investments: Global development division Christopher Elias leads the foundation's efforts to combat extreme poverty through grants as president of the Global Development Program.In March 2006, the foundation announced a $5 million grant for the International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights organization based in Washington, D.C., US to work in the area of sex trafficking. The official announcement explained that the grant would allow the IJM to "create a replicable model for combating sex trafficking and slavery" that would involve the opening of an office in a region with high rates of sex trafficking, following research. The office was opened for three years for the following purposes: "conducting undercover investigations, training law enforcement, rescuing victims, ensuring appropriate aftercare, and seeking perpetrator accountability".The IJM used the grant money to found "Project Lantern" and established an office in the Philippines city of Cebu. In 2010, the results of the project were published, in which the IJM stated that Project Lantern had led to "an increase in law enforcement activity in sex trafficking cases, an increase in commitment to resolving sex trafficking cases among law enforcement officers trained through the project, and an increase in services – like shelter, counseling, and career training – provided to trafficking survivors". At the time that the results were released, the IJM was exploring opportunities to replicate the model in other regions. Gates Cambridge Scholarships In October 2000, William Gates established the Gates Cambridge Scholarships which allow students and scholars from the U.S. and around the world to study at Cambridge University, one of the top universities in the world. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship has often been compared to the Rhodes Scholarship, given its similarly international scope and substantial endowment. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the scholarship trust with $210 million to help outstanding graduate students outside of the United Kingdom study at the University of Cambridge. The Gates Foundation has continued to contribute funds to expand the scholarship, making it one of the largest and best-endowed scholarships in the world. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship accepts less than 0.3% of applicants and remains extremely competitive. Each year, approximately 100 new graduate students from around the world receive funding to study at Cambridge University. Financial assistance Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI): A $35 million grant for the AFI supports a coalition of countries from the developing world to create savings accounts, insurance, and other financial services that are made available to people living on less than $2 per day. Financial Access Initiative: A $5 million grant allows Financial Access Initiative to conduct field research and answer important questions about microfinance and financial access in impoverished countries around the world. Pro Mujer: A five-year $3.1 million grant to Pro Mujer—a microfinance network in Latin America combining financial services with healthcare for the poorest women entrepreneurs—will be used to research new opportunities for the poorest segment of the Latin American microfinance market. Grameen Foundation: A $1.5 million grant allows Grameen Foundation to approve more microloans that support Grameen's goal of helping five million additional families, and successfully freeing 50 percent of those families from poverty within five years. Grant worth $1.3 million Lawrence Muganga for his book You Can't Make Fish Climb Trees. Agricultural development International Rice Research Institute: Between November 2007 and October 2010, the Gates Foundation offered $19.9 million to the International Rice Research Institute. The goal of the aid was to support the increasing world demand for rice. The Gates Foundation claims: "To keep up with worldwide demand, the production of rice will have to increase by about 70 percent in the next two decades." The International Rice Research Institute has developed Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant developed to combat Vitamin A deficiency. Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA): The Gates Foundation has partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to enhance agricultural science and small-farm productivity in Africa, building on the Green Revolution that the Rockefeller Foundation spurred in the 1940s and 1960s. Water, sanitation and hygiene The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in mid-2005 as a "Learning Initiative", and became a full-fledged program under the Global Development Division in early 2010. The foundation has since 2005 undertaken a wide range of efforts in the WASH sector involving research, experimentation, reflection, advocacy, and field implementation. In 2009, the foundation decided to refocus its WASH effort mainly on sustainable sanitation services for the poor, using non-piped sanitation services (i.e. without the use of sewers), and less on water supply. This was because the sanitation sector was generally receiving less attention from other donors and from governments, and because the foundation believed it had the potential to make a real difference through strategic investments. In mid-2011, the foundation announced in its new "Water, Sanitation, Hygiene Strategy Overview" that its funding now focuses primarily on sanitation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, because access to improved sanitation is lowest in those regions. Their grant-making focus has been since 2011 on sanitation science and technology ("transformative technologies"), delivery models at scale, urban sanitation markets, building demand for sanitation, measurement and evaluation as well as policy, advocacy and communications.In mid-2011, the foundation stated that they had committed more than $265 million to the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector over the past five years, i.e. since about 2006. For the time period of about 2008 to mid-2015, all grants awarded to water, sanitation, and hygiene projects totaled a value of around $650 million, according to the publicly available grant database. Improved sanitation in the developing world is a global need, but a neglected priority, as shown by the data collected by the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) of UNICEF and WHO. This program is tasked to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) relating to drinking water and sanitation. About one billion people have no sanitation facility whatsoever and continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy. This is called open defecation and it poses significant health risks. India is the country with the highest number of people practicing open defecation: around 600 million people. The foundation has been funding many sanitation research and demonstration projects in India since about 2011. Reinvent the Toilet Challenge In 2011, the foundation launched a program called "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" with the aim to promote the development of innovations in toilet design to benefit the 2.5 billion people that do not have access to safe and effective sanitation. This program has generated significant interest of the mainstream media. It was complemented by a program called "Grand Challenges Explorations" (2011 to 2013 with some follow-up grants reaching until 2015) which involved grants of $100,000 each in the first round. Both funding schemes explicitly excluded project ideas that relied on centralized sewerage systems or are not compatible with development country contexts. Since the launch of the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge", more than a dozen research teams, mainly at universities in the U.S., Europe, India, China, and South Africa, have received grants to develop innovative on-site and off-site waste treatment solutions for the urban poor. The grants were in the order of $400,000 for their first phase, followed by typically $1 million – 3 million for their second phase; many of them investigated resource recovery or processing technologies for excreta or fecal sludge.The "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" is focused on "reinventing the flush toilet". The aim was to create a toilet that not only removes pathogens from human excreta, but also recovers resources such as energy, clean water, and nutrients (a concept also known as reuse of excreta). It should operate "off-the-grid" without connections to water, sewer, or electrical networks. Finally, it should cost less than 5 cents per user per day.High-tech toilets for tackling the growing public health problem of human waste are gaining increasing attention, but this focus on a "technology fix" has also been criticized by many in the sector. However, low-tech solutions may be more practical in poor countries, and research is also funded by the foundation for such toilets.The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge is a long-term research and development effort to develop a hygienic, stand-alone toilet. This challenge is being complemented by another investment program to develop new technologies for improved pit latrine emptying (called by the foundation the "Omni-Ingestor") and fecal sludge processing (called "Omni-Processor"). The aim of the "Omni Processor" is to convert excreta (for example fecal sludge) into beneficial products such as energy and soil nutrients with the potential to develop local business and revenue. Examples of transformative technologies research About 200 sanitation projects in many different countries and at various scales – some with a technology focus, some with a focus on market development or policy and advocacy, have received funding from the foundation since 2008. The University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa Gates Foundation was awarded $1.6 million in 2014 to act as a hub for sanitation researchers and product developers. One example of an Omni-Processor is a combustion-based system designed to turn fecal sludge into energy and drinking water. The development of this particular prototype by U.S.-based company Janicki Bioenergy attracted media attention for the sanitation crisis and the work of the foundation after Bill Gates drank water produced from this process. Examples for the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge include: Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder were given funding of $1.8 million to develop a prototype toilet that uses solar heat to treat the fecal matter and produce biochar. Funding has been provided to RTI International since 2012 to develop a toilet based on electrochemical disinfection and solid waste combustion. Other global initiatives Some examples include: 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake: The foundation made total grant donations of $3 million to various charities to help with the aid effort for victims of the earthquake. These charities include: CARE international, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, and World Vision. 2005 Kashmir earthquake: The foundation made a donation of $500,000 for the earthquake. In 2014, the Gates Foundation released "flexible funds" in the order of $50 million to United Nations agencies and other organizations involved in the work against the deadly disease Ebola in West Africa. 2021 Emergency Funding. The foundation, with a group of philanthropists, has pledged £93.5m funding to cover UK foreign aid cuts.The foundation is a donor to the National Geographic Society.The foundation is working with Mastercard, GAVI and TrustStamp to create the Mastercard Well Pass. This program, being tested in 2020 in West Africa, will integrate vaccination records with cashless payment capability. Global health division Since 2011, the president of the Global Health Program is Trevor Mundel: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: The foundation has donated more than $6.6 billion for global health programs, including over $1.3 billion donated as of 2012 on malaria alone, greatly increasing the dollars spent per year on malaria research. Before the Gates efforts on malaria, malaria drugmakers had largely given up on producing drugs to fight the disease, and the foundation is the world's largest donor to research on diseases of the poor. With the help of Gates-funded vaccination drives, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000.The foundation has donated billions of dollars to help sufferers of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, protecting millions of children from death at the hands of preventable diseases.The Global Health Program's other significant grants include: Polio eradication: In 2006, the foundation provided $86 million toward efforts attempting to eradicate poliomyelitis (polio). The GAVI vaccine alliance: The foundation gave the GAVI Alliance (formerly the "Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization") a donation of $750 million on January 25, 2005. Children's Vaccine Program: The Children's Vaccine Program, run by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), received a donation of $27 million to help vaccinate against Japanese encephalitis on December 9, 2003. HIV Research: The foundation donated a total of $287 million to various HIV/AIDS researchers. The money was split between 16 different research teams across the world, on the condition that the findings are shared amongst the teams. Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation: The foundation gave the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation more than $280 million to develop and license an improved vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) for use in high-burden countries (HBCs). Cheaper high-tech tuberculosis (TB) test: In August 2012, the foundation, in partnership with PEPFAR (United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and UNITAID (an international drug purchasing facility hosted by WHO), announced they had finalized an agreement to reduce the cost of a commercial TB test (Cepheid's Xpert MTB/RIF run on the GeneXpert platform), from $16.86 to $9.98. This test can take the place of smear microscopy, a technique first developed in the 1880s by Robert Koch. Smear microscopy often does not show TB infection in persons who are also co-infected with HIV, whereas the GeneXpert system can show TB in the co-infected patient. In addition, the system can show whether the particular TB strain is resistant to the bactericidal antibiotic rifampicin, a widely accepted indicator of the presence of multidrug resistant tuberculosis. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) research: The foundation awarded the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases a $5 million grant in 2009 for research into visceral leishmaniasis (VL), an emerging parasitic disease in Ethiopia, Africa, where it is frequently associated with HIV/AIDS and is a leading cause of adult illness and death. The project, a collaborative effort with Addis Ababa University, will gather data for analysis—to identify the weak links in the transmission cycle—and devise methods for control of the disease. In 2005 the foundation provided a $30 million grant to The Institute for OneWorld Health to support the nonprofit pharmaceutical company's VL work in the rural communities of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. By September 2006, the company had received approval from the Indian body Drug-Controller General of India (DCGI) for the Paromomycin Intramuscular (IM) Injection, a drug that provides an effective cure for VL following a 21-day course. In 2010 Raj Shankar Ghosh, the Regional Director for the South Asia Institute for OneWorld Health, explained that the foundation funded "the majority of our work" in the development of the drug. Group B streptococcus: The foundation gave $17,252,854 in September 2016 to Pfizer to develop a vaccine against Group B streptococcus (GBS) for distribution in developing countries. In May 2022, the funding was renewed with an additional $100,000,000. Next-Generation Condom: The foundation gave $100,000 to 11 applicants in November 2013 to develop an improved condom; that is, one that "significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use", according to the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health website. Further grants of up to $1 million will be given to projects that are successful. Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs): Alongside WHO, the governments of the United States, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates, and the World Bank, the foundation endorsed the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases, "to eradicate, eliminate and intensify control of 17 selected diseases by 2015 and 2020", at a meeting on January 30, 2012, held at the Royal College of Physicians in London, UK. Gates was the principal organizer responsible for bringing together the heads of 13 of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and the foundation's monetary commitment to the Declaration was $363 million over five years. On April 3, 2014, the two-year anniversary of the Declaration, Gates attended a meeting in Paris at which participants reviewed the progress that had been made against 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The foundation committed a further $50 million, together with $50 million from the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and $120 million from the World Bank. The foundation has given in excess of $1 million to The END Fund, a public-private partnership to deliver medication for NTDs to areas in need. Monoclonal antibody therapies: In October 2018, the foundation awarded $8,279,723 to Inovio Pharmaceuticals to fund the development of "next-generation" delivery methods for monoclonal antibodies targeted for use in low- and middle-income countries. Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI): A global group tasked with more quickly developing vaccines against infectious disease threats worldwide was launched on January 8, 2017, by a coalition of governments and nonprofit groups including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, funded with an initial investment of $460 million from Germany, Japan, Norway, the Wellcome Trust and the Gates foundation, aims to develop vaccines against known infectious disease threats that could be deployed quickly to contain outbreaks before they become global health emergencies, the group said in a statement at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Big Catch-up: In response to the decline in childhood vaccination rates affecting over 100 countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global health partners including WHO, UNICEF, Gavi, and the Vaccine Alliance launched "The Big Catch-up" initiative. This collaborative effort aims to reverse vaccination declines, particularly in 20 countries with the highest numbers of missed vaccinations. Over 25 million children missed at least one vaccination in 2021, leading to preventable disease outbreaks. The initiative focuses on strengthening healthcare systems, building trust in vaccines, and addressing barriers to immunization, with an emphasis on reaching vulnerable populations. COVID-19 Beginning in 2020, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of funding towards initiatives surrounding the COVID-19 public health crisis. COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator In 2020, together with the UK research charity Wellcome and Mastercard, the Gates Foundation established the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19. After the World Health Organization's appeal for funding, the Gates Foundation pledged an extra US$150 million on top of the US$100 million already committed earlier.By April 2020, the foundation had provided backing for six candidates for vaccines against COVID-19. In June, the foundation tapped the National University of Singapore to investigate which countries in Asia responded effectively to the pandemic. On June 26, the foundation and its partners with the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator announced the launch of the International COVID-19 Data Alliance (ICODA) to be hosted at Health Data Research UK.In December 2020, the foundation solicited applications for funding for researchers at McMaster University to develop epidemiological models for SARS-CoV-2, as well as COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and non-pharmaceutical interventions. The foundation re-upped its support of ICODA in May 2021 with a grant of $577,246.In August 2021, the foundation awarded a $587,568 grant to Wits Health Consortium to test the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines distributed in South Africa by Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.In November 2021, the foundation gave $2,118,334 to Providence Therapeutics to develop more cost-effective mRNA vaccines. United States division Under President Allan Golston, the United States Program has made grants such as the following: Donation to Planned Parenthood Up to 2013, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided $71 million to Planned Parenthood and affiliated organizations. In 2014, Melinda Gates has stated that the foundation "has decided not to fund abortion", focusing instead on family planning and contraception in order to avoid conflation of abortion and family planning. In response to questions about this decision, Gates stated in a June 2014 blog post that "[she], like everyone else, struggle[s] with the issue" and that "the emotional and personal debate about abortion is threatening to get in the way of the lifesaving consensus regarding basic family planning". Since this time, their endeavors have shifted to a more global perspective, focusing on voluntary family planning and maternal and newborn health. Libraries In 1997, the charity introduced a U.S. Libraries initiative with a goal of "ensuring that if you can get to a public library, you can reach the internet". The foundation has given grants, installed computers and software, and provided training and technical support in partnership with public libraries nationwide to increase access and knowledge. Helping provide access and training for these resources, this foundation helps move public libraries into the digital age.Most recently, the foundation gave a $12.2 million grant to the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) to assist libraries in Louisiana and Mississippi on the Gulf Coast, many of which were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Education A key aspect of the Gates Foundation's U.S. efforts involves an overhaul of the country's education policies at both the K-12 and college levels, including support for teacher evaluations and charter schools and opposition to seniority-based layoffs and other aspects of the education system that are typically backed by teachers' unions. It spent $373 million on education in 2009. It has also donated to the two largest national teachers' unions. The foundation was the biggest early backer of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. In October 2017 it was announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would spend more than $1.7 billion over five years to pay for new initiatives in public education.One of the foundation's goals is to lower poverty by increasing the number of college graduates in the United States, and the organization has funded "Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery" grants to think tanks and advocacy organizations to produce white papers on ideas for changing the current system of federal financial aid for college students, to increase graduation rates. One of the ways the foundation has sought to increase the number of college graduates is to get them through college faster, but that idea has received some pushback from organizations of universities and colleges.As part of its education-related initiatives, the foundation has funded journalists, think tanks, lobbying organizations, and governments. Millions of dollars of grants to news organizations have funded reporting on education and higher education, including more than $1.4 million to the Education Writers Association to fund training for journalists who cover education.Some of the foundation's educational initiatives have included: Gates Cambridge Scholarships: In 2000, the Gates Foundation donated $210 million to help outstanding graduate students from the U.S. and around the world to study at the prestigious University of Cambridge. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship has often been compared to the Rhodes Scholarship given its international scope and substantial endowment. The scholarship remains extremely competitive with just 0.3% of applicants being selected. Each year, approximately 100 new graduate students from around the world receive funding to attend Cambridge University. Several buildings at the University of Cambridge also bear the name of William and Melinda Gates after sizable contributions to their construction.Cornell University: Received $25 million from the foundation for a new Information Science building, named "Bill and Melinda Gates Hall". The total cost of the building was estimated at $60 million. Construction began in March 2012 and officially opened in January 2014. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Part of the Ray and Maria Stata Center is known as the "Gates Tower" in recognition of partial funding of the building. Carnegie Mellon University: The foundation gave $20 million to the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science for a new Computer Science building called the "Gates Center for Computer Science". It officially opened on September 22, 2009. Smaller schools: The Gates Foundation claims one in five students is unable to read and grasp the contents of what they read, and African American and Latino students are graduating high school with the skills of a middle school student. Gates Foundation has invested more than $250 million in grants to create new small schools, reduce student-to-teacher ratios, and to divide up large high schools through the schools-within-a-school model. D.C. Achievers Scholarships: The Gates Foundation announced March 22, 2007, a $122 million initiative to send hundreds of the District of Columbia's poorest students to college. Gates Millennium Scholars: Administered by the United Negro College Fund, the foundation donated $1.5 billion for scholarships to high achieving minority students. NewSchools Venture Fund: The foundation contributed $30 million to help NewSchools to manage more charter schools, which aim to prepare students in historically underserved areas for college and careers. Strong American Schools: On April 25, 2007, the Gates Foundation joined forces with the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation pledging a joint $60 million to create Strong American Schools, a nonprofit project responsible for running ED in 08, an initiative and information campaign aimed at encouraging 2008 presidential contenders to include education in their campaign policies. Teaching Channel: The Gates Foundation announced in September 2011 a $3.5 million initiative to launch a multi-platform service delivering professional development videos for teachers over the Internet, public television, cable and other digital outlets. To date, over 500,000 teachers and educators have joined the community to share ideas, lesson plans and teaching methods. The Texas High School Project: The project was set out to increase and improve high school graduation rates across Texas. The foundation committed $84.6 million to the project beginning in 2003. The project focuses its efforts on high-need schools and districts statewide, with an emphasis on urban areas and the Texas-Mexico border. University Scholars Program: Donated $20 million in 1998 to endow a scholarship program at Melinda Gates' alma mater, Duke University. The program provides full scholarships to about 10 members of each undergraduate class and one member in each class in each of the professional schools (schools of medicine, business, law, divinity, environment, nursing, and public policy), as well as to students in the Graduate School pursuing doctoral degrees in any discipline. Graduate and professional school scholars serve as mentors to the undergraduate scholars, who are chosen based on financial need and potential for interdisciplinary academic interests. Scholars are chosen each spring from new applicants to Duke University's undergraduate, graduate, and professional school programs. The program features seminars to bring these scholars together for interdisciplinary discussions and an annual spring symposium organized by the scholars. Washington State Achievers Scholarship: The Washington State Achievers program encourages schools to create cultures of high academic achievement while providing scholarship support to select college-bound students. William H. Gates Public Service Law Program: This program awards five full scholarships annually to the University of Washington School of Law. Scholars commit to working in relatively low-paying public service legal positions for at least the first five years following graduation. University of Texas at Austin: $30 million challenge grant to build the Bill & Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex. STAND UP: a national campaign that seeks to positively impact the current crisis within the United States public education system by calling upon community leaders, parents, students, and citizens to encourage change and STAND UP for better schools and the future of America's children. STAND UP was co-founded by the Eli Broad Foundation and was launched in April 2006 on The Oprah Winfrey Show in a two-part feature. Alliance for Early Success to support the promotion, education, coordination, and alignment of policies that support vulnerable children ages birth through age eight. Every Student Succeeds Act: donated about $44 million to help with the 2015 federal education law. Pacific Northwest Discovery Institute: Donated $1 million in 2000 to the Discovery Institute and pledged $9.35 million over 10 years in 2003, including $50,000 of Bruce Chapman's $141,000 annual salary. According to a Gates Foundation grant maker, this grant is "exclusive to the Cascadia project" on regional transportation, and it may not be used for the institute's other activities, including promotion of intelligent design. Rainier Scholars: Donated $1 million. Computer History Museum: Donated $15 million to the museum in October 2005. Criticism Education programs Some critics fear that the foundation directs the conversation on education or pushing its point of view through news coverage. The foundation has said it lists all its grants publicly and does not enforce any rules for content among its grantees, who have editorial independence. Union activists in Chicago have accused Gates Foundation grantee Teach Plus, which was founded by new teachers and advocates against seniority-based layoffs, of "astroturfing".The K-12 and higher education reform programs of the Gates Foundation have been criticized by some education professionals, parents, and researchers who argue they have driven the conversation on education reform to such an extent that they may marginalize researchers who do not support Gates' predetermined policy preferences. Several Gates-backed policies such as small schools, charter schools, and increasing class sizes have been expensive and disruptive, but some studies indicate they have not improved educational outcomes and may have caused harm.Examples of some of the K-12 reforms advocated by the foundation include closing ineffective neighborhood schools in favor of privately run charter schools; extensively using standardized test scores to evaluate the progress of students, teachers, and schools; and merit pay for teachers based on student test scores. Critics also believe that the Gates Foundation exerts too much influence over public education policy without being accountable to voters or taxpayers. Global health division A 2007 investigation by the Los Angeles Times claimed there are three major unintended consequences with the foundation's allocation of aid towards the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. First, sub-Saharan Africa already suffered from a shortage of primary doctors before the arrival of the Gates Foundation, but "by pouring most contributions into the fight against such high-profile killers as AIDS, Gates grantees have increased the demand for specially trained, higher-paid clinicians, diverting staff from basic care" in sub-Saharan Africa. This "brain drain" adds to the existing doctor shortage and pulls away additional trained staff from children and those suffering from other common killers. Second, "the focus on a few diseases has shortchanged basic needs such as nutrition and transportation". Third, "Gates-funded vaccination programs have instructed caregivers to ignore – even discourage patients from discussing – ailments that the vaccinations cannot prevent".In response, the Gates Foundation has said that African governments need to spend more of their budgets on public health than on wars, that the foundation has donated at least $70 million to help improve nutrition and agriculture in Africa, in addition to its disease-related initiatives and that it is studying ways to improve the delivery of health care in Africa.Both insiders and external critics have suggested that there is too much deference to Bill Gates's personal views within the Gates Foundation, insufficient internal debate, and pervasive "group think." Critics also complain that Gates Foundation grants are often awarded based on social connections and ideological allegiances rather than based on formal external review processes or technical competence.Critics have suggested that Gates' approach to Global Health and Agriculture favors the interests of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies over the interests of the people of developing countries. After the Gates foundation urged the University of Oxford to find a large company partner to get its COVID-19 vaccine to market, the university backed off from its earlier pledge to donate the rights to any drugmaker.Critics have outlined that the "Global Health Governance" approach as its conducted by the BMGF can best be understood as "Global Health Imperialism" breaking with the "traditional notions of Westphalian sovereignty" by enforcing capitalist policies on all countries. Also the broader concept of "philanthrocapitalism" is criticised as not addressing the real issue of systemic inequality of capitalism. Instead of real social change organisations such as BMGF represent the interests of "highly sophisticated capitalists who know what they want and how best to get it" – the "Global Health Imperialism" agenda is devoted "to expanding worldwide markets and facilitating commerce on behalf of Western capitalism". AGRA The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the founders and primary financiers of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an African-led organization focused on "transforming African agriculture" to improve food security in Africa and reduce poverty among small farmers. Some critics allege that by encouraging the use of mass-produced fertilizers and new seed varieties, AGRA's hidden goal is not to lift small farmers out of poverty, but to control them through dependence on profit-oriented international supply chains. Modi Goalkeepers Award On September 24, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave its Goalkeepers Global Goals award to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. The decision to award Modi was widely criticized by academics, Nobel Prize laureates, and human rights activists from all over the world. A petition signed by over 100,000 people also demanded that the Gates Foundation rescind the award. Critics insisted that Modi, a Hindu nationalist prime minister with an alleged long record of human rights abuse, should not be celebrated by an organization whose mission states that 'every life has equal value and all people deserve healthy lives.' By giving Modi this prestigious award, they noted, the Gates Foundation contributes in legitimizing the rule of Modi. Poverty and education policy Critics say the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has overlooked the links between poverty and poor academic achievement and has unfairly demonized teachers for poor achievement by underprivileged students. They contend that the Gates Foundation should be embracing anti-poverty and living wage policies rather than pursuing untested and empirically unsupported education reforms.Critics say that Gates-backed reforms such as increasing the use of technology in education may financially benefit Microsoft and the Gates family. Calls for divestment The foundation trust invests undistributed assets, with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility. It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.Critics have called on the Gates Foundation to divest from the GEO Group, the second-largest private prison corporation in the United States. A large part of the prison's work involves incarcerating and detaining migrants that have been detained by the Obama administration and the Trump administration. In spring 2014, the Gates Foundation acknowledged its $2.2 million investment in the prison corporation. It rebuffed critics' request that it sever investment ties with the prison corporation. It has refused to comment on whether it is continuing its investments, as of 2016. Awards In 2006, the foundation won the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. In 2007, then-President of India Pratibha Devisingh Patil presented the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In recognition of the foundation's philanthropic activities in India, Bill and Melinda Gates jointly received India's third highest civilian honor Padma Bhushan in 2015. On November 22, 2016, President Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with The Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts. See also Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute Corporate social responsibility Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition List of wealthiest charitable foundations Philanthropy Social enterprise Social entrepreneurship Social responsibility Notes and references External links Official website Grants database from 1994 onward (grant payments only, not contracts or investments) Bill Gates donated his $35.8 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation World's Biggest Charitable Trust The Foundation Center: Top 100 US Foundations by asset size Gates Foundation ranked number one.

special report on climate change and land

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), also known as the "Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems", is a landmark study from 2019 by 107 experts from 52 countries. The SRCCL provides a comprehensive overview of the entire land-climate system for the first time and decided to enlist land as a "critical resource". The IPCC's 50th session (IPCC-50) formally adopted the SRCCL's Summary for policymakers (SPM) and approved the underlying report. The SPM and the full text of Special Report on Climate Change and Land—in an unedited form—were released on 8 August 2019. The report is over 1,300 pages long and includes the work of 107 experts from 52 countries. The report is the second of three Special Reports in the current Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) cycle which began in 2015 and will be completed in 2022. The first was Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, and the third is the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) released on 25 September 2019. The AR6 cycle is considered by the IPCC to be their most ambitious since the panel was formed in 1988.: 11 Previous IPCC assessments cycles and special reports Since it was established in 1988, the IPCC provides the governments of their 195 member countries, with periodic comprehensive summaries of scientific assessments of the drivers of climate change, including current impact and potential risks. The reports also put forward possible responses in terms of adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC has published five Assessment Reports, including the 1990 IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR), the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report also known as Climate Change 1995, the 2001 Third Assessment Report, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) also known as Climate Change 2007, and the Fifth Assessment Report. Each report also includes the "full scientific and technical assessment of climate change, generally in three volumes, one for each of the Working Groups of the IPCC, together with their Summaries for Policymakers, and a Synthesis Report."SRCCL is part of a series of Special Reports and Assessments in the sixth assessment report (AR6) cycle which began in 2015—following the election of a new Bureau—and concludes in 2022. The IPCC considers the current assessment cycle to be their most ambitious in the 30-year history of the panel. So far, during this cycle, along with the SRCCL, IPCC has published the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C in October 2018, and the May 2019 Refinement. The third in the series, the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), is upcoming. As well, in March 2018, the IPCC held a conference in preparation for a special report on cities and climate change in the seventh assessment cycle. Since its inception, the IPCC had also published over a dozen Special Reports which are included in the ARs. The Special report also includes a Summary for policymakers providing an "assessment of a specific issue and generally follow the same structure as a volume of an Assessment Report and Methodology Reports which are "materials that provide practical guidelines for the preparation of greenhouse gas inventories." Sections SRCCL summary for policymakers (SPM) There are four sections in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). The first deals with "people, land and climate in a warming world"; the second covers "adaptation and mitigation response options"; the third focuses on "enabling response options" and the fourth considers "action in the near-term". In the first section, the SPM says that human-induced land degradation—with increased consumption and population growth causing more land use for "food, feed, fibre, timber and energy"—has negatively affected ice-free land area globally. Approximately "25–30% of total food produced is lost or wasted" while "821 million people are undernourished" and "2 billion adults now being overweight or obese.": 3  In part two, the SPM says that "increased food productivity, dietary choices and food losses and waste reduction, can reduce demand for land conversion.": 20  In part 3, suggested response options that will also help eradicate poverty, include "improving access to markets, securing land tenure, factoring environmental costs into food, making payments for ecosystem services, and enhancing local and community collective action".: 32  The SPM says that, "Many sustainable land management technologies and practices are profitable within three to 10 years (medium confidence). While they can require upfront investment, actions to ensure sustainable land management can improve crop yields and the economic value of pasture. Land restoration and rehabilitation measures improve livelihood systems and provide both short-term positive economic returns and longer-term benefits in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity and enhanced ecosystem functions and services.": 40 Chapters The SRCCL consists of seven chapters, Chapter 1: Framing and Context, Chapter 2: Land-Climate Interactions, Chapter 3: Desertification, Chapter 4: Land Degradation, Chapter 5: Food Security, Chapter 5 Supplementary Material, Chapter 6: Interlinkages between desertification, land degradation, food security and GHG fluxes: Synergies, trade-offs and Integrated Response Options, and Chapter 7: Risk management and decision making in relation to sustainable development. Like all IPCC reports, the SRCCL includes a "Summary for Policymakers", Chapter 1: Framing and context In the executive summary of Chapter 1, the authors described the land area on earth as "finite" saying that sustainable land use is "fundamental for human well-being.": 1 One of the authors of "Framing and Context", Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's Almut Arneth, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) journalists that "The surface of the earth is limited, the population is growing, and more acreage is needed for food and for fibres that can be used for clothing." Chapter 2: Land-climate interactions According to the 8 August Carbon Brief in-depth article on the SRCCL, Chapter 2 provides data on livestock methane emissions, about 66% is agricultural methane" and "about 33% of global methane emissions" come from livestock.: 38 Chapter 3: Desertification In Chapter 3, the authors said that while climate change is exacerbating desertification, there are technologies and innovations including those based on indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), that are available and that could, if put into practice in local regions, "avoid, reduce and reverse desertification, simultaneously contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation.": 4 Chapter 4: Land degradation While the impact of land degradation on peoples' livelihoods globally is already evident, "particularly those living in vulnerable and poverty-stricken regions", the authors of chapter four do not make a clear connection between climate change and land degradation because of the multiple factors at play which include inequality, population growth, technology, and markets.: 4 Chapter 5: Food security Climate change has had a negative impact on vegetation at the same time that we are experiencing population growth. Ice-free land is needed to maintain food security. The IPCC report authors cautioned against "converting land" to bioenergy in which energy is produced by burning vegetation instead of burning fossil fuels, and advised countries to "set limits on the amount of land" used for energy crops—biofuels and afforestation. Land use in this way means there is less soil to grow much-needed food crops. In the original draft of the summary for policymakers the warning was even more pronounced, but it was considerably watered down due to the intervention of a group of governments led by Brazil, United States, United Kingdom and Sweden.According to Chapter 5, with extreme weather events, rising temperatures increase, and either not enough or too much rain, there is more food insecurity. In some cases, yields of maize and wheat, for example, have increased in higher altitudes while yields of the same crops have declined in regions with lower altitudes. They also discuss "climate change-induced displacement and migration" in "eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.": 118  They said that in countries such as, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua where 30% of the agriculture is dependent on rainfall, food security is undermined. They cited studies that show that migration from Mexico and Central America, fluctuates in "response to climate variability".: 118  Furthermore, in these countries, the "food system is heavily dependent on maize and bean production and long-term climate change and variability significantly affect the productivity of these crops and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.": 118 Chapter 6: Interlinkages Chapter 6, "Interlinkages between desertification, land degradation, food security and GHG fluxes: Synergies, trade-offs and Integrated Response Options", offers pathways of mitigating the effects of global climate change on land use, such as reduced deforestation and agricultural diversification. In addition, Chapter 6 also says that a shift in consumer behaviour towards a more plant-based diet with less protein from livestock, such as cattle, "sheep, buffalo and goats" would result in lower emissions. One of the three lead authors for Chapter 6, the University of Aberdeen's environmental scientist, Pete Smith, who teaches plant and soil science, said that as growing conditions deteriorate, there will be a "massive pressure for migration." Ruminant livestock not only produce a lot of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, but the "deforestation in critical forest systems" is caused by need for grazing land in countries such as Brazil. Smith clarified that, "We're not telling people to stop eating meat. In some places people have no other choice. But it's obvious that in the West we're eating far too much."Rutgers University's Department of Human Ecology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences's associate professor, Pamela McElwee, who is one of Chapter 6's co-authors, said that "dietary change"—"particularly in developed countries of the West"—such as reducing "excess" consumption of "high-greenhouse-gas-emissions diets" high in lamb and cattle consumption is a "win-win" because it addresses both climate crisis and health problems at the same time. McElwee said that food security in a warming world is a major concern as there is potential for "food crises developing "on several continents at once," as quoted in the New York Times. Climate change can be a multiplier effect on existing problems like "rate of soil loss and land degradation" which heightens the risk of "severe food shortages." While there are a lot of actions available to combat these problems, McElwee said that "what some of these solutions do require is attention, financial support, enabling environments." The science on which the report is based shows that "increasing the productivity of land, wasting less food" and shifting diets "away from cattle and other types of meat" lowers the carbon footprint. According to an 8 August 2019 PBS NewsHour report, about 15% of current emissions could be cut by mid-century if "people change their diets, reducing red meat and increasing plant-based foods, such as fruits, vegetables and seeds." Rosenzweig added, it "would also make people more healthy."Chapter six discusses material substitution as it relates to sustainable long-term forest management, with more production of harvested wood products (HWPs) which have a lower carbon footprint. HWP that are used to as a substitute for metal, plastic, or concrete— which are more emissions-intensive—would also result in removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.: 41  In Canada, for example, Margot Hurlbert said that forest industry could increase the percentage of solid wood products that it harvests and decrease the amount of pulp and paper products. Chapter 7: Risk management and decision making in relation to sustainable development Risk management, which "reduces vulnerabilities in land and the food system" and increases resilience in communities, can include making dietary changes and growing a "variety of crops", which can prevent soil degradation. It also includes sharing risks, "reducing inequalities, and improving incomes." Other "ways to adapt to the negative effects of climate change, include ensuring that there is "equitable access to food" particularly in those regions where "land cannot provide adequate food".University of Regina's Margot Hurlbert, who is also Canada Research Chair in climate change, energy and sustainability policy, is co-ordinating co-author of "Risk management and decision making in relation to sustainable development", said that, "...there's lots of opportunities to make these changes, and it's not too late." This includes using natural shade, through agroforestry, for example, to grow crops, and—in tropical climates—using biochar as a fertilizer. Hurlbert said that countries, like Canada, can "wield influence through its own use of trade conditions and policies" to "ensure imported food is grown without damaging landscapes and widening deserts overseas". Consumers, as well as organizations and governments, can use sustainability certifications when sourcing wood products and food, for example. Main statements "Land is where we live. Land is under growing human pressure. Land is a part of the solution. But land can't do it all." This report provided a comprehensive overview of the entire land-climate system for the first time and addressed land itself as a "critical resource".In a 9 August United Nations video, Valerie Masson-Delmotte cited the newly released report, saying that there are currently over 500 million people who live in areas negatively affected by climate change on land transformed by land degradation or desertification. Many are forced to migrate. The international group of 107 authors urged all nations to adopt sustainable land use in order to "limit greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late" and to work together to build long-term food security systems to support farmers with programs that will help build their resilience and help them engage in the market.IPCC vice-chair and ANU Climate Institute director Mark Howden, who is one of the authors of the SRCCL, said that "the land sector is currently contributing to climate change" and better land management "would have multiple economic, environmental and health benefits" and would deliver "win-wins for farmers, communities, governments and biodiversity but also helps address climate change." Contributors The scientific leadership of the SRCCL included 107 experts from 52 countries as coordinating lead authors and lead authors in the three IPCC Working Groups as well as the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories with support from the Working Group III Technical Support Unit. Fifty three percent of the authors of the report are from developing countries and forty percent of the coordinating lead authors are women. Reactions The Economist stated that the report "fires another warning shot about the state of the planet and the way people are transforming virtually every corner of every continent. Human activities affect roughly three-quarters of Earth's ice-free land, with huge consequences for the climate." The BBC published a series of articles related to the publication of the report. Roger Harrabin, a BBC environment analyst, said that the report would "become the most authoritative report yet on the way we use and abuse the land." An 8 August 2019 article by New York Times (NYT) highlighted the facts that the SRCCL was "prepared by more than 100 experts from 52 countries" and that it found that a "half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming." The NYT also pointed to the fivefold increase in migrants at the United States/Mexico border from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras "coinciding with a dry period that left many with not enough food." Some scientists "suggested it bears the signal of climate change." An article in The Atlantic was titled, "This Land Is the Only Land There Is". The article said that the SRCCL is a milestone because it says that ice-free land itself, which humans need for growing food, is "scarce and precious". The article pointed to some climate scientists and researchers having, prior to SRCCL, sometimes portrayed land as a "limitless" cleansing "global sponge", in the sense that replanting sufficient numbers of trees would significantly reduce the net CO2 burden. The Washington Post called SRCCL a "landmark study". See also Effects of climate change on agriculture Special Report on Emissions Scenarios Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Notes References Further reading Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (SRCCL). IPCC (Report). Retrieved 2019-08-09. Summary for Policymakers (SPM) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). p. 43. Retrieved 2019-08-09. Headline statements (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-08-03. Retrieved 2019-08-09. List of authors. IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-08-03. Retrieved 2019-08-09. Chapter 1 (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). p. 100. Retrieved 2019-08-09. Chapter 2 (Draft) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-04-27. p. 186. Retrieved 2019-08-09. Chapter 3: Desertification (Draft) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-04-25. p. 174. Retrieved 2019-08-10. Chapter 4: Land Degradation (Draft) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-04-25. p. 186. Retrieved 2019-08-10. Chapter 5: Food Security (Draft) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-07-08. p. 200. Retrieved 2019-08-10. Chapter 6: Interlinkages between desertification, land degradation, food security and GHG fluxes: Synergies, trade-offs and Integrated Response Options (Draft) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-07-08. p. 303. Retrieved 2019-08-10. Chapter 7: Risk management and decision making in relation to sustainable development (Draft) (PDF). IPCC (Report). Special Report on climate change and land (SRCCL). 2019-07-08. p. 235. Retrieved 2019-08-10.

fourth national climate assessment

Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) 2017/2018 is a 1,500 page two-part congressionally mandated report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)—the first of its kind by the Trump administration, who released the report on November 23, 2018. The climate assessment process, with a report to be submitted to Congress every four years, is mandated by law through the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The report, which took two years to complete, is the fourth in a series of National Climate Assessments (NCA) which included NCA1 (2000), NCA2 (2009), and NCA3 (2014).Volume 1 of NCA4, "Climate Science Special Report" (CSSR) was released in October 2017. In the CSSR, researchers reported that "it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.": 22 Volume 2, entitled "Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States", was released on November 23, 2018. According to NOAA, "human health and safety" and American "quality of life" is "increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change". Like the previous reports in this series, the NCA4 is a "stand-alone report of the state of science relating to climate change and its physical impacts". The authors say that without more significant mitigation efforts, there will be "substantial damages on the U.S. economy, human health, and the environment. Under scenarios with high emissions and limited or no adaptation, annual losses in some sectors are estimated to grow to hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century."While the CSSR is "designed to be an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change" in the United States, it does not include policy recommendations. Background President George H.W. Bush signed the Global Change Research Act of 1990 104 Stat. 3096 into law on November 16, 1990, which established the United States Global Change Research Program with a mandate to understand and respond to global change, including the cumulative effects of human activities and natural processes on the environment, to promote discussions toward international protocols in global change research, and for other purposes."Although the National Climate Assessment was mandated to release a report every four years, there have only been four reports since Global Change Research Act of 1990 was enacted. NCA4 Authors In the preparation of the NCA4, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of thirteen federal agencies comprising the USGCRP team, was the "administrative lead agency." The other agencies included the DOA, DOC, DOD, DOE, HHS, DOI, DOS, DOT, EPA, NASA, NSF, Smithsonian Institution, and the USAID. The report was produced with the assistance of "1,000 people, including 300 leading scientists, roughly half from outside the government." The Federal Science Steering Committee (SSC) for the CSSR included representatives from NOAA, NASA, and DOE, USGCRP and 3 Coordinating Lead Authors. Process The Obama administration released a review draft of the CCSR with a public review period running from December 15, 2016 through February 3, 2017. Public policy While the CSSR is "designed to be an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change" in the United States, it does not include policy recommendations. On August 20, 2017, the Trump administration notified the 15-person Federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment that he was dissolving the Federal Advisory Committee. The Federal Advisory Panel translating the NCA's scientific studies and findings into actionable public policy that individual states could implement to reduce emissions. According to an August 20, 2017 article in the Washington Post, the role of the Federal Advisory Panel for the National Climate Assessment was to assist "policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning". The panel was tasked with translating dozens of studies and scientific revelations that constitute the National Climate Assessment into policy actions that states could use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In January 2018 Andrew Cuomo, Governor of the State of New York, part of a coalition of States, reconvened a modified and limited version of the science advisory panel chaired by Columbia University's Earth Institute's Richard Moss. The States' panel cannot "replace federal support for science, including maintaining satellites and building better climate models" nor will it have any "sway over federal climate policy". Key findings An article in The Atlantic said that the report "warns, repeatedly and directly, that climate change could soon imperil the American way of life, transforming every region of the country, imposing frustrating costs on the economy, and harming the health of virtually every citizen."In the section on mitigation, the report says that without more significant mitigation efforts, there will be "substantial damages on the U.S. economy, human health, and the environment. Under scenarios with high emissions and limited or no adaptation, annual losses in some sectors are estimated to grow to hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century." The report cited a 2017 study, published in the journal Science, that estimated the economic damage to the U.S. economy in relation to increases in the global mean surface temperature (GMST).The report said that across the United States damages are "intensifying". The report which analyzed the "effects of climate change by U.S. region", emphasize[d] that "poor and marginalized communities" will be the most negatively "impacted by the intensifying storms and weather patterns caused by global warming." "While Americans are responding in ways that can bolster resilience and improve livelihoods, neither global efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change nor regional efforts to adapt to the impacts currently approach the scales needed to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades." Volume 1 A 2018 CRS cited the October 2017 "Climate Science Special Report" CSSR: "Detection and attribution studies, climate models, observations, paleoclimate data, and physical understanding lead to high confidence (extremely likely) that more than half of the observed global mean warming since 1951 was caused by humans, and high confidence that internal climate variability played only a minor role (and possibly even a negative contribution) in the observed warming since 1951. The key message and supporting text summarizes extensive evidence documented in the peer-reviewed detection and attribution literature, including in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.": 127 : 2 Volume 2 According to Volume II, "Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States", "Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was "administrative lead agency" in the preparation of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Chapters (Volume 2) Volume 2 of NCA4 has fifteen chapters: Chapter 1: Our Globally Changing Climate Chapter 2: "Physical Drivers of Climate Change", Chapter 3: "Detection and Attribution of Climate Change", Chapter 4: "Climate Models, Scenarios, and Projections", Chapter 5: "Large-Scale Circulation and Climate Variability", Chapter 6: "Temperature Changes in the United States", Chapter 7: "Precipitation Change in the United States", Chapter 8: "Droughts, Floods, and Wildfire", Chapter 9: "Extreme Storms", Chapter 10: "Changes in Land Cover and Terrestrial Biogeochemistry", Chapter 11: "Arctic Changes and their Effects on Alaska and the Rest of the United States", Chapter 12: "Sea Level Rise", Chapter 13: "Ocean Acidification and Other Ocean Changes", Chapter 14: "Perspectives on Climate Change Mitigation", and Chapter 15: "Potential Surprises: Compound Extremes and Tipping Elements".Chapter one provided an overview. "Risks are often highest for those that are already vulnerable, including low-income communities, some communities of color, children, and the elderly...Climate change threatens to exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities that result in higher exposure and sensitivity to extreme weather and climate-related events and other changes."Chapter 2, entitled "Our Changing Climate: Observations, Causes, and Future Change", reported on observed changes in the United States, such as "intensifying" and more frequent atmospheric rivers of rain that connect Asia with the United States, "[h]igh temperature extremes", increasing "heavy precipitation events", retreating glaciers and shrinking snow cover, the decline of sea ice, warming, sea level rising and increasing ocean acidification, more frequent flooding along the coastlines, lengthening growing seasons, and increasing wildfires. Reactions In a November 26 scrum with reporters in Washington, DC, President Trump told reporters he had seen and read some of the report but he doesn't believe it. The White House dismissed the NCA4 as "inaccurate". White House spokesperson, Lindsay Walters said that the climate report was "largely based on the most extreme scenario". Walters called for future NCA reports to have a "more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes". Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist from Texas Tech University said that Walters' claim was "demonstrably false". Hayhoe confirmed that the report "considers all scenarios, from those where we go carbon negative before end of century to those where carbon emissions continue to rise".The New York Times reported "White House officials made a calculation that Mr. Trump’s core base of supporters most likely would not care that its findings are so at odds with the president’s statements and policies.” Steven Milloy, a climate-change denier who served on Trump's EPA transition team, called the report a product of the deep state, adding "We don’t care. In our view, this is made-up hysteria anyway." He noted that the Administration did not alter the report's findings but rather chose to release it the day after Thanksgiving "on a day when nobody cares, and hope it gets swept away by the next day’s news."An article in The Atlantic called the report "massive", a "grave climate warning", and a "huge achievement for American science".Both The Washington Post and Vox described the report as "major". The Post described it as the Trump administration's climate report. Vox news described it as "dire".A November 23, 2018 Reuters article published in The New York Times cited the NCA4: "With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century - more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states." In July 2019 the Times cited the NCA4 in its own reporting to underscore the threat of sea level rise to the trillion-dollar coastal real estate market.Articles in Reuters/The New York Times, and the BBC, said that the warning issued by the 4th NCA "is at odds with the Trump administration's fossil fuels agenda."An article in The Hill described the report as "damning", 'sounding the alarm' on the impact of climate change and contrasted the findings of NCA4 with doubts about climate change science expressed by President Trump.An article in The Verge called it a "bleak black Friday report."An article in the Los Angeles Times said that the release of NCA4 was important in "tackling a misconception by many Americans that the changing climate doesn’t harm them personally." The report shows "how climate change is already affecting each one of us, whether we live in Texas or Minnesota or Hawai’i or Florida."Collin O'Mara, President of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) issued a statement in which he called the timing of the Black Friday release by the White House of the NCA4 report—a month before its anticipated release—a "disgrace". O’Mara said that, "It’s an absolute disgrace to bury the truth about climate impacts in a year that saw hundreds of Americans die during devastating climate-fueled megafires, hurricanes, floods, and algal blooms."In a November 23, 2018 press release, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) described how the 1,500-page report was based on "the best available science" and serves to assist the U.S. in "understand[ing], assess[ing], predict[ing] and respond[ing] to" climate change. It "examines the climate and economic impacts U.S. residents could expect if drastic action is not taken to address climate change".In May 2019, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was planning to make changes in the climate modeling methods used to create the next report which is due in 2022. Rather than project impacts of change to the end of the century as has been done in the past, they will project only to 2040. The administration is also planning to create a climate change review panel that would question the conclusions of the 2022 report. The Times reported that William Happer, who "would be a fringe figure even for climate skeptics", would head the panel. See also National Research Council, report on climate change Presidential Climate Action Plan State of the Climate Climate security Notes References External links U.S. Global Change Research Program, Organizational website. 2018 NCA Report

international inequality

International inequality refers to inequality between countries, as compared to global inequality, which is inequality between people across countries. International inequality research has primarily been concentrated on the rise of international income inequality, but other aspects include educational and health inequality, as well as differences in medical access. Reducing inequality within and among countries is the 10th goal of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and ensuring that no one is left behind is central to achieving them. Inequality can be measured by metrics such as the Gini coefficient. According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2004, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in countries with high, medium and low human development (a classification based on the UN Human Development Index) was 24,806, 4,269 and 1,184 PPP$, respectively (PPP$ = purchasing power parity measured in United States dollars). Proposed explanations Differences in economic institutions Economic institutions such as competitive markets, credible contracts and systems of property rights allow economic agents to pursue the economic activities which form the basis of growth. It has been argued that the presence or absence of strong economic institutions is a primary determinant of development. Economists have begun to consider the set of economic institutions adopted by countries as a choice that is in turn determined endogenously by competing social forces. In a widely cited paper by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, the authors concluded that the majority of present-day inequality among former European colonies can be attributed to the persisting role of economic institutions. Describing European colonization as a "natural experiment," they argued that colonizers who encountered dense populations with developed economies such as in Central America and India were incentivized to impose extractive economic institutions, while colonizers who encountered sparse populations with few natural resources such as in North America were more likely to institute broad-based property rights. This resulted in a "reversal of fortune" around 1800 as regions which were under-developed at the time of colonization were able to industrialize more effectively. Path dependence In the context of development, path dependence is the idea that certain points in history may have an outsized and persistent impact on the long-term economic and political character of nations. These points may produce outcomes that induce positive feedback and are therefore difficult to reverse. Political scientist James Mahoney has examined the political consequences of a period of liberal reform in Central America during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and argued that whether policies were implemented along radical or reformist guidelines directly determined the success of the liberalization efforts and ultimately resulted in vastly different political outcomes which persisted for decades, ranging from military authoritarian regimes (Guatemala and El Salvador) to progressive democracy (Costa Rica). Other explanations Multiple other causes of international inequality have been proposed, such as: Geography: The location of countries often affects their economy. For example, landlocked countries have difficulty accessing sea trade routes. Economic structure: the economies of different countries are composed of different industries, such as poorer countries relying primarily on agriculture. The use of the United States dollar in international trade allows the US government to create wealth by creating new money. Environmental factors (including work by Jared Diamond) Cultural factors (including work by Max Weber) International inequality during COVID-19 The worsening of inequality is considered the most significant outcome of COVID-19. The pandemic has had the greatest impact on vulnerable groups such as the elderly, people with disabilities, children, women and refugees, low-income people, youth, and informal workers. The research and measures of the World Bank, say that "Covid-19 has increased inequality in nearly every sphere: in the availability of vaccines, in economic growth rates, in access to education and health care, and the scale of job and income losses". Between 2020 and 2021 global billionaire wealth grew by $4.4 trillion but at the same time, more than 100 million people fell below the poverty line. Impact on the labor market COVID-19 caused the change of view in providing certain activities, goods and services, and certain production processes. They are considered to be riskier and costlier. Staff shortages and breaks of working activity because of compulsory quarantines of Covid-positive workers are the reason for the replacement of the human labor force with robots. Robots are easily managed, don't need masks, can be easily disinfected, and don't get sick. The threat of automation has spread to the work of low-skilled, person-to-person service workers. Before the pandemic, these jobs were seen by literature as less affected – for example, in health and education. New labor market uncertainty brings a decrease in the demand for certain types of labor. This shift consequently causes an increase in inequality. Another inequality was visible after the beginning of lockdowns. Millions of newly unemployed joined the long queues for social security benefits. The loss of jobs differs by the nature of the job. Tourism, gastronomy, recreational services and accommodation, airlines, and industries that rely on personal interactions have been the hardest hit. Lockdown rules and social distance requirements limited employees. The inability of workers to work from home deprived a lot of them of their jobs. Inequality in access to healthcare COVID-19 is the biggest health crisis in a century. Not only were poor countries with weak health care systems hard-hit, but also economically strong and developed rich countries. America is considered the most hit country in a term of unequal access to resources and health services. One of the reasons for their highest number of cases and deaths is their worst average healthcare standards among the major developed economies. The poorest suffer from the lack of a universal healthcare system and high prices of medicaments (and for health care, in general) the most. Many Americans skipped testing to know if they are infected because of the high price of tests. They went to work, spreading the virus mostly among those, who could not have a home office. After being infected, they could not afford to buy medicament or to search for medical help since they have no insurance. Inequality in the distribution of vaccines The development, production, and distribution of vaccines was a scientific, political, and economic triumph seeing that it was relatively quick. However, despite having the technology and the resources, the society failed to raise vaccine supply and distribute enough doses in poor countries. "As of October 1st, 2021, the highest-income countries—as classified by the World Bank—had a per-capita vaccination rate of 125.3 vaccinations per 100 people, representing nearly 3-fold higher than the rate for lower-middle-income countries of 45.3 per 100, and 30-fold higher than lower-income countries with 4.2 per 100." Also, the efficacy varied between distributed vaccines. They are more likely to be a lower efficacy on average in lower-income locations. Sputnik, Sinopharm, and Janssen vaccines are mostly used in low and middle-income countries with lower efficacy against new variants of virus compared to vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna – used mainly in higher-income areas. Inequality in education The control measures introduced around the world to curb the spread of the virus had a considerable impact on education. By April 2020, an unprecedented 1.4 billion students were shut out of their pre-primary, primary, and secondary schools in more than 190 countries and the classroom present education had moved to online distance learning. The number and duration of periods of school closures have varied across countries. Inequalities were observable in the extent to which their learning is supported by their family and home environment background. Lack of opportunities, tools, or access to affordable, reliable internet connections were daily problems to deal with. Children from low-income families were more likely to be excluded from online distance learning because of an inability to afford sufficient internet or devices.Another dimension of inequality relevant to distance learning is the one between low- and high-achieving students. Education from home implies a large amount of self-regulated learning where students must independently acquire and understand the academic content without the support of teachers. This self-regulated learning may be feasible for high-achieving students, but it may be especially challenging for low-achieving students and for students with special needs.In addition, in some countries, girls have faced widespread discrimination in access to education and to the internet. Society was much more likely to expect them to take on a greater burden in the household during distance learning than boys. In developing and poor countries girls who were out of school were at greater risk than boys of facing abuses such as child marriage and other forms of gender-based violence. International wealth distribution Between 1820 and 2000, global income inequality increased with almost 50%. However, this change occurred mostly before 1950. Afterwards, the level of inequality remained mostly stable. It is important to differentiate between between-country inequality, which was the driving force for this pattern, and within country inequality, which remained largely constant.Global income inequality peaked approximately in the 1970s, when world income was distributed bimodally into "rich" and "poor" countries with little overlap. Since then, inequality has been rapidly decreasing, and this trend seems to be accelerating. Income distribution is now unimodal, with most people living in middle-income countries.As of 2000, a study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University found that the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of global assets, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. Oxfam International reported that the richest 1 percent of people owned 48 percent of global wealth As of 2013, and would own more than half of global wealth by 2016. In 2014, Oxfam reported that the 85 wealthiest individuals in the world had a combined wealth equal to that of the bottom half of the world's population, or about 3.5 billion people.As of 2001, the major component of the world's income inequality (the global Gini coefficient) was comprised by two groups of countries (called the "twin peaks" by Quah [1997]). The first group has 13% of the world's population and receives 45% of the world's PPP income. This group includes the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and Canada, and comprises 500 million people with an annual income level over 11,500 PPP$. The second group has 42% of the world's population and receives only 9% of the world PPP income. This group includes India, Indonesia and rural China, and comprises 2.1 billion people with an income level under 1,000 PPP$.In terms of between country inequality, between 1820 and 2000, Latin America, Africa and the middle east almost always had a higher average Gini coefficient than Europe, implying a higher level of inequality. Asia was usually below average.As of 2017, over 70% of the world's adults had under $10,000 in wealth. Only 0.7% of the world had one million dollars or more in wealth, but this number is increasing. As of 2008, there were 1,125 billionaires (in US dollars) who owned $4.4 trillion in assets. As of 2006, the total value of global assets was about $125 trillion.The evolution of the income gap between poor and rich countries is related to convergence. Convergence can be defined as "the tendency for poorer countries to grow faster than richer ones and, hence, for their levels of income to converge". Global poverty In the past, the vast majority of the world population lived in conditions of extreme poverty.The absolute number of poor people (living below the poverty threshold, e.g. earning below 1 dollar per day) was reasonably stable between 1820 and 1929. It then increased significantly between 1929 and 1950, and fell rapidly again after 1950 before reaching its lowest point at ca. 220 million. From 1980, there was another increase in poverty, a trend that only reversed after 1995.The percentage of the global population living in absolute poverty fell from over 80% in 1800 to under 20% by 2015. According to UN estimates, in 2015 roughly 734 million people or 10% remained under those conditions. The number had previously been measured as 1.9 billion in 1990, and 1.2 billion in 2008. Despite the significant number of individuals still below the international poverty line, these figures represent significant progress for the international community, as they reflect a decrease of more than one billion people over 15 years.In 1981, 60% of the world population (2.73 billion people) had an income of less than $2.50 per day and 42% of the world population (1.91 billion people) had an income of less than $1.25 per day. As of 2005, these numbers had reduced to 43% and 21.5% respectively. In 2002, the proportion of poor people (earning less than $3,470 per year) was 78%, while the proportion of rich people (earning more than $8,000/year) was 11%.A very severe case of income inequality can be observed on the African continent. 40-45% of the world's poor (persons earning less than 1 dollar per day) live in Africa, while only 11% of the global population inhabit the continent.Challenges in reducing global poverty include ongoing armed conflicts, low levels of support from other countries, and not knowing how to begin helping. Social welfare spending Overall, social spending is lower in the Global South, with some regions registering just a few percentage points of GDP. Proposed solutions Potential approaches to decrease inequality include: Education and family planning: Many countries with education access have higher income levels. Part of this is because people are striving for a career and are striving for higher education. Countries that do not have access to education have lower incomes. Women who have access to an education will have fewer children because they are focusing on building themselves. Democracy: Democracy allows people to have a say in where money is spent, such as in social welfare programs. Government policies: The government can create policies that can aid the poor and help provide medicine. Empowerment of women Improve agriculture: Poor countries tend to suffer from food shortages. One thing that could be done is to help improve farming grounds and livestock development. By starting the proper groundwork for crops, it will help provide the nutrition that many people need. Livestock can provide milk, eggs, meat, and cheese for consuming. This can also help provide fur and feathers for making clothing and other goods, which could be sold to help with low income. Volunteers who travel to poor countries to help A global wealth tax: Thomas Piketty suggests a global and coordinated wealth tax as the remedy to trends of global inequality, saying that only a direct solution to wealth concentration can be successful where other governmental policies have failed. Piketty proposed an international agreement between nations that would tax all personal assets at phased rates. The simplest version of the proposal would levy a 1% tax on net worth between $1.3 million and $6.5 million, and a 2% tax on wealth above $6.5 million. This idea has so far failed to gain ground and has been subject to criticism. Schuyler argues that a wealth tax would cause significant declines in investment, salaries, incomes, and national production, making all groups worse off. In addition, he raises problems of large administrative and enforcement hurdles, making Piketty's wealth tax impractical to a large extent. Reducing illicit wealth outflows: From 2003 to 2012, developing countries lost $6.6 trillion to illicit financial flows, with the amount rising at an average of 9.4 percent each year. Since this could have been used for investments into human capital, infrastructure and economic growth, a strong correlation exists between illicit outflows and the levels of poverty and economic inequality. Minimum wage: Minimum wage levels are often described as an important part of the challenge to reduce inequality. Worker unions: Historically, labor unions have played an important role in reducing inequality, particularly in negotiating better pay for low-wage workers. Income disparity is typically lower in countries with higher union membership and collective bargaining coverage, while inequality tends to worsen in countries with decreasing union membership and coverage.Research has stressed the need to address inequality with a multi-pronged approach, including taxation reform and curbing excesses associated with financial deregulation, country-specific circumstances, and potential trade-offs with other policy objectives. See also Distribution of wealth Economic development Economic mobility Income disparity Income inequality metrics Income inequality in the United States International development List of countries by income equality Poverty United Nations Millennium Development Goals Wealth inequality in the United States Wealth inequality in Latin America Family planning in India Family Planning in the United States Global environmental inequality References Sources Milanovic, Branko (World Bank), True world income distribution, 1988 and 1993: first calculation based on household surveys alone, The Economic Journal, Volume 112 Issue 476 Page 51 – January 2002. Article: [1]. Actual report on which the article is based: [2]. News coverage: [3] and [4]. Cole, Matthew A.; Neumayer, Eric (April 2003). "The pitfalls of convergence analysis: is the income gap really widening?" (PDF). Applied Economics Letters. 10 (6): 355–357. doi:10.1080/1350485032000072361. S2CID 154633111. Quah, Danny T. (1 March 1997). "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs". Journal of Economic Growth. 2 (1): 27–59. doi:10.1023/A:1009781613339. S2CID 55517603. Martin Ravallion, "A poverty-inequality trade-off?", World Bank, 5 May 2005, Policy Research Working Paper no. WPS 3579, Martin Ravallion, "Looking beyond Averages in the Trade and Poverty Debate", World Bank, November 2004, Policy Research Working Paper No. 3461 Barro, Robert (2000). "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries" (PDF). Journal of Economic Growth. 7 (1). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 December 2005.. James B. Davies; Susanna Sandstrom; Anthony Shorrocks; Edward N. Wolff (2006). "The World Distribution of Household Wealth". World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER). Retrieved 8 December 2006. News coverage: [5] [6] External links World Distribution of Household Wealth report at United Nations University The UC Atlas of Global Inequality explores some aspects of inequality using online, downloadable maps and graphics. Poverty Facts and Stats is a well-documented source of comparisons. UN World Social Situation Report 2005 – Inequality Predicament Common Dreams – Globalization Driving Inequality, UN Warns Heritage Foundation – Economic Freedom and Per Capita Income Archived 31 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine

solar geoengineering

Solar geoengineering, or solar radiation modification (SRM), is a type of climate engineering in which sunlight (solar radiation) would be reflected back to outer space to limit or offset human-caused climate change. There are multiple potential approaches, with stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) being the most-studied method, followed by marine cloud brightening (MCB). Other methods have been proposed, including a variety of space-based approaches, but they are generally considered less viable, and are not taken seriously by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. SRM methods could have a rapid cooling effect on atmospheric temperature, but if the intervention were to suddenly stop for any reason, the cooling would soon stop as well. It is estimated that the cooling impact from SAI would cease 1–3 years after the last aerosol injection, while the impact from marine cloud brightening would disappear in just 10 days. Contrastingly, once any carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere and not removed, its warming impact does not decrease for a century, and some of it will persist for hundreds to thousands of years. As such, solar geoengineering is not a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but would act as a temporary measure to limit warming while emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced and carbon dioxide is removed.If solar geoengineering were to cease while greenhouse gas levels remained high, it would lead to "large and extremely rapid" warming and similarly abrupt changes to the water cycle. Rapid termination would significantly increase the threats to biodiversity from climate change. In spite of this risk, solar geoengineering is frequently discussed as a policy option because it is much faster and (in the short run) cheaper than any form of climate change mitigation. While cooling the atmosphere by 1 °C (1.8 °F) through stratospheric aerosol injection would cost at least $18 billion annually (at 2020 USD value), and other approaches also cost tens of billions of dollars or more annually, this would still be "orders of magnitude" cheaper than greenhouse gas mitigation, and the unmitigated effects of climate change would cost far more than that.As of 2022, hundreds of studies have used climate models to simulate the impacts of SRM on the various aspects of the Earth's climate. In general, they show that it can combat many of the adverse effects of climate change, such as the increase in extreme weather, the decrease in soil moisture, slowdown of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, Arctic sea ice decline and the melting of mountain glaciers. However, they concur that is impossible for SRM to fully reverse climate change and return the world to its preindustrial state, because the scale of any intervention required to completely offset the recent warming would substantially alter the weather patterns and the water cycle compared to the past, while ocean acidification would proceed until CO2 concentrations stop increasing. For the same reason, simply using SRM to maintain present-day temperature would still alter the climate to some extent. Climate models often struggle to correctly estimate regional impacts of global dimming caused by historical sulfate air pollution, and so there is only low confidence in the current projections of how solar geoengineering would affect regional climate and ecosystems.Governing solar geoengineering is challenging for multiple reasons, including that few countries would likely be capable of doing it alone. For now, there is no formal international framework designed to regulate SRM, with aspects of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity or the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer coming the closest out of the existing agreements. Thus, many questions regarding the acceptable deployment of SRM, or even its research and development, are currently unanswered. Overview Solar geoengineering (SG, or SRM) increases Earth's ability to deflect sunlight, e.g., by increasing the albedo of the atmosphere or the surface. While reducing the average temperature, it would not address ocean acidification. Climate models project that SRN interventions would take effect rapidly, but would also quickly fade out if not sustained. This means that their direct effects are effectively reversible, but also risks a rapid rebound after a prolonged interruption, sometimes known as termination shock. The US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated in a 2021 report: "The available research indicates that SG could reduce surface temperatures and potentially ameliorate some risks posed by climate change (e.g., to avoid crossing critical climate “tipping points”; to reduce harmful impacts of weather extremes)."Solar geoengineering methods include: Stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, in which small particles of e.g., sulfur dioxide would be injected into the upper atmosphere. Marine cloud brightening (MCB), which would spray fine sea water to whiten clouds and thus increase cloud reflectivity. Cirrus cloud thinning (CCT), which is strictly not solar geoengineering but shares many of the physical and especially governance characteristics as the other methods.Regardless of the method used, there is a wide range of potential deployment scenarios for solar geoengineering, which differ both in the scale of warming they must offset, and their target endpoint. Historically, the majority of studies consider relatively extreme scenarios where global emissions are very high and are offset with similarly high levels of SRM. More recently, research began exploring alternatives like using SRM as an aid to avoid failing the Paris Agreement goals of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) and 2 °C (3.6 °F). It has also been suggested that SRM is deployed to halve the current warming, as this may be less disruptive to societies and ecosystems than attempting to reach the preindustrial levels. However, this approach may also increase flood and wildfire risk in Europe. There have also been proposals to focus the use of SRM at the poles, in order to combat polar amplification of warming and the associated Arctic sea ice decline, permafrost thaw and ice sheet melt leading to increased sea level rise. However, actual deployment of even the cheapest proposals is projected to cost tens of billions of US dollars annually, so the decision to deploy these interventions would not be taken lightly. Means of operation Averaged over the year and location, the Earth's atmosphere receives 340 W/m2 of solar irradiance from the sun. Due to elevated atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the net difference between the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth and the amount of energy radiated back to space has risen from 1.7 W/m2 in 1980, to 3.1 W/m2 in 2019. This imbalance - called radiative forcing - means that the Earth absorbs more energy than it lets off, causing global temperatures to rise. The goal of solar geoengineering would be to reduce radiative forcing by increasing Earth's albedo (reflectivity). An increase in planetary albedo of 1% would reduce radiative forcing by 2.35 W/m2, eliminating most of global warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, while a 2% albedo increase would negate the warming effect of doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration However, because warming from greenhouse gases and cooling from solar geoengineering would operate differently across latitudes and seasons, a world where global warming is offset would still have a different climate from the world where this warming did not occur in the first place, mainly as the result of an altered hydrological cycle. Potential roles Solar geoengineering may end up being deployed as an emergency solution to climate change, but in the long run, it is intended to complement, not replace, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal. For example, the Royal Society stated in its landmark 2009 report: "Geoengineering methods are not a substitute for climate change mitigation, and should only be considered as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report concurs: "There is high agreement in the literature that for addressing climate change risks SRM cannot be the main policy response to climate change and is, at best, a supplement to achieving sustained net zero or net negative CO2 emission levels globally". Solar geoengineering's speed of effect gives it two potential roles in managing risks from climate change. First, if mitigation and adaptation continue to be insufficient, and/or if climate change impacts are severe due to greater-than-expected climate sensitivity, tipping points, or vulnerability, then solar geoengineering could reduce these unexpectedly severe impacts. In this way, the knowledge to implement solar geoengineering as a backup plan would serve as a sort of risk diversification or insurance. Second, solar geoengineering could be implemented along with aggressive mitigation and adaptation in order "buy time" by slowing the rate of climate change and/or to eliminate the worst climate impacts until net negative emissions reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. (See diagram.) Solar geoengineering has been suggested as a means of stabilizing regional climates - such as limiting heatwaves or Arctic sea ice decline and permafrost thaw, but there's low confidence about the ability to control geographical boundaries of the effect. History In 1965, during the administration of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, President's Science Advisory Committee delivered "Restoring the Quality of Our Environment", a landmark report which warned of the harmful effects of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel and mentioned "deliberately bringing about countervailing climatic changes," including "raising the albedo, or reflectivity, of the Earth." As early as 1974, Russian climatologist Mikhail Budyko suggested that if global warming ever became a serious threat, it could be countered with airplane flights in the stratosphere, burning sulfur to make aerosols that would reflect sunlight away. Along with carbon dioxide removal, solar geoengineering was discussed jointly as "geoengineering" in a 1992 climate change report from the US National Academies. The topic was essentially taboo in the climate science and policy communities until Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen published an influential scholarly paper in 2006. Major reports by the Royal Society (2009) and the US National Academies (2015, 2021) followed. As of 2018, total research funding worldwide remained modest, at less than 10 million US dollars annually. Almost all research into solar geoengineering has to date consisted of computer modeling or laboratory tests, and there are calls for more research funding as the science is poorly understood. Major academic institutions, including Harvard University, have begun research into solar geoengineering, with NOAA alone investing $22 million from 2019 to 2022, though few outdoor tests have been run to date. The Degrees Initiative is a UK registered charity, established to build capacity in developing countries to evaluate solar geoengineering. The 2021 US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report recommended an initial investment into solar geoengineering research of $100–$200 million over five years. In May 2022, the Climate Overshoot Commission was launched to recommend a comprehensive strategy to reduce climate risk which includes sunlight reflection methods in its policy portfolio, and will issue a final report prior to the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference. Evidence of effectiveness and impacts Climate models consistently indicate that a moderate magnitude of solar geoengineering would bring important aspects of the climate - for example, average and extreme temperature, water availability, cyclone intensity - closer to their preindustrial values at a subregional resolution. (See figure.) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in its Sixth Assessment Report:: 69 .... SRM could offset some of the effects of increasing GHGs on global and regional climate, including the carbon and water cycles. However, there would be substantial residual or overcompensating climate change at the regional scales and seasonal time scales, and large uncertainties associated with aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions persist. The cooling caused by SRM would increase the global land and ocean CO2 sinks, but this would not stop CO2 from increasing in the atmosphere or affect the resulting ocean acidification under continued anthropogenic emissions. It is likely that abrupt water cycle changes will occur if SRM techniques are implemented rapidly. A sudden and sustained termination of SRM in a high CO2 emissions scenario would cause rapid climate change. However, a gradual phase-out of SRM combined with emission reduction and CDR would avoid these termination effects.The 2021 US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report states: "The available research indicates that SG could reduce surface temperatures and potentially ameliorate some risks posed by climate change (e.g., to avoid crossing critical climate 'tipping points'; to reduce harmful impacts of weather extremes)."Solar geoengineering would imperfectly compensate for anthropogenic climate changes. Greenhouse gases warm throughout the globe and year, whereas solar geoengineering reflects light more effectively at low latitudes and in the hemispheric summer (due to the sunlight's angle of incidence) and only during daytime. Deployment regimes could compensate for this heterogeneity by changing and optimizing injection rates by latitude and season.In general, greenhouse gases warm the entire planet and are expected to change precipitation patterns heterogeneously, both spatially and temporally, with an overall increase in precipitation. Models indicate that solar geoengineering would compensate both of these changes but would do more effectively for temperature than for precipitation. Therefore, using solar geoengineering to fully return global mean temperature to a preindustrial level would overcorrect for precipitation changes. This has led to claims that it would dry the planet or even cause drought, but this would depend on the intensity (i.e. radiative forcing) of solar geoengineering. Furthermore, soil moisture is more important for plants than average annual precipitation. Because solar geoengineering would reduce evaporation, it more precisely compensates for changes to soil moisture than for average annual precipitation. Likewise, the intensity of tropical monsoons is increased by climate change and decreased by solar geoengineering. A net reduction in tropical monsoon intensity might manifest at moderate use of solar geoengineering, although to some degree the effect of this on humans and ecosystems would be mitigated by greater net precipitation outside of the monsoon system. This has led to claims that solar geoengineering "would disrupt the Asian and African summer monsoons," but the impact would depend on the particular implementation regime. People are concerned about climate change largely because of its impacts on people and ecosystems. In the case of the former, agriculture is particularly important. A net increase in agricultural productivity from elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and solar geoengineering has also been predicted by some studies due to the combination of more diffuse light and carbon dioxide's fertilization effect. Other studies suggest that solar geoengineering would have little net effect on agriculture. Understanding of solar geoengineering's effects on ecosystems remains at an early stage. Its reduction of climate change would generally help maintain ecosystems, although the resulting more diffuse incoming sunlight would favor undergrowth relative to canopy growth. Advantages The target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved through a combination of emission cuts and carbon dioxide removal, after which global warming stops, but the temperature will only go back down if we remove more carbon dioxide than we emit. Solar geoengineering on the other hand could cool the planet within months after deployment, thus can act to reduce climate risk while we cut emissions and scale up carbon dioxide removal. Stratospheric aerosol injection is expected to have low direct financial costs of implementation, relative to the expected costs of both unabated climate change and aggressive mitigation. Finally, the direct climatic effects of solar geoengineering are reversible within short timescales. Limitations and risks As well as the imperfect cancellation of the climatic effect of greenhouse gases, described above, there are other significant problems with solar geoengineering. Incomplete solution to elevated carbon dioxide concentrations Solar geoengineering does not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and thus does not reduce other effects from these gases, such as ocean acidification. While not an argument against solar geoengineering per se, this is an argument against reliance on it to the exclusion of emissions reduction. Uncertainty Most of the information on solar geoengineering comes from climate models and volcanic eruptions, which are both imperfect analogues of stratospheric aerosol injection. The climate models used in impact assessments are the same that scientists use to predict the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Some uncertainties in these climate models (such as aerosol microphysics, stratospheric dynamics, and sub-grid scale mixing) are particularly relevant to solar geoengineering and are a target for future research. Volcanoes are an imperfect analogue as they release the material in the stratosphere in a single pulse, as opposed to sustained injection. Modelling is uncertain as little practical research has been done. Maintenance and termination shock Solar geoengineering effects would be temporary, and thus long-term climate restoration would rely on long-term deployment until sufficient carbon dioxide is removed. If solar geoengineering masked significant warming, stopped abruptly, and was not resumed within a year or so, the climate would rapidly warm. Global temperatures would rapidly rise towards levels which would have existed without the use of solar geoengineering. The rapid rise in temperature might lead to more severe consequences than a gradual rise of the same magnitude. However, some scholars have argued that this termination shock appears reasonably easy to prevent because it would be in states' interest to resume any terminated deployment regime; and because infrastructure and knowledge could be made redundant and resilient, allowing states to act on this interest and gradually phase out unwanted solar geoengineering.Some claim that solar geoengineering "would basically be impossible to stop." This is true only of a long-term deployment strategy. A short-term, temporary strategy would limit implementation to decades. Disagreement and control Although climate models of solar geoengineering rely on some optimal or consistent implementation, leaders of countries and other actors may disagree as to whether, how, and to what degree solar geoengineering be used. This could result in suboptimal deployments and exacerbate international tensions.Some observers claim that solar geoengineering is likely to be militarized or weaponized. However, weaponization is disputed because solar geoengineering would be imprecise. Regardless, the U.N. Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, which prohibits weaponizing solar geoengineering, came into force in 1978. Unwanted or premature use There is a risk that countries may start using solar geoengineering without proper precaution or research. Solar geoengineering, at least by stratospheric aerosol injection, appears to have low direct implementation costs relative to its potential impact. This creates a different problem structure. Whereas the provision of emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal present collective action problems (because ensuring a lower atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is a public good), a single country or a handful of countries could implement solar geoengineering. Many countries have the financial and technical resources to undertake solar geoengineering.In 2000s, some have suggested that solar geoengineering could be within reach of a lone "Greenfinger," a wealthy individual who takes it upon him or herself to be the "self-appointed protector of the planet". Others disagree and argue that states will insist on maintaining control of solar geoengineering. Subsequent research had dimmed this notion, as the annual costs of around $18 billion per 1 °C (1.8 °F) of cooling are likely to be prohibitive for even the wealthiest individuals. Distribution of effects Both climate change and solar geoengineering would affect various groups of people differently. Some observers describe solar geoengineering as necessarily creating "winners and losers." However, models indicate that solar geoengineering at a moderate intensity would return important climatic values of almost all regions of the planet closer to preindustrial conditions. That is, if all people prefer preindustrial conditions, such a moderate use could be a Pareto improvement. Developing countries are particularly important, as they are more vulnerable to climate change. All else equal, they therefore have the most to gain from a judicious use of solar geoengineering. Observers sometimes claim that solar geoengineering poses greater risks to developing countries. There is no evidence that the unwanted environmental impacts of solar geoengineering would be significantly greater in developing countries, although potential disruptions to tropical monsoons are a concern. But in one sense, this claim of greater risk is true for the same reason that they are more vulnerable to greenhouse gas-induced climate change: developing countries have weaker infrastructure and institutions, and their economies rely to a greater degree on agriculture. They are thus more vulnerable to all climate changes, whether from greenhouse gases or solar geoengineering. Lessened mitigation The existence of solar geoengineering may reduce the political and social impetus for mitigation. This has generally been called a potential "moral hazard," although risk compensation may be a more accurate term. This concern causes many environmental groups and campaigners to be reluctant to advocate or discuss solar geoengineering. However, several public opinion surveys and focus groups have found evidence of either assertion of a desire to increase emission cuts in the face of solar geoengineering, or of no effect. Likewise, some modelling work suggests that the threat of solar geoengineering may in fact increase the likelihood of emissions reduction. Effect on sky and clouds Managing solar radiation using aerosols or cloud cover would involve changing the ratio between direct and indirect solar radiation. This would affect plant life and solar energy. Visible light, useful for photosynthesis, is reduced proportionally more than is the infrared portion of the solar spectrum due to the mechanism of Mie scattering. As a result, deployment of atmospheric solar geoengineering would reduce by at least 2-5% the growth rates of phytoplankton, trees, and crops between now and the end of the century. Uniformly reduced net shortwave radiation would hurt solar photovoltaics by the same >2-5% because of the bandgap of silicon photovoltaics. Proposed forms Atmospheric Stratospheric aerosol injection Injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere is the proposed solar geoengineering method that has received the most sustained attention. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Stratospheric aerosol injection "is the most-researched SRM method, with high agreement that it could limit warming to below 1.5°C." This technique would mimic a cooling phenomenon that occurs naturally by the eruption of volcanoes. Sulfates are the most commonly proposed aerosol, since there is a natural analogue with (and evidence from) volcanic eruptions. Alternative materials such as using photophoretic particles, titanium dioxide, and diamond have been proposed. Delivery by custom aircraft appears most feasible, with artillery and balloons sometimes discussed. The annual cost of delivering a sufficient amount of sulfur to counteract expected greenhouse warming is estimated at $5 to 10 billion US dollars. This technique could give much more than 3.7 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, which is sufficient to entirely offset the warming caused by a doubling of carbon dioxide. Marine cloud brightening Various cloud reflectivity methods have been suggested, such as that proposed by John Latham and Stephen Salter, which works by spraying seawater in the atmosphere to increase the reflectivity of clouds. The extra condensation nuclei created by the spray would change the size distribution of the drops in existing clouds to make them whiter. The sprayers would use fleets of unmanned rotor ships known as Flettner vessels to spray mist created from seawater into the air to thicken clouds and thus reflect more radiation from the Earth. The whitening effect is created by using very small cloud condensation nuclei, which whiten the clouds due to the Twomey effect. This technique can give more than 3.7 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, which is sufficient to reverse the warming effect of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Cirrus cloud thinning Natural cirrus clouds are believed to have a net warming effect. These could be dispersed by the injection of various materials. This method is strictly not solar geoengineering, as it increases outgoing longwave radiation instead of decreasing incoming shortwave radiation. However, because it shares some of the physical and especially governance characteristics as the other solar geoengineering methods, it is often included. Ocean sulfur cycle enhancement Enhancing the natural marine sulfur cycle by fertilizing a small portion with iron—typically considered to be a greenhouse gas remediation method—may also increase the reflection of sunlight. Such fertilization, especially in the Southern Ocean, would enhance dimethyl sulfide production and consequently cloud reflectivity. This could potentially be used as regional solar geoengineering, to slow Antarctic ice from melting. Such techniques also tend to sequester carbon, but the enhancement of cloud albedo also appears to be a likely effect. Terrestrial Cool roof Painting roof materials in white or pale colors to reflect solar radiation, known as 'cool roof' technology, is encouraged by legislation in some areas (notably California). This technique is limited in its ultimate effectiveness by the constrained surface area available for treatment. This technique can give between 0.01 and 0.19 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, depending on whether cities or all settlements are so treated. This is small relative to the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Moreover, while in small cases it can be achieved at little or no cost by simply selecting different materials, it can be costly if implemented on a larger scale. A 2009 Royal Society report states that, "the overall cost of a 'white roof method' covering an area of 1% of the land surface (about 1012 m2) would be about $300 billion/yr, making this one of the least effective and most expensive methods considered." However, it can reduce the need for air conditioning, which emits carbon dioxide and contributes to global warming. Radiative cooling Some papers have proposed the deployment of specific thermal emitters (whether via advanced paint, or printed rolls of material) which would simultaneously reflect sunlight and also emit energy at longwave infrared (LWIR) lengths of 8–20 μm, which is too short to be trapped by the greenhouse effect and would radiate into outer space. It has been suggested that to stabilize Earth's energy budget and thus cease warming, 1–2% of the Earth's surface (area equivalent to over half of Sahara) would need to be covered with these emitters, at the deployment cost of $1.25 to $2.5 trillion. While low next to the estimated $20 trillion saved by limiting the warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) rather than 2 °C (3.6 °F), it does not include any maintenance costs. Ocean and ice changes Oceanic foams have also been suggested, using microscopic bubbles suspended in the upper layers of the photic zone. A less costly proposal is to simply lengthen and brighten existing ship wakes.Arctic sea ice formation could be increased by pumping deep cooler water to the surface. Sea ice (and terrestrial) ice can be thickened by increasing albedo with silica spheres. Glaciers flowing into the sea may be stabilized by blocking the flow of warm water to the glacier. Salt water could be pumped out of the ocean and snowed onto the West Antarctic ice sheet. Vegetation Reforestation in tropical areas has a cooling effect. Changes to grassland have been proposed to increase albedo. This technique can give 0.64 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, which is insufficient to offset the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of carbon dioxide, but could make a minor contribution. Selecting or genetically modifying commercial crops with high albedo has been suggested. This has the advantage of being relatively simple to implement, with farmers simply switching from one variety to another. Temperate areas may experience a 1 °C cooling as a result of this technique. This technique is an example of bio-geoengineering. This technique can give 0.44 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, which is insufficient to offset the 3.7 W/m2 of positive forcing from a doubling of carbon dioxide, but could make a minor contribution. Space-based There has been a range of proposals to reflect or deflect solar radiation from space, before it even reaches the atmosphere, commonly described as a space sunshade. The most straightforward is to have mirrors orbiting around the Earth - an idea first suggested even before the wider awareness of climate change, with rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth considering it a way to facilitate terraforming projects in 1923. and this was followed by other books in 1929, 1957 and 1978. By 1992, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences described a plan to suspend 55,000 mirrors with an individual area of 100 square meters in a Low Earth orbit. Another contemporary plan was to use space dust to replicate Rings of Saturn around the equator, although a large number of satellites would have been necessary to prevent it from dissipating. A 2006 variation on this idea suggested relying entirely on a ring of satellites electromagnetically tethered in the same location. In all cases, sunlight exerts pressure which can displace these reflectors from orbit over time, unless stabilized by enough mass. Yet, higher mass immediately drives up launch costs.In an attempt to deal with this problem, other researchers have proposed Inner lagrangian point between the Earth and the Sun as an alternative to near-Earth orbits, even though this tends to increase manufacturing or delivery costs instead. In 1989, a paper suggested founding a lunar colony, which would produce and deploy diffraction grating made out of a hundred million tonnes of glass. In 1997, a single, very large mesh of aluminium wires "about one millionth of a millimetre thick" was also proposed. Two other proposals from the early 2000s advocated the use of thin metallic disks 50–60 cm in diameter, which would either be launched from the Earth at a rate of once per minute over several decades, or be manufactured from asteroids directly in orbit. When summarizing these options in 2009, the Royal Society concluded that their deployment times are measured in decades and costs in the trillions of USD, meaning that they are "not realistic potential contributors to short-term, temporary measures for avoiding dangerous climate change", and may only be competitive with the other geoengineering approaches when viewed from a genuinely long (a century or more) perspective, as the long lifetime of L1-based approaches could make them cheaper than the need to continually renew atmospheric-based measures over that timeframe.Relatively few researchers have revisited the subject since that Royal Society review, as it became accepted that space-based approaches would cost about 1000 times more than their terrestrial alternatives. In 2022, the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report had discussed SAI, MCB, CCT and even attempts to alter albedo on the ground or in the ocean, yet completely ignored space-based approaches. There are still some proponents, who argue that unlike stratospheric aerosol injection, space-based approaches are advantageous because they do not interfere directly with the biosphere and ecosystems. After the IPCC report was published, three astronomers have revisited the space dust concept, instead advocating for a lunar colony which would continuously mine the Moon in order to eject lunar dust into space on a trajectory where it would interfere with sunlight streaming towards the Earth. Ejections would have to be near-continuous, as since the dust would scatter in a matter of days, and about 10 million tons would have to be dug out and launched annually. The authors admit that they lack a background in either climate or rocket science, and the proposal may not be logistically feasible.In 2021, researchers in Sweden considered building solar sails in the near-Earth orbit, which would then arrive to L1 point over 600 days one by one. Once they all form an array in situ, the combined 1.5 billion sails would have total area of 3.75 million square kilometers, while their combined mass is esimated in a range between 83 million tons (present-day technology) and 34 million tons (optimal advancements). This proposal would cost between five and ten trillion dollars, but only once launch cost has been reduced to US$50/kg, which represents a massive reduction from the present-day costs of $4400-$2700/kg for the most widely used launch vehicles. In July 2022, a pair of researchers from MIT Senseable City Lab, Olivia Borgue and Andreas M. Hein, have instead proposed integrating nanotubes made out of silicon dioxide into ultra-thin polymeric films (described as "space bubbles" in the media ), whose semi-transparent nature would allow them to resist the pressure of solar wind at L1 point better than any alternative with the same weight. The use of these "bubbles" would limit the mass of a distributed sunshade roughly the size of Brazil to about 100,000 tons, much lower than the earlier proposals. However, it would still require between 399 and 899 yearly launches of a vehicle such as SpaceX Starship for a period of around 10 years, even though the production of the bubbles themselves would have to be done in space. The flights would not begin until research into production and maintenance of these bubbles is completed, which the authors estimate would require a minimum of 10–15 years. After that, the space shield may be large enough by 2050 to prevent crossing of the 2 °C (3.6 °F) threshold. Governance Solar geoengineering poses several governance challenges because of its high leverage, low apparent direct costs, and technical feasibility as well as issues of power and jurisdiction. Solar geoengineering does require widespread engagement with community and stakeholders, not to incur in a multitude of challenges and barriers to the research, testing and deployment of novel technology. Because international law is generally consensual, this creates a challenge of participation that is the inverse of that of mitigation to reduce climate change, where widespread participation is required. Discussions are broadly on who will have control over the deployment of solar geoengineering and under what governance regime the deployment can be monitored and supervised. A governance framework for solar geoengineering must be sustainable enough to contain a multilateral commitment over a long period of time and yet be flexible as information is acquired, the techniques evolve, and interests change through time. Legal and regulatory systems may face a significant challenge in effectively regulating solar geoengineering in a manner that allows for an acceptable result for society. Some researchers have suggested that building a global agreement on solar geoengineering deployment will be very difficult, and instead power blocs are likely to emerge. There are, however, significant incentives for states to cooperate in choosing a specific solar geoengineering policy, which make unilateral deployment a rather unlikely event.In 2021, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released their consensus study report Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance, concluding:" [A] strategic investment in research is needed to enhance policymakers' understanding of climate response options. The United States should develop a transdisciplinary research program, in collaboration with other nations, to advance understanding of solar geoengineering's technical feasibility and effectiveness, possible impacts on society and the environment, and social dimensions such as public perceptions, political and economic dynamics, and ethical and equity considerations. The program should operate under robust research governance that includes such elements as a research code of conduct, a public registry for research, permitting systems for outdoor experiments, guidance on intellectual property, and inclusive public and stakeholder engagement processes. Public attitudes and politics There have been a handful of studies into attitudes to and opinions of solar geoengineering. These generally find low levels of awareness, uneasiness with the implementation of solar geoengineering, cautious support of research, and a preference for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. As is often the case with public opinions regarding emerging issues, the responses are highly sensitive to the questions' particular wording and context. Although most public opinion studies have polled residents of developed countries, those that have examined residents of developing countries—which tend to be more vulnerable to climate change impacts—find slightly greater levels of support there.There are many controversies surrounding this topic and hence, solar geoengineering has become a very political issue. No countries have an explicit government position on solar geoengineering. Support for solar geoengineering research comes almost entirely from those who are concerned about climate change. Some observers claim that political conservatives, opponents of action to reduce climate change, and fossil fuel firms are major advocates of solar geoengineering research. However, only a handful of conservatives and opponents of climate action have expressed support, and there is no evidence that fossil fuel firms are involved in solar geoengineering research. Instead, these claims often conflate solar geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal—where fossil fuel firms are involved—under the broader term "geoengineering." As noted, the interests and roles of developing countries are particularly important. The Degrees Initiative works toward "changing the global environment in which SRM is evaluated, ensuring informed and confident representation from developing countries." Among other activities, it provides grants to researchers in the Global South. In 2021, researchers at Harvard were forced to put plans for a solar geoengineering test on hold after Indigenous Sámi people objected to the test taking place in their homeland. Although the test would not have involved any immediate atmospheric experiments, members of the Saami Council spoke out against the lack of consultation and solar geoengineering more broadly. Speaking at a panel organized by the Center for International Environmental Law and other groups, Saami Council Vice President Åsa Larsson Blind said, "This goes against our worldview that we as humans should live and adapt to nature." See also Climate engineering Cloud seeding Passive daytime radiative cooling Weather Modification Operations and Research Board == References ==

environmental issues in haiti

Environmental issues in Haiti include a historical deforestation problem, overpopulation, a lack of sanitation, natural disasters, and food insecurity. The major reasons for these environmental issues are corruption, human exploitation, and the embezzlement of taxpayers' funds for personal gains. In addition, there is not sufficient protection or management of the country's natural resources. Other environmental issues, such as decreases in precipitation and more severe natural disasters, will likely arise in Haiti as a result of climate change. Experts agree that Haiti needs to adopt new policies to address both the issues that already exist and to prepare for the effects of climate change. Issues Deforestation Deforestation in Haiti occurred primarily during the colonial period, and later after the Haitian Revolution to pay a post-independence war indemnity to France. Deforestation has led to soil erosion by decreasing tree cover and leaving soil exposed. In the present era, arboreal fallow, or trees cleared for agricultural production, are then transformed into charcoal as a secondary agricultural by-product. Today, 'primary' forest cover in Haiti is estimated at less than 1% of all land area. In an earlier study using the Food and Agricultural Organization (United Nations) global standard definition for 'forest', which includes areas that have been degraded by as much as 90% (10% canopy), approximately 30% of Haiti was estimated to be covered with trees and/or forests. However, because the United Nations definition does not distinguish between areas that have been previously deforested and those never deforested (primary forest), and the use of different canopy cover values can yield different per cent forest cover values, and because primary forest is the most important forest for the preservation of biodiversity, it is argued that only the value of <1% primary forest is relevant for environmental issues in Haiti because it addresses both deforestation and biodiversity.Haiti had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.01/10, ranking it 137th globally out of 172 countries. Charcoal Charcoal production and consumption in Haiti is a widely misunderstood phenomenon. Charcoal is the primary source of energy for Haitian residents. The UN reported that 92% of Haitian households rely on charcoal for cooking, and approximately 10,000 bags of charcoal are burned daily in Haiti.Media has popularly portrayed Haitians as engaged in a widespread and lucrative illegal market for charcoal in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Conservative estimates calculate the illegal movement of 115 tons of charcoal per week from the Dominican Republic to Haiti in 2014. Dominican officials estimate that at least 10 trucks per week are crossing the border loaded with charcoal. However new research and charcoal export data from the Dominican Republic indicate the flow of charcoal into Haiti has declined as Dominicans have found more lucrative charcoal markets in the United States and the Middle East. Agriculture It was once believed that Haiti's reliance on agriculture to support its economy is another primary reason for deforestation. 66.4% of the land in Haiti is used for agricultural purposes. Reallocating land for forest means a reduction in land available for cultivation of crops, and currently the land available is insufficient to keep pace with the growing population of Haiti. Additionally, insecure property rights discourage forest management; the possibility that tenants will reap the benefits of land conservation is reduced because it is possible that they may lose that property in the future. The Haitian government could encourage citizens to preserve forested land through the strengthening of property rights, as this would create greater responsibility of land use. Currently, there is a lack of off-farm opportunities; many rural residents depend on agriculture for their livelihood. An increase in off-farm employment could minimize deforestation, as this would potentially reduce the need for households to clear forest for crop. Overpopulation Early researchers claimed that an increasing Haitian population contributed to the degradation of the environment. However, recent research places Haiti as the country with the lowest per capita ecological footprint in the world.Haiti can be characterized as a low-income, high-density nation. As of 2012, Haiti's population count was at 10.6 million. The UN estimates that 52% of the population lived in urban areas in 2011, with an annual 3.9% annual increase in population in urban areas. Low-income individuals are largely concentrated in urban areas, especially Port-au-Prince, and are subject to poor environmental quality, human health, and quality of life. Port-au-Prince's urban environmental quality is further reduced by its poor infrastructure, lack of government management, and its subjectivity to natural disasters, as a result of being located on the coast. As the population of urban areas in Haiti grows it is hard to update the already poor infrastructure to meet the needs of so many people. When an abundance of people don't have an adequate waste management system, it can have devastating effects on the environment through air and water pollution. Studies show that more than 60% of Haitians live in low environmental quality urban areas near the coast, such as Port-au-Prince. Environmental quality can be measured by assessing the domestic environment, public environment, physical environment and atmosphere. The areas with the lowest environmental quality have the highest population density and are subject to pollution and an array of natural hazards, which can destroy natural resources and cause environmental degradation. These individuals face a situation of environmental injustice. In rural areas, overpopulation causes over-cultivation of land and therefore soil erosion, as nutrients are quickly depleted from the soil. Although many Haitian farmers are aware of the effects of their practices on the soil, they are often reluctant to change their practices because political and economic factors, such as insecure property rights and high prices of capital, prohibit them from adopting proper technologies. Lack of sanitation The lack of sanitation and sewerage treatment in Haiti has led to an inadequate supply of safe drinking water. City sewerage systems are insufficient, and many citizens have to use septic tanks. Local drainage systems primarily consist of open channels dug along the side of the road. The densely populated capital of Port-au-Prince is especially at risk for water-borne diseases, with many of its citizens residing on flood plains in poorly constructed housing and a generally under-developed waste management system. Only 46% of the urban population has access to safe water, and in 2012 only 55% of people in urban areas had "improved sanitation", which consisted of using a latrine. Natural disasters make water sanitation even worse, as latrines and channels on the side of the road often overflow with large amounts of rain. A 2012 study after hurricane season found that less than 10% of households were drinking treated water a week after a storm. Cholera Cholera has become one of the leading issues facing Haiti, and its recurrence is largely due to Haiti's poor sanitation system. A Cholera epidemic was reported in Haiti in October 2010 after the infection was brought to the country by peacekeeping troops providing aid after a devastating earthquake struck the region. Infections have continued to occur since the initial epidemic, which raises questions as to whether there is an established environmental reservoir of Cholera in Haiti. Environmental reservoirs are environmental sources where the bacterium can survive between outbreaks of the disease. There is evidence that conditions are appropriate for Cholera to establish environmental reservoirs in the water of Haiti. The establishment of environmental reservoirs would make it nearly impossible to eradicate the disease from Haiti, and increase the chance of transmission of the disease neighbouring countries. Both improving sanitation and monitoring potential environmental reservoirs are necessary to reduce the spread of Cholera throughout Haiti. Effects of climate change Haiti's position as a southern island nation makes it particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change. Factors that make Haiti more vulnerable than other Caribbean nations, such as the Dominican Republic, are its higher population density, extensive deforestation, extreme soil erosion, and high income-inequality. Several effects of increased intensity of tropical storms, depleted coral reefs, and desertification. Since 1960 the mean annual rainfall has decreased by 5mm per month per decade, and mean temperatures have increased by 0.45 °C. The combination of increased temperatures and decreased rainfall will likely lead to the intensification of drought conditions, especially in the centre of the country. According to the IPCC climate change predictions for 2050, more than 50% of Haiti will be in danger of desertification. The frequency of hot days and nights has increased, while the frequency of cold days and nights have steadily decreased. Sea-level rise is projected to rise between 0.13 and 0.56 m by 2090. The US Climate Change Science program estimates that with each 1 °C increase in temperature, hurricane rainfall will increase by 6–17% and hurricane wind speeds will increase by 1–8%. Natural disasters As a small Caribbean country, Haiti is often the victim of intense natural disasters such as hurricanes, tropical storms, and earthquakes, which have a large impact on both Haiti's environment and its citizens. The intensity of Atlantic hurricanes in Haiti has increased substantially since 1980. These storms frequently result in loss of human life, loss of livestock, destruction of agriculture, soil erosion, a spike in water-borne diseases, and decreased food security. Tropical storms often also lead to flooding, which is one of the leading causes of vulnerability in Haiti. Flooding often occurs in Haiti's most populous cities, which are located in valleys along the coast. Large amounts of rain, barren hills resulting from deforestation, and poor drainage infrastructure leave Haiti especially susceptible to flooding after tropical storms. Landslides also often result from the rain accompanying a tropical storm since much of the soil has eroded as a result of deforestation. From 1980 to 2009, Haiti had more deaths due to natural disasters than any other country in the insular Caribbean. The majority of deaths were caused by flooding or landslides, which resulted from the heavy rains of tropical storms combined with the unstable slopes left from deforestation. Poor infrastructure makes it difficult for people to cope with natural disasters on a basic level. A significant reason why other Caribbean countries experience lower death rates than Haiti is that their investment in physical infrastructure and human resources have led to risk reduction and successful disaster management. In Haiti, inability to evacuate leads to a much larger loss of life than a country with good public infrastructure and paved roads would experience in the same situation. Unfortunately, Haiti lacks both climate-resilient infrastructure and the funds to construct it. Food insecurity Roughly 40% of the total land in Haiti is farmed, with agriculture being the basis of the country's economy. Given agriculture's high dependence on natural ecosystem services, farming systems are at high risk to be negatively affected by climate change and climate-induced shocks. Food security is poor in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, and more erratic and unpredictable rainfall will place strain on the agriculture industry in the future. Following the hurricanes of 2012, about 70% of Haitian residents reported suffering from moderate or severe hunger, and more than two-thirds of farmers reported having crops destroyed, losing materials to plant new crops, or losing farming equipment. A warning system to aid farmers in preparing for these natural disasters would be an efficient way to reduce the impact of storms on the agricultural system. The farming sector will also have to build resilience against drought and water scarcity as rainfall patterns change. Drought particularly affects the Northwest, Artibonite, and Centre departments of Haiti. Erratic rainfall patterns and poor water management infrastructure cause droughts, which destroy crops, reduce agricultural production, and decrease food security. Improved infrastructure could play a role in increasing food security, as Haiti largely relies on small rural farms and struggles to transport enough food from the countryside to village markets and urban centres. Specific improvements needed to aid the Haitian food system are improved public infrastructure and more paved roads. References Bibliography Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin Books, 2005 and 2011 (ISBN 9780241958681). See chapter 11 entitled "One Island, Two People, Two Histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti".

climate change and sexual and reproductive health and rights in africa

Climate change is a global phenomenon with wide-ranging and profound impacts on various aspects of human life. Beyond its well-known environmental consequences, climate change significantly affects human health, including the realm of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs). Nowhere are these impacts more pronounced than in Africa, a continent that is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to its socio-economic, geographic, and ecological factors. Understanding the intersection between climate change and SRHRs is crucial for developing holistic and effective strategies to address these interconnected challenges.According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), climate change has a significant impact on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) in Africa. The report states that barriers to the realization of SRHR inhibit progress toward gender equality and may impede climate action. At the same time, the impacts of climate change may negatively affect SRHR, for example, through interruptions in sexual and reproductive health services caused by extreme weather events. Climate Change and Health Impacts on SRHRs Climate change issues have negative impacts on maternal health and create conditions that result in increases in gender-based violence, including harmful practices such as child marriage. Climate-related disasters may strain the capacity of health systems and hinder access to SRHR services. The consequences of climate change are diverse, severe, and predicted to worsen over the coming years Even if temperature changes are maintained in line with the Paris Agreement (that is to limit temperature increases to below 2 °C, and preferably below 1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels), there will be significant impacts on biodiversity, water availability, food security, and health. Impacts on Women and Girls The effects of climate change disproportionately affect women and girls, who often bear the brunt of its consequences. When climate-related disasters strike, women and girls face heightened vulnerabilities, putting them at greater risk of gender-based violence. Displacement from their homes can lead to early marriages for young girls as their families struggle to provide for them. Child marriage exposes girls to higher risks of intimate partner violence due to power imbalances in these relationships.Climate change has far-reaching consequences for SRHRs, particularly in regions like Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Sahel. Women and girls face specific vulnerabilities, including gender-based violence and limited access to healthcare services during climate-related disasters. The lack of resources, such as clean water and menstrual products, further hampers their ability to manage their health with dignity. Marginalized groups and those with disabilities are disproportionately affected, as climate change exacerbates existing challenges. Challenges in Accessing SRHR Services During climate-related disasters, healthcare services, including sexual and reproductive health services, are often limited or unavailable. This lack of access leaves women without the necessary medical support during childbirth, risking their health and that of their newborns. Additionally, the absence of clean water and menstrual products hinders women's and girls' ability to manage menstruation with dignity, further impacting their SRHRs. Exacerbation of Vulnerabilities for Marginalized Groups For marginalized and vulnerable populations, as well as those with disabilities, the impact of climate change compounds their existing challenges and vulnerabilities. These groups face additional barriers in accessing healthcare, adapting to changing environmental conditions, and recovering from climate-related disasters. The intersectionality of social, economic, and health disparities further exacerbates their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. == References ==

water security

The aim of water security is to make the most of water's benefits for humans and ecosystems. The second aim is to limit the risks of destructive impacts of water to an acceptable level. These risks include for example too much water (flood), too little water (drought and water scarcity) or poor quality (polluted) water. People who live with a high level of water security always have access to "an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods and production". For example, access to water, sanitation and hygiene services is one part of water security. Some organizations use the term water security more narrowly for water supply aspects only. Decision makers and water managers aim to reach water security goals that address multiple concerns. These outcomes can include increasing economic and social well-being while reducing risks tied to water. There are linkages and trade-offs between the different outcomes.: 13  Planners often consider water security effects for varied groups when they design climate change reduction strategies.: 19–21 Three main factors determine how difficult or easy it is for a society to sustain its water security. These include the hydrologic environment, the socio-economic environment and changes in the future environment. This last is mainly due to climate change. Decision makers may assess water security risks at varied levels. These range from the household to community, city, basin, country and region.: 11 The absence of water security is water insecurity.: 5  Water insecurity is a growing threat to societies.: 4  The main factors contributing to water insecurity are water scarcity, water pollution and low water quality due to climate change impacts. Others include poverty, destructive forces of water, and disasters that stem from natural hazards. Climate change affects water security in many ways. Changing rainfall patterns, including droughts, can have a big impact on water availability. Flooding can worsen water quality. Stronger storms can damage infrastructure, especially in the Global South.: 660 There are different ways to deal with water insecurity. Science and engineering approaches can increase the water supply or make water use more efficient. Financial and economic tools can include a safety net to ensure access for poorer people. Management tools such as demand caps can improve water security.: 16  They work on strengthening institutions and information flows. They may also improve water quality management, reduce inequalities and investment in water infrastructure. Improving the climate resilience of water and hygiene services is important. These efforts help to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development.There is no single method to measure water security.: 562  Metrics of water security roughly fall into two groups. This includes those that are based on experiences versus metrics that are based on resources. The former mainly focus on measuring the water experiences of households and human well-being. The latter tend to focus on freshwater stores or water resources security. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report found that increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security. Scientists have observed the largest impacts in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Small Islands and the Arctic.: 9   The report predicted that global warming of 2 °C would expose roughly 1-4 billion people to water stress. It finds 1.5-2.5 billion people live in areas exposed to water scarcity.: 660 Definitions Broad definition There are various definitions for the term water security.: 5  It emerged as a concept in the 21st century. It is broader than the absence of water scarcity. It differs from the concepts of food security and energy security. Whereas those concepts cover reliable access to food or energy, water security covers not only the absence of water but also its presence when there is too much of it.One definition of water security is "the reliable availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks".A similar definition of water security by UN-Water is: "the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.": 1 World Resources Institute also gave a similar definition in 2020. "For purposes of this report, we define water security as the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socioeconomic development; protect against water pollution and water-related disasters; and preserve ecosystems, upon which clean water availability and other ecosystem services depend.": 17 Narrower definition with a focus on water supply Some organizations use water security in a more specific sense to refer to water supply only. They do not consider the water-related risks of too much water. For example, the definition of WaterAid in 2012 focuses on water supply issues. They defined water security as "reliable access to water of sufficient quantity and quality for basic human needs, small-scale livelihoods and local ecosystem services, coupled with a well managed risk of water-related disasters".: 5  The World Water Council also uses this more specific approach with a focus on water supply. "Water security refers to the availability of water, in adequate quantity and quality, to sustain all these needs together (social and economic sectors, as well as the larger needs of the planet's ecosystems) – without exceeding its ability to renew." Relationship with WASH and IWRM WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) is an important concept when we discuss water security. Access to WASH services is one part of achieving water security. The relationship works both ways. To be sustainable, WASH services need to address water security issues.: 4  For example WASH relies on water resources that are part of the water cycle. But climate change has many impacts on the water cycle which can threaten water security.: vII  There is also growing competition for water. This reduces the availability of water resources in many areas in the world.: 4 Water security incorporates ideas and concepts to do with the sustainability, integration and adaptiveness of water resource management. In the past, experts used terms such as integrated water resources management (IWRM) or sustainable water management for this. Related concepts Water risk Water risk refers to the possibility of problems to do with water. Examples are water scarcity, water stress, flooding, infrastructure decay and drought.: 4  There exists an inverse relationship between water risk and water security. This means as water risk increases, water security decreases. Water risk is complex and multilayered. It includes risks flooding and drought. These can lead to infrastructure failure and worsen hunger. When these disasters take place, they result in water scarcity or other problems. The potential economic effects of water risk are important to note. Water risks threaten entire industries. Examples are the food and beverage sector, agriculture, oil and gas and utilities. Agriculture uses 69% of total freshwater in the world. So this industry is very vulnerable to water stress.Risk is a combination of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Examples of hazards are droughts, floods and decline in quality. Bad infrastructure and bad governance lead to high exposure to risk. The financial sector is becoming more aware of the potential impacts of water risk and the need for its proper management. By 2025, water risk will threaten $145 trillion in assets under management.To control water risk, companies can develop water risk management plans. Stakeholders within financial markets can use these plans to measure company environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. They can then identify leaders in water risk management. The World Resources Institute has developed an online water data platform named Aqueduct for risk assessment and water management. China Water Risk is a nonprofit dedicated to understanding and managing water risk in China. The World Wildlife Fund has a Water Risk Filter that helps companies assess and respond to water risk with scenarios for 2030 and 2050.Understanding risk is part of water security policy. But it is also important to take social equity considerations more into account.There is no wholly accepted theory or mathematical model for determining or managing water risk.: 13  Instead, managers use a range of theories, models and technologies to understand the trade-offs that exist in responding to risk. Water conflict Desired outcomes There are three groups of water security outcomes. These include economic, environmental and equity (or social) outcomes. Outcomes are things that are happening or that we want to see happen as a result of policy and management: Economic outcomes: Sustainable growth which takes changing water needs and threats into account. Sustainable growth includes job creation, increased productivity and standards of living.Environmental outcomes: Quality and availability of water for the ecosystems services that depend on this water resource. Loss of freshwater biodiversity and depletion of groundwater are examples of negative environmental outcomes. Equity or social outcomes: Inclusive services so that consumers, industry and agriculture can access safe, reliable, sufficient and affordable water. These also mean they can dispose of wastewater safely. This area includes gender issues, empowerment, participation and accountability.There are four major focus areas for water security and its outcomes. It is about using water so that we increase economic and social welfare, move towards long-term sustainability or reduce risks tied to water. Decision makers and water managers must consider the linkages and trade-offs between the varied types of outcomes.: 13 Improving water security is a key factor to achieve growth, development that is sustainable and reduce poverty. Water security is also about social justice and fair distribution of environmental benefits and harms. Development that is sustainable can help reduce poverty and increase living standards. This is most likely to benefit those affected by the impacts of insecure water resources in the region, especially women and children. Water security is important for attaining most of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is because access to adequate and safe water is a precondition for meeting many of the individual goals.: 4–8  It is also important for attaining development that is resilient to climate change.: 4–7  Planners take note of water security outcomes for various groups in society when they design strategies for climate change adaptation.: 19–21 Determining factors Three main factors determine the ability of a society to sustain water security: Hydrologic environment Socio-economic environment Changes in the future environment (climate change) Hydrologic environment The hydrologic environment is important for water security. The term hydrologic environment refers to the "absolute level of water resource availability". But it also refers to how much it varies in time and location. Inter-annual means from one year to the next, Intra-annual means from one season to the next. We can refer to location as spatial distribution. Scholars distinguish between a hydrologic environment that is easy to manage and one that is difficult.An easy to manage hydrologic environment would be one with low rainfall variability. In this case rain is distributed throughout the year and perennial river flows sustained by groundwater base flows. For example, many of the world's industrialized nations have a hydrologic environment that they can manage quite easily. This has helped them achieve water security early in their development.A difficult to manage hydrologic environment is one with absolute water scarcity such as deserts or low-lying lands prone to severe flood risk. Regions where rainfall is very variable from one season to the next, or regions where rainfall varies a lot from one year to the next are also likely to face water security challenges. We call this high inter-annual climate variability. An example would be East Africa, where there have been prolonged droughts every two to three years since 1999. Most of the world's developing countries have challenges in managing hydrologies and have not achieved water security. This is not a coincidence.The poverty and hydrology hypothesis states that there is a link between poverty and difficult hydrologies. It posits that regions with a difficult hydrology remain poor because the respective governments have not been able to make the large investments necessary to achieve water security. Examples of such regions would be those with rainfall variability within one year and across several years. This leads to water insecurity which constrains economic growth. There is a statistical link between increased changes in rainfall patterns and lower per capita incomes. Socio-economic environment The social and economic status also has an effect on the likelihood of a society to reach water security. This refers to the structure of the economy, conduct of people and firms, existing nature and culture, and policy choices. It also includes water infrastructure and institutions, macroeconomic structure and resilience, risk, and the behavior of economic actors. Climate change Impacts of climate change that are tied to water, affect people's water security on a daily basis. They include more frequent and intense heavy precipitation which affects the frequency, size and timing of floods. Also droughts can alter the total amount of freshwater and cause a decline in groundwater storage, and reduction in groundwater recharge. Reduction in water quality due to extreme events can also occur.: 558  Faster melting of glaciers can also occur.Global climate change will probably make it more complex and expensive to ensure water security. It creates new threats and adaptation challenges. This is because climate change leads to increased hydrological variability and extremes. Climate change has many impacts on the water cycle. These result in higher climatic and hydrological variability, which can threaten water security.: vII  Changes in the water cycle threaten existing and future water infrastructure. It will be harder to plan investments for future water infrastructure as there are so many uncertainties about future variability for the water cycle. This makes societies more exposed to risks of extreme events linked to water and therefore reduces water security.: vII Climate change is about uncertainty. So it is an important long-term risk to water security.: 21  On the other hand, future climate change is only one of many existing challenges for water security. These include high levels of weather changes in warmer areas, population growth and increased demand for water resources. Others include political challenges, increased disaster exposure due to settlement in hazard-prone areas, and environmental degradation.: 22  Water demand for irrigation in agriculture will increase due to climate change. This is because evaporation rates and the rate of water loss from crops will be higher due to rising temperatures.: 4 Climate factors have a major effect on water security as various levels. Geographic variability in water availability, reliability of rainfall and vulnerability to droughts, floods and cyclones are inherent hazards that affect development opportunities. These play out at international to intra-basin scales. At local scales, social vulnerability is a factor that increases the risks to water security, no matter the cause.: 6  For example, people affected by poverty may have less ability to cope with climate shocks. Challenges and threats There are many factors that contribute to low water security. Some examples are:: 4 : 9  Water scarcity: Water demand exceeds supply in many regions of the world. This can be due to population growth, higher living standards, general economic expansion and/or greater quantities of water used in agriculture for irrigation. Increasing water pollution and low levels of wastewater treatment, which is making local water unusable. Poor planning of water use, poor water management and misuse. These can cause groundwater levels to drop, rivers and lakes to dry out, and local ecosystems to collapse. Trans-boundary waters and international rivers which belong to several countries. Country borders often do not align with natural watersheds. One reason is that international borders result from boundaries during colonialism. Climate change. This makes water-related disasters such as droughts and floods more frequent and intense; rising temperatures and sea levels can contaminate freshwater sources.: 9 Water scarcity A major threat to water security is water scarcity. About 27% of the world's population lived in areas affected by water scarcity in the mid-2010s. This number will likely increase to 42% by 2050. Water pollution Water pollution is a threat to water security. It can affect the supply of drinking water and indirectly contribute to water scarcity. Reduced water quality due to climate change Weather and its related shocks can affect water quality in several ways. These depend on the local climate and context. Shocks that are linked to weather include water shortages, heavy rain and temperature extremes. They can damage water infrastructure through erosion under heavy rainfall and floods, cause loss of water sources in droughts, and make water quality deteriorate.Climate change can reduce lower water quality in several ways:: 582  Heavy rainfall can rapidly reduce the water quality in rivers and shallow groundwater. It can affect water quality in reservoirs even if these effects can be slow. Heavy rainfall also impacts groundwater in deeper, unfractured aquifers. But these impacts are less pronounced. Rainfall can increase fecal contamination of water sources. Floods after heavy rainfalls can mix floodwater with wastewater. Also pollutants can reach water bodies by increased surface runoff. Groundwater quality may deteriorate due to droughts. The pollution in rivers that feed groundwater becomes less diluted. As groundwater levels drop, rivers may lose direct contact with groundwater. In coastal regions, more saltwater may mix into freshwater aquifers due to sea level rise and more intense storms.: 16  This process is called saltwater intrusion. Warmer water in lakes, oceans, reservoirs and rivers can cause more eutrophication. This results in more frequent harmful algal blooms.: 140  Higher temperatures cause problems for water bodies and aquatic ecosystems because warmer water contains less oxygen. Permafrost thawing leads to an increased flux of contaminants. Increased meltwater from glaciers may release contaminants. As glaciers shrink or disappear, the positive effect of seasonal meltwater on downstream water quality through dilution is disappearing. Poverty People in low-income countries are at greater risk of water insecurity. This can result in human suffering, sustained poverty, constrained growth and social unrest. Destructive forces of water Water can cause large-scale destruction due to its huge power. This destruction can result from sudden events. Examples are tsunamis, floods or landslides. Events that happen slowly over time such as erosion, desertification or water pollution can also cause destruction. Other threats Other threats to water security include: Disasters caused by natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires. These can damage man-made structures such as dams and fill waterways with debris; Some climate change mitigation measures which need a lot of water. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, afforestation and reforestation may use relatively large amounts of water if done at inappropriate locations".: 4–8  We call this a high water footprint. Terrorism such as water supply terrorism; Radiation due to a nuclear accident; New water uses such as hydraulic fracturing for energy resources; Armed conflict and migration. Migration can be due to water scarcity at the origin or it can lead to more water scarcity at the target destinations.: 9 Management approaches There are different ways to tackle water insecurity. Science and engineering approaches can increase the water supply or make water use more efficient. Financial and economic tools can be used as a safety net for poorer people. Higher prices may encourage more investments in water systems. Finally, management tools such as demand caps can improve water security.: 16, 104  Decision makers invest in institutions, information flows and infrastructure to achieve a high level of water security. Investment decisions Institutions The right institutions are important to improve water security. Institutions govern how decisions can promote or constrain water security outcomes for the poor. Strengthening institutions might involve reallocating risks and duties between the state, market and communities in new ways. This can include performance-based models, development impact bonds, or blended finance from government, donors and users. These finance mechanisms are set up to work jointly with state, private sector and communities investors.: 37 Sustainable Development Goal 16 is about peace, justice and strong institutions. It recognizes that strong institutions are a necessary condition for sustainable development, including water security.: 35 Drinking water quality and water pollution are linked. But policymakers often do not address them in a comprehensive way. For example, pollution from industries is often not linked to drinking water quality in developing countries.: 32  Keeping track of river, groundwater and wastewater is important. It can identify sources of contamination and guide targeted regulatory responses. The WHO has described water safety plans as the most effective means of maintaining a safe supply of drinking water to the public. Information flows It is important for institutions to have access to information about water. This helps them with their planning and decision-making. It also helps with tracking how accountable and effective policies are. Investments into climate information tools that are appropriate for the local context are useful.: 59  They cover a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. They also respond to regional climate risks tied to water.: 58 Seasonal climate and hydrological forecasts can be useful to prepare for and reduce water security risks. They are especially useful if people can apply them at the local scale. Applying knowledge of how climate anomalies relate to each other over long distances can improve seasonal forecasts for specific regions. These teleconnections are correlations between patterns of rainfall, temperature, and wind speed between distant areas. They are caused by large-scale ocean and atmospheric circulation. In regions where rainfall varies with the seasons and from year to year, water managers would like to have more accurate seasonal weather forecasts. In some locations the onset of seasonal rainfall is particularly hard to predict. This is because aspects of the climate system are difficult to describe with mathematical models. For example, the long rains in East Africa which fall March to May have been difficult to simulate with climate models. When climate models work well they can produce useful seasonal forecasts. One reason for these difficulties is the complex topography of the area. Improved understanding of atmospheric processes may allow climate scientists to provide more relevant and localized information to water managers on a seasonal timescale. They could also provide more detailed predictions for the effects of climate change on a longer timeframe.One example would be seasonal forecasts of rainfall in Ethiopia's Awash river basin. These may become more accurate by understanding better how sea surface temperatures in different ocean regions relate to rainfall patterns in this river basin. At a larger regional scale, a better understanding of the relationship between pressure systems in the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic on the one hand, and wind speeds and rainfall patterns in the Greater Horn of Africa on the other hand would be helpful. This kind of scientific analysis may contribute to improved representation of this region in climate models to assist development planning. It could also guide people when they plan water allocation in the river basin or prepare emergency response plans for future events of water scarcity and flooding. Infrastructure Water infrastructure serves to access, store, regulate, move and conserve water. Several assets carry out these functions. Natural assets are lakes, rivers, wetlands, aquifers, springs. Engineered assets are bulk water management infrastructure, such as dams. Examples include: Improved water storage: using natural water storage systems such as aquifers and wetlands or built infrastructure such as storage tanks and dams. Using new water sources to add to the existing water supplies. This can be done through water reuse, desalination, rainwater harvesting and groundwater pumping. Embankments (or levee or dike) for flood protection.Public and private spending on water infrastructure and supporting institutions must be well balanced. They are likely to evolve over time. This is important to avoid unplanned social and environmental costs from building new facilities. For example, in the case of Africa, investments into groundwater use is an option to increase water security and for climate change adaptation. Water security in African countries could benefit from the distribution of groundwater storage and recharge on the continent. Recharge is a process where water moves to groundwater. Many countries that have low recharge have substantial groundwater storage. Countries with low storage typically have high, regular recharge. Consideration of scales People manage water security risks at different spatial scales. These range from the household to community, town, city, basin and region.: 11  At the local scale, actors include county governments, schools, water user groups, local water providers and the private sector. At the next larger scale there are basin and national level actors. These actors help to identify any constraints with regards to policy, institutions and investments. Lastly, there are global actors such as the World Bank, UNICEF, FCDO, WHO and USAID. They help to develop suitable service delivery models.: 11 The physical geography of a country shows the correct scale that planners should use for managing water security risks. Even within a country, the hydrologic environment may vary a lot. See for example the variations in seasonal rainfall across Ethiopia. Reducing inequalities in water security Inequalities with regards to water security within a society have structural and historical roots. They can affect people at different scales. These range from the household, to the community, town, river basin or the region.: 20  High risk social groups and regions can be identified during political debates but are often ignored. Water inequality is often tied to gender in low-income countries. At the household level, women are often the "water managers". But they have limited choices over water and related issues.: 21 Improving climate resilience of water and sanitation services Many institutions are working to develop WASH services that are resilient to climate.: 27, 37 Measurement tools There is no single way to measure water security.: 562  There are no standard indicators to measure water security. That is because it is a concept that focuses on outcomes. The outcomes that are regard as important can change depending on the context and stakeholders. Instead, it is common to compare relative levels of water security by using metrics for certain aspects of water security.: 562  For example, the Global Water Security Index includes metrics on: availability (water scarcity index, drought index, groundwater depletion); accessibility to water services (access to sanitation and drinking water); safety and quality (water quality index, global flood frequency); management (World Governance Index, transboundary legal framework, transboundary political tension).Scientists have been working on ways to measure water security at a variety of levels. The metrics roughly fall into two groups. There are those that are based on experiences versus metrics that are based on resources. The former mainly focus on measuring the experiences of households and human well-being. Meanwhile the latter focuses on the amount of available freshwater.The Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale measures several components of water insecurity at the household level. These include adequacy, reliability, accessibility and safety. This scale can help to identify vulnerable subpopulations and ensure resources are allocated to those in need. It can also measure how effective of water policies and projects are. Global estimates The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report summarises the current and future water security trends. It says that increasing weather and extreme climate events have led to acute food insecurity and reduced water security for millions of people. The largest impacts are seen in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Small Islands and the Arctic.: 9 The same report predicted that global warming of 2 °C would expose roughly 1-4 billion people to water stress. This would depend on regional patterns of climate change and the socio-economic scenarios.: 558  On water scarcity which is one factor in water insecurity the report finds 1.5-2.5 billion people live water scarce areas.: 660 Water scarcity and water security are not always equal. There are regions with high water security even though they also experience water scarcity. Examples are parts of the United States, Australia and Southern Europe. This is due to efficient water services that have a high level of safety, quality, and accessibility.: 562  However, even in those regions, groups such as Indigenous peoples tend to have less access to water and face water insecurity at times.: 562 Country examples Bangladesh Risks to water security in Bangladesh include:: 45  natural hazards that related to the climate (climate hazards) some impacts of urbanization impacts from climate change such as changes to precipitation patterns and sea level rise.The country experiences water security risks in the capital Dhaka as well as in the coastal region. In Dhaka, monsoonal pulses can lead to urban flooding. This can pollute the water supply. A number of processes and events cause water risks for about 20 million people in the coastal regions. These include aquifers that are getting saltier, seasonal water scarcity, fecal contamination, and flooding from the monsoon and from storm surges due to cyclones.: 64 Different types of floods occur in coastal Bangladesh. They are: river floods, tidal floods and storm surge floods due to tropical cyclones. These floods can damage drinking water infrastructure. They can also lead to reduced water quality as well as losses in agricultural and fishery yields. There is a link between water insecurity and poverty in the low-lying areas in the Ganges-Brahmaputra tidal delta plain. Those low-lying areas are embanked areas in coastal Bangladesh. The government has various programs to reduce risks for people who live in coastal communities. These programs also lead to increases in economic wellbeing. Examples include the "Coastal Embankment Improvement Project" by World Bank in 2013, the BlueGold project in 2012, UNICEF's "Managed Aquifer Recharge" program in 2014 and the Bangladesh Delta Plan in 2014. Such investments in water security aim to increase the continued use and upkeep of water facilities. They can help coastal communities to escape the poverty trap caused by water insecurity.A program called the "SafePani framework" focuses on how the state shares risks and responsibilities with service providers and communities. This program aims to help decision makers to address climate risks through a process called climate resilient water safety planning. The program is a cooperation between UNICEF and the Government of Bangladesh. Ethiopia Ethiopia has two main wet seasons per year. It rains in the spring and summer. These seasonal patterns of rainfall vary a lot across the country. Western Ethiopia has a seasonal rainfall pattern that is similar to the Sahel. It has rainfall from February to November (which is decreasing to the north), and has peak rainfall from June to September. Southern Ethiopia has a rainfall pattern similar to the one in East Africa. There are two distinct wet seasons every year, February to May, and October to November. Central and eastern Ethiopia has some rainfall between February and November, with a smaller peak in rainfall from March to May and a second higher peak from June to September.In 2022 Ethiopia had one of the most severe La Niña-induced droughts in the last forty years. It came about due to four consecutive rainy seasons which did not produce enough rain. This drought increased water insecurity for more than 8 million pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in the Somali, Oromia, SNNP and South-West regions. About 7.2 million people needed food aid, and 4.4 million people needed help to access water. Food prices have increased a lot due to the drought conditions. Many people in the affected area have experienced food shortages due to the water insecurity situation.In the Awash basin in central Ethiopia floods and droughts are common. Agriculture in the basin is mainly rainfed (without irrigation systems). This applies to around 98% of total cropland as of 2012. So changes in rainfall patterns due to climate change will reduce economic activities in the basin. Rainfall shocks have a direct impact on agriculture. A rainfall decrease in the Awash basin could lead to a 5% decline in the basin's overall GDP. The agricultural GDP could even drop by as much as 10%.Partnerships with the Awash Basin Development Office (AwBDO) and the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity (MoWIE) have led to the development of new models of water allocation in the Awash basin. This can improve water security for the 18.3 million residents in the basin. With this they will have enough water for their domestic, irrigation and industry needs. Kenya Kenya ranked 46th out of 54 African countries in an assessment of water security in 2022. Major water security issues in Kenya include drinking water safety, water scarcity, lack of water storage, poor wastewater treatment, and drought and flood. Large-scale climate patterns influence the rainfall patterns in East Africa. Such climate patterns include the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Cooling in the Pacific Ocean during the La Niña phase of ENSO is linked with dryer conditions in Kenya. This can lead to drought as it did in 2016-17. On the other hand a warmer Western Indian Ocean due to a strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole caused extreme flooding in Kenya in 2020.Around 38% of Kenya's population and 70% of its livestock live in arid and semi-arid lands. These areas have low rainfall which varies a lot from one season to the next. This means that surface water and groundwater resources vary a lot by location and time of year. Residents in Northern Kenya are seeing increased changes in rainfall patterns and more frequent droughts. These changes affect livelihoods in this region where people have been living as migratory herders. They are used to herding livestock with a seasonal migration pattern. More people are now settling in small urban centers, and there is increasing conflict over water and other resources. Water insecurity is a feature of life for both settled and nomadic pastoralists. Women and children bear the burden for fetching water.Groundwater sources have great potential to improve water supply in Kenya. However, the use of groundwater is limited by low quality and knowledge, pumping too much groundwater, known as overdrafting, and salt water intrusion along coastal areas. Another challenge is the upkeep of groundwater infrastructure, mainly in rural areas. See also Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership Human right to water and sanitation Water footprint Water security in Australia Water security in the United States References External links International Water Security Network Water Security (an open source journal that started in 2017)

2019 united nations climate change conference

The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP25, was the 25th United Nations Climate Change conference. It was held in Madrid, Spain, from 2 to 13 December 2019 under the presidency of the Chilean government. The conference incorporated the 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 15th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP15), and the second meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA2). Prelude The conference was planned to be held in Brazil in November 2019, but a year before the planned start, newly-elected President Jair Bolsonaro withdrew the offer to host the event, citing economic reasons. Then Chile stepped up and became the new host, but massive protests against social inequality in the lead-up to the meeting forced it late October 2019 to withdraw from hosting. Then by mutual agreement between the UN, Chile, and Spain, the latter became the new host.Various climate activists had set out from Europe to South America by sailboat, before the decision had been taken to relocate COP25 to Madrid. In mid-November, some of these activists joined an alternative conference, the "Forest COP", near the centre of the Amazon jungle, in Terra do Meio. The event was attended by indigenous leaders, scientists and academics such as Eduardo Góes Neves, and activists such as Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. After the Forest COP, a follow-on event, "Amazônia Centro do Mundo" (Amazon: The Centre of the World) took place on 17 November in nearby Altamira. Event planning In November, Teresa Ribera, the Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, announced the conference would be held at the IFEMA facilities in Madrid. The Spanish government divided the COP25 into two zones, one blue and one green. The blue zone hosted sessions for negotiation between the parties of the COP. This included the 15th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol and the 2nd session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement. The blue zone also hosted events and activities run by NGO actors and side events organized by states other than Spain. The green zone was dedicated to civil society initiatives aiming to promote social participation. This area was divided into three thematic sub-zones: one involving youth events, the second designated to indigenous peoples, and the third focused on science and innovation. The green zone was intended to be an open-dialogue pavilion for all types of civil actors, ranging from NGOs to businesses, academia and sponsors.The event was supported among others by Iberdrola, Endesa, Santander, Suez, Telefonica, Fundación Abertis, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Acciona and Indra. Participants Harjeet Singh, of environmental group ActionAid International, said that moving the summit from Chile to Spain with only four weeks' notice presented "real barriers to participation" for delegates from the southern hemisphere.In August 2019, youth climate change activist Greta Thunberg and her father Svante sailed from Plymouth, England across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas in sailboat Malizia II to participate in the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City in September. At that time it was not clear how she was going to return to Europe, but she was planning to go on to Chile for the conference. With the move of the conference to Madrid, the need to return to Europe became more urgent. Teresa Ribera, as Spain's environment minister, offered her help in finding a way to travel to the conference. Riley Whitelum and his wife, Elayna Carausu, two Australians who had been sailing around the world aboard their 48-foot (15 m) catamaran, La Vagabonde, took Thunberg back across the Atlantic. On 13 November 2019, Thunberg set sail from Hampton, Virginia for Lisbon, Portugal. Her departing message was the same as it has been since she began her activism: "My message to the Americans is the same as to everyone – that is to unite behind the science and to act on the science." Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi led a 15-member Congressional delegation to the talks to demonstrate continued U.S. support for the negotiations, despite the Trump administration's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.Ecuadorian environmental activist Helena Gualinga participated. She spoke about her concern on the Ecuadorian government authorizing oil extraction in indigenous land. She said: "Our country's government is still granting our territories to the corporations responsible of climate change. This is criminal." She criticized the Ecuadorian government for claiming interest in protecting the Amazon during the conference instead of attending indigenous Amazon women's demands brought to the government during the 2019 Ecuadorian protests. She also expressed her disappointment towards world leaders' lack of interest to discuss topics brought by indigenous peoples to the conference.The International Union for Conservation of Nature presented research showing that the number of low-oxygen zones in the oceans is increasing. Negotiations The last part of the Paris regime that remains to be resolved is Article 6, which describes rules for a carbon market and other forms of international cooperation. In the COP24 conference no agreement could be reached on this topic. Several politically difficult decisions have to be made for this article. Negative emissions could be traded under the Kyoto Protocol to offset emissions by developed countries, but many of these negative emission projects would have happened anyway without the extra incentive from the Kyoto Protocol, so that this mechanism was described as 'hot air'. International trading of carbon can make overall emission cuts cheaper. If negotiations about this fail, it will come up again in 2020's COP26 (postponed to 2021).According to scientists, talks focused on some of the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris agreement, but the overriding issue of how fast the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions has received little official attention. Urgent UN talks on tackling the climate emergency are still not addressing the true scale of the crisis, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned.Negotiations concluded on 15 December 2019, two days after the stated deadline. Results The results of the conference were disappointing at a time when climate action and concrete measures are considered urgent. Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists who has attended climate negotiations since 1991, stated that he had never seen before the almost total disconnect between what the science requires and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of meaningful action. Greenpeace executive director Jennifer Morgan summarized the prevalent opinion: “Climate blockers like Brazil and Saudi Arabia, enabled by an irresponsibly weak Chilean leadership, peddled carbon deals and steamrolled scientists and civil society”. The decisions about the carbon market and emissions cuts were delayed to the next climate conference in Glasgow. The United States, Russia, India, China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia were the main opponents of these measures. On the other side, the European Union reached an agreement about the European Green Deal that should lower its emissions to zero by 2050. Also, many commitments were made by countries, cities, businesses and international coalitions. For example, the Climate Ambitious Coalition contains now "73 countries committed to net zero emissions by 2050, as well as a further 1214 actors (regions, cities, businesses, investors) who have pledged the same goal". All the information about the pledges (governmental and non-governmental) is streamed to the Global Climate Action portal.The Santiago Network was established at COP25. See also Voyage of Greta Thunberg Fourth Global Climate Strike (29 November 2019) References External links 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference 25th Website

global hunger index

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool that attempts to measure and track hunger globally as well as by region and by country, prepared by European NGOs of Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. The GHI is calculated annually, and its results appear in a report issued in October each year. The 2022 Global Hunger Index shows a dramatic hunger situation worldwide. Global progress in ending Hunger is at a near standstill. The main drivers of hunger are conflicts, the climate crisis, and the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. These drivers come on top of underlying factors such as poverty, inequality, inadequate governance. The situation is expected to continue to worsen in the face of overlapping global crises. Without fundamental changes, the goal of Zero Hunger by 2030 will not be achieved. Global Hunger Index Report Created in 2006, the GHI was initially published by the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Germany-based Welthungerhilfe. In 2007, the Irish NGO Concern Worldwide also became a co-publisher. In 2018, IFPRI withdrew from the project and the GHI became a joint project of Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide.The Global Hunger Index presents a multidimensional measure of national, regional, and global hunger by assigning a numerical score based on several aspects of hunger. Countries are then ranked by GHI score and compared to previous scores from three reference years (e.g., the 2022 GHI scores can be directly compared to 2000, 2007 and 2014 GHI scores) to provide an assessment of progress over time. In addition to presenting GHI scores, the GHI includes an essay that covers an annually changing focus topic related to hunger. The 2022 report focuses on community action that engages local leaders and citizens in improving food systems governance and accountability and provides policy recommendations on how to respond to current emergencies while also transforming food systems, so they are more equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. Calculation of GHI scores Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger, where 0 is the best possible score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst. Each country’s GHI score is classified by severity, from low to extremely alarming. The GHI combines 4 component indicators: Undernourishment: share of the population with insufficient caloric intake. Child stunting: share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition. Child wasting: share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition. Child mortality: share of children who die before their fifth birthday, reflecting in part the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.In 2022, data were assessed for the 136 countries that met the criteria for inclusion in the GHI, and GHI scores were calculated for 121 of those countries based on data from 2017 to 2021. The data used to calculate GHI scores come from published United Nations sources (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Health Organization, UNICEF, and Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation), the World Bank, and Demographic and Health Surveys. For 15 countries, individual scores could not be calculated, and ranks could not be determined owing to lack of data. 8 countries were provisionally designated by severity based on other published data. For the remaining 7 countries, data were insufficient to allow for either calculating GHI scores or assigning provisional categories. In previous years, topics included: 2010: Early childhood undernutrition among children younger than the age of two. 2011: Rising and more volatile food prices of the recent years and the effects these changes have on hunger and malnutrition. 2012: Achieving food security and sustainable use of natural resources, when the natural sources of food become increasingly scarce. 2013: Strengthening community resilience against undernutrition and malnutrition. 2014: Hidden hunger, a form of undernutrition characterized by micronutrient deficiencies. 2015: Armed conflict and its relation to hunger. 2016: Reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by 2030. 2017: The challenges of inequality and hunger. 2018: Forced migration and hunger. 2019: Climate change and hunger. 2020: One decade to Zero Hunger: Linking health and sustainable food systems". 2021: Hunger and Food Systems in Conflict Settings. 2022: Food Systems Transformation and Local Governance.In addition to the yearly GHI, the Hunger Index for the States of India (ISHI) was published in 2008 and the Sub-National Hunger Index for Ethiopia was published in 2009. An interactive map allows users to visualize the data for different years and zoom into specific regions or countries. Global and Regional Trends in Hunger According to the 2022 GHI projections, the world – and 46 countries in particular – will not achieve a low level of hunger by 2030. The situation is likely to worsen in the face of the current barrage of overlapping global crises—conflict, climate change, and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic—all of which are powerful drivers of hunger. The war in Ukraine has further increased global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices and has the potential to significantly worsen hunger in 2023. The global hunger situation that has improved since 2000 according to the GHI, has largely stagnated in the recent years. The 2022 GHI score for the world is considered moderate, but at 18.2, it shows only a slight decline from the 2014 score of 19.1. While the global GHI score dropped by 5.2 points from 24.3 to 19.1 between 2007 and 2014, it has only decreased 0.9 points since then. After decades of decline, one indicator used in the GHI, the prevalence of undernourishment, shows that the share of people who lack regular access to sufficient calories is increasing. This development could be a sign that other hunger indicators are also reversing. Hunger is serious in both South Asia (where hunger is highest) and Africa South of the Sahara (where hunger is second highest). South Asia has the world’s highest child stunting and child wasting rates. In Africa South of the Sahara, the prevalence of undernourishment and the rate of child mortality are higher than in any other world region. Parts of East Africa are experiencing one of the most severe droughts of the past 40 years, threatening the survival of millions. In West Asia and North Africa, where hunger is moderate, there are worrying signs of a reversal in progress against hunger. Hunger is considered low in Latin America and the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia, and Europe and Central Asia. Country rankings Country rankings as per the Global Hunger Index.Legend Note: As always, rankings and index scores from this table cannot be accurately compared to rankings and index scores from previous reports. 1 Ranked according to 2022 GHI scores. Countries that have identical scores are given the same ranking (for example, Costa Rica and United Arab Emirates are both ranked 18th). 2 The 17 countries with 2022 GHI scores of less than 5 are not assigned individual ranks, but rather are collectively ranked 1-17. Differences between their scores are minimal. *For 15 countries, individual scores could not be calculated, and ranks could not be determined owing to lack of data. Where possible, these countries were provisionally designated by severity: 4 as ''serious'' and 4 as ''alarming''. For 7 countries, provisional designations could not be established. 2022 GHI: Food Systems Transformation and Local Governance Facing the third global food price crisis in 15 years, it is more obvious than ever that our current food systems are inadequate to end poverty and hunger. The GHI emphasizes that the international community urgently needs to respond to the escalating humanitarian crises - while not losing sight of the need for long-term transformation of food systems. The GHI 2022 focuses on the way communities, local governments, and civil actors engage with each other to make decisions and allocate resources is key to improving the food situation for people, and especially for the most vulnerable ones. It emphasizes the power of communities on a local level to shape how their food systems are governed. In her essay, Danielle Resnick explains that a recent trend toward decentralizing government functions has given local governments greater autonomy and authority, including over key elements of food systems. And in fragile states local or informal sources of governance, such as traditional authorities, may have greater credibility with communities. Yet in several countries, civic spaces are subject to increasing repression, hindering citizens from claiming and realizing their right to adequate food. Moreover, citizens are often unaware of this right, even if it has been enshrined in national law. Thus, the GHI emphasizes that decision-makers must put inclusive local governance, accountability, and the realization of the right to food at the center of food system transformation. At the same time, the essay by Danielle Resnick shows how local action can help citizens realize their right to food. It provides promising examples from a variety of settings where citizens are finding ways to amplify their voices in food system debates to improve food systems governance at the local level and hold decision makers accountable for addressing food and nutrition insecurity and hunger. Encouragingly, it points out that examples of empowerment are as visible in fragile contexts with high levels of societal fractionalization as they are in more stable settings with longer traditions of local democracy. These include a range of tools such as systems for tracking government budgets and expenditures, community scorecards for assessing the performance of local governments, and inclusive multistakeholder platforms that engage a range of local actors, including government officials, community groups, and private sector participants, in policy planning. In summary, the GHI emphasizes that motivated and inclusive governance at all levels that ensure citizens’ participation, action, and oversight is pivotal for meaningful food system transformation that ultimately benefits all people, especially the most vulnerable. All levels of government must include local voices and capacities and promote strong local decision-making structures, with the efforts tailored to the conditions and capacities on the ground. 2021 GHI: Hunger and Food Systems in Conflict Settings In their essay, guest authors Dan Smith and Caroline Delgado describe how, despite the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, violent conflicts continued to be the main cause of global hunger in 2020. The number of active violent conflicts is increasing, and they are becoming more severe and protracted. They state that the reciprocal linkages between hunger and conflict are widely known. Violent conflict affects nearly all aspects of a food system, from production, harvesting, processing, and transport to commodity supply, financing, marketing, and consumption. Meanwhile, increased food insecurity can fuel violent conflict. Smith and Delgado argue that without a solution to food insecurity, it is difficult to build sustainable peace, and without peace, chances of ending world hunger are minimal. If progress is to be made in both stemming conflict and fighting hunger, a food security lens must be integrated into peace building and a peace-building lens should be integrated into the effort to create resilient food systems. For this the guest authors propose four priorities: (1) adopt a flexible and agile approach; (2) work through partnerships; (3) pursue integrative ways of working; and (4) break down funding silos. The 2021 GHI states that even in the midst of conflict and extreme vulnerability, it remains possible to disrupt the destructive links between conflict and hunger and build resilience. By working collaboratively, involved actors—from states and community groups to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations agencies—can build a foundation for food security and sustainable peace. Integrating a peace-building perspective into building resilient food systems and a food security perspective into peace building requires a thorough knowledge of the context and sensitivity to the realities of ongoing conflicts. Thus, the GHI emphasizes the importance of strengthening locally led interventions and taking into account local concerns and aspirations, while building partnerships that bring together different actors and their respective knowledge. Moreover, funding should be provided in a flexible and long-term manner and should be adaptable to contexts that are fluid, fragile, and conflict affected. Finally, the 2021 GHI calls for a more vigorous approach to addressing conflicts at the political level and prosecuting those who use hunger as a weapon of war. 2020 GHI: Linking Health and Sustainable Food Systems The events of 2020 are laying bare many of the vulnerabilities of the world’s food system in ways that are becoming impossible to ignore. However, by taking an integrated approach to health and food and nutrition security, it may yet be possible to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. A One Health approach, which is based on a recognition of the interconnections between humans, animals, plants, and their shared environment, as well as the role of fair-trade relations, would address the various crises we face holistically and help avert future health crises, restore a healthy planet, and end hunger. A One Health lens brings into focus a number of weaknesses including the fragility of globalized food systems; underinvestment in local farmers, farmer associations, and smallholder-oriented value chains; increasing rates of diet-related noncommunicable disease; emergency responses that disrupt local food systems; the heavy environmental cost of food systems; inadequate social protection for much of the world’s population; unfair global food governance, including unjust trade and aid policies; and lack of secure land tenure, which results in food insecurity for rural communities, indigenous people, women, and marginalized groups. To ensure the right to adequate and nutritious food for all and achieve Zero Hunger by 2030, we must approach health and food and nutrition security in a way that considers human, animal, and environmental health and fair-trade relations holistically. Multilateral institutions, governments, communities, and individuals must take a number of actions in the short and long term, including sustaining the production and supply of food; ensuring social protection measures; strengthening regional food supply chains; reviewing food, health, and economic systems through a One Health lens to chart a path to environmental recovery; and working toward a circular food economy that recycles nutrients and materials, regenerates natural systems, and eliminates waste and pollution. 2019 GHI: The Challenge of Hunger and Climate Change The 2019 GHI report notes that climate change is making it ever more difficult to adequately and sustainably feed and nourish the human population. Climate change has direct and indirect negative impacts on food security and hunger through changes in food production and availability, access, quality, utilization, and stability of food systems. In addition, climate change can contribute to conflict, especially in vulnerable and food-insecure regions, creating a double vulnerability for communities, which are pushed beyond their ability to cope. Furthermore, climate change raises four key inequities that play out at the interface of climate change and food security: 1. the degree of responsibility for causing climate change 2. the intergenerational impacts of climate change 3. the impacts of climate change on poorer people in the Global South 4. the ability and capacity to deal with climate change impacts Current actions are inadequate for the scale of the threat that climate change poses to food security. Transformation—a fundamental change in the attributes of human and natural systems—is now recognized as central to climate-resilient development pathways that can achieve zero hunger. Individual and collective values and behaviors must push toward sustainability and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society. 2018 GHI: Forced Migration and Hunger The 2018 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report—the 13th in the annual series—presents a multidimensional measure of national, regional, and global hunger by assigning a numerical score based on several aspects of hunger. It then ranks countries by GHI score and compares current scores with past results. The 2018 report shows that in many countries and in terms of the global average, hunger and undernutrition have declined since 2000; in some parts of the world, however, hunger and undernutrition persist or have even worsened. Since 2010, 16 countries have seen no change or an increase in their GHI levels. The essay in the 2018 GHI report examines forced migration and hunger—two closely intertwined challenges that affect some of the poorest and most conflict-ridden regions of the world. Globally, there are an estimated 68.5 million displaced people, including 40.0 million internally displaced people, 25.4 million refugees, and 3.1 million asylum seekers. For these people, hunger may be both a cause and a consequence of forced migration. Support for food-insecure displaced people needs to be improved in four key areas: • recognizing and addressing hunger and displacement as political problems; • adopting more holistic approaches to protracted displacement settings involving development support; • providing support to food-insecure displaced people in their regions of origin; and • recognizing that the resilience of displaced people is never entirely absent and should be the basis for providing support. The 2018 Global Hunger Index report presents recommendations for providing a more effective and holistic response to forced migration and hunger. These include focusing on those countries and groups of people who need the most support, providing long-term solutions for displaced people, and engaging in greater responsibility sharing at an international level. 2017 GHI: The Inequalities of Hunger The 2017 highlights the uneven nature of progress made in reducing hunger worldwide and the ways in which inequalities of power lead to unequal nourishment. Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ aim of “leaving no one behind” demands approaches to hunger and malnutrition that are both more sensitive to their uneven distribution and more attuned to the power inequalities that intensify the effects of poverty and marginalization on malnutrition. The report emphasizes the importance of using power analysis to name all forms of power that keep people hungry and malnourished; the significance of designing interventions strategically focused on where power is exerted; the need to empower the hungry and malnourished to challenge and resist loss of control over the food they eat. 2016 GHI: Getting to Zero Hunger The 2016 Global Hunger Index (GHI) presents a multidimensional measure of national, regional, and global hunger, focusing on how the world can get to Zero Hunger by 2030. The developing world has made substantial progress in reducing hunger since 2000. The 2016 GHI shows that the level of hunger in developing countries as a group has fallen by 29 percent. Yet this progress has been uneven, and great disparities in hunger continue to exist at the regional, national, and subnational levels. The 2016 GHI emphasizes that the regions, countries, and populations most vulnerable to hunger and undernutrition have to be identified, so improvement can be targeted there, if the world community wants to seriously Sustainable Development Goal 2 on ending hunger and achieving food security. 2015 GHI: Armed Conflict and Chronic Hunger The chapter on hunger and conflict shows that the time of great famines with more than 1 million people dead is over. There is, however, a clear connection between armed conflict and severe hunger. Most of the countries scoring worst in the 2015 GHI are experiencing or have recently experienced armed conflict. Still, severe hunger also exists without conflict present, as the cases of several countries in South Asia and Africa show. Armed conflict has increased since 2005, and unless it can be reduced, there is little hope for eliminating hunger. 2014 GHI: Hidden Hunger Hidden hunger concerns over 200 million people worldwide. This micronutrient deficiency develops when humans do not take in enough micronutrients such as zinc, folate, iron and vitamins, or when their bodies cannot absorb them. Reasons include an unbalanced diet, a higher need for micronutrients (e.g. during pregnancy or while breast feeding) but also health issues related to sickness, infections or parasites. The consequences for individuals can be devastating: these often include mental impairment, bad health, low productivity and death caused by sickness. In particular, children are affected if they do not absorb enough micronutrients in the first 1000 days of their lives (beginning with conception). Micronutrient deficiencies are responsible for an estimated 1.1 million of the yearly 3.1 million death caused by undernutrition in children. Despite the magnitude of the problem, it is still not easy to get precise data on the spread of hidden hunger. Macronutrient and micronutrient deficiencies cause a loss in global productivity of 1.4 to 2.1 billion US Dollars per year.Different measures exist to prevent hidden hunger. It is essential to ensure that humans maintain a diverse diet. The quality of produce is as important as the caloric input. This can be achieved by promoting the production of a wide variety of nutrient-rich plants and the creation of house gardens. Other possible solutions are the industrial enrichment of food or biofortification of feedplants (e.g. vitamin A rich sweet potatoes). In the case of acute nutrient deficiency and in specific life phases, food supplements can be used. In particular, the addition of vitamin A leads to a better child survival rate. Generally, the situation concerning hidden hunger can only be improved when many measures intermesh. In addition to the direct measures described above, this includes the education and empowerment of women, the creation of better sanitation and adequate hygiene, and access to clean drinking water and health services. 2013 GHI: Resilience to Build Food and Nutrition Security Many of the countries in which the hunger situation is "alarming" or "extremely alarming" are particularly prone to crises: In the African Sahel people experience yearly droughts. On top of that, they have to deal with violent conflict and natural calamities. At the same time, the global context becomes more and more volatile (financial and economic crises, food price crises). The inability to cope with these crises leads to the destruction of many development successes that had been achieved over the years. In addition, people have even less resources to withstand the next shock or crises. 2.6 billion people in the world live on less than US$2 per day. For them, a sickness in the family, crop failure after a drought, or the interruption of remittances from relatives who live abroad can set in motion a downward spiral from which they cannot free themselves on their own. It is therefore not enough to support people in emergencies and, once the crisis is over, to start longer-term development efforts. Instead, emergency and development assistance has to be conceptualized with the goal of increasing resilience of poor people against these shocks. The Global Hunger Index differentiates three coping strategies. The lower the intensity of the crises, the less resources have to be used to cope with the consequences: Absorption: Skills or resources are used to reduce the impact of a crisis without changing a household's lifestyle (e.g., selling some livestock). Adaptation: Once the capacity to absorb is exhausted, steps are taken to adapt the household's lifestyle to the situation without making drastic changes (e.g., using drought-resistant seeds). Transformation: If adaptation strategies do not suffice to deal with the negative impact of the crisis, fundamental, longer-lasting changes to life and behavior have to be made (e.g., nomadic tribes become sedentary farmers because they cannot keep their herds).Based on this analysis, the authors present several policy recommendations: Overcoming the institutional, financial, and conceptual boundaries between humanitarian aid and development assistance. Elimination of policies that undermine people's resilience. Using the Right to Food as a basis for the development of new policies. Implementation of multi-year, flexible programs, which are financed in a way that enables multisectoral approaches to overcome chronic food crises. Communicating that improving resilience is cost-effective and improves food and nutrition security, especially in fragile contexts. Scientific monitoring and evaluation of measures and programs with the goal to increase resilience. Active involvement of the local population in the planning and implementation of resilience-increasing programs. Improvement of food, especially of mothers and children, through nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions to prevent short-term crises from leading to nutrition-related problems late in life or across generations. 2012 GHI: Pressures on Land, Water, and Energy Resources Increasingly, hunger is related to how we use land, water, and energy. The growing scarcity of these resources puts more and more pressure on food security. Several factors contribute to an increasing shortage of natural resources: Demographic change: The world population is expected to be over 9 billion by 2050. Additionally, more and more people live in cities. Urban populations feed themselves differently than inhabitants of rural areas; they tend to consume less staple foods and more meat and dairy products. Higher income and non-sustainable use of resources: As the global economy grows, wealthy people consume more food and goods, which have to be produced with a lot of water and energy. They can afford not to be efficient and wasteful in their use of resources. Bad policies and weak institutions: When policies, for example energy policy, are not tested for the consequences they have on the availability of land and water it can lead to failures. An example are the biofuel policies of industrialized countries: As corn and sugar are increasingly used for the production of fuels, there is less land and water for the production of food.Signs for an increasing scarcity of energy, land and water resources are for example: growing prices for food and energy, a massive increase of large-scale investment in arable land (so-called land grabbing), increasing degradation of arable land because of too intensive land use (for example, increasing desertification), increasing number of people, who live in regions with lowering ground water levels, and the loss of arable land as a consequence of climate change. The analysis of the global conditions lead the authors of the GHI 2012 to recommend several policy actions: Securing land and water rights Gradual lowering of subsidies Creation of a positive macroeconomic framework Investment in agriculture technology development to promote a more efficient use of land, water and energy Support for approaches, that lead to a more efficient use of land, water and energy along the whole value chain Preventing and overuse of natural resources through monitoring strategies for water, land and energy, and agricultural systems Improvement of the access to education for women and the strengthening of their reproductive rights to address demographic change Increase incomes, reduce social and economic inequality and promotion of sustainable lifestyles Climate change mitigation and adaptation through a reorientation of agriculture 2011 GHI: Rising and Volatile Food Prices The report cites 3 factors as the main reasons for high volatility, or price changes, and price spikes of food: Use of the so-called biofuels, promoted by high oil prices, subsidies in the United States (over one third of the corn harvest of 2009 and 2010 respectively) and quota for biofuel in gasoline in the European Union, India and others. Extreme weather events as a result of Climate Change Future trading of agricultural commodities, for instance investments in fonds, which are speculating on price changes of agricultural products (2003: 13 Bn US Dollar, 2008: 260 Bn US Dollar), as well as increasing trade volume of these goods.Volatility and prices increases are worsened according to the report by the concentration of staple foods in a few countries and export restrictions of these goods, the historical low of worldwide cereal reserves and the lack of timely information on food products, reserves and price developments. Especially this lack of information can lead to overreactions in the markets. Moreover, seasonal limitations on production possibilities, limited land for agricultural production, limited access to fertilizers and water, as well as the increasing demand resulting from population growth, puts pressure on food prices. According to the Global Hunger Index 2011 price trends show especially harsh consequences for poor and under-nourished people, because they are not capable to react to price spikes and price changes. Reactions, following these developments, can include: reduced calorie intake, no longer sending children to school, riskier income generation such as prostitution, criminality, or searching landfills, and sending away household members, who cannot be fed anymore. In addition, the report sees an all-time high in the instability and unpredictability of food prices, which after decades of slight decrease, increasingly show price spikes (strong and short-term increase). At a national level, especially food importing countries (those with a negative food trade balance), are affected by the changing prices. 2010 GHI: Early Childhood Undernutrition Undernutrition among children has reached terrible levels. About 195 million children under the age of five in the developing world—about one in three children—are too small and thus underdeveloped. Nearly one in four children under age five—129 million—is underweight, and one in 10 is severely underweight. The problem of child undernutrition is concentrated in a few countries and regions, with more than 90 percent of stunted children living in Africa and Asia. 42% of the world's undernourished children live in India alone. The evidence presented in the report shows that the window of opportunity for improving nutrition spans is the 1,000 days between conception and a child's second birthday (that is the period from -9 to +24 months). Children who are do not receive adequate nutrition during this period have increased risks to experiencing lifelong damage, including poor physical and cognitive development, poor health, and even early death. The consequences of malnutrition that occurred after 24 months of a child's life are by contrast largely reversible. See also List of countries by percentage of population living in poverty Food portal World portal Literature 2022 – Food Systems Transformation and Local Governance 2021 – Hunger and Food Systems in Conflict Settings 2020 – One Decade to Zero Hunger - Linking Health and Sustainable Food Systems 2019 – The Challenge of Hunger and Climate Change 2018 – Forced Migration and Hunger 2017 – The Inequalities of Hunger 2016 – Getting to Zero Hunger 2015 – Armed Conflict and the Challenge of Hunger 2014 – The Challenge of Hidden Hunger 2013 – The Challenge of Hunger: Building Resilience to achieve Food and Nutrition Security 2012 – The Challenge of Hunger: Ensuring Sustainable Food Security Under Land, Water, and Energy Stresses 2011 – The Challenge of Hunger: Taming Price Spikes and Excessive Food Price Volatility 2010 – The Challenge of Hunger: Focus on the Crisis of Child Undernutrition 2009 – The Challenge of Hunger: Focus on Financial Crisis and Gender Inequality 2008 – The Challenge of Hunger 2008 2007 – The Challenge of Hunger 2007 2006 – The Challenge of Hunger 2006 Further reading Alkire, S. und M. E. Santos. 2010. "Multidimensional Poverty Index: 2010 data". Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Wiesmann, Doris (2004): An international nutrition index: concept and analyses of food insecurity and undernutrition at country levels. Development Economics and Policy Series 39. Peter Lang Verlag. == References ==

climate of the united states

The climate of the United States varies due to changes in latitude, and a range of geographic features, including mountains and deserts. Generally, on the mainland, the climate of the U.S. becomes warmer the further south one travels, and drier the further west, until one reaches the West Coast. West of 100°W, much of the U.S. has a cold semi-arid climate in the interior upper western states (Idaho to the Dakotas), to warm to hot desert and semi-arid climates in the southwestern U.S. East of 100°W, the climate is humid continental in northern areas (locations roughly above 40°N, Northern Plains, Midwest, Great Lakes, New England), transitioning into a humid temperate climate from the Southern Plains and lower Midwest east to the Middle Atlantic states (Virginia to southern Connecticut). A humid subtropical climate is found along and south of a mostly east–west line from the Virginia/Maryland capes (north of the greater Norfolk, Virginia area), westward to approximately northern Oklahoma, north of the greater Oklahoma City area. Along the Atlantic seaboard, the humid subtropical climate zone extends southward into central Florida. A Mediterranean climate prevails along most of the California coast, while southern Florida has a tropical climate, the warmest region on the US mainland. Hawaii and the U.S. territories also have tropical climates.Higher-elevation areas of the Rocky Mountains, the Wasatch Range, Sierra Nevada, and Cascade Range are alpine. Coastal areas of Oregon and Washington have an oceanic climate. The state of Alaska, on the northwestern corner of the North American continent, is largely dominated by a subarctic climate, but with a subpolar oceanic climate in the southeast (Alaska Panhandle), southwestern peninsula and Aleutian Islands, and a polar climate in the north. The primary drivers of weather in the contiguous United States are the seasonal change in the solar angle, the migration north–south of the subtropical highs, and the seasonal change in the position of the polar jet stream. In the Northern Hemisphere summer, the subtropical high pressure systems move northward and closer to the United States mainland. In the Atlantic Ocean, the Bermuda High creates a south-southwest flow of tropical air masses over the southeastern, south-central and central United States – resulting in warm to hot temperatures, high humidity and frequent intense (but usually brief) showers and/or thunderstorms as the heat builds in the afternoon. In the Northern Hemisphere summer, high pressure in the Pacific Ocean builds toward the California coast, resulting in a northwesterly airflow, creating the cool, dry, and stable weather conditions prevalent along the West Coast in summer. In the Northern Hemisphere winter, the subtropical highs retreat southward. The polar jet stream (and associated conflict zone between cold, dry air masses from Canada and warm, moist air masses from the Gulf of Mexico) drops further southward into the United States – bringing more frequent periods of stormy weather, with rain, ice and snow, and much more variable temperatures, with rapid temperature rises and falls not uncommon. Areas in the southern U.S. (Florida, the Gulf Coast, the Desert Southwest, and southern California) however, often have more stable weather, as the polar jet stream's impact does not usually reach that far south. Weather systems, be they high-pressure systems (anticyclones), low-pressure systems (cyclones) or fronts (boundaries between air masses of differing temperature, humidity and most commonly, both) are faster-moving and more intense in the winter/colder months than in the summer/warmer months, when the belt of lows and storms generally moves into southern Canada. The Gulf of Alaska is the origination area of many storms that enter the United States. Such "North Pacific lows" enter the U.S. through the Pacific Northwest, then move eastward across the northern Rocky Mountains, northern Great Plains, upper Midwest, Great Lakes and New England states. Across the central states from late fall to spring, "Panhandle hook" storms move from the central Rockies into the Oklahoma/Texas panhandle areas, then northeast toward the Great Lakes. They generate unusually large temperature contrasts, and often bring copious Gulf moisture northward, resulting sometimes in cold conditions and possibly-heavy snow or ice north and west of the storm track, and warm conditions, heavy rains and potentially-severe thunderstorms south and east of the storm track – often simultaneously. Across the northern states in winter usually from Montana eastward, "Alberta clipper" storms track east and bring light to moderate snowfalls from Montana and the Dakotas across the upper Midwest and Great Lakes states to New England, and often, windy and severe Arctic outbreaks behind them. When winter-season Canadian cold air masses drop unusually far southward, "Gulf lows" can develop in or near the Gulf of Mexico, then track eastward or northeastward across the Southern states, or nearby Gulf or South Atlantic waters. They sometimes bring rain, but can bring snow or ice across the South, mostly in interior or northern areas. In the cold season (generally November to March), most precipitation occurs in conjunction with organized low-pressure systems and associated fronts. In the summer, storms are much more localized, with short-duration thunderstorms common in many areas east of 100°W and south of 40°N. In the warm season, storm systems affecting a large area are less frequent, and weather conditions are more solar {sun} controlled, with the greatest chance for thunderstorm and severe weather activity during peak heating hours, mostly between 3 PM and 9 PM local time. From May to August especially, often-overnight mesoscale-convective-system (MCS) thunderstorm complexes, usually associated with frontal activity, can deliver significant to flooding rainfall amounts from the Dakotas/Nebraska eastward across Iowa/Minnesota to the Great Lakes states. From late summer into fall (mostly August to October), tropical cyclones (hurricanes, tropical storms and tropical depressions) sometimes approach or cross the Gulf and Atlantic states, bringing high winds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges (often topped with battering waves) to Gulf and Atlantic lowlands and coastal areas. Regional overview Southwest The Southwest has a hot desert climate, at lower elevations. Cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Yuma, and Palm Springs have average highs over 100 °F (38 °C) during the summer months and lows in the 70s or even 80s. In winter, daily temperatures in the southwest are cooler with highs in the 50s and 60s F, and lows in the 40s F. In Phoenix, Las Vegas and similar Southwestern desert areas, on average June is the driest month, after Pacific-originating winter storms have concluded and before the Southwestern summer "monsoon" begins. The Southwest and the Great Basin are affected by said monsoon from the Gulf of California from July–September. This results in some increase in humidity and cloud cover, bringing higher nighttime low temperatures and localized thunderstorms to the region, which can result in flash flooding. Further eastward in the desert Southwest (Tucson, Arizona eastward toward El Paso, Texas), winter-season precipitation decreases, while the summer monsoon increasingly provides a summer precipitation maximum. For example, El Paso and Albuquerque, New Mexico have a pronounced July to September precipitation maximum. Still, drought has been frequent in the region, often lasting for periods of years or longer. Forest fires across the Western United States (especially the southwest) occur many years, and can be severe to extreme in especially hot, dry summer seasons. Northern Arizona and New Mexico, central and northern Nevada and most of Utah (outside higher mountain areas) have a temperate semi-desert to desert climate, but with colder and snowier winters than in Phoenix and similar areas, and less-hot summers (as at Salt Lake City, Utah). Summer high temperatures often reach the 90s, but low temperatures drop into the low 60s and even 50s. As in other temperate desert climates, the dry air results in large differences (sometimes over 40 degrees) between daytime high and nighttime low temperatures. Precipitation, though scarce, often falls year-round, influenced both by summer thunderstorms brought by the Southwestern monsoon (primarily in southern areas), and by winter-season storms from the Pacific Ocean. The coast of California has a Mediterranean climate. Daily high temperatures range from 70 to 80 °F (21 to 27 °C) in the summer to 50 to 65 °F (10 to 16 °C) in winter, with low temperatures from the 60 °F (16 °C)s in summer to the mid 40s F in winter. Like most Mediterranean climates, much of coastal California has a wet winter and dry summer. Early summers can often bring cool, overcast weather (fog and low stratus clouds) to coastal California. As such, the warmest summer weather is delayed until August, even September in many areas of the California coast; on average, September is the warmest month in San Francisco. Upwelling of cold Pacific waters also contributes to the frequent cool spring and early summer weather in coastal California. In California's inland river valleys (Bakersfield, Sacramento areas), the wet-winter, dry-summer pattern remains, but winters are cooler and more prone to occasional frost or freeze, while summers are much hotter, with blazing sunshine and daytime high temperatures not uncommonly in the 90s to over 100 °F (38 °C). Gulf Coast/Lower Mississippi Valley/South Atlantic states The Gulf and South Atlantic states have a humid subtropical climate with mostly mild winters and hot, humid summers. Most of the Florida peninsula including Tampa and Jacksonville, along with other coastal cities like Houston, New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington all have average summer highs from near 90 to the lower 90s F, and lows generally from 70 to 75 °F (21 to 24 °C); combined with moist tropical air, this creates the sultry summer weather conditions that prevail here. In the interior South, in cities like Raleigh, Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville and Jackson, average summer highs and lows are similar to coastal areas, while some areas of interior eastern and central Texas (i.e. Dallas, Austin and San Antonio areas) have average daily highs in the mid to upper 90s F. In winter, average daily high temperatures range from the 40 °F (4 °C)s (upper South: northern Arkansas, Kentucky and Virginia), to the 60 °F (16 °C)s along the Gulf Coast and South Atlantic coast (Charleston southward), with 70 °F (21 °C)s in central Florida and far southern Texas. Average daily lows in winter range from 20 °F (−7 °C)s north to 40 °F (4 °C)s along the Gulf and far South Atlantic coasts, with 50 °F (10 °C)s in Florida and coastal south Texas, both regions bordering the tropical climate zone. Much of the interior South (Tennessee, Kentucky and the northern Gulf states) has a winter or spring maximum in precipitation, with December, March or April typically the wettest month, and August to October the driest months – for example, at Birmingham, Huntsville, Tupelo and Memphis. From November to April, these areas commonly experience sharp conflicts between cold, dry air from Canada and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. These air-mass clashes often bring heavy winter and spring precipitation to the Mid-South. Given the tropical air masses, summer-season thunderstorms can occur throughout the South, but they are heavier and more frequent along the Gulf Coast, South Atlantic coast (Norfolk, Virginia area southward), and in peninsular Florida. Along most of the Gulf coast (i.e. New Orleans, Mobile and Pensacola areas), and in South Atlantic coastal and sandhills areas (i.e. Columbia, Fayetteville, Raleigh, Wilmington, and Norfolk), July and August are usually the wettest months, and precipitation is fairly evenly distributed the rest of the year. Primarily from August to early October, the coastal Gulf and South Atlantic states are susceptible to being struck by tropical weather systems (tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes). Even in winter, most precipitation falls as rain. However, occasionally frozen precipitation (snow, sleet and/or freezing rain) can occur (more commonly in interior and northern areas) when southerly-tracking storms throw Gulf or Atlantic moisture over cold air at ground level. Southern Florida has a tropical climate, with all months having a mean temperature of higher than 65 °F (18 °C), a wet season from May through October, and a dry season from November through April. In cities like Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Key West, Naples, and Palm Beach average daily highs range from the mid 70 °F (21 °C)s in winter to near 90 °F (32-33 °C) in summer. Average overnight lows range from the upper 50 °F (10 °C)s in winter to the mid and upper 70 °F (21 °C)s in summer. Southern Florida is the warmest region of the U.S. mainland in winter. Southern Plains/Lower Midwest/Middle East Coast/Mid-Atlantic The region from the southern Plains, to the lower Midwest, eastward to the central East Coast (the New York City/coastal Connecticut region southward to Virginia) has a humid temperate climate, transitional between the humid continental and humid subtropical climate zones, becoming semi-arid in the western plains. This region has cool to cold winters and hot, humid summers. Daytime highs range from 80 to 90 °F (27 to 32 °C) in summer to 35 to 50 °F (2 to 10 °C) in winter. Lows range from the 60 °F (16 °C)s in summer to 25 to 35 °F (−4 to 2 °C) in winter. Cities in this region include Louisville, Kentucky, Wichita, Kansas, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Missouri, Springfield, Illinois, Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, New York City, New Haven, Connecticut, and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Precipitation is spread fairly evenly throughout the year, though as one travels from Indiana westward there is an increasingly prominent early-summer concentration, with a May maximum in northern Texas and Oklahoma, and a June maximum increasingly evident from (central/northern) Indiana westward to Kansas. As one travels from east to west across Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, average annual precipitation steadily decreases. Far western Texas (El Paso area) is desert, and average annual precipitation is less than twenty inches (510 mm) in westernmost Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, where the climate qualifies as semi-arid. In the lower Midwest (and southern Plains states, especially), temperatures can rise or drop rapidly; winds can be extreme; and clashing air masses, including hot, dry air of Mexican and/or Southwestern origin, warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and cold, dry air from Canada can spawn severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, particularly from April to June. The "dryline", separating hot, dry air of Mexican/Southwestern U.S. origin from warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, often causes severe, occasionally violent, thunderstorms to fire in central and eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas; these sometimes contribute toward the hailstorms and tornado outbreaks that the Southern Plains are well known for. Reflecting these air-mass conflicts, central Oklahoma, including the Oklahoma City and Moore–Norman areas, has the highest frequency of tornadoes per unit land area on planet Earth, with May the highest-risk month for tornadoes throughout "Tornado Alley", from northern Texas north-northeastward toward western and central Iowa. Northern Great Plains/North-Central/Great Lakes/New England The northern half of the Great Plains (Nebraska northward), Midwest, Great Lakes, and New England states have a variety of humid continental climates, and the western plains have a semi-arid climate. Here there are four distinct seasons, with warm to hot summers, and cold and often-snowy winters. Average daily high temperatures range from 10 °F (−12 °C) (in North Dakota, and central and northern Minnesota) to 30 °F (−1 °C) in winter to 70 to 80 °F (21 to 27 °C)s in summer, while overnight lows range from below 0 °F (−18 °C) in winter (in North Dakota and much of Minnesota) to 50 to 60 °F (10 to 16 °C) in summer. In the New England states, precipitation is evenly distributed around the year, with a slight late fall-early winter (November–December) maximum along the New England coast from Boston northward due to intense early-winter storms. In the Great Lakes states, cold Arctic air in winter crossing the relatively warmer lake waters can result in frequent and sometimes very heavy lake-effect snow, especially on the eastern and southern shores of the Great Lakes (for example, in western Michigan's Lower Peninsula and in the Buffalo, New York area). Cities in this area include Minneapolis, Omaha, Sioux Falls, Fargo, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, Boston, Concord and Augusta. As one travels from east to west across Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota, average annual precipitation steadily decreases, and the westernmost counties of these states have a semi-arid climate, with about or just over 15 inches of precipitation per year, on average (see climate data for Williston, North Dakota, Rapid City, South Dakota and Scottsbluff, Nebraska). In the upper Midwest and northern Plains states, temperatures may rise or fall rapidly, and winds (from warm-season thunderstorms or larger-scale low-pressure systems) can be strong to extreme. Here, air-mass conflicts primarily involve warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, clashing with cool to cold, dry air from Canada, with only occasional intrusions of hot, dry air from the southwest. The conflicts between Canadian and Gulf air commonly produce severe thunderstorms (including hailstorms, especially on the western Plains) and tornadoes, particularly in May and June. In the northern Plains and North Central states generally, June is the year's wettest month on average, owing to maximum shower and thunderstorm activity. Also, June is the highest-risk month for severe weather throughout North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest has an oceanic climate. The climate is wet and cool in autumn, winter, and spring, and stable and dry in the summer months, especially July and August. On average, the wettest month is typically November or December; the driest, July. In the summer months, average highs in cities like Seattle and Portland are from 70 to 75 °F (21 to 26 °C) with lows from 50 to 59 °F (10 to 15 °C), while in winter daily highs are from 40 to 45 °F (4 to 9 °C) and overnight lows from 30 to 38 °F (−1 to 4 °C).In winter, the Pacific Northwest (especially coastal districts and other areas west, i.e. on the prevailing windward side, of the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges), experiences a mostly overcast, wet and cool climate, but without severe cold like that found in the interior northern U.S. (i.e. Minnesota/North Dakota). At lower elevations, winter precipitation falls mostly as rain. However, snow does occur even at the lowest elevations, primarily when Pacific moisture interacts with cold air intruding into the Pacific Northwest from western Canada (i.e. Alberta and interior British Columbia). Summers in the Pacific Northwest are generally cool, especially along the coastline. The Great Basin and Columbia Plateau (the Intermontane Plateaus) are arid or semiarid regions, with high summer temperatures in the 90s to occasionally over 100 at lower elevations (e.g. at Boise, Idaho), with annual precipitation averaging less than 15 inches (380 mm) as a result of the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. Both coastal and interior areas of Oregon and Washington, and southern Idaho, have a wet-winter, dry-summer precipitation pattern, but traveling eastward into Montana and Wyoming, this transitions progressively (for example, at Missoula, Montana) toward relatively drier winters and a May and eventually June precipitation maximum, the latter characteristic of the Northern Plains and much of the upper Midwest (i.e. both Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota). Alaska The climate in Juneau and the southeast panhandle is a mid-latitude oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb). The climate in the extreme north of Alaska is what would be expected for an area north of the Arctic Circle — it is an Arctic climate (Köppen ET) with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers. Akclimate.org says the following: "The altitude above sea level influences the climate of a given area [in Alaska]. Lower elevations in interior Alaska, such as the Yukon Flats and the Tanana Valley experience extreme cold in the winter as well as high summertime temperatures." Hawaii Hawaii has 11 different climate zones, influenced by altitude and topographical effect on wind and rainfall. These include tropical at sea level, arid, semi-arid, temperate, and alpine at the highest elevations. Snow sometimes occurs in high mountain areas. Caribbean territories Puerto Rico has different climatic zones, all tropical. The northeastern part of the territory is very wet, with a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af). This supports rainforests like El Yunque. The southern part is drier, mostly a savanna climate (Köppen Aw) with small locations on the southern coast dry enough to have a hot-semi arid climate (Koppen BSh). The U.S. Virgin Islands have a tropical savanna climate, with warm, dry winters, and rainy summers (Köppen Aw), typical of the Caribbean. The wet season is from May to October. In 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico are the areas of the U.S. most vulnerable to climate change. Pacific territories Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands both have a trade-wind tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af). The dry season is from January to May, and the wet season from July to November. American Samoa is south of the equator, and therefore its wet/dry seasons are reversed. The wet season is from December–March, and the dry season is from April–September. Rainmaker Mountain on Tutuila traps trade-wind rainclouds, leading to very high rainfall and a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af). Precipitation Precipitation (whether by annual amount, annual distribution or characteristic[s]) varies significantly across the United States and its possessions. Late summer and fall extratropical cyclones bring a majority of the precipitation which falls across western, southern, and southeast Alaska annually. During the fall, winter, and spring, Pacific storm systems bring most of Hawaii and the western United States much of their precipitation. Most of Florida has a subtropical monsoon rainfall pattern (wet summer and dry winter).In the central and upper eastern United States, precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year, although summer rainfall increases as one moves southeastward. Lake-effect snows add to precipitation potential downwind of the Great Lakes, as well as Great Salt Lake and the Finger Lakes during the cold season. The average snow to liquid ratio across the contiguous United States is 13:1, meaning 13 inches (330 mm) of snow melts down to 1 inch (25 mm) of water. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation affects the precipitation distribution, by altering rainfall patterns across the West, Midwest, the Southeast, and throughout the tropics.During the summer, the Southwest monsoon combined with Gulf of California and Gulf of Mexico moisture moving around the subtropical ridge in the Atlantic Ocean bring the promise of afternoon and evening thunderstorms to the southern tier of the country as well as the Great Plains. Equatorward of the subtropical ridge, tropical cyclones enhance precipitation (mostly from August to October) across southern and eastern sections of the country, as well as Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Over the top of the ridge, the jet stream brings a summer precipitation maximum to the Great Lakes. Large thunderstorm areas known as mesoscale convective complexes move through the Plains, Midwest, and Great Lakes during the warm season, contributing up to 10% of the annual precipitation to the region. Extremes In northern Alaska, tundra and arctic conditions predominate, and the temperature has fallen as low as −80 °F (−62 °C). On the other end of the spectrum, Death Valley, California once reached 134 °F (56.7 °C), officially the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.On average, the mountains of the western states receive the highest levels of snowfall on Earth. The greatest annual snowfall level is at Mount Rainier in Washington, at 692 inches (1,758 cm); the record there was 1,122 inches (2,850 cm) in the winter of 1971–72. This record was broken by the Mt. Baker Ski Area in northwestern Washington which reported 1,140 inches (2,896 cm) of snowfall for the 1998–99 snowfall season. Other places with significant snowfall outside the Cascade Range are the Wasatch Range, near the Great Salt Lake and the Sierra Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. Along the coastal mountain ranges in the Pacific Northwest, rainfall is greater than anywhere else in the continental U.S., with Quinault Ranger Station in Washington having an average of 137 inches (3,480 mm). Hawaii receives even more, with 404 inches (10,262 mm) measured annually, on average, at the Big Bog, in Maui. Pago Pago Harbor in American Samoa is the rainiest harbor in the world (because of the 523 meter Rainmaker Mountain). The Sonoran Desert in the southwest is home to the driest locale in the US. Yuma, Arizona, has an average of 2.63 inches (67 mm) of precipitation each year. Extreme highs Extreme lows Overall average(s) Natural disasters and effects Because of contrasting air masses, the Great Plains, the Midwest, and the southern United States have frequent severe thunderstorms and tornado outbreaks during both the spring and the summer. In central portions of the U.S., tornadoes are more common than anywhere else in the world. They usually can touch down during the spring and the summer. The strip of land from north Texas north to Nebraska and east into Southern Michigan is known as Tornado Alley, where many houses have tornado shelters and where many towns have tornado sirens. Stretching across Mississippi and Alabama, Dixie Alley has experienced both tornadoes and violent thunderstorms, with peak tornado season coming on as early as February and waning by May. Florida also reports many tornadoes, but these rarely are very strong. The southern US has a second tornado season during the autumn. Generally, the area at greatest risk for tornadoes migrates northward from February to June, peaking in the Gulf States in February and March, the Ohio Valley and lower Midwest in April, southern and central Plains and central Midwest in May, and Northern Plains and upper Midwest (Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) in June. Eastern and Gulf Coastal states suffer from frequent Hurricanes and tropical storms from late summer into autumn. Both the Appalachian region and the Midwest experience the worst floods. Widespread severe flooding is rare. Some exceptions include the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the Great Flood of 1993, and widespread flooding and mudslides caused by the 1982–83 El Niño event in the western United States. Localized flooding can, however, occur anywhere. Mudslides from heavy rain can even cause problems in any mountainous areas, particularly in the Southwest. The narrow canyons of many mountain areas in the west and severe thunderstorm activity during the monsoon season in summer leads to sometimes devastating flash floods as well. On the other hand, Nor'easter snowstorms can bring activity to a halt in both the New England and Great Lakes regions. In 2013, the US sustains $10 billion annually in damage from floods.The Southwest has the worst droughts; one is thought to have lasted over 500 years and to have decimated the Anasazi people. Large stretches of desert shrub in the west can fuel the spreads of wildfires. Although severe drought is rare, it has occasionally caused some major problems, such as those during the Dust Bowl (1931–1942), which coincided with the Great Depression. Farmland failed throughout the Plains, entire regions were virtually depopulated, and dust storms ravaged the land. More recently, the western US experienced widespread drought from 1999 to 2004. In terms of deaths from heat waves, 7,415 losses occurred between 1999 and 2010, a mean of 618 per year. A disproportionate number of men, a full 68% of deaths, versus women have been affected. The highest yearly total of heat-related deaths during that time frame was in 1999. The lowest was in 2004. In terms of deaths caused by cold waves, the same gender inequality exists; 66% of hypothermia-related deaths in 2002 were of males. From 1979 to 2002, 16,555 deaths occurred due to exposure to excessive cold temperatures, a mean of 689 per year.Approximately 43 people die by lightning strike each year in the United States, and 90 percent of those struck will survive. Americans have a one in 15,300 chance of being struck by lightning in their lifetime. See also Weather media in the United States Climate change in the United States Geography of the United States List of snowiest places in the United States by state United States tropical cyclone rainfall climatology List of wettest tropical cyclones in the United States Meteorology References External links National Weather Service

food security

Food security is the availability of food in a country (or a geographic region) and the ability of individuals within that country (region) to access, afford, and source adequate foodstuff. According to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another element of food security. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply; food security is defined as the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuff to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset the fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food insecurity, on the other hand, is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a situation of " limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways". Food security incorporates a measure of resilience to future disruption or unavailability of critical food supply due to various risk factors including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars.The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, identified the four pillars of food security as availability, access, utilization, and stability. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and has since said that it is vital for the enjoyment of all other rights.The concept of food security has evolved to recognize the centrality of agency and sustainability, along with the four other dimensions of availability, access, utilization, and stability. These six dimensions of food security are reinforced in conceptual and legal understandings of the right to food.The 1996 World Summit on Food Security declared that "food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure". Multiple different international agreements and mechanisms have been developed to address food security. The main global policy to reduce hunger and poverty is in the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030.The International Monetary Fund cautioned in September 2022 that "the impact of increasing import costs for food and fertilizer for those extremely vulnerable to food insecurity will add $9 billion to their balance of payments pressures – in 2022 and 2023." This would deplete countries' foreign reserves as well as their capacity to pay for food and fertilizer imports." Measurement Food security can be measured by calories to digest to intake per person per day, available on a household budget. In general, the objective of food security indicators and measurements is to capture some or all of the main components of food security in terms of food availability, accessibility, and utilization/adequacy. While availability (production and supply) and utilization/adequacy (nutritional status/ anthropometric measurement) are easier to estimate and therefore, more popular, accessibility (the ability to acquire a sufficient quantity and quality of food) remains largely elusive. The factors influencing household food accessibility are often context-specific.Several measurements have been developed to capture the access component of food security, with some notable examples developed by the USAID-funded Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) project, collaborating with Cornell and Tufts University and Africare and World Vision. These include: Household Food Insecurity Access Scale – measures the degree of food insecurity (inaccessibility) in the household in the previous month on a discrete ordinal scale. Household Dietary Diversity Scale – measures the number of different food groups consumed over a specific reference period (24hrs/48hrs/7days). Household Hunger Scale – measures the experience of household food deprivation based on a set of predictable reactions, captured through a survey and summarized in a scale. Coping Strategies Index (CSI) – assesses household behaviors and rates them based on a set of varied established behaviors on how households cope with food shortages. The methodology for this research is based on collecting data on a single question: "What do you do when you do not have enough food, and do not have enough money to buy food?"Food insecurity is measured in the United States by questions in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. The questions asked are about anxiety that the household budget is inadequate to buy enough food, inadequacy in the quantity or quality of food eaten by adults and children in the household, and instances of reduced food intake or consequences of reduced food intake for adults and children. A National Academy of Sciences study commissioned by the USDA criticized this measurement and the relationship of "food security" to hunger, adding "it is not clear whether hunger is appropriately identified as the end of the food security scale."Recently, FAO has developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) as a universally applicable experience-based food security measurement scale derived from the scale used in the United States. Thanks to the establishment of a global reference scale and the procedure needed to calibrate measures obtained in different countries, it is possible to use the FIES to produce cross-country comparable estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in the population. Since 2015, the FIES has been adopted as the basis to compile one of the indicators included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) monitoring framework. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) collaborate every year to produce The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, or SOFI report (known as The State of Food Insecurity in the World until 2015). The SOFI report measures chronic hunger (or undernourishment) using two main indicators, the Number of undernourished (NoU) and the Prevalence of undernourishment (PoU). Beginning in the early 2010s, FAO incorporated more complex metrics into its calculations, including estimates of food losses in retail distribution for each country and the volatility in agri-food systems. Since 2016, it also reports the Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity based on the FIES. Recent editions of the SOFI report present evidence that the decades-long decline in hunger in the world, as measured by the number of undernourished (NoU), has ended. In the 2020 report, FAO used newly accessible data from China to revise the global NoU downwards to nearly 690 million, or 8.9 percent of the world population – but having recalculated the historic hunger series accordingly, it confirmed that the number of hungry people in the world, albeit lower than previously thought, had been slowly increasing since 2014. On broader measures, the SOFI report found that far more people suffered some form of food insecurity, with 3 billion or more unable to afford even the cheapest healthy diet. Nearly 2.37 billion people did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of 320 million people compared to 2019. FAO's 2021 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) further estimates that an additional 1 billion people (mostly in lower- and upper-middle-income countries) are at risk of not affording a healthy diet if a shock were to reduce their income by a third. Rates The 2021 edition of the SOFI report estimated the hunger excess linked to the COVID-19 pandemic at 30 million people by the end of the decade – FAO had earlier warned that even without the pandemic, the world was off track to achieve Zero Hunger or Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals – it further found that already in the first year of the pandemic, the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) had increased 1.5 percentage points, reaching a level of around 9.9 percent. This is the mid-point of an estimate of 720 to 811 million people facing hunger in 2020 – as many as 161 million more than in 2019. The number had jumped by some 446 million in Africa, 57 million in Asia, and about 14 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.At the global level, the prevalence of food insecurity at a moderate or severe level, and severe level only, is higher among women than men, magnified in rural areas. The gender gap in accessing food increased from 2018 to 2019, particularly at moderate or severe levels. Today, more than one billion women and girls around the world still do not have access to the healthy diets they need to survive and thrive, and two-thirds of countries report higher rates of food insecurity for women than men, especially in the Near East area. Examples of food insecurity Famines have been frequent in world history. Some have killed millions and substantially diminished the population of a large area. The most common causes have been drought and war, but the greatest famines in history were caused by economic policy. One economic policy example of famine was the Holodomor (Great Famine) induced by the Soviet Union's communist economic policy resulting in 7–10 million deaths.Close to 12 percent of the global population was severely food insecure in 2020, representing 928 million people – 148 million more than in 2019. A variety of reasons lies behind the increase in hunger over the past few years. Slowdowns and downturns since the 2008-9 financial crisis have conspired to degrade social conditions, making undernourishment more prevalent. Structural imbalances and a lack of inclusive policies have combined with extreme weather events; altered environmental conditions; and the spread of pests and diseases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, triggering stubborn cycles of poverty and hunger. In 2019, the high cost of healthy diets together with persistently high levels of income inequality put healthy diets out of reach for around 3 billion people, especially the poor, in every region of the world.Inequality in the distributions of assets, resources and income, compounded by the absence or scarcity of welfare provisions in the poorest of countries, is further undermining access to food. Nearly a tenth of the world population still lives on US$1.90 or less a day, with sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia the regions most affected. High import and export dependence ratios are meanwhile making many countries more vulnerable to external shocks. In many low-income economies, debt has swollen to levels far exceeding GDP, eroding growth prospects. Finally, there are increasing risks to institutional stability, persistent violence, and large-scale population relocation as a consequence of the conflicts. With the majority of them being hosted in developing nations, the number of displaced individuals between 2010 and 2018 increased by 70% between 2010 and 2018 to reach 70.8 million. Food security by country Afghanistan In Afghanistan, about 35.5% of households are food insecure. The prevalence of underweight, stunting, and wasting in children under five years of age is also very high.Western countries suspended humanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the country in August 2021. The United States has frozen about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. bank accounts. In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage. On 11 November 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Program has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity. China Food security is a policy priority of the government of China.The persistence of wet markets has been described as "critical for ensuring urban food security", particularly in Chinese cities. The influence of wet markets on urban food security includes food pricing and physical accessibility.Calling food waste "shameful", General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping launched "Operation empty plate". Xi stressed that there should be a sense of crisis regarding food security. In 2020, China witnessed a rise in food prices, due to the COVID-19 outbreak and mass flooding that wiped out the country's crops, which made food security a priority for Xi. Iran Iran is in top 7 worse food inflation worldwide. Minister of agriculture had reported unstable food in 2023. 57 percent of the population has malnutrition. In 2023 summer power was not supplied to the farmers threatening food supply. Atomic Energy Organization plans to reduce crop loss by 30 percent with nuclear radiation technology fighting pest. Iran in exchange for oil imported 100 thousand tons of Kenyan meat , at the same time per Trust report national statistics organization reported annual consumption of only 4 kg of meat protein per person. The government has launched National Credit Network for food/staple off coupon. Queue lines are reported too. In July 2023 another 82.3 percent food price hike happened. Out of 85 million population 28 million people live below poverty. There is a national document factory farming corporations program. The country has a program to reach 150000 hectare of greenhouses space. Minister of Mine, Industry and commerce changed prioritization for meat import from basic necessity to luxury good item. 2020s calorie intake was down to 2100 calories from 2700 in 2010s. Mexico Food insecurity has been an issue for Mexico throughout its history. Although food availability is not the issue, severe deficiencies in the accessibility of food contribute to insecurity. Between 2003 and 2005, the total Mexican food supply was well above the level sufficient to meet the requirement of the Mexican population, averaging 3,270 kilocalories per daily capita, which is higher than the minimum requirements of 1,850 kilocalories per daily capita. However, at least 10 percent of the population in every Mexican state suffers from inadequate food access. In nine states, 25–35 percent live in food-insecure households. More than 10 percent of the population of seven Mexican states falls into the category of Serious Food Insecurity.The issue of food inaccessibility is magnified by chronic child malnutrition, as well as obesity in children, adolescents, and families.Mexico is vulnerable to drought, which can cripple agriculture. Pakistan Pakistan's food insecurity and malnutrition situation is likely to worsen in the outlook period, as economic and political crises are reducing households' purchasing power and ability to buy food and other essential goods, it notes. Singapore In 1965 Singapore produced 60% of its vegetable demand, 80% of its poultry, and 100% of its eggs. In 2019 Singapore produced 13% of all leafy vegetables consumed, 24% of its eggs, and 9% of its fish. In that year the government launched the "30 by 30" program which aims to drastically reduce food insecurity through hydroponic farms and aquaculture farms. United States The Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways." Food security is defined by the USDA as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life."National Food Security Surveys are the main survey tool used by the USDA to measure food security in the United States. Based on respondents' answers to survey questions, the household can be placed on a continuum of food security defined by the USDA. This continuum has four categories: high food security, marginal food security, low food security, and very low food security. The continuum of food security ranges from households that consistently have access to nutritious food to households where at least one or more members routinely go without food due to economic reasons. Economic Research Service report number 155 (ERS-155) estimates that 14.5 percent (17.6 million) of US households were food insecure at some point in 2012.Across 2016, 2017 and 2018: 11.1 percent (14.3 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2018. In 6.8 percent of households with children, only adults were food insecure in 2018. Both children and adults were food insecure in 7.1 percent of households with children (2.7 million households) in 2018. 11.8 percent (15.0 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2017. 7.4 percent (9.4 million) of U.S. households had low food security in 2016. 4.9 percent (6.1 million) of U.S. households had very low food security at some time during 2016. Both children and adults were food insecure in 8.0 percent of households with children (3.1 million households).Food insecurity is recognized as a social determinant of health, or a condition in the environment where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. The severity of food insecurity differs between populations and communities such as minority populations and rural communities. People who experience food insecurity are usually faced with a variety of other socioeconomic and personal challenges such as affordable housing issues, social isolation, economic/social disadvantage resulting from structural racism, chronic or acute health problems, high medical costs, and low wages, all of which compound the problem. Poverty is closely associated with food insecurity but this relationship is not foolproof, in that not all people living below the poverty line experience food insecurity, and people who live above the poverty line can also experience food insecurity. In recognition of the complexity of the issue of food insecurity, promising and viable solutions consist of ones that frame food insecurity as a social issue and are comprehensive in that they address the interplay between food insecurity and socioeconomic and systemic factors, not merely the issue of fresh food access and availability. One example may include making efforts to increase minimum wage or decrease unemployment rates in affected areas, in addition to addressing a community's access to fresh food. An effort being increasing the implementation of social protection programs that function to stabilize incomes, raising incomes, or enhancing social justice, since underlying factors of food insecurity relates to economic factors such as income.In September 2022, the United States announced a $2.9 billion contribution to aid efforts of global food security at the UN General Assembly in New York. $2 billion will go to the U.S. Agency for International Development for its humanitarian assistance efforts around the world, along with $140 million for the agency's Feed the Future Initiative. The United States Department of Agriculture will receive $220 million to fund eight new projects, all of which is expected to benefit nearly a million children residing in food-insecure countries in Africa and East Asia. The USDA will also receive another $178 million for seven international development projects to support U.S. government priorities on four continents. Feed the Future In 2010, the government of the United States began the Feed the Future Initiative. The initiative is expected to work based on country-led priorities that call for consistent support by the governments, donor organizations, the private sector, and civil society to accomplish its long-term goals. Uganda In 2022, 28% of Ugandan households experienced food insecurity. This insecurity has negative effects on HIV transmission and household stability. Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of Congo is the second-largest country in Africa and is dealing with food insecurity. Although they have an abundance of natural resources, they lack accessibility to essential foods, which makes it difficult for the Congolese people in their daily lives. Malnutrition is high among children, which affects their ability, and children who live in rural areas are affected more than children who live in urban areas. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, about 33% of households are food insecure; it is 60% in eastern provinces. A study showed the correlation of food insecurity negatively affecting at-risk HIV adults in the Democratic Republic of Congo.In 2007–2008, grain prices increased and the people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo went into civil unrest. There were riots and protests. Hunger is frequent in the country, but sometimes it is to the extreme that many families cannot afford to eat every day. Bushmeat trade was used to measure the trend of food security. The trend signifies the amount of consumption in urban and rural areas. Urban areas mainly consume bushmeat because they cannot afford other types of meat. Australia Agriculture remains one of Australia's main exports, particularly beef, wheat, and rice. Australia is estimated to export enough food to feed 40 million people. Conversely, Australia is estimated to retain enough food to feed roughly 22 million domestically. Australia's main agricultural exports are to countries such as Japan, Indonesia, and South Korea.In 2012, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) conducted a survey measuring nutrition, which included food security. Financial issues were cited as the main cause of food insecurity. It was reported that 4% of Australian households were food insecure. 1.5% of those households were severely food insecure. Additionally, the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), reported that certain demographics are more vulnerable to being food insecure; such as indigenous, elderly, regional, and single-parent households.Climate change may present future challenges for Australia regarding food security, as Australia already experiences extreme weather. Australia's history in biofuel production and use of fertilizers has reduced the quality of the land. Increased extreme weather is projected to affect crops, livestock, and soil quality. Wheat production, one of Australia's main food exports, is projected to decrease by 9.2% by 2030. Beef production is also expected to fall by 9.6%. World Summit on Food Security The World Summit on Food Security, held in Rome in 1996, aimed to renew a global commitment to the fight against hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) called the summit in response to widespread undernutrition and growing concern about the capacity of agriculture to meet future food needs. The conference produced two key documents, the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action.The Rome Declaration called for the members of the United Nations to work to halve the number of chronically undernourished people on the Earth by 2015. The Plan of Action set several targets for government and non-governmental organizations for achieving food security, at the individual, household, national, regional, and global levels.Another World Summit on Food Security took place at the FAO's headquarters in Rome between November 16 and 18, 2009. Pillars of food security The WHO states that three pillars that determine food security: food availability, food access, and food use and misuse. The FAO adds a fourth pillar: the stability of the first three dimensions of food security over time. In 2009, the World Summit on Food Security stated that the "four pillars of food security are availability, access, utilization, and stability". Two additional pillars of food security were recommended in 2020 by the High-Level Panel of Experts for the Committee on World Food Security: agency and sustainability. Availability Food availability relates to the supply of food through production, distribution, and exchange. Food production is determined by a variety of factors including land ownership and use; soil management; crop selection, breeding, and management; livestock breeding and management; and harvesting. Crop production can be affected by changes in rainfall and temperatures. The use of land, water, and energy to grow food often compete with other uses, which can affect food production. Land used for agriculture can be used for urbanization or lost to desertification, salinization or soil erosion due to unsustainable agricultural practices. Crop production is not required for a country to achieve food security. Nations do not have to have the natural resources required to produce crops to achieve food security, as seen in the examples of Japan and Singapore.Because food consumers outnumber producers in every country, food must be distributed to different regions or nations. Food distribution involves the storage, processing, transport, packaging, and marketing of food. Food-chain infrastructure and storage technologies on farms can also affect the amount of food wasted in the distribution process. Poor transport infrastructure can increase the price of supplying water and fertilizer as well as the price of moving food to national and global markets. Around the world, few individuals or households are continuously self-reliant on food. This creates the need for a bartering, exchange, or cash economy to acquire food. The exchange of food requires efficient trading systems and market institutions, which can affect food security. Per capita world food supplies are more than adequate to provide food security to all, and thus food accessibility is a greater barrier to achieving food security. Access Food access refers to the affordability and allocation of food, as well as the preferences of individuals and households. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights noted that the causes of hunger and malnutrition are often not a scarcity of food but an inability to access available food, usually due to poverty. Poverty can limit access to food, and can also increase how vulnerable an individual or household is to food price spikes. Access depends on whether the household has enough income to purchase food at prevailing prices or has sufficient land and other resources to grow its food. Households with enough resources can overcome unstable harvests and local food shortages and maintain their access to food.There are two distinct types of access to food: direct access, in which a household produces food using human and material resources, and economic access, in which a household purchases food produced elsewhere. Location can affect access to food and which type of access a family will rely on. The assets of a household, including income, land, products of labor, inheritances, and gifts can determine a household's access to food. However, the ability to access sufficient food may not lead to the purchase of food over other materials and services. Demographics and education levels of members of the household as well as the gender of the household head determine the preferences of the household, which influences the type of food that is purchased. A household's access to adequate nutritious food may not assure adequate food intake for all household members, as intrahousehold food allocation may not sufficiently meet the requirements of each member of the household. The USDA adds that access to food must be available in socially acceptable ways, without, for example, resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies.Socially transmitted stereotypes and beliefs about certain groups can lead to discrimination and potentially to marginalization, resulting in exclusion from social and economic life. For example, when individuals cannot participate in the cultural norms in their community, such as having access to food to celebrate religious or cultural holidays due to exclusion from society, it can increase their chance of being food insecure. Specifically, their social and psychological well-being will not be fulfilled. In particular, indigenous peoples are at a higher risk of food insecurity due to exclusion, evidenced by the higher rates of stunting in indigenous communities (e.g. Guatemala) compared to non-indigenous communities. This can also be attributed to the inability to protect access to traditional foods and bio-cultural resources that form the basis of their diet. Culture shapes eating and meal patterns, and can determine ingrained rituals such as when and how a meal is eaten and prepared. Resettled refugees, for example, can face difficulties assimilating to the new cultural ways of eating and navigating the new food environment, placing them at a higher risk of food insecurity despite having physical access to food. Utilization The next pillar of food security is food utilization, which refers to the metabolism of food by individuals. Once the food is obtained by a household, a variety of factors affect the quantity and quality of food that reaches members of the household. To achieve food security, the food ingested must be safe and must be enough to meet the physiological requirements of each individual. Food safety affects food utilization, and can be affected by the preparation, processing, and cooking of food in the community and household. How we prepare food is largely influenced by our culture. Traditional food processing can greatly affect food utilization and influence present-day food preparation. Techniques such as fermenting, germination, and soaking can improve the nutritional value and safety of food while being cost and energy efficient. Exploring the benefits of traditional techniques and how different cultures utilize food can allow for a deeper understanding of food processing, preparation, and storage of food and increase overall food security. Nutritional values of the household determine food choice, and whether food meets cultural preferences is important to utilization in terms of psychological and social well-being. Access to healthcare is another determinant of food utilization since the health of individuals controls how the food is metabolized. For example, intestinal parasites can take nutrients from the body and decrease food utilization. Sanitation can also decrease the occurrence and spread of diseases that can affect food utilization. Education about nutrition and food preparation can affect food utilization and improve this pillar of food security. Stability Food stability refers to the ability to obtain food over time. Food insecurity can be transitory, seasonal, or chronic. In transitory food insecurity, food may be unavailable during certain periods of time. At the food production level, natural disasters and drought result in crop failure and decreased food availability. Civil conflicts can also decrease access to food. Instability in markets resulting in food-price spikes can cause transitory food insecurity. Other factors that can temporarily cause food insecurity are loss of employment or productivity, which can be caused by illness. Seasonal food insecurity can result from the regular pattern of growing seasons in food production.Chronic (or permanent) food insecurity is defined as the long-term, persistent lack of adequate food. In this case, households are constantly at risk of being unable to acquire food to meet the needs of all members. Chronic and transitory food insecurity are linked since the reoccurrence of transitory food security can make households more vulnerable to chronic food insecurity. Agency Agency refers to the capacity of individuals or groups to make their own decisions about what foods they eat, what foods they produce, how that food is produced, processed, and distributed within food systems, and their ability to engage in processes that shape food system policies and governance. Sustainability Sustainability refers to the long-term ability of food systems to provide food security and nutrition in a way that does not compromise the economic, social, and environmental bases that generate food security and nutrition for future generations. Effects of food insecurity Famine and hunger are both rooted in food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity translates into a high degree of vulnerability to famine and hunger; ensuring food security presupposes the elimination of that vulnerability. Data shows that food insecurity has detrimental effects on a human's well-being. Such effects include chronic and infectious diseases, especially diabetes, and HIV/AIDS, nutritional status and mental health. Social and ecological factors must also be considered especially taking sociocultural implications into account as those are related to child growth, diseases, and the nutritional status of an individual. The coping of households is dependent on contextual factors, such as where an individual is settled, namely rural, urban or marginal environments. The ways households respond to food insecurity influences health aspects such as infectious and chronic diseases, nutritional status, and mental health. It is essential for households to develop a sufficient coping strategy in to combat the negative impact food insecurity has on an individual's well-being. Households experiencing food insecurity tend to have a greater number of coping strategies than households with water insecurity. Even though there is a pattern of universal coping responses, it is important to consider contextual factors, for instance, the geographical and social setting. Biological anthropologists are thought to be essential for the contribution and understanding of the relationship between food insecurity and human health. They are interested in research and policy to improve food security in populations around the world. By improving food insecurity, better food safety is promoted.The Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted global food supplies which had already been hit hard by the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing impact of climate change. The conflict has severely impacted food supply chains with noteworthy effects on production, sourcing, manufacturing, processing, logistics, and significant shifts in demand between nations reliant on imports from Ukraine. In Asia and the Pacific, many of the region's countries depend on the importation of basic food staples such as wheat and fertilizer with nearly 1.1 billion lacking a healthy diet caused by poverty and ever-increasing food prices. On September 27, 2022, the Asian Development Bank announced a plan for a comprehensive range of assistance totaling $14 billion for both immediate and longer-term actions. The plan calls to improve long-term food security by strengthening farming and food supplies to cope with climate change and the loss of biodiversity in Asia and the Pacific. Since 2018, ADB has identified food security as a key operational priority. Under the program, assistance will start in 2022 and continue through 2025.Food insecurity can force individuals to undertake risky economic activities such as prostitution. A report from ICAP at Columbia University found that "Women and girls experiencing food insecurity were 28% more likely to engage in transactional sex, defined as sex in exchange for material goods, including food. They are also more likely to engage in high-risk or unprotected sex, sex before the age of 15, forced sex, or sex with a man who is 10 or more years older." This increases the risk of contracting HIV. Stunting and chronic nutritional deficiencies Many countries experience ongoing food shortages and distribution problems. These result in chronic and often widespread hunger amongst significant numbers of people. Human populations can respond to chronic hunger and malnutrition by decreasing body size, known in medical terms as stunting or stunted growth. This process starts in utero if the mother is malnourished and continues through approximately the third year of life. It leads to higher infant and child mortality, but at rates far lower than during famines. Once stunting has occurred, improved nutritional intake after the age of about two years is unable to reverse the damage. Stunting itself can be viewed as a coping mechanism, bringing body size into alignment with the calories available during adulthood in the location where the child is born. Limiting body size as a way of adapting to low levels of energy (calories) adversely affects health in three ways: Premature failure of vital organs during adulthood. For example, a 50-year-old individual might die of heart failure because his/her heart suffered structural defects during early development; Stunted individuals suffer a higher rate of disease and illness than those who have not undergone stunting; Severe malnutrition in early childhood often leads to defects in cognitive development. It, therefore, creates a disparity a between children who did not experience severe malnutrition and those who experience it.Between 2000 and 2019, the global prevalence of child stunting declined by one-third.Worldwide, the prevalence of child stunting was 21.3 percent in 2019, or 144 million children. Central Asia, Eastern Asia, and the Caribbean have the largest rates of reduction in the prevalence of stunting and are the only subregions on track to achieve the 2025 and 2030 stunting targets.Data from the 2021 FAO SOFI showed that in 2020, 22.0 percent (149.2 million) of children under 5 years of age were affected by stunting, 6.7 percent (45.4 million) were suffering from wasting and 5.7 percent (38.9 million) were overweight. FAO warned that the figures could be even higher due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.Africa and Asia account for more than nine out of ten of all children with stunting, more than nine out of ten children with wasting, and more than seven out of ten children who are affected by being overweight worldwide.The 2020 edition of FAO's Near East and North Africa − Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition found that in 2019 22.5 percent of children under the age of five were stunted, 9.2 percent were wasted, and 9.9 percent were overweight across several Arab and North African countries.Although there has been some progress, the world is not on track to achieve the global nutrition targets, including those on child stunting, wasting and overweight by 2030. Depression, anxiety, and other mental health outcomes Food insecurity is one of the social determinants of mental health. A recent comprehensive systematic review showed that over 50 studies have shown that food insecurity is strongly associated with a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. For depression and anxiety, food-insecure individuals have almost a threefold risk increase compared to food-secure individuals. Research has also found that food insecurity is linked to an increased risk of disordered eating behaviors. Challenges to achieving food security Global water crisis Water deficits, which are already spurring heavy grain imports in numerous smaller countries, may soon do the same in larger countries, such as China or India. The water tables are falling in scores of countries (including northern China, the US, and India) due to widespread overpumping using powerful diesel and electric pumps. Other countries affected include Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. This will eventually lead to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest. Even with the overpumping of its aquifers, China is developing a grain deficit. When this happens, it will almost certainly drive grain prices upward. Most of the 3 billion people projected to be born worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages. After China and India, there is a second tier of smaller countries with large water deficits – Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and Pakistan. Four of these already import a large share of their grain. Only Pakistan remains self-sufficient. But with a population expanding by 4 million a year, it will likely soon turn into the world market for grain.Regionally, Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any place on the globe, as of an estimated 800 million people who live in Africa, 300 million live in a water-stressed environment. It is estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely displace anywhere between 24 million and 700 million people as conditions become increasingly unlivable. Because the majority of Africa remains dependent on an agricultural lifestyle and 80 to 90 percent of all families in rural Africa rely upon producing their food, water scarcity translates to a loss of food security.Multimillion-dollar investments beginning in the 1990s by the World Bank have reclaimed the desert and turned the Ica Valley in Peru, one of the driest places on earth, into the largest supplier of asparagus in the world. However, the constant irrigation has caused a rapid drop in the water table, in some places as much as eight meters per year, one of the fastest rates of aquifer depletion in the world. The wells of small farmers and local people are beginning to run dry and the water supply for the main city in the valley is under threat. As a cash crop, asparagus has provided jobs for local people, but most of the money goes to the buyers, mainly the British. A 2010 report concluded that the industry is not sustainable and accuses investors, including the World Bank, of failing to take proper responsibility for the effect of their decisions on the water resources of poorer countries. Diverting water from the headwaters of the Ica River to asparagus fields has also led to a water shortage in the mountain region of Huancavelica, where indigenous communities make a marginal living herding. Land degradation Several definitions of land degradation exist in literature with varying emphasis on biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services. One definition of land degradation is "a negative trend in the condition of land that is caused by direct or indirect human-induced processes inclusive of anthropogenic climate change which is expressed as a long-term loss or reduction of at least one of the following: biological productivity, ecological integrity or value to humans." This definition applies to the forest and non-forest land and soil degradation. Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and a decline of agricultural yields. Other causes of land degradation include deforestation, overgrazing, over-exploitation of vegetation for use. Approximately 40 percent of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. According to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, Africa might be able to feed just 25 percent of its population by 2025. Climate change Over the coming decades, a changing climate and environmental stressors will have significant yet uncertain impacts on global food security. Extreme events, such as droughts and floods, are forecast to increase with climate change. Ranging from flash floods to gradually worsening droughts, these will have a range of effects on agriculture as well as the plants that various communities can grow. According to the Climate & Development Knowledge Network report Managing Climate Extremes and Disasters in the Agriculture Sectors: Lessons from the IPCC SREX Report, the effects will include changing productivity and livelihood patterns, economic losses, and effects on infrastructure, markets and food security. Food security in the future will be linked to society's ability to adapt agricultural systems to extreme events. An example of a shifting weather pattern would be a rise in temperatures. As temperatures rise due to climate change, there is a risk of a diminished food supply due to heat damage. According to recent statistics, the agricultural system produces around 21% to 37% greenhouse gasses, contributing to the climate crisis and leaving a dire situation for food security or malnutrition.Approximately 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar could experience floods followed by severe droughts in the coming decades. In India alone, the Ganges provides water for drinking and farming for more than 500 million people. Glaciers are not the only worry that the developing nations have; sea level is reported to rise as climate change progresses, reducing the amount of land available for agriculture.In other parts of the world, a big effect will be low yields of grain according to the World Food Trade Model, specifically in the low-latitude regions where much of the developing world is located. From this the price of grain will rise, along with the developing nations trying to grow the grain. Due to this, every 2–2.5% price hike will increase the number of hungry people by 1%. Low crop yields are just one of the problems facing farmers in low latitudes and tropical regions. The timing and length of the growing seasons, when farmers plant their crops, are going to be changing dramatically, per the USDA, due to unknown changes in soil temperature and moisture conditions.Another way of thinking about food security and climate change comes from Evan Fraser, a geographer working at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. His approach is to explore the vulnerability of food systems to climate change, and he defines vulnerability to climate change as situations that occur when relatively minor environmental problems cause major effects on food security. Examples of this include the Ethiopian Famine in the early 1980s. Three factors stand out as common in such cases, and these three factors act as a diagnostic "tool kit" through which to identify cases where food security may be vulnerable to climate change. These factors are: specialized agro-ecosystems; households with very few livelihood options other than farming; situations where formal institutions do not provide adequate safety nets to protect people."The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that an additional US$ 7.1–7.3 billion per year are needed in agricultural investments to offset the negative effect of climate change on nutrition for children by 2050." However, practices exist for successful climate change mitigation through changes in food policy. Agricultural diseases Diseases affecting livestock or crops can have devastating effects on food availability especially if there are no contingency plans in place. For example, Ug99, a lineage of wheat stem rust, which can cause up to 100% crop losses, is present in wheat fields in several countries in Africa and the Middle East and is predicted to spread rapidly through these regions and possibly further afield, potentially causing a wheat production disaster that would affect food security worldwide.The genetic diversity of the crop wild relatives of wheat can be used to improve modern varieties to be more rust resistant. In their centers of origin wild wheat plants are screened for rust resistance, then their genetic information is studied and finally wild plants and modern varieties are crossed through means of modern plant breeding to transfer the resistance genes from the wild plants to the modern varieties. Food versus fuel Farmland and other agricultural resources have long been used to produce non-food crops including industrial materials such as cotton, flax, and rubber; drug crops such as tobacco and opium, and biofuels such as firewood, etc. In the 21st century, the production of fuel crops has increased, adding to this diversion. However, technologies are also developed to commercially produce food from energy such as natural gas and electrical energy with tiny water and land footprint. Politics In the European Age of Enlightenment politicians discovered a tension between an individual's choice, public well-being, and the wealth of a sovereign nation state. It was in the 18th century that the eating habits of people became the subject of government strategy, resulting in political and economic theories about diet and national resilience. Today this political concern is called food security.In the late 20th century the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen observed that "there is no such thing as an apolitical food problem." While drought and other naturally occurring events may trigger famine conditions, it is government action or inaction that determines its severity, and often even whether or not a famine will occur. The 20th century has examples of governments, such as Collectivization in the Soviet Union or the Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China undermining the food security of their nations. Mass starvation is frequently a weapon of war, as in the blockade of Germany in World War I and World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the blockade of Japan during World War I and World War II and in the Hunger Plan enacted by Nazi Germany.Governments sometimes have a narrow base of support, built upon cronyism and patronage. Fred Cuny pointed out in 1999 that under these conditions: "The distribution of food within a country is a political issue. Governments in most countries give priority to urban areas, since that is where the most influential and powerful families and enterprises are usually located. The government often neglects subsistence farmers and rural areas in general. The more remote and underdeveloped the area the less likely the government will be to effectively meet its needs. Many agrarian policies, especially the pricing of agricultural commodities, discriminate against rural areas. Governments often keep prices of basic grains at such artificially low levels that subsistence producers cannot accumulate enough capital to make investments to improve their production. Thus, they are effectively prevented from getting out of their precarious situation."In Venezuela, the government has used food as a political weapon, rewarding supporters while denying food supplies to areas that oppose their rule.A government with a strong tendency towards kleptocracy can undermine food security even when harvests are good. When the rule of law is absent or is non-existent, farmers have little incentive to improve their productivity. If a farm becomes noticeably more productive than neighboring farms, it may become the target of individuals well-connected to the government. Rather than risk being noticed and possibly losing their land, farmers may be content with the perceived safety of mediocrity. Food loss and waste Food waste may be diverted for alternative human consumption when economic variables allow for it. In the 2019 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture, FAO asserted that food loss and waste have potential effects on the four pillars of food security. However, the links between food loss and waste reduction and food security are complex, and positive outcomes are not always certain. Reaching acceptable levels of food security and nutrition inevitably implies certain levels of food loss and waste. Maintaining buffers to ensure food stability requires a certain amount of food to be lost or wasted. At the same time, ensuring food safety involves discarding unsafe food, which then is counted as lost or wasted, while higher-quality diets tend to include more highly perishable foods.How the impacts on the different dimensions of food security play out and affect the food security of different population groups depends on where in the food supply chain the reduction in losses or waste takes place as well as on where nutritionally vulnerable and food-insecure people are located geographically.The waste of consumable food is even gaining attention from large food conglomerates. For instance, due to low food prices, simply discarding irregular carrots has typically been more cost-effective than spending money on the extra labor or machinery necessary to handle them. A juice factory in the Netherlands, however, has developed a process to efficiently divert and use previously rejected carrots, and its parent company is expanding this innovation to plants in Great Britain.In recent years, France has worked to combat food insecurity, in part by addressing food waste; since 2013 the country has passed laws prohibiting grocery stores from discarding unsold food items, requiring that they instead donate the food to designated charities. Nevertheless, according to The Economist's Global Food Security Index, overall food insecurity remains more severe in France than in the United States despite higher nationwide estimates of food waste in the U.S.Local efforts can directly help regional food security, particularly when residents become mindful of the juxtaposition of food insecurity in their communities with their own food waste at home. Learning that the average family of four throws away $1,500 worth of food per year while neighbors may be going hungry the motivation to waste less and give more: waste less money at the grocery store and give more to the food pantry. Overfishing The overexploitation of fish stocks can pose serious risks to food security. Risks can be posed both directly by overexploitation of food fish and indirectly through overexploitation of the fish that those food fish depend on for survival. In 2022 the United Nations called attention "considerably negative impact" on food security of the fish oil and fishmeal industries in West Africa. Risks to food security Population growth 2017 UN projections show a continued increase in population in the future (but a steady decline in the population growth rate), with the global population expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. Estimates by the UN Population Division for the year 2150 range between 3.2 and 24.8 billion; mathematical modeling supports the lower estimate. Some analysts have questioned the sustainability of further world population growth, highlighting the growing pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources. Solutions for feeding the extra billions in the future are being studied and documented. Fossil fuel dependence While agricultural output has increased, energy consumption to produce a crop has also increased at a greater rate, so the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, many of which are petroleum products, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum.Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon-fueled irrigation.Natural gas is a major feedstock for the production of ammonia, via the Haber process, for use in fertilizer production. The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. According to ICIS Fertilizers managing editor Julia Meehan, "People don't realize that 50% of the world's food relies on fertilizers." Economic Price setting In 2008, Thailand, one of the world's bihast rice exporters, announced the creation of the Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries with the potential to develop into a price-fixing cartel for rice. It is a project to organize 21 rice exporting countries to create a homonymous organisation to control the price of rice. The group is mainly made up of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The organization attempts to serve the purpose of making a "contribution to ensuring food stability, not just in an individual country but also to address food shortages in the region and the world". However, it is still questionable whether this organization will serve its role as an effective rice price fixing cartel, that is similar to OPEC's mechanism for managing petroleum. Economic analysts and traders said the proposal would go nowhere because of the inability of governments to cooperate with each other and control farmers' output. Moreover, countries that are involved expressed their concern that this could only worsen the food security. Inflation Inflation can jeopardize food security and decrease the effectiveness of measures meant to achieve it. Land use change China needs not less than 120 million hectares of arable land for its food security. China has reported a surplus of 15 million hectares. By contrast, some 4 million hectares of conversion to urban use and 3 million hectares of contaminated land have also been reported. A 2014 survey found that 2.5% of China's arable land is too contaminated to grow food without harm. Global catastrophic risks As anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions reduce the stability of the global climate, abrupt climate change could become more intense. The impact of an asteroid or comet larger than about 1 km diameter has the potential to block the sun globally, causing impact winter. Particles in the troposphere would quickly rain out, but particles in the stratosphere, especially sulfate, could remain there for years. Similarly, a supervolcanic eruption would reduce the potential of agricultural production from solar photosynthesis, causing volcanic winter. The Toba super volcanic eruption approximately 70,000 years ago may have nearly caused the extinction of humans (see Toba catastrophe theory). Again, primarily sulfate particles could block the sun for years. Solar blocking is not limited to natural causes as nuclear winter is also possible, which refers to the scenario involving widespread nuclear war and burning of cities that release soot into the stratosphere that would stay there for about 10 years. The high stratospheric temperatures produced by soot absorbing solar radiation would create near-global ozone hole conditions even for a regional nuclear conflict.A sufficiently powerful geomagnetic storm could result in the sudden absence of access to electricity in large areas of the world. Because industrial farming is increasingly dependent on constant access to electricity, for example in precision livestock farming, a geomagnetic storm could potentially have devastating effects on food production.The World Food Programme has stated that pandemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic risk undermining the efforts of humanitarian and food security organizations to maintain food security. The International Food Policy Research Institute expressed concerns that the increased connections between markets and the complexity of food and economic systems could cause disruptions to food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically affecting the poor. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 led to increases in the prices of staple foods in West Africa. Agricultural subsidies in the United States Agricultural subsidies are paid to farmers and agribusinesses to supplement their income, manage the supply of their commodities and influence the cost and supply of those commodities. In the United States, the main crops the government subsidizes contribute to the obesity problem; since 1995, $300 billion has gone to crops that are used to create junk food.Taxpayers heavily subsidize corn and soy, which are primary ingredients in processed foods and fatty foods not encouraged by the government, and are also used to fatten livestock. Half of the farmland is devoted to corn and soy, and the rest is wheat. Soy and corn can be found in sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup. Over $19 billion during the prior 18 years to 2013 was spent to incent farmers to grow the crops, raising the price of fruits and vegetables by about 40% and lowering the price of dairy and other animal products. Little land is used for fruit and vegetable farming.Corn, a pillar of American agriculture for years, is now mainly used for ethanol, high fructose corn syrup and bio-based plastics. About 40 percent of corn is used for ethanol and 36% is used as animal feed. A tiny fraction of corn is used as a food source, and much of that fraction is used for high-fructose corn syrup, which is a main ingredient in processed, unhealthy junk food.People who ate the most subsidized food had a 37% higher risk of being obese compared to people who ate the least amount of subsidized food. This brings up the concern that minority communities are more prone to risks of obesity due to financial limitations. The subsidies result in those commodities being cheap to the public, compared to those recommended by dietary guidelines.U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a 21% cut to government discretionary spending in the agriculture sector, which has met partisan resistance. This budget proposal would also reduce spending on the Special Supplement Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, albeit less than President Obama did. Children and food security On April 29, 2008, a UNICEF UK report found that the world's poorest and most vulnerable children are being hit the hardest by climate change. The report, "Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility: The Implications of Climate Change for the World's Children", says that access to clean water and food supplies will become more difficult, particularly in Africa and Asia. In the United States By way of comparison, in one of the largest food producing countries in the world, the United States, approximately one out of six people are "food insecure", including 17 million children, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2009. A 2012 study in the Journal of Applied Research on Children found that rates of food security varied significantly by race, class and education. In both kindergarten and third grade, 8% of the children were classified as food insecure, but only 5% of white children were food insecure, while 12% and 15% of black and Hispanic children were food insecure, respectively. In third grade, 13% of black and 11% of Hispanic children were food insecure compared to 5% of white children.There are also regional variations in food security. Although food insecurity can be difficult to measure, 45% of elementary and secondary students in Maine qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch; by some measures Maine has been declared the most food-insecure of the New England states. Transportation challenges and distance are common barriers to families in rural areas who seek food assistance. Social stigma is another important consideration, and for children, sensitively administering in-school programs can make the difference between success and failure. For instance, when John Woods, co-founder of Full Plates, Full Potential, learned that embarrassed students were shying away from the free breakfasts being distributed at a school he was working with, he made arrangements to provide breakfast free of charge to all of the students there. According to a 2015 Congressional Budget Office report on child nutrition programs, it is more likely that food-insecure children will participate in school nutrition programs than children from food-secure families. School nutrition programs, such as the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP) have provided millions of children access to healthier lunch and breakfast meals, since their inception in the mid-1900s. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NSLP has served over 300 million, while SBP has served about 10 million students each day. Nevertheless, far too many qualifying students still fail to receive these benefits simply due to not submitting the necessary paperwork. Multiple studies have reported that school nutrition programs play an important role in ensuring students are accessing healthy meals. Students who ate school lunches provided by NLSP showed higher diet quality than if they had their lunches. Even more, the USDA improved standards for school meals, which ultimately led to positive impacts on children's food selection and eating habits.Countless partnerships have emerged in the quest for food security. A number of federal nutrition programs exist to provide food specifically for children, including the Summer Food Service Program, Special Milk Program (SMP) and Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), and community and state organizations often network with these programs. The Summer Food Program in Bangor, Maine, is run by the Bangor Housing Authority and sponsored by Good Shepherd Food Bank. In turn, Waterville Maine's Thomas College, for example, is among the organizations holding food drives to collect donations for Good Shepherd. Children whose families qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) may also receive food assistance. WIC alone served approximately 7.6 million participants, 75% of which are children and infants.Despite the sizable populations served by these programs, Conservatives have regularly targeted these programs for defunding. Conservatives' arguments against school nutrition programs include fear of wasting food and fraud from applications. On January 23, 2017, H.R.610 was introduced to the House by Republican Representative Steve King. The bill seeks to repeal a rule set by the Food and Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture, which mandates schools to provide more nutritious and diverse foods across the food plate. Two months later, the Trump administration released a preliminary 2018 budget that proposed a $2 billion cut from WIC.Food insecurity in children can lead to developmental impairments and long term consequences such as weakened physical, intellectual and emotional development.Food insecurity is also related to obesity for people living in – "food deserts" – neighborhoods where nutritious foods are unavailable or unaffordable. People living in these neighborhoods often have to turn to more accessible but less nutritious food which puts them at greater risk of health issues like obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Gender and food security Gender inequality both leads to and is a result of food insecurity. According to estimates, girls and women make up 60% of the world's chronically hungry and little progress has been made in ensuring the equal right to food for women enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.At the global level, the gender gap in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity grew even larger in the year of COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 SOFI report finds that in 2019 an estimated 29.9 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 years around the world were affected by anemia – now a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator (2.2.3).The gap in food insecurity between men and women widened from 1.7 percentage points in 2019 to 4.3 percentage points in 2021. Women’s care burden also increased: in Honduras and Uganda, for example, lockdown measures increased girls’ domestic and care burden and reduced their school attendance more than they did those of boys.Hunger correlates with discrimination both in education and employment opportunities and within the household, where women's bargaining power is lower. Women's employment is essential for not only advancing gender equality within the workforce but ensuring a sustainable future as it means less pressure for high birth rates and net migration. On the other hand, gender equality and the promotion of women's empowerment and gender transformative approaches are described as instrumental and critical to ending malnutrition and hunger and hence to achieve healthy diets and food security.Women tend to be responsible for food preparation and childcare within the family and are more likely to spend their income on food and their children's needs. Women also play an important role in food production, processing, distribution and marketing. They often work as unpaid family workers, are involved in subsistence farming and represent about 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, varying from 20% in Latin America to 50% in Eastern and Southeastern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, women face discrimination in access to land, credit, technologies, finance and other services. Empirical studies suggest that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, women could boost their yields by 20–30%, raising the overall agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4%. While these are rough estimates, there would be a significant benefit in closing the gender gap in agricultural productivity. The gendered aspects of food security are visible along the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization.Women play key roles in maintaining all four pillars of food security: as food producers and agricultural entrepreneurs; as decision-makers for the food and nutritional security of their households and communities and as "managers" of the stability of food supplies in times of economic hardship. And yet, women's contributions often remain invisible and undervalued, inadequately reflected in policy, legal and institutional frameworks, and neglected by service providers and other actors operating across agrifood systems, thereby preventing them from reaching their full potential.The number of people affected by hunger remains extremely high, with a significant impact on girls and women. There is a sentiment that making this trend disappear should be a top priority for governments and international institutions. This is because food insecurity is an issue concerning equality, rights and social justice. Factors like capitalism, and exploration of Indigenous lands all contribute to food insecurity for minorities and the people who are the most oppressed in various countries (women being one of these oppressed groups). Because girls and women are the most oppressed by the inequitable global economic processes that govern food systems and by global trends such as climate change, it is reflective of how institutions continue to place women in positions of disadvantage and impoverishment to make money and thrive on capitalizing the food system. When the government withholds food by raising its prices to amounts only privileged people can afford, they both benefit and can control the lower-class/marginalized people via the food market. Use of genetically modified (GM) crops One of the most up-and-coming techniques to ensure global food security is the use of genetically modified (GM) crops. The genome of these crops can be altered to address one or more aspects of the plant that may be preventing it from being grown in various regions under certain conditions. Many of these alterations can address the challenges that were previously mentioned above, including the water crisis, land degradation, and the ever-changing climate. In agriculture and animal husbandry, the Green Revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield by creating high-yielding varieties. Often, the handful of hybridized breeds originated in developed countries and was further hybridized with local varieties in the rest of the developing world to create high-yield strains resistant to local climate and diseases.The area sown to genetically engineered crops in developing countries is rapidly catching up with the area sown in industrial nations. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), GM crops were grown by approximately 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries in 2005; up from 8.25 million farmers in 17 countries in 2004. Opposition to GM crops Some scientists question the safety of biotechnology as a panacea; agroecologists Miguel Altieri and Peter Rosset have enumerated ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment, or reduce poverty. Reasons include: There is no relationship between the prevalence of hunger in a given country and its population Most innovations in agricultural biotechnology have been profit-driven rather than need-driven Ecological theory predicts that the large-scale landscape homogenization with transgenic crops will exacerbate the ecological problems already associated with monoculture agriculture And, that much of the needed food can be produced by small farmers located throughout the world using existing agroecological technologies.Based on evidence from previous attempts, there is a likely lack of transferability of one type of GM crop from one region to another. For example, modified crops that have proven successful in Asia from the Green Revolution have failed when tried in regions of Africa. More research must be done regarding the specific requirements of growing a specific crop in a specific region.There is also a drastic lack of education given to governments, farmers, and the community about the science behind GM crops, as well as suitable growing practices. In most relief programs, farmers are given seeds with little explanation and little attention is paid to the resources available to them or even laws that prohibit them from distributing produce. Governments are often not advised on the economic and health implications that come with growing GM crops and are then left to make judgments on their own. Because they have so little information regarding these crops, they usually shy away from allowing them or do not take the time and effort required to regulate their use. Members of the community that will then consume the produce from these crops are also left in the dark about what these modifications mean and are often scared off by their 'unnatural' origins. This has resulted in failure to properly grow crops as well as strong opposition to the unknown practices. A study published in June 2016 evaluated the status of the implementation of Golden Rice, which was first developed in the 1990s to produce higher levels of Vitamin A than its non-GMO counterparts. This strain of rice was designed so that malnourished women and children in third-world countries who were more susceptible to deficiencies could easily improve their Vitamin A intake levels and prevent blindness, which is a common result. Golden Rice production was centralized in the Philippines, yet there have been many hurdles to jump in order to get production moving. The study showed that the project is far behind schedule and is not living up to its expectations. Although research on Golden Rice continues, the country has moved forward with other non-GMO initiatives to address the Vitamin A deficiency problem that is so pervasive in that region.Many anti-GMO activists argue that the use of GM crops decreases biodiversity among plants. Livestock biodiversity is also threatened by the modernization of agriculture and the focus on more productive major breeds. Therefore, efforts have been made by governments and non-governmental organizations to conserve livestock biodiversity through strategies such as cryoconservation of animal genetic resources. Support of GM crops Many GM crop success stories exist, primarily in developed nations like the US, China, and various countries in Europe. Common GM crops include cotton, maize, and soybeans, all of which are grown throughout North and South America as well as regions of Asia. Modified cotton crops, for example, have been altered such that they are resistant to pests, can be grown in more extreme heat, cold, or drought, and produce longer, stronger fibers to be used in textile production.One of the biggest threats to rice, which is a staple food crop especially in India and other countries within Asia, is blast disease, which is a fungal infection that causes lesions to form on all parts of the plant. A genetically engineered strain of rice has been developed so that it is resistant to blast, greatly improving the crop yield of farmers and allowing rice to be more accessible to everyone. Some other crops have been modified such that they produce higher yields per plant or that they require less land for growing. The latter can be helpful in extreme climates with little arable land and also decreases deforestation, as fewer trees need to be cut down in order to make room for crop fields. Others yet have been altered such that they do not require the use of insecticides or fungicides. This addresses various health concerns associated with such pesticides and can also work to improve biodiversity within the area in which these crops are grown. In a review of Borlaug's 2000 publication entitled Ending world hunger: the promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry, the authors argued that Borlaug's warnings were still true in 2010,GM crops are as natural and safe as today's bread wheat, opined Dr. Borlaug, who also reminded agricultural scientists of their moral obligation to stand up to the antiscience crowd and warn policy makers that global food insecurity will not disappear without this new technology and ignoring this reality global food insecurity would make future solutions all the more difficult to achieve.Research conducted by the GMO Risk Assessment and Communication of Evidence (GRACE) program through the EU between 2007 and 2013 focused on many uses of GM crops and evaluated many facets of their effects on human, animal, and environmental health.The body of scientific evidence concluding that GM foods are safe to eat and do not pose environmental risks is wide. Findings from the International Council of Scientists (2003) that analyzed a selection of approximately 50 science-based reviews concluded that "currently available genetically modified foods are safe to eat," and "there is no evidence of any deleterious environmental effects having occurred from the trait/species combinations currently available." The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supported the same consensus a year later in addition to recommending the extension of biotechnology to the developing world. Similarly, the Royal Society (2003) and British Medical Association (2004) found no adverse health effects of consuming genetically modified foods. These findings supported the conclusions of earlier studies by the European Union Research Directorate, a compendium of 81 scientific studies conducted by more than 400 research teams did not show "any new risks to human health or the environment, beyond the usual uncertainties of conventional plant breeding." Likewise, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Europe (OECD) and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (1999) did not find that genetically modified foods posed a health risk. Approaches By the United Nations The UN Millennium Development Goals are one of the initiatives aimed at achieving food security in the world. The first Millennium Development Goal states that the UN "is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty" by 2015. Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, advocates for a multidimensional approach to food security challenges. This approach emphasizes the physical availability of food; the social, economic and physical access people have to food; and the nutrition, safety and cultural appropriateness or adequacy of food. The work of the Food and Agriculture Organization Over the last decade, FAO has proposed a "twin track" approach to fight food insecurity that combines sustainable development and short-term hunger relief. Development approaches include investing in rural markets and rural infrastructure. In general, FAO proposes the use of public policies and programs that promote long-term economic growth that will benefit the poor. To obtain short-term food security, vouchers for seeds, fertilizer, or access to services could promote agricultural production. The use of conditional or unconditional food or cash transfers is another approach promoted by FAO. Conditional transfers may include school feeding programs, while unconditional transfers could include general food distribution, emergency food aid or cash transfers. A third approach is the use of subsidies as safety nets to increase the purchasing power of households. FAO has stated that "approaches should be human rights-based, target the poor, promote gender equality, enhance long-term resilience and allow sustainable graduation out of poverty."FAO has noted that some countries have been successful in fighting food insecurity and decreasing the number of people suffering from undernourishment. Bangladesh is an example of a country that has met the Millennium Development Goal hunger target. The FAO credited growth in agricultural productivity and macroeconomic stability for the rapid economic growth in the 1990s that resulted in an increase in food security. Irrigation systems were established through infrastructure development programs. Two programs, HarvestPlus and the Golden Rice Project, provided biofortified crops in order to decrease micronutrient deficiencies.In 2020, FAO deployed intense advocacy to make healthy diets affordable as a way to reduce global food insecurity and save vast sums in the process. The agency said that if healthy diets were to become the norm, almost all of the health costs that can currently be blamed on unhealthy diets (estimated to reach US$1.3 trillion a year in 2030) could be offset; and that on the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions that are linked to unhealthy diets, the savings would be even greater (US$1.7 trillion, or over 70 percent of the total estimated for 2030).FAO urged governments to make nutrition a central plank of their agricultural policies, investment policies and social protection systems. It also called for measures to tackle food loss and waste, and to lower costs at every stage of food production, storage, transport, distribution and marketing. Another FAO priority is for governments to secure better access to markets for small-scale producers of nutritious foods. By the World Food Programme The World Food Programme (WFP) is an agency of the United Nations that uses food aid to promote food security and eradicate hunger and poverty. In particular, the WFP provides food aid to refugees and to others experiencing food emergencies. It also seeks to improve nutrition and quality of life to the most vulnerable populations and promote self-reliance. An example of a WFP program is the "Food For Assets" program in which participants work on new infrastructure, or learn new skills, that will increase food security, in exchange for food. The WFP and the Government of Kenya have partnered in the Food For Assets program in hopes of increasing the resilience of communities to shocks. Global partnerships to achieve food security and end hunger In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. They put this ahead of other priorities, like the fight against malaria and AIDS.The main global policy to reduce hunger and poverty are the recently approved Sustainable Development Goals. In particular Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. A number of organizations have formed initiatives with the more ambitious goal to achieve this outcome in only 10 years, by 2025: In 2013 Caritas International started a Caritas-wide initiative aimed at ending systemic hunger by 2025. The One human family, food for all campaign focuses on awareness raising, improving the effect of Caritas programs and advocating the implementation of the Right to Food. The partnership Compact2025, led by IFPRI with the involvement of UN organisations, NGOs and private foundations develops and disseminates evidence-based advice to politicians and other decision-makers aimed at ending hunger and undernutrition in the coming 10 years, by 2025. It bases its claim that hunger can be ended by 2025 on a report by Shenggen Fan and Paul Polman that analyzed the experiences from China, Vietnam, Brazil and Thailand and concludes that eliminating hunger and undernutrition was possible by 2025. In June 2015, the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have launched a partnership to combat undernutrition especially in children. The program will initially be implemented in Bangladesh, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos and Niger and will help these countries to improve information and analysis about nutrition so they can develop effective national nutrition policies. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has created a partnership that will act through the African Union's CAADP framework aiming to end hunger in Africa by 2025. It includes different interventions including support for improved food production, a strengthening of social protection and integration of the Right to Food into national legislation. By the United States Agency for International Development The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) proposes several key steps to increasing agricultural productivity, which is in turn key to increasing rural income and reducing food insecurity. They include: Boosting agricultural science and technology. Current agricultural yields are insufficient to feed the growing populations. Eventually, the rising agricultural productivity drives economic growth. Securing property rights and access to finance Enhancing human capital through education and improved health Conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms and democracy and governance based on principles of accountability and transparency in public institutions and the rule of law are basic to reducing vulnerable members of society.Since the 1960s, the U.S. has been implementing a food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) to directly target consumers who lack the income to purchase food. According to Tim Josling, a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, food stamps or other methods of distribution of purchasing power directly to consumers might fit into the range of international programs under consideration to tackle food insecurity. Agrifood systems resilience According to FAO, resilient agrifood systems achieve food security. The resilience of agrifood systems refers to the capacity over time of agrifood systems, in the face of any disruption, to sustainably ensure availability of and access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for all, and sustain the livelihoods of agrifood systems' actors. Truly resilient agrifood systems must have a robust capacity to prevent, anticipate, absorb, adapt and transform in the face of any disruption, with the functional goal of ensuring food security and nutrition for all and decent livelihoods and incomes for agrifood systems' actors. Such resilience addresses all dimensions of food security, but focuses specifically on stability of access and sustainability, which ensure food security in both the short and the long term. Resilience-building involves preparing for disruptions, particularly those that cannot be anticipated, in particular through: diversity in domestic production, in imports, and in supply chains; robust food transport networks; and guaranteed continued access to food for all.The FAO finds that, depending on context, there are six pathways to follow towards food systems transformation: integrating humanitarian, development and peacebuilding policies in conflict-affected areas; scaling up climate resilience across food systems; strengthening resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity; intervening along the food supply chains to lower the cost of nutritious foods; tackling poverty and structural inequalities, ensuring interventions are pro-poor and inclusive; and strengthening food environments and changing consumer behaviour to promote dietary patterns with positive impacts on human health and the environment.Given that most food systems are affected by more than one driver, the formulation of comprehensive portfolios of policies, investments and legislation may be elaborated along several pathways simultaneously. This will allow for maximizing their combined effects on food systems transformation, exploiting win-win solutions and mitigating undesirable trade-offs.Coherence in the formulation and implementation of policies and investments among food, health, social protection and environmental systems is also essential to build on synergies towards more efficient and effective food systems solutions. Systems approaches are needed to build coherent portfolios of policies, investments and legislation and enable win-win solutions while managing trade-offs, including territorial approaches, ecosystems approaches, Indigenous Peoples' food systems approaches and interventions that systemically address protracted crisis conditions. Improving agricultural productivity to benefit the rural poor There are strong, direct relationships between agricultural productivity, hunger, poverty, and sustainability. Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas and make their living from agriculture. Hunger and child malnutrition are greater in these areas than in urban areas. Moreover, the higher the proportion of the rural population that obtains its income solely from subsistence farming (without the benefit of pro-poor technologies and access to markets), the higher the incidence of malnutrition. Therefore, improvements in agricultural productivity aimed at small-scale farmers will benefit the rural poor first. Food and feed crop demand is likely to double in the next 50 years, as the global population approaches nine billion. Growing sufficient food will require people to make changes such as increasing productivity in areas dependent on rainfed agriculture; improving soil fertility management; expanding cropped areas; investing in irrigation; conducting agricultural trade between countries; and reducing gross food demand by influencing diets and reducing post-harvest losses.According to the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, a major study led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), managing rainwater and soil moisture more effectively, and using supplemental and small-scale irrigation, hold the key to helping the greatest number of poor people. It has called for a new era of water investments and policies for upgrading rainfed agriculture that would go beyond controlling field-level soil and water to bring new freshwater sources through better local management of rainfall and runoff. Increased agricultural productivity enables farmers to grow more food, which translates into better diets and, under market conditions that offer a level playing field, into higher farm incomes. With more money, farmers are more likely to diversify production and grow higher-value crops, benefiting not only themselves but the economy as a whole.It may be that an alliance between the emergency food program and community-supported agriculture is beneficial, as some countries' food stamps cannot be used at farmer's markets and places where food is less processed and grown locally. The gathering of wild food plants appears to be an efficient alternative method of subsistence in tropical countries, which may play a role in poverty alleviation. Large-scale food stockpiling The minimum annual global wheat storage is approximately two months. To counteract the severe food security issues caused by global catastrophic risks, years of food storage has been proposed. Though this could ameliorate smaller scale problems like regional conflict and drought, it would exacerbate current food insecurity by raising food prices. Alternative diets Food security could be increased by integrating alternative foods that can be grown in compact environments, that are resilient to pests and disease, and that don't require complex supply chains. Foods meeting these criteria include algae, mealworm, and fungi-derived mycoprotein. While unpalatable on their own to most people, such raw ingredients might be processed into more palatable foods. Some such foods might also be feasible following a nuclear winter or similar loss of sunlight, as might seaweed, as well as various single-cell proteins that can feed on dead leaves, grass, or methane. Agricultural insurance Insurance is a contractual means of protection from financial loss, which allows exposed individuals to pool resources to spread their risk. They do so by contributing premium to an insurance fund, which will indemnify those who suffer insured loss. This procedure reduces the risk for an individual by spreading his/her risk among the multiple fund contributors. Insurance can be designed to protect many types of individuals and assets against single or multiple perils and buffer insured parties against sudden and dramatic income or asset loss.Crop insurance is purchased by agricultural producers to protect themselves against either the loss of their crops due to natural disasters. Two type of insurances are available: claim-based insurances and index-based insurances. In particular, in poor countries facing food security problems, index-based insurances offer some advantages, including indices that can be derived from globally available satellite images that correlate well with what is insured. These indices can be delivered at low cost, and the insurance products open up new markets that are not served by claim-based insurances.An advantage of index-based insurance is that it can potentially be delivered at lower cost. A significant barrier that hinders uptake of claim-based insurance is the high transaction cost for searching for prospective policyholders, negotiating and administering contracts, verifying losses and determining payouts. Index insurance eliminates the loss verification step, thereby mitigating a significant transaction cost. A second advantage of index-based insurance is that, because it pays an indemnity based on the reading of an index rather than individual losses, it eliminates much of the fraud, moral hazard and adverse selection, which are common in classical claim-based insurance. A further advantage of index insurance is that payments based on a standardized and indisputable index also allow for a fast indemnity payment. The indemnity payment could be automated, further reducing transaction costs.Basis risk is a major disadvantage of index-based insurance. It is the situation where an individual experiences a loss without receiving payment or vice versa. Basis risk is a direct result of the strength of the relation between the index that estimates the average loss by the insured group and the loss of insured assets by an individual. The weaker this relation the higher the basis risk. High basis risk undermines the willingness of potential clients to purchase insurance. It thus challenges insurance companies to design insurances such as to minimize basis risk. Food Justice Movement The Food Justice Movement has been seen as a unique and multifaceted movement with relevance to the issue of food security. It has been described as a movement about social-economic and political problems in connection to environmental justice, improved nutrition and health, and activism. Today, a growing number of individuals and minority groups are embracing the Food Justice due to the perceived increase in hunger within nations such as the United States as well as the amplified effect of food insecurity on many minority communities, particularly the Black and Latino communities.A number of organizations have either championed the Food Justice Cause or greatly impacted the Food Justice space. An example of a prominent organization within the food justice movement has been the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which is a worker-based human rights organization that has been recognized globally for its accomplishments in the areas of human trafficking, social responsibility and gender-based violence at work. The Coalition of Immoaklee Workers most prominent accomplishment related to the food justice space has been its part in implementing the Fair Food Program, which increased the pay and bettered working conditions of farm workers in the tomato industry who had been exploited for generations. This accomplishment provided over 30,000 workers more income and the ability to access better and more healthy foods for themselves and their families. Another organization in the food justice space is the Fair Food Network, an organization that has embraced the mission of helping families who need healthy food gain access to it while also increasing the livelihood for farmers in America and growing local economies. Started by Oran B. Hesterma, the Fair Food Network has invested over $200 million in various projects and initiatives, such as the Double Up Food Bucks program, to help low-income and minority communities access healthier food. A possible way to learn about nutrition, and provide community activities and access to food is community gardening. Food sovereignty The concept of "food sovereignty" is important within food justice movements in the US. "Food sovereignty" is a response to a history of colonialism, power, and industrialization. Its main goal is to raise awareness of, "the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems". The term "sovereign" can be understood as independence, self governance, or a non-alignment – in the context of the Western world, this is seen as autonomy from the global food industry. Because the industrialization of food has caused a lack of agency over food source, Food sovereignty declares the business practices of multinational corporations as a form of neocolonialism. For this reason, the food sovereignty movement is in direct opposition with multinational corporations. This oppositional relationship between people and the food industry has birthed the Food Justice Movement, a conversation that food sovereignty is a part of. "The food justice movement is a different approach to a community's needs that seeks to truly advance self-reliance and social justice by placing communities in leadership of their own solutions". This movement is a direct challenge to colonial food pathways, as it calls attention to the need for self reliance to determine how food is grown and consumed. Food security related days October 16 has been chosen as World Food Day, in honour of the date FAO was founded in 1945. On this day, FAO hosts a variety of events at its headquarters in Rome and around the world, as well as seminars with UN officials.The United Nations, on the joint initiative of FAO and Slovenia, has designated 20 May as World Bee Day to highlight the threats facing pollinators. Bees and other pollinating insects help sustain food security by contributing to a variety of crops, and are estimated to improve the food output of some 2 billion small farmers. Model An example of a city that has overcome challenges and achieved improved sustainability practices while immensely decreasing food insecurity is Lisbon. Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was awarded as the 2020 European Green Leaf Award Winner for its notable sustainable land use, transport, green growth and eco and waste innovations. The 2010 to 2014 Portuguese financial crisis, a prominent obstacle for Portugal caused by factors such as the global recession, resulted in increased unemployment rates and reduced household budgets. As a product, adequate food intake was evidently inhibited. However, Lisbon demonstrated that sustainability and economic growth can go hand in hand. Measures were taken place such as the ReFood Movement, a food waste prevention initiative, and the Municipal Plan Against Food Wastage program. Generalization As of 2015, the concept of food security has mostly focused on food calories rather than the quality and nutrition of food. The concept of nutrition security or nutritional security evolved as a broader concept. In 1995, it has been defined as "adequate nutritional status in terms of protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals for all household members at all times".: 16  It is also related to the concepts of nutrition education and nutritional deficiency. See also Organizations: Sources This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020, In brief​, 44, FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, . This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction, In brief​, 24, FAO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from The State of Food and Agriculture 2021. Making agrifood systems more resilient to shocks and stresses, In brief​, FAO, . This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from Robust transport networks support agrifood systems' resilience​, FAO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from Ensuring economic access to healthy diets during times of crisis​, FAO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from International trade and the resilience of national agrifood systems​, FAO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021. Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all, In brief​, FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA (license statement/permission). Text taken from NENA Regional Network on Nutrition-sensitive Food System​, FAO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. (license statement/permission). Text taken from The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021: Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all, In brief​, FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP & WHO, FAO. This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from The status of women in agrifood systems – Overview​, FAO, FAO. References Sources Cox, P. G., S. Mak, G. C. Jahn, and S. Mot. 2001. Impact of technologies on food security and poverty alleviation in Cambodia: designing research processes. pp. 677–684 In S. Peng and B. Hardy [eds.] "Rice Research for Food Security and Poverty Alleviation." Proceeding the International Rice Research Conference, March 31, – April 3, 2000, Los Baños, Phile. Singer, H. W. (1997). A global view of food security. Agriculture + Rural Development, 4: 3–6. Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CTA). Further reading Dixant, Agriculture, and Food Security in Southern Africa edited by Steven Were Omamo and Klaus von Grebmer (2005) (Brief and Book available) Brown ME, Funk CC (February 2008). "Climate. Food security under climate change". Science. 319 (5863): 580–1. doi:10.1126/science.1154102. PMID 18239116. S2CID 32956699. Lobell DB, Burke MB, Tebaldi C, Mastrandrea MD, Falcon WP, Naylor RL (February 2008). "Prioritizing climate change adaptation needs for food security in 2030". Science. 319 (5863): 607–10. doi:10.1126/science.1152339. PMID 18239122. S2CID 6180475. Introduction to the Basic Concepts of Food Security EC-FAO Food Security Programme (2008) Practical Guide Series Lindberg R, Whelan J, Lawrence M, Gold L, Friel S (February 2015) "Still serving hot soup? Two hundred years of a charitable food sector in Australia: a narrative review". Australia New Zealand Journal of Public Health. The environmental food crisis A study done by the UN on feeding the world population (2009). Climate change: Impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation A report by the International Food Policy Research Institute that presents research results that quantify the impacts of climate change, assesses the consequences for food security, and estimates the investments that would offset the negative consequences for human well-being. Moseley, W.G. and B.I. Logan. 2005. "Food Security." In: Wisner, B., C. Toulmin and R. Chitiga (eds). Toward a New Map of Africa. London: Earthscan Publications. Pp. 133–152. Nord, Mark. "Struggling To Feed the Family: What Does It Mean To Be Food Insecure?". Archived from the original on 18 May 2015. Food Insecurity, a special issue on the topic by the Journal of Applied Research on Children. (212) Achieving Food and Nutrition Security: Actions to Meet the Global Challenge. A Training Course Reader by InWEnt, GTZ and Welthungerhilfe. 3rd edition, 240 pages, 2009 Natalini, Davide; Jones, Aled; Bravo, Giangiacomo (2015). "Quantitative Assessment of Political Fragility Indices and Food Prices as Indicators of Food Riots in Countries". Sustainability. 7 (4): 4360–4385. doi:10.3390/su7044360. — Research from the Global Sustainability Institute that studies the link between political fragility and access to food. "Human population numbers as a function of food supply" (PDF). Russell Hopfenberg (1 Duke University, Durham, NC, USA;)* and publisher=Environment, development and sustainability 3.1: 1–15. |David Pimentel (2 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA). "We don't need to double world food production by 2050 – here's why". Mitch Hunter, Post-Doctoral Associate, University of Minnesota. The Conversation. 8 March 2017. "'Hunger Games': How to Feed a Growing Population Without Turning the Planet into a Human Factory". Abegão, J.L.R & Silva, L.F (2020), Social Sciences Institute (ICS), University of Lisbon. Archived from the original on 11 April 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2021. External links Food Security Communications Toolkit from FAO Encyclopedia of Food Security and Sustainability. Elsevier Science. 8 November 2018. ISBN 978-0-12-812688-2. "FOOD SECURITY Communications Toolkit". fao.org. Food and Agriculture Organization. Retrieved 7 September 2016. "Population Growth and the Food Supply". Population Institute of Canada. "Feeding the Ten Billion-Plants and Population Growth". PGR Newsletter FAO-Bioversity L.T. Evans. 2000. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-64685-5. Published in Issue No. 125, page 39 to 40 – (5802) characters

green new deal

Green New Deal (GND) proposals call for public policy to address climate change along with achieving other social aims like job creation, economic growth and reducing economic inequality. The name refers back to the New Deal, a set of reforms and public works projects undertaken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933-1935 in response to the Great Depression in the United States. The Green New Deal combines Roosevelt's economic approach with modern ideas such as renewable energy and resource efficiency.A prominent 2019 attempt to get legislation passed for a Green New Deal was sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) during the 116th United States Congress, though it failed to advance in the Senate. In the European Union, a 2019 proposal from the European commission for a European Green Deal was supported by the European Council, and in January 2020, by the European Parliament as well.Since the early 2000s, and especially since 2018, other proposals for a "Green New Deal" had arisen both in the United States and internationally. The first U.S. politician to run on a Green New Deal platform was Howie Hawkins of the Green Party when he ran for governor of New York in 2010. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein ran on a Green New Deal platform in 2012 and 2016. History Throughout the 1970s and 1990s, an economic policy to move the United States economy away from nonrenewable energy was developed by activists in the labor and the environmental movements. An early use of the phrase "Green New Deal" was by journalist Thomas Friedman. He argued in favor of the idea in The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine. In January 2007, Friedman wrote:If you have put a windmill in your yard or some solar panels on your roof, bless your heart. But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid – moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean coal and renewables. And that is a huge industrial project – much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century. Friedman expanded upon the idea in his September 2008 book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. This approach was taken up in Britain by the Green New Deal Group, which published its eponymous report on July 21, 2008. The concept was further popularized and put on a wider footing when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) began to promote it internationally. In early 2008, author Jeff Biggers launched a series of challenges for a Green New Deal from the perspective of his writings from coal country in Appalachia. Biggers wrote, "(then-presidential candidate) Obama should shatter these artificial racial boundaries by proposing a New 'Green' Deal to revamp the region and bridge a growing chasm between bitterly divided Democrats, and call for an end to mountaintop removal policies that have led to impoverishment and ruin in the coal fields." Biggers followed up with other Green New Deal proposals over the next four years.The Green Party of the United States and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein proposed a "Green New Deal" beginning in 2012. A Green New Deal remains officially part of the platform of the Green Party of the United States. COVID-19 recovery programs By 2019, international calls for a Green New Deal had already became more prominent. This reflected the popular support the GND had received in the US in late 2018, growing recognition of the global warming threat resulting from recent extreme weather events, the Greta effect and the IPPC 1.5 °C report. In addition to activity within conventional national & multilateral politics, there has been support for a Green New Deal within city diplomacy. In October 2019 the C40 committed to supporting a Global Green New Deal, announcing there will be determined action from all its 94 cities, with 30 cities having already peaked their emissions and progressing rapidly towards net-zero.There were further proposals to include a GND, both in the US and internationally, in the recovery program for the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2020 however, the United Nations released a report saying that a high proportion of the world's COVID-19 recovery stimulus was not going towards clean energy. UN secretary general António Guterres declared the world's governments were "doubling down" on fossil fuels. As of 2021, commentators such as the Council on Foreign Relations have noted that in addition to climate-friendly policies being enacted in the U.S. by Joe Biden, other major economies such as China, India, and the European Union have also begun "implementing some of the policies envisioned by the Green New Deal." Environmental justice The 2019 United States congressional resolution Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey advocated a "just transition", counteracting previous systemic injustices that had disproportionally hurt vulnerable communities. Commentators have called for future Green New Deal-type programs to also emphasize environmental justice, both in the United States and overseas. Other commentators, while agreeing on the need for the incorporation of justice, have cautioned against excessive emphases on identity politics, or on bundling in too many economically progressive measures. They fear including too much in a GND package will make it harder to achieve broad based majority support. Polls had found that in 2019 the Ocasio-Cortez and Markey GND was initially supported by a majority of conservatives. Yet after a few months of hostile criticism by shows like Fox News for being excessively socialist, only about 35% of American conservatives remained in support. Australia The Australian Greens have advocated for a "Green Plan", similar to the Green New Deal, since 2009. Deputy Leader Christine Milne discussed the idea on the ABC's panel discussion program Q&A on February 19, 2009, and it was the subject of a major national conference of the Australian Greens in 2009. Canada In early May 2019, with rising concerns about the need for urgent global environmental action to reduce potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, a non-partisan coalition of nearly 70 groups launched the Pact for a Green New Deal (New Deal vert au Canada in French). With press conferences in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, the coalition called for fossil fuel emissions to be halved by 2030. On May 16, 2019 the Green Party released a 5-page summary of their plan entitled "Mission: Possible: The Green Climate Action Plan". European Union On continental Europe, the European Spring coalition campaigned under the banner of a "Green New Deal" for the 2019 EU elections. In December 2019, the newly elected European Commission under Von der Leyen presented a set of policy proposals under the name European Green Deal. Compared to the United States plan, it has a less ambitious decarbonisation timeline, with an aim of carbon neutrality in 2050. The policy proposal involves every sector in the economy and the option of a border adjustment mechanism, a 'carbon tariff', is on the table to prevent carbon leakage from outside countries.A pilot program for a four-day workweek, under development by Spain's Valencian Regional Government, has been described as a "helpful counter to ... fearmongering about the bleak, hamburger-free world climate activists are allegedly plotting to create with a Green New Deal."In April 2020 the European Parliament called to include the European Green Deal in the recovery program from the COVID-19 pandemic.The proposals were criticised for falling short of the goal of ending fossil fuels, or being sufficient for a green recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic. In its place, it has been proposed that the EU enacts a "Green New Deal for Europe", which includes more investment, and changes the legal regulation that enables global warming from coal, oil, and gas to continue.In July 2021, the European Commission released its "Fit for 55" legislation package, which contains important guidelines for the future of the automotive industry; all new cars on the European market must be zero-emission vehicles from 2035. According to European Commissioner for Climate Action Frans Timmermans, "the best answer" to the 2021 global energy crisis is "to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels." South Korea In 2020, after the Democratic Party won an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the leadership of the country began to advance a Green New Deal. It includes: Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. South Korea is the first country in east Asia committing to this target. Expanding investments in renewable energy. Stopping investments in coal in the country and outside it. Establishing a carbon tax. Creating a Regional Energy Transition Centre to ensure that the coal workers will not suffer and will be transitioned to green jobs. United Kingdom In the UK, the Green New Deal Group and the New Economics Foundation produced the A Green New Deal report asking for a Green New Deal as a way out of the Global Financial Crisis back in 2008, demanding a reform of the financial and tax sectors and a revolution of the energy sector in the country. Also, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas, raised the idea during an economic debate in 2008.In March 2019, Labour Party members launched a grassroots campaign called Labour for a Green New Deal. The aim of the group is to push the party to adopt a radical Green New Deal to transform the UK economy, tackle inequality and address the escalating climate crisis. It also wants a region-specific green jobs guarantee, a significant expansion of public ownership and democratic control of industry, as well as mass investment in public infrastructure. The group states that they got their inspiration from the Sunrise Movement and the work that congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done in the US. Group members have met with Zack Exley, co-founder of the progressive group Justice Democrats, to learn from the experiences that he and Ocasio-Cortez have had in working for the Green New Deal campaign in the US.On April 30, former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband joined Caroline Lucas and former South Thanet Conservative MP Laura Sandys in calling for a Green New Deal in the UK. The left-wing campaigning group Momentum also wish to influence the Labour Party's manifesto to include a Green New Deal.In September 2019, the Labour party committed to a Green New Deal at its 2019 annual conference. This included a target to decarbonise by 2030. Polling undertook by YouGov in late October 2019 found that 56% of British adults support the goal of making the UK carbon neutral by 2030 or earlier.In July 2020, while the UK government promised a "green recovery" from the COVID-19 pandemic, this was criticised as being insufficient, and lacking changes to regulation that enabled coal, oil, and gas pollution to continue. An alternative "Green Recovery Act", widely endorsed by politicians and the media, was published by an academic and think tank group that would target nine fields of law reform, on transport, energy generation, agriculture, fossil fuels, local government, international agreement, finance and corporate governance, employment, and investment. This has the goal of establishing duties on all public bodies and regulators to end use of all coal, oil and gas "as fast as technologically practicable", with strict exceptions if there are not yet technical alternatives. United States Early efforts In 2006, a Green New Deal was created by the Green New Deal Task Force as a plan for one hundred percent clean, renewable energy by 2030 utilizing a carbon tax, a jobs guarantee, free college, single-payer healthcare, and a focus on using public programs.Since 2006, the Green New Deal has been included in the platforms of multiple Green Party candidates, such as Howie Hawkins' gubernatorial campaigns in 2010, 2014, and 2018, and Jill Stein's 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns.In the 2014 Congressional race in California, Independent candidate for CA-33 and author Marianne Williamson endorsed the Green New Deal in her campaign platform. The Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey Green New Deal Background A "Green New Deal" wing began to emerge in the Democratic Party after the November 2018 elections. A possible program in 2018 for a "Green New Deal" assembled by the think tank Data for Progress was described as "pairing labor programs with measures to combat the climate crisis."A November 2018 article in Vogue stated, "There isn't just one Green New Deal yet. For now, it's a platform position that some candidates are taking to indicate that they want the American government to devote the country to preparing for climate change as fully as Franklin Delano Roosevelt once did to reinvigorating the economy after the Great Depression."A week after the 2018 midterm elections, climate justice group Sunrise Movement organized a protest in Nancy Pelosi's office calling on Pelosi to support a Green New Deal. On the same day, freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched a resolution to create a committee on the Green New Deal. Following this, several candidates came out supporting a "Green New Deal", including Deb Haaland, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Antonio Delgado. They were joined in the following weeks by Reps. John Lewis, Earl Blumenauer, Carolyn Maloney, and José Serrano.By the end of November, eighteen Democratic members of Congress were co-sponsoring a proposed House Select Committee on a Green New Deal, and incoming representatives Ayanna Pressley and Joe Neguse had announced their support. Draft text would task this committee with a "'detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan' capable of making the U.S. economy 'carbon neutral' while promoting 'economic and environmental justice and equality,'" to be released in early 2020, with draft legislation for implementation within 90 days.Organizations supporting a Green New Deal initiative include the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Extinction Rebellion and Friends of the Earth.A Sunrise Movement protest on behalf of a Green New Deal at the Capitol Hill offices of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer on December 10, 2018 featured Lennox Yearwood and speakers as young as age 7, resulting in 143 arrests. Euronews, the pan-European TV network, displayed video of youth with signs saying "Green New Deal," "No excuses", and "Do your job" in its "No Comment" section.On December 14, 2018, a group of over 300 local elected officials from 40 states issued a letter endorsing a Green New Deal approach. That same day, a poll released by Yale Program on Climate Change Communication indicated that although 82% of registered voters had not heard of the "Green New Deal," it had strong bi-partisan support among voters. A non-partisan description of the general concepts behind a Green New Deal resulted in 40% of respondents saying they "strongly support", and 41% saying they "somewhat support" the idea.On January 10, 2019, over 600 organizations submitted a letter to Congress declaring support for policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This includes phasing out fossil fuel extraction and ending fossil fuel subsidies, transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2035, expanding public transportation, and strict emission reductions rather than reliance on carbon emission trading. Green New Deal Resolution On February 7, 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey released a fourteen-page resolution for their Green New Deal (House Resolution 109, closely related to S. Res. 59). Their proposal advocated transitioning the United States to 100% renewable, zero-emission energy sources, along with investment in electric cars and high-speed rail systems, and implementing the "social cost of carbon" that had been part of the Obama administration's plan for addressing climate change within 10 years. Besides increasing state-sponsored jobs, this Green New Deal is also sought to address poverty by aiming much of the improvements in "frontline and vulnerable communities" which include the poor and disadvantaged people. The resolution included calls for universal health care, increased minimum wages, and preventing monopolies. According to The Washington Post (February 11, 2019), the resolution called for a "10-year national mobilization" whose primary goals would be: "Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States." "Providing all people of the United States with – (i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security; and (iv) access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature." "Providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States." "Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources." "Repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including . . . by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible." "Building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and 'smart' power grids, and working to ensure affordable access to electricity." "Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification." "Overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in – (i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; (ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and (iii) high-speed rail." "Spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible." "Working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible." House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis Various perspectives emerged in late 2018 as to whether to form a committee dedicated to climate, what powers such a committee might be granted, and whether the committee would be specifically tasked with developing a Green New Deal. Incoming House committee chairs Frank Pallone and Peter DeFazio indicated a preference for handling these matters in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. (Writing in Gentleman's Quarterly, Jay Willis responded that despite the best efforts of Pallone and De Fazio over many years, "the planet's prognosis has failed to improve," providing "pretty compelling evidence that it is time for legislators to consider taking a different approach.")In contrast, Representative Ro Khanna thought that creating a Select Committee specifically dedicated to a Green New Deal would be a "very commonsense idea", based on the recent example of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (2007–2011), which had proven effective in developing a 2009 bill for cap-and-trade legislation.Proposals for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis did not contain "Green New Deal" language and lacked the powers desired by Green New Deal proponents, such as the ability to subpoena documents or depose witnesses.Representative Kathy Castor of Florida was appointed to chair the committee. January 2019 letter to Congress from environmental groups On January 10, 2019, a letter signed by 626 organizations in support of a Green New Deal was sent to all members of Congress. It called for measures such as "an expansion of the Clean Air Act; a ban on crude oil exports; an end to fossil fuel subsidies and fossil fuel leasing; and a phase-out of all gasoline-powered vehicles by 2040."The letter also indicated that signatories would "vigorously oppose ... market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, waste-to-energy and biomass energy."Six major environmental groups did not sign on to the letter: the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, Mom's Clean Air Force, Environment America, and the Audubon Society.An article in The Atlantic quoted Greg Carlock, who prepared "a different Green New Deal plan for the left-wing think tank Data for Progress" as responding, "There is no scenario produced by the IPCC or the UN where we hit mid-century decarbonization without some kind of carbon capture."The MIT Technology Review responded to the letter with an article titled, "Let's Keep the Green New Deal Grounded in Science". The MIT article states that, although the letter refers to the "rapid and aggressive action" needed to prevent the 1.5 ˚C of warming specified in the UN climate panel's latest report, simply acknowledging the report's recommendation is not sufficient. If the letter's signatories start from a position where the options of carbon pricing, carbon capture for fossil plants, hydropower, and nuclear power, are not even on the table for consideration, there may be no feasible technical means to reach the necessary 1.5 ˚C climate goal.A report in Axios suggested that the letter's omission of a carbon tax, which has been supported by moderate Republicans, did not mean that signatories would oppose carbon pricing.The Director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy at George Mason University was quoted as saying, "As long as organizations hold onto a rigid set of ideas about what the solution is, it's going to be hard to make progress ... And that's what worries me." Criticism Many who support some goals of the Green New Deal express doubt about feasibility of one or more of its parts. John P. Holdren, former science advisor to Obama, thinks the 2030 goal is too optimistic, saying that 2045 or 2050 would be more realistic.Many members of the Green party have also attacked the plan due to its cutting of multiple parts of their plan, such as the elimination of nuclear power and jobs guarantee, and the changing of the goal from a one hundred percent clean, renewable energy economy by 2030 to the elimination of the U.S. carbon footprint by 2030.Paul Bledsoe of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank affiliated with the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, expressed concern that setting unrealistic "aspirational" goals of 100% renewable energy could undermine "the credibility of the effort" against climate change.Economist Edward Barbier, who developed the "Global Green New Deal" proposal for the United Nations Environment Programme in 2009, opposes "a massive federal jobs program," saying "The government would end up doing more and more of what the private sector and industry should be doing." Barbier prefers carbon pricing, such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, in order to "address distortions in the economy that are holding back private sector innovation and investments in clean energy."When Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was confronted by youth associated with the Sunrise Movement on why she does not support the Green New Deal, she told them "there's no way to pay for it" and that it could not pass a Republican-controlled Senate. In a tweet following the confrontation, Feinstein said that she remains committed "to enact real, meaningful climate change legislation."In February 2019, the center-right American Action Forum, estimated that the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade. They estimate its potential cost at $600,000 per household. The organization estimated the cost for eliminating carbon emissions from the transportation system at $1.3–2.7 trillion; guaranteeing a job to every American $6.8–44.6 trillion; universal health care estimated close to $36 trillion. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Wall Street is willing to invest significant resources toward GND programs, but not unless Congress commits to moving it forward.The AFL–CIO, in a letter to Ocasio-Cortez, expressed strong reservations about the GND, saying, "We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy."In an op-ed for Slate, Alex Baca criticizes the Green New Deal for failing to address the environmental, economic, and social consequences of urban sprawl. Adam Millsap criticizes the GND's overreliance on public transit to make cities more environmentally friendly, since public transit integrates better in monocentric cities than in polycentric ones. He suggests land use reforms to increase density, congestion pricing, and eliminating parking requirements as measures that can be applied more flexibly to cities with monocentric and polycentric layouts.Although the Green New Deal is often presented as a left-wing proposal, criticism of it has come from left-wing commentators who have argued that the Green New Deal fails to tackle the real cause of the climate emergency, namely the concept of unending growth and consumption inherent in capitalism, and is instead an attempt to greenwash capitalism. Left wing critics of the Green New Deal argue that it is not the monetization of Green policies and practices within capitalism that are necessary, but an anti-capitalist adoption of policies for de-growth. Supporters In September 2019, Naomi Klein published On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. On Fire is a collection of essays focusing on climate change and the urgent actions needed to preserve the planet. Klein relates her meeting with Greta Thunberg in the opening essay in which she discusses the entrance of young people into those speaking out for climate awareness and change. She supports the Green New Deal throughout the book and in the final essay she discusses the 2020 U.S. election saying "The stakes of the election are almost unbearably high. It's why I wrote the book and decided to put it out now and why I'll be doing whatever I can to help push people toward supporting a candidate with the most ambitious Green New Deal platform—so that they win the primaries and then the general."Former vice presidents Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, former United States Senator from Tennessee, Former US Representative from Tennessee's 6th congressional district and 4th congressional district, environmentalist, filmmakerIndividuals Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General Mike Gravel, former US Senator from Alaska and candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries Howie Hawkins, Green party co-founder and first American political candidate to run on the promise of a Green New Deal Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics, professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times Bill Maher, comedian, political commentator, and television host Jagmeet Singh, Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada endorsed a Canadian Green New Deal Jill Stein, former Green party presidential candidate in 2012 and 2016 Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, professor at Columbia University, and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. Bria Vinaite recorded a "Green New Deal" video for Vogue Magazine in 2018 Marianne Williamson, candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries Andrew Yang, candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primariesSenators Richard Blumenthal US Senator from Connecticut Cory Booker, US Senator from New Jersey Kirsten Gillibrand, US Senator from New York Martin Heinrich, US Senator from New Mexico Mazie Hirono, US Senator from Hawaii Amy Klobuchar, US Senator from Minnesota Ed Markey, US Senator from Massachusetts Jeff Merkley, US Senator from Oregon Bernie Sanders, US Senator from Vermont, Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Tom Udall, US Senator from New Mexico Chris Van Hollen, US Senator from Maryland Elizabeth Warren, US Senator from Massachusetts Ron Wyden, US Senator from OregonRepresentatives Karen Bass, US Representative from California's 37th congressional district. Earl Blumenauer, US Representative from Oregon's 3rd congressional district. Suzanne Bonamici, US Representative from Oregon's 1st congressional district. Salud Carbajal, US Representative from California's 24th congressional district. David Cicilline, US Representative from Rhode Island's 1st congressional district. Katherine Clark, Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and US Representative from Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. Bonnie Watson Coleman, US Representative from New Jersey's 12th congressional district. Gerry Connolly, US Representative from Virginia's 11th congressional district. Susan Davis, US Representative from California's 53rd congressional district. Peter DeFazio, Chair of the House Transportation Committee and US Representative from Oregon's 4th congressional district. Rosa DeLauro, US Representative from Connecticut's 3rd congressional district. Lloyd Doggett, US Representative from Texas 35th congressional district. Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and US Representative from New York's 16th congressional district. Veronica Escobar, US Representative from Texas 16th congressional district. Anna Eshoo, US Representative from California's 18th congressional district. Adriano Espaillat, US Representative from New York's 13th congressional district. John Garamendi, US Representative from California's 3rd congressional district. Jesús "Chuy" García, US Representative from Illinois's 4th congressional district. Jimmy Gomez, US Representative from California's 34th congressional district. Raúl Grijalva, Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and US Representative from Arizona's 3rd congressional district. Deb Haaland, US Representative from New Mexico's 1st congressional district. Jahana Hayes, US Representative from Connecticut's 5th congressional district. Jared Huffman, US Representative from California's 2nd congressional district. Pramila Jayapal, US Representative from Washington's 7th congressional district. Bill Keating (politician), US Representative from Massachusetts's 9th congressional district. Joe Kennedy III, US Representative from Massachusetts's 4th congressional district and 2020 US Senate candidate. Ro Khanna, US Representative from California's 17th congressional district. John Larson, US Representative from Connecticut's 1st congressional district. Barbara Lee, US Representative from California's 13th congressional district. Andy Levin, US Representative from Michigan's 9th congressional district. Mike Levin, US Representative from California's 49th congressional district. Nita Lowey, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee and US Representative from New York's 17th congressional district. Ben Ray Luján, Assistant Speaker of the US Representative from New Mexico's 1st congressional district and 2020 candidate for US Senate. Carolyn Maloney, US Representative from New York's 12th congressional district. Sean Patrick Maloney, US Representative from New York's 18th congressional district. Betty McCollum, US Representative from Minnesota's 4th congressional district. James McGovern, Chair of the House Rules Committee and US Representative from Massachusetts's 2nd congressional district. Seth Moulton,US Representative from Massachusetts' 6th congressional district and former 2020 Presidential candidate. Grace Napolitano, US Representative from California's 32nd congressional district. Joe Neguse, US Representative from Colorado's 2nd congressional district. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US Representative from New York's 14th congressional district. Beto O'Rourke, former US Representative From Texas 16th congressional district, 2018 US Senate Nominee in Texas. Bill Pascrell, US Representative from New Jersey's 9th congressional district. Chellie Pingree, US Representative from Maine's 1st congressional district. Mark Pocan, Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and US Representative from Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district. Ayanna Pressley, US Representative from Massachusetts's 7th congressional district. Mike Quigley, US Representative from Illinois's 5th congressional district. Jamie Raskin, US Representative from Maryland 8th congressional district. Dutch Ruppersberger, US Representative from Maryland's 2nd congressional district. Gregorio Sablan, Delegate to the US House of Representatives from the Northern Mariana Islands' at-large district. John Sarbanes, US Representative from Maryland's 3rd congressional district. Janice Schakowsky, US Representative from Illinois 9th congressional district. Bobby Scott (politician), Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee and US Representative from Virginia's 3rd congressional district. Brad Sherman , US Representative from California's 30th congressional district. Adam Smith, Chair of the House Armed Services Committee and US Representative from Washington's 9th congressional district. Thomas Suozzi, US Representative from New York's 3rd congressional district. Mike Thompson, US Representative from California's 5th congressional district. Rashida Tlaib, US Representative from Michigan's 13th congressional district. Lori Trahan, US Representative from Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district. Juan Vargas, US Representative from California's 51st congressional district. Peter Welch, US Representative from Vermont At Large.Governors Andrew Cuomo, Former Governor of New York. Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington and former 2020 Presidential candidate. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Governor of New Mexico. Janet Mills, Governor of Maine.Mayors Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend Bill De Blasio, Mayor of New York City and former 2020 Presidential candidate Wayne Messam, Mayor of Miramar, Florida Michelle Wu, Mayor of BostonOrganizations The Climate Mobilization, which advocates a "World War II-scale economic mobilization to restore a safe climate." The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DieM25), a pan-European political activist group of over 100.000 members for progressive EU and global economics policy, founded by Yanis Varoufakis The European Green Party and The Greens–European Free Alliance campaigned on the Green New Deal in the 2009 European Parliament election and maintain an ongoing European "Green New Deal" campaign The Global Greens support a Global Green New Deal. Green Party of the United States has endorsed the Green New Deal in its party platform. The Heinrich Böll Foundation published proposals for a Green New Deal in Germany, the European Union, as well as North America, Israel, and Ukraine. The League of Conservation Voters is an American advocacy group for environmental issues The New Economics Foundation and The Green New Deal Group (United Kingdom) openDemocracy Sierra Club Living Economy Program The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, who developed the Low Carbon Green Growth Roadmap for Asia and the Pacific The United Nations Environment Programme launched a Green Economy Initiative known as the "Global Green New Deal". The Global Marshall Plan Initiative advocates for a sustainable global economy Detractors Individuals On February 9, 2019, United States President Donald Trump voiced his opposition using sarcasm via Twitter as follows: "I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called "Carbon Footprint" to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!" Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein objected to the plan saying "there's no way to pay for it" and is drafting her own narrowed down version. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin criticized the plan as a "dream" adding that 'it would hurt regions dependent on reliable, affordable energy." Republican White House aide Sebastian Gorka has referred to the deal as "what Stalin dreamed about but never achieved" and that "they [proponents of the deal] want to take your pickup truck. They want to rebuild your home. They want to take away your hamburgers." The comments about hamburgers are a common criticism of the deal by conservatives, who have gone on to criticize Representative Ocasio-Cortez for allowing her Chief of Staff to eat a hamburger with her at a Washington restaurant. On February 13, 2019, Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) released a parody video on his verified Twitter account comparing the Green New Deal to the failed Fyre Festival, using the hashtag #GNDisFyre. On March 14, 2019, Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican representing Utah's 1st congressional district, said that the legislation was "tantamount to genocide," adding shortly afterward that his comment was "maybe an overstatement, but not by a lot." During a Fox Business interview on August 13, 2020, President Donald Trump again voiced his opposition, declaring that adopting the Green New Deal would result in demolishing the Empire State Building and abolishing all animals. Legislative outcome On March 26, in what Democrats called a "stunt," Republicans called for an early vote on the resolution without allowing discussion or expert testimony. In protest, 42 Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with Democrats voted "present" resulting in a 57–0 defeat on the Senate floor. Three Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with Democrats voted against the bill, while the other votes were along party lines. 2020 presidential campaign Howie Hawkins, the Green Party's 2020 presidential candidate, ran on a Green New Deal platform calling for the U.S. to reach zero greenhouse emissions and 100% clean energy by 2030.Democratic Party presidential candidate and president-elect Joe Biden has declined to endorse the full Green New Deal plan proposed by members of his party, but he has promised to increase generation of renewable energy, transition to more energy efficient buildings and increase fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. The joint policy proposals developed by the Biden and Sanders campaigns, which were released on July 8, 2020, do not include a Green New Deal. The Biden climate plan In 2021, commentators noted that early climate-related executive actions by President Biden, such as re-joining the Paris Agreement, have much in common with the 2019 GND proposed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey. According to Mike Krancer, while he sees the Biden Plan For A Clean Energy Revolution And Environmental Justice and the 2019 proposal as very similar, a key difference is that the Biden plan includes a prominent role for carbon capture and storage technology. President Biden's infrastructure package, which pledges to halve 2005 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2030, has been criticized by progressives, including Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, as not being ambitious enough to achieve the scale required to mitigate climate change. Biden's climate plan is incorporated in his American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan, which would in part lead to the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps. 2021 reintroduction On April 20, 2021, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Markey and fellow Democratic lawmakers reintroduced the Green New Deal Resolution at the National Mall. The resolution reaffirms the threat produced by climate change and the responsibility of the US to recommit to meeting the emission goals outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Red Deal In April 2021, The Red Nation Indigenous advocacy group released the Red Deal. The Red Deal is a proposal designed to supplement the Green New Deal, and incorporates a range of anti-capitalism and Indigenous decolonisation proposals designed to halt climate change. Boston Green New Deal Mayor Michelle Wu of the city of Boston has been pursuing the implementation of a Boston Green New Deal which she proposed in 2020. She became mayor in 2021. American University Green New Deal The Sunrise Movement at American University launched an initiative for a Green New Deal at AU. The campaign was launched during a rally on the first day of voting for the spring 2023 student government elections. The movement gathered over 500 signatures to get a GND for AU on the ballot for a campus-wide referendum. The referendum received 83% of students voting in favor of the question. Candidates for Student Body President and Vice President of American University incorporated the AUGND into their official platforms. Senators in the Undergraduate Senate have come out in large support of the deal.The Green New Deal for AU (GND4AU) is a vision for a sustainable and thriving campus for American University. The GND4AU applies the Green New Deal framework to the American University campus and community. It would position American University to be a leader in combating the climate crisis both in its operations and in the students and research it produces. Like the Green New Deal policy, it also targets economic inequality and centers social justice values. International After the Green New Deal idea was floated by Thomas Friedman in 2007 and developed by the British Green New Deal Group, a plan for an international green new deal was advanced by the United Nations. On October 22, 2008, UNEP's Executive Director Achim Steiner unveiled a Global Green New Deal initiative as a response to the financial crisis of 2008, aiming to create jobs in "green" industries, thus boosting the world economy and curbing climate change at the same time. The UN continued to promote the global green new deal into 2009 both to the G20 and its wider membership. The International green new deal was also supported by Gordon Brown. Yet despite the success of Brown and others in bringing about a short lived worldwide return to Keynesian stimulus policies, the focus of extra government spending was on supporting existing economic activity, rather than speeding the transition to the green economy. In 2019, United Nations officials and others once again called for a global green new deal. In July 2021, the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal was launched, a group of politicians from around the world campaigning for an international Green New Deal. See also References Further reading Aronoff, Kate (2019). A planet to win: why we need a green new deal. Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, Thea N. Riofrancos, Naomi Klein. London. ISBN 978-1-78873-831-6. OCLC 1126186838.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)online Bloomfield, Jon, and Fred Steward. "The politics of the green new deal." Political Quarterly 91.4 (2020): 770-779 online Carmack, Meagan, Nives Dolšak, and Aseem Prakash. "Electoral appeal of climate policies: The Green New Deal and the 2020 US House of Representatives elections." PLOS Climate 1.6 (2022): e0000043. online Chohan, Usman W. A Green New Deal: Discursive Review and Appraisal (March 3, 2019). https://ssrn.com/abstract=3347494 Chomsky, Noam (2020). Climate crisis and the global green new deal: the political economy of saving the planet. Robert Pollin, Chronis Polychroniou. London. ISBN 978-1-78873-985-6. OCLC 1156445770.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Galvin, Ray, and Noel Healy. "The Green New Deal in the United States: What it is and how to pay for it." Energy Research & Social Science 67 (2020): 101529. online Green, Jeremy. "Greening Keynes? Productivist lineages of the Green New Deal." The Anthropocene Review 9.3 (2022): 324-343. onlineHockett, Robert (2020). Financing the Green New Deal: a plan of action and renewal. Cham, Switzerland. ISBN 978-3-030-48450-7. OCLC 1183719220.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Klein, Naomi (2020). On fire: the (burning) case for a green new deal (First Simon & Schuster trade paperback ed.). New York. ISBN 978-1-9821-2992-7. OCLC 1139767535.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Mastini, Riccardo, Giorgos Kallis, and Jason Hickel. "A green new deal without growth?" Ecological Economics 179 (2021): 106832. onlineNetzer, Nina (2011). A global green new deal response to crisis or paradigm shift towards sustainability?. Berlin. ISBN 978-3-86872-734-0. OCLC 748701860.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Pettifor, Ann. The case for the green new deal (Verso Books, 2020). online Smol, Marzena. "Is the green deal a global strategy? Revision of the green deal definitions, strategies and importance in post-COVID recovery plans in various regions of the world." Energy Policy 169 (2022): 113152. onlineVarshini Prakash, Guido Girgenti (2020). Winning the green new deal: why we must, how we can (First Simon & Schuster trade paperback ed.). New York, NY. ISBN 978-1-9821-4243-8. OCLC 1156413445.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) External links Media related to Green New Deal at Wikimedia Commons Quotations related to Green New Deal at Wikiquote Projects referred to as "Green New Deal" Full text of A Green New Deal by the Green New Deal Group and published by the New Economics Foundation (2008) UNEP: Global Green New Deal at the Library of Congress Web Archives (archived November 12, 2008) Hilary French, Michael Renner and Gary Gardner, Toward a Transatlantic Green New Deal, ed. by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Worldwatch Institute, PDF, 2009 E McGaughey, M Lawrence and Common Wealth, 'The Green Recovery Act 2020', proposed UK law, and pdf Green New Deal for Europe (2019) Edition II Green New Deal proposal in 116th Congress Text of H. Res. 109: "Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal." Introduced February 7, 2019. The Green New Deal could be our only hope: In praise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's vision. Mia MacDonald and Gene Baur for New York Daily News. January 16, 2019.

sinking cities

Sinking cities are urban environments that are in danger of disappearing due to their rapidly changing landscapes. The largest contributors to these cities becoming unlivable are the combined effects of climate change (manifested through sea level rise, intensifying storms, and storm surge), land subsidence, and accelerated urbanization. Many of the world's largest and most rapidly growing cities are located along rivers and coasts, exposing them to natural disasters. As countries continue to invest people, assets, and infrastructure into these cities, the loss potential in these areas also increases. Sinking cities must overcome substantial barriers to properly prepare for today's dynamic environmental climate. Background and history Development The vast majority of sinking cities are located in coastal lowlands. These areas are particularly vulnerable to climate related hazards, but since ancient times, have also been preferred areas for human settlement. Soil fertility, availability of fresh water from rivers, accessibility due to flat topographical relief, and sea and waterways allowing for trade routes, have long made coastal plains valuable agricultural and economic resources. Throughout history, these areas have continued to develop, and today, are some of the most densely populated regions in the world. Causes The growing physical risks to many coastal cities stem from a combination of factors relating to rapid urbanization, climate change, and land subsidence. Many of these natural hazards are largely anthropogenic in origin. In many cases, the fundamental aspects that lead to sinking cities become tightly interwoven, and over time, are increasingly difficult to resolve. Urbanization For the first time in human history the majority of people live in urban areas. The United Nations estimates that approximately 68% of the world's population will be living in urban areas by 2050. Urbanization has vast implications including the urban planning, geography, sociology, architecture, economics, and public health of a region. The rate at which urbanization occurs is also important. Slower rates of urbanization allow city planners time to make thoughtful planning decisions. Once cities reach maturity, it can take decades for local governments to develop, fund, and execute major infrastructure projects to alleviate the issues brought on by rapid urbanization. In particular, some regions in Asia are currently experiencing unprecedented urban growth. Currently, the Asian urban population is increasing by 140,000 per day and is expected to nearly double from 1.25 billion in 2006 to 2.4 billion by 2030. The more troubling fact is that much of this growth is taking place along the coasts. In China, population growth in urban coastal locations was three times the national growth rate. Rapid increases in population growth challenge the carrying capacity of these urban environments often leading to mismanagement of natural resources. For sinking cities, the most common result has been over-extraction of groundwater ultimately resulting in land subsidence. Climate change Low-lying cities are especially prone to the most devastating effects of climate change. The risks posed by climate change will continue to grow into the next century, even if a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is achieved, due to the built-in momentum from previous emissions. Moreover, recent reports by the United Nations have shown that climate change may be accelerating rather than slowing down. The 2019 Emissions Gap Report confirmed that GHG emissions continue to rise, despite highly publicized political commitments. The report goes on to emphasize that countries must increase their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions threefold to remain below the 2 °C goal and more than fivefold to achieve the 1.5 °C goal.Coastal cities will bear the largest impacts of climate change due to their proximity to the sea. Storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase flooding in many regions. Oftentimes even recently completed infrastructure projects have not properly accounted for the rapidly changing climate. Asia's coastal megacities are particularly at risk as certain cities' flood protection measures have been cited as inadequate even for 30-year flood events. Sea level rise Although reports vary widely in predicting the height of sea level rise in the future, IPCC estimates predict a 1-meter rise over the next century. Other reports consider the IPCC estimates to be far too low and suggest levels closer to 1.9 meters by 2100. As sea levels continue to rise, coastal cities face challenges of properly modeling and preparing for the increased storm surges brought on by tropical storms. Intensifying storms Risks due to sea level rise will only be compounded by intensifying storms. As the oceans continue to warm, tropical cyclone rainfall rates and cyclone intensities are likely to increase. Studies conducted by the NOAA also suggest a 2 °C increase in global temperatures will lead to a greater proportion of tropical storms that reach Category 4 and Category 5 levels. Hurricane Sandy (2012), which was only a Category 3 storm, inflicted nearly US$70 billion in damages. Additionally, climate change may cause a change in the paths of tropical cyclones, bringing storms to places which have previously not had to contend with major hurricanes. These vulnerable areas are likely to be unaware and ill-prepared for the ever intensifying storms. Land subsidence Subsidence is the sudden sinking or gradual downward settling of the ground's surface with little or no horizontal motion. Land subsidence can have both direct and indirect repercussions for cities. Direct impacts are often in the form of structural damage to major infrastructure systems, including water management networks, buildings, and highways. Land subsidence also further adds to the growing risk of coastal flooding, and oftentimes, the net rate of subsidence exceeds that of sea level rise. In Bangkok, the Gulf of Thailand is rising 0.25 cm per year, but the city is sinking at a far faster rate, up to 4 cm per year. This downward settlement significantly increases flood vulnerability which can ultimately lead to major economic damages and loss of lives. Causes Throughout the twenty-first century, as these cities continued to grow, fresh water became an ever more precious resource. Due to the dense populations along river deltas, industrial development, and relaxed or no environmental protections, river waters often became polluted. This has become an ever more common phenomena in coastal mega-cities, particularly in Asia. Many cities are unable to afford costly water treatment systems and are forced to rely heavily on groundwater. When groundwater is extracted from aquifers in the subsurface more rapidly than it is able to recharge, voids are created beneath the earth. As the ground is loaded, most often through increased development, the soil compresses and land begins to subside. Depending on the geology of the region, subsidence may occur rapidly, as in many coastal plains, or more slowly depending on bedrock depth. Examples Venice is often referenced as an example of a city suffering from subsidence, however, it is a relatively minor case with mostly historical origins. More serious, are the Asian metropolises with concentrations of millions of people living at or even below mean sea level. Some cities, such as Tokyo, have developed sophisticated techniques for measuring, monitoring, and combating land subsidence. But many other large cities (Hanoi, Haiphong, Rangoon, Manila, etc.), particularly in developing nations, have no record of their subsidence, which is far from under control. Many cities do not possess the resources necessary to conduct complex, and often expensive, geological, geotechnical, and hydrogeological studies required to accurately measure and model future land subsidence. Mexico City is an example of a sinking city that is neither coastal nor low-lying. The city was originally constructed by the Aztecs above a large aquifer in the 1300s. Subsidence was originally caused by the loading of large Aztec and Spanish structures. The city grew rapidly during the nineteenth century, and with it, so did the demand for water. By 1854 more than 140 wells had been drilled into the aquifer beneath Mexico City. Although the early cultures drew water from the same lakes and aquifers, they were merely 300,000 people as compared to the city's current population of 21 million. Today, the historic and densely populated city is rapidly sinking at varying rates between 15 – 46 cm/year. The city is also currently plagued with water shortage issues emphasizing a common positive feedback loop that exists within sinking cities. Impacts Economic As cities continue to grow, fueled by global urbanization, countries will continue to invest additional resources to accommodate the growing populations. Every day, sinking cities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters, many of which are critical components of their national economies, and some, of the global economy. While natural catastrophes cause average economic losses between US$60–100 billion annually, a single large-scale disaster can easily surpass this, as proven by Hurricanes Sandy and Maria. Numerous sinking cities throughout the world are becoming ever more exposed to natural disasters, many of which, do not have the financial means to prepare for the impending storms. In July and August, floods at high tide often near the subway level in Mumbai, clearly indicative of the impending climate dangers. One study put the cost to Mumbai of a 1-meter sea level rise at US$71 billion. Ho Chi Minh City currently accounts for 40% of Vietnam's GDP and has become especially vulnerable due to rising sea levels, land subsidence, and continued urbanization. Bangkok is also highly exposed to river flooding, as a major storm could have potentially massive impacts to the national economy. This was confirmed in 2011 when the Chao Phraya River flooded and losses amounted to around 10% of Thailand's GDP.Although many US cities are less exposed and better equipped to handle the impacts of climate change, in some cases, US cities are especially susceptible in terms of economic risk. In a study conducted by Zillow, the real estate firm found that a combined $882 billion worth of real estate would be underwater if sea level were to rise by six feet. Furthermore, the estimate only accounts for sea level rise and doesn't consider the possibility of major storms or land subsidence. New York City alone accounts for approximately 8% of the United States GDP and has experienced costly storms within the past decade. Megaprojects, like The BIG U (NYC), have been proposed to help protect against future super storms and long-term sea level rise. However, major questions are being raised regarding the project's effectiveness and social responsibility. Social and ethical Asian urbanization will be accompanied by a significant increase in the number of urban poor as migrants continue to move to cities in hopes of economic prosperity. One report by OECD examined the vulnerability of 130 major port cities to climate change and found that by 2070 approximately half of the total population threatened by coastal flooding would reside in just ten megacities, all but one located in Asia. Another report analyzed the 616 largest metropolitan areas home to 1.7 billion people and cover approximately US$34,000 billion of global GDP. The study found that flood risk threatens more people than any other natural catastrophe.The urban poor will bear a disproportionate burden of climate change risk as they are likely to settle in areas most prone to flooding. This has also been seen in many US cities as low income housing is typically situated in the flood zones. Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, disproportionately impacted low income and minority communities as the wealthiest communities are situated above sea level, and thus, further protected from major storms. Highly impacted areas, such as Orleans Parish and the 9th Ward, predominately contain minority communities and therefore the impacts are unevenly dispersed. In other countries, environmental refugees have become a particularly difficult problem for governments. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and resulting floods have caused many people to flee to cities in India. In the coming decades, as impending storms begin to damage large sinking cities, environmental refugees are likely to become a global phenomena. Political Sinking cities have even led some nations to make drastic political changes. Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is home to 10 million people and is one of the fastest sinking cities in the world. Almost half the city sits below sea level, and some researchers believe if the subsidence issues continue to go unchecked parts of the city will be entirely submerged by 2050. Jakarta's environmental issues have become so dire that the Indonesian government has proposed the capital be moved from Jakarta to a yet-to-be-built city in Kalimantan in Borneo. The move hopes to ease some of the inequality and growing population issues on Jakarta by relocating a large portion of the population to the new capital. The controversial move is not unprecedented, but is likely one of the first capital relocations to be driven by environmental forces. Policy development In many cases, urban officials have been unable to manage the challenges associated with sinking cities. Although every city has specific issues, the following are common general barriers to urban adaptation: Urban officials' lack of awareness regarding the magnitude and vulnerability of coastal flooding risk The need to cope with immediate problems such as housing, transportation, and poverty Financial constraints which limit infrastructure upgrades Governance issues Mitigation The first step in mitigating the risks associated with sinking cities is raising awareness among citizens and city officials. Some of the vulnerabilities of sinking cities are unable to be controlled by engineering projects like climate change, so it is essential that urban officials are aware of the risks and vulnerabilities posed on their region. This starts by conducting local and regional assessments that analyze city-level flood risks and culminates in creating a long term resiliency plan for cities. At this stage, climate change can no longer be mitigated. International goals hope to reduce its impact throughout the twenty-first century, however, cities must design with climate adaptability in mind. Land subsidence Other components of sinking cities are within the control of urban officials and can be successfully mitigated. The first step toward a successful subsidence mitigation strategy is measuring and understanding its root causes. Many different techniques are used today including optical leveling, GPS surveys, LIDAR, and InSAR satellite imagery. Ideally, a combination of techniques will be used to conduct the initial studies. Many cities have successfully implemented policies to reduce subsidence. In Tokyo, groundwater regulations were implemented in the early 1960s, and ten years later, subsidence came to a halt. Shanghai is another example of a city that successfully implemented a subsidence mitigation strategy. Shanghai implemented an active recharge technique which actively pumps an equal amount of water back into the subsurface as water is extracted. Assuming the pumping rates are in balance with the recharge rates, this has been proven to be a successful strategy. Adaptation For many sinking cities, adaptation is a more realistic strategy as many of the feedback loops associated with urbanization are too strong to overcome. For most sinking cities, the largest challenge associated with adaptation often becomes cost. The cost of adaptation to climate change required by developing countries, mostly in Asia, is estimated by the World Bank at US$75–100 billion per annum. However, the United Nations adaptation fund remains pitifully under-resourced at US$18 million. For many countries, foreign assistance will be necessary to fund large adaptation projects. A major component of adapting to climate change is the installation of flood protections, warning systems/evacuation planning, and land use and spatial planning. Construction of large seawalls, dikes, and diversion channels, are underway in many cities, but these solutions often only limit damage and must be combined with warning systems and evacuation plans. Warning systems and evacuation plans are likely the only response in coping with large-scale disasters to avoid significant loss of life. However, as seen during Hurricane Katrina, evacuation is not easily executed, as residents are often unwilling to abandon their unprotected property.As previously discussed, flood risk remains the largest natural risk to sinking cities throughout the world. The need to regulate land use to reduce exposure to flood risk should be the highest priority of many governments. The Netherlands has implemented a country-wide program coined the "Room for the River" Programme, which aims to give the river more room to be able to manage higher water levels throughout the country. By allowing buffer space for rivers that flood naturally, sinking cities can reduce the risk of floods that impact the established built environment. Largest potential sinking cities See also Central Valley land subsidence List of lost lands – Islands or continents supposedly existing during prehistory, having since disappeared == References ==

economists' statement on climate change

The Economists' Statement on Climate Change was published in 1997, prior to the Kyoto Protocol negotiated that same year, to promote market-based solutions to climate change. It was signed by more than 2,600 economists, including 19 Nobel Prize laureates, and remains the largest public statement in the history of the economics profession.The statement was coordinated by Redefining Progress, an environmental economics think tank founded by Ted Halstead. Statement content The statement published on 29 March 1997 read as follows: I. The review conducted by a distinguished international panel of scientists under the auspices of the International Panel on Climate Change has determined that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate." As economists, we believe that global climate change carries with it significant environmental, economic, social, and geopolitical risks, and that preventive steps are justified. II. Economic studies have found that there are many potential policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions for which the total benefits outweigh the total costs. For the United States in particular, sound economic analysis shows that there are policy options that would slow climate change without harming American living standards, and that these measures may in fact improve U.S. productivity in the long run. III. The most efficient approach to slowing climate change is through market-based policies. In order for the world to achieve its climatic objectives at minimum cost, a cooperative approach among nations is required – such as an international emissions trading agreement. The United States and other nations can most efficiently implement their climate policies through market mechanisms, such as carbon taxes or the auction of emissions permits. The revenues generated from such policies can effectively be used to reduce the deficit or to lower existing taxes. Original drafters Kenneth Arrow Dale W. Jorgenson Paul Krugman William Nordhaus Robert Solow Nobel Laureate signatories Kenneth Arrow Gérard Debreu Lars Peter Hansen John Harsanyi Oliver Hart James Heckman Leonid Hurwicz Lawrence Klein Paul Krugman Wassily Leontief Franco Modigliani William Nordhaus Alvin E. Roth Thomas J. Sargent Amartya Sen Robert Solow Joseph Stiglitz James Tobin Oliver E. Williamson History and organization The Economists' Statement on Climate Change was organized by Redefining Progress, an environmental economics think tank founded in 1993 by Ted Halstead, who served as its first executive director. Economist Stephen DeCanio, at the time a senior research fellow at Redefining Progress, played an important role in the effort. Halstead and Decanio approached the original drafters listed above, and worked with them to co-draft the statement, which was subsequently mailed to other economists. The statement was released on March 29, 1997, in advance of the Kyoto Climate Change Conference of December 1997, which led to the Kyoto Protocol. Redefining Progress ceased operations in 2008. == References ==

climate solutions caucus

The Climate Solutions Caucus is a bipartisan caucus of U.S. legislators supported by the Citizens' Climate Lobby whose members work to achieve action addressing the risks from climate change. The House of Representatives and Senate each have a caucus. The House caucus was founded in February 2016, during the 114th Congress, by Representatives Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and Ted Deutch (D-FL). The Senate Caucus was founded in 2019 by Senators Mike Braun (R-IN) and Chris Coons (D-DE).On November 27, 2018, House caucus members Ted Deutch (D-FL), Francis Rooney (R-FL), Charlie Crist (D-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and John Delaney (D-MD) introduced the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (HR 763), which would implement a national carbon fee and dividend. It had also been introduced in the Senate in 2018 as S. 3791. The 2018 midterm elections illustrated a growing partisan divide over climate, and several incumbent Republican members of the Caucus lost their seats. One study concluded that this showed limited value for GOP members in pursuing bipartisan climate action. Mission According to Co-Chair Deutch's House website, the mission of the Caucus in the House is: to educate members on economically-viable options to reduce climate risk and to explore bipartisan policy options that address the impacts, causes, and challenges of our changing climate. House members, 116th Congress Membership of the caucus was previously restricted to consist of equal representation of Republicans and Democrats, but after the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, this rule was loosened. In the 116th Congress, the 65 members are as follows: Senate members, 116th Congress The Senate Climate Solutions Caucus was announced by Senators Mike Braun (R-IN) and Chris Coons (D-DE) on October 23, 2019. The two Senators wrote in an op-ed announcing the caucus: Today, we are launching the Senate Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group of senators who, like the Americans we serve, believe Congress should play a central role in guiding America's 21st century energy economy and addressing the challenge of a changing climate. Our caucus seeks to take the politics out of this important issue. Instead, members will commit to an honest dialogue, through which we can develop solutions that solidify American environmental leadership, promote American workers, and make meaningful progress on protecting our environment. The Climate Solutions Caucus in the Senate is bi-partisan, the rules of the caucus require that new members may only join with a member of the opposite party to ensure that the number of Democrats and Republicans stays the same. All actions by the caucus require unanimous agreement among the members. The caucus membership for the 116th Congress is as follows (independent Angus King (I-ME) caucuses with the Democrats): See also Citizens' Climate Lobby Friends Committee on National Legislation Problem Solvers Caucus == References ==

climate change denial

Climate change denial (also global warming denial or climate denial) is the pseudoscientific dismissal or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Climate change denial includes doubts to the extent of how much climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda.Many of the issues that are settled within the scientific community, such as human responsibility for global warming, remain the subject of politically or economically motivated attempts to downplay, dismiss or deny them—an ideological phenomenon categorized by academics and scientists as climate change denial. Climate scientists, especially in the United States, have reported government and oil-industry pressure to censor or suppress their work and hide scientific data, with directives not to discuss the subject in public communications. The fossil fuels lobby has been identified as overtly or covertly supporting efforts to undermine or discredit the scientific consensus on global warming.Activities to undermine public trust in climate science are organized by industrial, political and ideological interests. Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates, ultraconservative think tanks and ultraconservative alternative media, often in the United States. More than 90% of papers that are skeptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks. Climate change denial is undermining the efforts to act on or adapt to climate change, and exerts a powerful influence on politics of global warming and the manufactured global warming controversy.In the 1970s, oil companies published research which broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on global warming. Since then, for several decades, oil companies have been organizing a widespread and systematic climate change denial campaign to seed public disinformation, a strategy that has been compared to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by the tobacco industry. Some of the campaigns are even carried out by the same individuals who previously spread the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda. Terminology "Climate change skepticism" and "climate change denial" refer to denial, dismissal or unwarranted doubt of the scientific consensus on the rate and extent of global warming, its significance, or its connection to human behavior, in whole or in part. Though there is a distinction between skepticism which indicates doubting the truth of an assertion and outright denial of the truth of an assertion, in the public debate phrases such as "climate skepticism" have frequently been used with the same meaning as climate denialism or contrarianism.The terminology emerged in the 1990s. Even though all scientists adhere to scientific skepticism as an inherent part of the process, by mid November 1995 the word "skeptic" was being used specifically for the minority who publicized views contrary to the scientific consensus. This small group of scientists presented their views in public statements and the media, rather than to the scientific community. This usage continued. In his December 1995 article "The Heat is On: The warming of the world's climate sparks a blaze of denial", Ross Gelbspan said industry had engaged "a small band of skeptics" to confuse public opinion in a "persistent and well-funded campaign of denial". His 1997 book The Heat is On may have been the first to concentrate specifically on the topic. In it, Gelbspan discussed a "pervasive denial of global warming" in a "persistent campaign of denial and suppression" involving "undisclosed funding of these 'greenhouse skeptics' " with "the climate skeptics" confusing the public and influencing decision makers.A November 2006 CBC Television documentary on the campaign was titled The Denial Machine. In 2007 journalist Sharon Begley reported on the "denial machine", a phrase subsequently used by academics.In addition to explicit denial, social groups have shown implicit denial by accepting the scientific consensus, but failing to "translate their acceptance into action". This was exemplified in Kari Norgaard's study of a village in Norway affected by climate change, where residents diverted their attention to other issues.The terminology is debated: most of those actively rejecting the scientific consensus use the terms skeptic and climate change skepticism, and only a few have expressed preference for being described as deniers, but the word "skepticism" is incorrectly used, as scientific skepticism is an intrinsic part of scientific methodology. The term contrarian is more specific, but used less frequently. In academic literature and journalism, the terms "climate change denial" and "climate change deniers" have well-established usage as descriptive terms without any pejorative intent. Both the National Center for Science Education and historian Spencer R. Weart recognize that either option is problematic, but have decided to use "climate change denial" rather than "skepticism".Terms related to "denialism" have been criticized for introducing a moralistic tone, and potentially implying a link with Holocaust denial. There have been claims that this link is intentional, which academics have strongly disputed. The usage of "denial" long predates the Holocaust, and is commonly applied in other areas such as HIV/AIDS denialism: the claim is described by John Timmer of Ars Technica as itself being a form of denial.In December 2014, an open letter from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry called on the media to stop using the term "skepticism" when referring to climate change denial. They contrasted scientific skepticism—which is "foundational to the scientific method"—with denial—"the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration"—and the behavior of those involved in political attempts to undermine climate science. They said "Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry." In June 2015 Media Matters for America were told by The New York Times public editor that the newspaper was increasingly tending to use "denier" when "someone is challenging established science", but assessing this on an individual basis with no fixed policy, and would not use the term when someone was "kind of wishy-washy on the subject or in the middle." The executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists said that while there was reasonable skepticism about specific issues, she felt that denier was "the most accurate term when someone claims there is no such thing as global warming, or agrees that it exists but denies that it has any cause we could understand or any impact that could be measured."The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry letter inspired a petition by climatetruth.org in which signers were asked to "Tell the Associated Press: Establish a rule in the AP Stylebook ruling out the use of 'skeptic' to describe those who deny scientific facts." On 22 September 2015, the Associated Press announced "an addition to AP Stylebook entry on global warming" which advised, "to describe those who don't accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from human-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers." On 17 May 2019, The Guardian also rejected use of the term "climate skeptic" in favor of "climate science denier". Categories In 2004, Stefan Rahmstorf described how the media give the misleading impression that climate change was still disputed within the scientific community, attributing this impression to PR efforts of climate change skeptics. He identified different positions argued by climate skeptics, which he used as a taxonomy of climate change skepticism: (Later the model was also applied on denial.) Trend sceptics or deniers (who deny there is global warming), [and] argue that no significant climate warming is taking place at all, claiming that the warming trend measured by weather stations is an artefact due to urbanisation around those stations ("urban heat island effect"). Attribution sceptics or deniers (who accept the global warming trend but see natural causes for this), [and] doubt that human activities are responsible for the observed trends. A few of them even deny that the rise in the atmospheric CO2 content is anthropogenic [while others argue that] additional CO2 does not lead to discernible warming [and] that there must be other—natural—causes for warming. Impact sceptics or deniers (who think global warming is harmless or even beneficial). This taxonomy has been used in social science for analysis of publications, and to categorize climate change skepticism and climate change denial. Sometimes, a fourth category called "consensus denial" is added, which describes people who question the existence of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.The National Center for Science Education describes climate change denial as disputing differing points in the scientific consensus, a sequential range of arguments from denying the occurrence of climate change, accepting that but denying any significant human contribution, accepting these but denying scientific findings on how this would affect nature and human society, to accepting all these but denying that humans can mitigate or reduce the problems. James L. Powell provides a more extended list, as does climatologist Michael E. Mann in "six stages of denial", a ladder model whereby deniers have over time conceded acceptance of points, while retreating to a position which still rejects the mainstream consensus: CO2 is not actually increasing. Even if it is, the increase has no impact on the climate since there is no convincing evidence of warming. Even if there is warming, it is due to natural causes. Even if the warming cannot be explained by natural causes, the human impact is small, and the impact of continued greenhouse gas emissions will be minor. Even if the current and future projected human effects on Earth's climate are not negligible, the changes are generally going to be good for us. Whether or not the changes are going to be good for us, humans are very adept at adapting to changes; besides, it's too late to do anything about it, and/or a technological fix is bound to come along when we really need it. Journalists and newspaper columnists including George Monbiot and Ellen Goodman, among others, have described climate change denial as a form of denialism.Denialism in this context has been defined by Chris and Mark Hoofnagle as the use of rhetorical devices "to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists." This process characteristically uses one or more of the following tactics: Allegations that scientific consensus involves conspiring to fake data or suppress the truth: a global warming conspiracy theory. Fake experts, or individuals with views at odds with established knowledge, at the same time marginalising or denigrating published topic experts. Like the manufactured doubt over smoking and health, a few contrarian scientists oppose the climate consensus, some of them the same individuals. Selectivity, such as cherry picking atypical or even obsolete papers, in the same way that the MMR vaccine controversy was based on one paper: examples include discredited ideas of the medieval warm period. Unworkable demands of research, claiming that any uncertainty invalidates the field or exaggerating uncertainty while rejecting probabilities and mathematical models. Logical fallacies.In 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben accused President Obama (widely regarded as strongly in favour of action on climate change) of "Catastrophic Climate-Change Denial", for his approval of oil-drilling permits in offshore Alaska. According to McKibben, the President has also "opened huge swaths of the Powder River basin to new coal mining." McKibben calls this "climate denial of the status quo sort", where the President denies "the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground."A study assessed the public perception and actions to climate change, on grounds of belief systems, and identified seven psychological barriers affecting the behavior that otherwise would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental stewardship. The author found the following barriers: cognition, ideological world views, comparisons to key people, costs and momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and inadequate behavioral changes. Discussing specific aspects of climate change science Some climate change denial groups say that because CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere (roughly 400ppm, or 0.04%, 4 parts per 10,000) it can only have a minor effect on the climate. Scientists have known for over a century that even this small proportion has a significant warming effect, and doubling the proportion leads to a large temperature increase. The scientific consensus, as summarized by the IPCC fourth assessment report, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other reports, is that human activity is the leading cause of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels accounts for around 30 billion tons of CO2 each year, which is 130 times the amount produced by volcanoes. Some groups allege that water vapor is a more significant greenhouse gas, and is left out of many climate models. While water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the very short atmospheric lifetime of water vapor (about 10 days) compared to that of CO2 (hundreds of years) means that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures; water vapour acts as a feedback, not a forcing, mechanism. Water vapor has been incorporated into climate models since their inception in the late 1800s.Climate denial groups may also argue that global warming stopped recently, a global warming hiatus, or that global temperatures are actually decreasing, leading to global cooling. These arguments are based on short term fluctuations, and ignore the long-term pattern of warming.At a May 2018 meeting of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Alabama's Representative Mo Brooks claimed that sea level rise is caused not by melting glaciers but rather by coastal erosion and silt that flows from rivers into the ocean.Climate change denial literature often features the suggestion that we should wait for better technologies before addressing climate change, when they will be more affordable and effective. Playing up the potential non-human causes Climate denial groups often point to natural variability, such as sunspots and cosmic rays, to explain the warming trend. According to these groups, there is natural variability that will abate over time, and human influences have little to do with it. These factors are already taken into account when developing climate models, and the scientific consensus is that they cannot explain the observed warming trend. Solar variation Some deniers argue that solar variation is a significant contributor to the observed global warming, which would reduce the relative importance of human-made causes. However, this is not supported by scientific consensus on climate change. Scientists reject the notion that the warming observed in the global mean surface temperature record since about 1850 is the result of solar variations: "The observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified."The consensus position is that solar radiation may have increased by 0.12 W/m2 since 1750, compared to 1.6 W/m2 for the net anthropogenic forcing. The IPCC Third Assessment Report found that, "The combined change in radiative forcing of the two major natural factors (solar variation and volcanic aerosols) is estimated to be negative for the past two, and possibly the past four, decades."A few studies say that the present level of solar activity is historically high as determined by sunspot activity and other factors. Solar activity could affect climate either by variation in the Sun's output or, more speculatively, by an indirect effect on the amount of cloud formation. Solanki and co-workers suggest that solar activity for the last 60 to 70 years may be at its highest level in 8,000 years, however they said "that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades", and concluded that "at the most 30% of the strong warming since [1970] can be of solar origin". Others have disagreed with the study, suggesting that other comparably high levels of activity have occurred several times in the last few thousand years. They concluded that "solar activity reconstructions tell us that only a minor fraction of the recent global warming can be explained by the variable Sun." Pseudoscience Various groups, including the National Center for Science Education, have described climate change denial as a form of pseudoscience. Climate change skepticism, while in some cases professing to do research on climate change, has focused instead on influencing the opinion of the public, legislators and the media, in contrast to legitimate science. False beliefs Explaining the techniques of science denial and misinformation, by presenting "examples of people using cherrypicking or fake experts or false balance to mislead the public", has been shown to inoculate people somewhat against misinformation.Dialogue focused on the question of how belief differs from scientific theory may provide useful insights into how the scientific method works, and how beliefs may have strong or minimal supporting evidence. Wong-Parodi's survey of the literature shows four effective approaches to dialogue, including "[encouraging] people to openly share their values and stance on climate change before introducing actual scientific climate information into the discussion." Links with nationalism It has been suggested that climate change can conflict with a nationalistic view because it is "unsolvable" at the national level and requires collective action between nations or between local communities, and that therefore populist nationalism tends to reject the science of climate change.In 2019, U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes said that the Freeport LNG project's exports would be "spreading freedom gas throughout the world", while Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg echoed the call to internationally export "molecules of US freedom".On the other hand, it has been argued that effective climate action is polycentric rather than international, and national interest in multilateral groups can be furthered by overcoming climate change denial. Climate change contrarians may believe in a "caricature" of internationalist state intervention that is perceived as threatening national sovereignty, and may re-attribute risks such as flooding to international institutions. UK Independence Party policy on climate change has been influenced by noted contrarian Christopher Monckton and then by its energy spokesman Roger Helmer MEP who stated in a speech "It is not clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic."Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center posits that climate change denial is an important component of Trumpian historical consciousness, and "plays a significant role in the architecture of Trumpism as a developing philosophical system".Though climate change denial was apparently waning circa 2021, some right-wing nationalist organizations have adopted a theory of "environmental populism" advocating that natural resources should be preserved for a nation's existing residents, to the exclusion of immigrants. Other such right-wing organizations have contrived new "green wings" that falsely assert it is refugees from poor nations who are the cause of environmental pollution and climate change, and should therefore be excluded. Being "luke warm" In 2012, Clive Hamilton published an essay 'Climate change and the soothing message of luke-warmism'. He defined luke warmists as "those who appear to accept the body of climate science but interpret it in a way that is least threatening: emphasising uncertainties, playing down dangers, and advocating a slow and cautious response. They are politically conservative and anxious about the threat to the social structure posed by the implications of climate science. Their “pragmatic” approach is therefore alluring to political leaders looking for a justification for policy minimalism." He associated Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, but also Roger A. Pielke Jr., Daniel Sarewitz, Steve Rayner, Mike Hulme and "the pre-eminent luke-warmist" Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg. Links with other environmental issues Many of the climate change deniers have disagreed, in whole or part, with the scientific consensus regarding other issues, particularly those relating to environmental risks, such as ozone depletion, DDT, and passive smoking.For example, in 1992 an EPA report linked second-hand smoke with lung cancer. In response, the tobacco industry engaged the APCO Worldwide public relations company, which set out a strategy of astroturfing campaigns to cast doubt on the science by linking smoking anxieties with other issues, including global warming, in order to turn public opinion against calls for government intervention. The campaign depicted public concerns as "unfounded fears" supposedly based only on "junk science" in contrast to their "sound science", and operated through front groups, primarily the Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC) and its Junk Science website, run by Steven Milloy. A tobacco company memo commented "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." During the 1990s, the tobacco campaign died away, and TASSC began taking funding from oil companies including Exxon. Its website became central in distributing "almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the popular press."In the 1990s, the Marshall Institute began campaigning against increased regulations on environmental issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and the dangers of DDT. In each case their argument was that the science was too uncertain to justify any government intervention, a strategy it borrowed from earlier efforts to downplay the health effects of tobacco in the 1980s. This campaign would continue for the next two decades.These efforts succeeded in influencing public perception of climate science. Between 1988 and the 1990s, public discourse shifted from the science and data of climate change to discussion of politics and surrounding controversy. Over reliance on adaptation only The conservative National Center for Policy Analysis whose "Environmental Task Force" contains a number of climate change deniers including Sherwood Idso and S. Fred Singer says, "The growing consensus on climate change policies is that adaptation will protect present and future generations from climate-sensitive risks far more than efforts to restrict CO2 emissions."The adaptation-only plan is also endorsed by oil companies like ExxonMobil, "ExxonMobil's plan appears to be to stay the course and try to adjust when changes occur. The company's plan is one that involves adaptation, as opposed to leadership," says this Ceres report.The George W. Bush administration also voiced support for an adaptation-only policy in the US in 2002. "In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report [U.S. Climate Action Report 2002] to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration also for the first time places most of the blame for recent global warming on human actions—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere." The report however "does not propose any major shift in the administration's policy on greenhouse gases. Instead it recommends adapting to inevitable changes instead of making rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming." This position apparently precipitated a similar shift in emphasis at the COP 8 climate talks in New Delhi several months later, "The shift satisfies the Bush administration, which has fought to avoid mandatory cuts in emissions for fear it would harm the economy. 'We're welcoming a focus on more of a balance on adaptation versus mitigation', said a senior American negotiator in New Delhi. 'You don't have enough money to do everything.'"Some find this shift and attitude disingenuous and indicative of an inherent bias against prevention (i.e. reducing emissions/consumption) and for the prolonging of profits to the oil industry at the expense of the environment. "Now that the dismissal of climate change is no longer fashionable, the professional deniers are trying another means of stopping us from taking action. It would be cheaper, they say, to wait for the impacts of climate change and then adapt to them" says writer and environmental activist George Monbiot in an article addressing the supposed economic hazards of addressing climate change. Climate change conspiracy theories Climate change conspiracy theories assert that the scientific consensus on global warming is based on conspiracies to produce manipulated data or suppress dissent. It is one of a number of tactics used in climate change denial to attempt to manufacture political and public controversy disputing this consensus. Conspiracy theorists typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind global warming and climate change has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons. They allege that scientists and institutions involved in global warming research are part of a global scientific conspiracy or engaged in a manipulative hoax.There have been allegations of malpractice, most notably in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("ClimateGate"). Eight committees investigated these allegations and published reports, each finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The Muir Russell report stated that the scientists' "rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," that the investigators "did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments," but that there had been "a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness." The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged at the end of the investigations.Global warming conspiracy theories have been posited which allege that the scientific consensus is illusory, or that climatologists are acting on their own financial interests by causing undue alarm about a changing climate. No evidence of such a conspiracy has been presented, and strong consensus exists among scientists from a multitude of political, social, organizational and national backgrounds about the extent and cause of climate change. Much of the data used in climate science is publicly available to be viewed and interpreted by competing researchers and the public, controverting accusations that scientists are hiding data or stonewalling requests.In 2012, research by Stephan Lewandowsky (then of the University of Western Australia) concluded that belief in other conspiracy theories was associated with being more likely to endorse climate change denial. An April 15, 2023 tweet by Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said climate change was a "scam" and that "fossil fuels are natural and amazing", saying that "there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy". Her tweet included a chart that omitted carbon dioxide and methane—the two most dominant greenhouse gas emissions.When a moderator at the August 23, 2023, Republican presidential debate asked the candidates to raise their hands if they believed human behavior is causing climate change, none raised their hands. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy claimed that "the climate change agenda is a hoax", and also that "more people are dying of climate change policies than they actually are of climate change"; none of his competitors challenged him directly on climate. After investigating Ramaswamy's latter claim, a Washington Post fact check found no supporting evidence. Alleged conspiracies by scientists who accept the reality of global warming Faked scientific data: In 2002, after Clive Hamilton criticized Lavoisier Group, the Cooler Heads Coalition published an article supporting the Lavoisier Group's conspiracy theory that hundreds of climate scientists have twisted their results to support the climate change theory in order to protect their research funding. In 2007, climate change denier John Coleman wrote a blog post claiming that global warming is "the greatest scam in history". He wrote "So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas". The climate deniers involved in Climategate in 2009 claimed that researchers faked the data in their research publications and suppressed their critics in order to receive more funding (i.e. taxpayer money). Some climate change deniers claim that there is no scientific consensus on climate change, and they sometimes claim that any evidence that shows there is scientific consensus is faked. Some of them even claim that governments have used the research grant money to pervert the science. Corrupted peer-review process: It is claimed that the peer-review process for papers in climate science has become corrupted by scientists seeking to suppress dissent. For example, climate change denier Frederick Seitz wrote an article in Wall Street Journal in 1996 criticizing IPCC Second Assessment Report. He suspected corruption in the peer-review process, writing that "A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version". Alleged political conspiracies Aiming at global governance: In a speech given to the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works on July 28, 2003, entitled "The Science of Climate Change", senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, concluded by asking the following question: "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" He further stated, "some parts of the IPCC process resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor." Inhofe has suggested that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol such as Jacques Chirac are aiming at global governance. William M. Gray said in 2006 that global warming became a political cause because of the lack of any other enemy following the end of the Cold War. He went on to say that its purpose was to exercise political influence, to try to introduce world government, and to control people, adding, "I have a demonic view on this." The TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle was made by Martin Durkin, who called global warming "a multi-billion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists." In the Washington Times in 2007 he said that his film would change history, and predicted that "in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk." Liberal extremists: There are theories claiming that "climate change is a hoax perpetrated by leftist radicals to undermine local sovereignty", or "climate science is less about science and more about socialist ideology". In 2017, James Inhofe told the 12th International Conference on Climate Change "The liberal extremists are not going to give up. Obama has built a culture of radical alarmists, and they’ll be back. You and I and the American people have won a great victory, but the war goes on. Stay vigilant." Green scam: "Another conspiracy theory argues that because many people have invested in renewable-energy companies, they stand to lose a lot of money if global warming is shown to be a myth. According to this theory, environmental groups therefore bribe climate scientists to doctor their data so that they are able to secure their financial investment in green energy." China is behind it: In 2010, Donald Trump claimed that "With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore....Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity." Then in 2012, he tweeted that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." Later in 2016 during his presidential campaign he suggested that his 2012 tweet was a joke saying that "Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very—you know, their standards are nothing. But they—in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business." To promote nuclear power: One of the claims made in The Great Global Warming Swindle is that the "threat of global warming is an attempt to promote nuclear power". History In 1959, a scientist working for Shell suggested in a New Scientist article that carbon cycles are too vast to upset Nature's balance. By 1966 however, a coal industry research organization, Bituminous Coal Research Inc., published its finding that if then prevailing trends of coal consumption continue, "the temperature of the earth's atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result." "Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London." In a discussion following this paper in the same publication, a combustion engineer for Peabody Coal, now Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal supplier, added that the coal industry was merely "buying time" before additional government air pollution regulations would be promulgated to clean the air. Nevertheless, the coal industry for decades thereafter publicly advocated the position that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial for the planet.In response to increasing public awareness of the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, conservative reaction built up, denying environmental concerns which could lead to government regulation. In 1977 the first Secretary of Energy, Republican James Schlesinger, suggested President Jimmy Carter take no action regarding a climate change memo, citing uncertainty. With the 1981 Presidency of Ronald Reagan, global warming became a political issue, with immediate plans to cut spending on environmental research, particularly climate-related, and stop funding for CO2 monitoring. Reagan appointed as Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards, who said that there was no real global warming problem. Congressman Al Gore had studied under Revelle and was aware of the developing science: he joined others in arranging congressional hearings from 1981 onwards, with testimony by scientists including Revelle, Stephen Schneider and Wallace Smith Broecker. The hearings gained enough public attention to reduce the cuts in atmospheric research. A polarized party-political debate developed. In 1982, Sherwood B. Idso published his book Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? which said increases in CO2 would not warm the planet, but would fertilize crops and were "something to be encouraged and not suppressed", while complaining that his theories had been rejected by the "scientific establishment". An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report in 1983 said global warming was "not a theoretical problem but a threat whose effects will be felt within a few years", with potentially "catastrophic" consequences. The Reagan administration reacted by calling the report "alarmist", and the dispute got wide news coverage. Public attention turned to other issues, then the 1985 finding of a polar ozone hole brought a swift international response. To the public, this was related to climate change and the possibility of effective action, but news interest faded.Public attention was renewed amidst summer droughts and heat waves when James Hansen testified to a Congressional hearing on 23 June 1988, stating with high confidence that long-term warming was underway with severe warming likely within the next 50 years, and warning of likely storms and floods. There was increasing media attention: the scientific community had reached a broad consensus that the climate was warming, human activity was very likely the primary cause, and there would be significant consequences if the warming trend was not curbed. These facts encouraged discussion about new laws concerning environmental regulation, which was opposed by the fossil fuel industry.From 1989 onwards industry-funded organizations including the Global Climate Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute sought to spread doubt among the public, in a strategy already developed by the tobacco industry. A small group of scientists opposed to the consensus on global warming became politically involved, and with support from conservative political interests, began publishing in books and the press rather than in scientific journals. This small group of scientists included some of the same people that were part of the strategy already tried by the tobacco industry. Spencer Weart identifies this period as the point where legitimate skepticism about basic aspects of climate science was no longer justified, and those spreading mistrust about these issues became deniers. As their arguments were increasingly refuted by the scientific community and new data, deniers turned to political arguments, making personal attacks on the reputation of scientists, and promoting ideas of a global warming conspiracy.With the 1989 fall of communism and the environmental movement's international reach at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the attention of U.S. conservative think tanks, which had been organized in the 1970s as an intellectual counter-movement to socialism, turned from the "red scare" to the "green scare" which they saw as a threat to their aims of private property, free trade market economies and global capitalism. As a counter-movement, they used environmental skepticism to promote denial of the reality of problems such as loss of biodiversity and climate change.The campaign to spread doubt continued into the 1990s, including an advertising campaign funded by coal industry advocates intended to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact", and a 1998 proposal written by the American Petroleum Institute intending to recruit scientists to convince politicians, the media and the public that climate science was too uncertain to warrant environmental regulation. The proposal included a US$ 5,000,000 multi-point strategy to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences", with a goal of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'".In 1998, Gelbspan noted that his fellow journalists accepted that global warming was occurring, but said they were in "'stage-two' denial of the climate crisis", unable to accept the feasibility of answers to the problem. A subsequent book by Milburn and Conrad on The Politics of Denial described "economic and psychological forces" producing denial of the consensus on global warming issues.These efforts by climate change denial groups were recognized as an organized campaign beginning in the 2000s. The sociologists Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright played a significant role in this shift when they published an article in 2000 exploring the connection between conservative think tanks and climate change denial. Later work would continue the argument specific groups were marshaling skepticism against climate change – a study in 2008 from the University of Central Florida analyzed the sources of "environmentally skeptical" literature published in the United States. The analysis demonstrated that 92% of the literature was partly or wholly affiliated with a self-proclaimed conservative think tanks. A later piece of research from 2015 identified 4,556 individuals with overlapping network ties to 164 organizations which are responsible for the most efforts to downplay the threat of climate change in the U.S. Gelbspan's Boiling Point, published in 2004, detailed the fossil-fuel industry's campaign to deny climate change and undermine public confidence in climate science. In Newsweek's August 2007 cover story "The Truth About Denial", Sharon Begley reported that "the denial machine is running at full throttle", and said that this "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign" by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry had "created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."Referencing work of sociologists Robert Antonio and Robert Brulle, Wayne A. White has written that climate change denial has become the top priority in a broader anti-environmental regulation agenda being pursued by neoliberals. In 2005, climate change skepticism was most prominently seen in the United States, where the media disproportionately featured views of the climate change denial community. In addition to offline media, the contrarian movement benefited from the growth of the internet, having gained some of its support from internet bloggers, talk radio hosts and newspaper columnists.The New York Times and others reported in 2015 that oil companies knew that burning oil and gas could cause climate change and global warming since the 1970s but nonetheless funded deniers for years. Dana Nuccitelli wrote in The Guardian that a small fringe group of climate deniers were no longer taken seriously at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in an agreement that "we need to stop delaying and start getting serious about preventing a climate crisis." However, The New York Times says any implementation is voluntary and will depend on any future world leaders—and every Republican U.S. presidential candidate in 2016 questioned or denied the science of climate change.Ernesto Araújo, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed by the newly elected president Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro called global warming a plot by "cultural Marxists" and has eliminated the Climate Change Division of the ministry.Alexandre Lopez-Borrull, a lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, noted in 2023 increases in climate change denial, particularly among supporters of the far right. Climate change deniers threatened meteorologists, accusing them of causing a drought, falsifying thermometer readings, and cherry-picking warmer weather stations to misrepresent global warming. Also in 2023, CNN reported that meteorologists and climate communicators internationally were receiving increased harassment and false accusations that they are lying about or controlling the weather, inflating temperature records to make climate change seem worse, and changing color palettes of weather maps to make them look more dramatic. Tagesschau described this as a global phenomenon. Jennie King, head of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said that growth of such conspiracy theories is "logical evolution of the broader trend around pushback on institutions" that supposedly are trying to "enact some insidious agenda". Meanwhile, after Elon Musk's 2022 takeover of Twitter, key figures in the company who ensured trusted content was prioritized were removed, and climate scientists received a large increase in hostile, threatening, harassing and personally abusive tweets from deniers. Denial networks United States The climate change denial industry is most powerful in the United States. In the 2016 United States election cycle, every Republican presidential candidate, and the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, questioned or denied climate change, and opposed U.S. government steps to address climate change.In 2015, a Pentagon report pointed out how climate change denial threatens national security. A study from 2015 identified 4,556 individuals with overlapping network ties to 164 organizations which are responsible for the most efforts to downplay the threat of climate change in the U.S.In 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy reported that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 U.S. think tanks, had been lobbying on behalf of major corporations and conservative donors to oppose climate change regulation.According to an investigative report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, influential academic papers used to support climate change denialism were written by authors affiliated with Harvard, MIT, and Georgetown University who had undisclosed conflict of interest.In 2023, Republican politician and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee published Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change, which acknowledged global warming but minimized the influence of human emissions. Marketed as an alternative to mainstream education, the publication does not attribute authorship or cite scientific credentials. The deputy director of the National Center for Science Education called the publication "propaganda" and "very unreliable as a guide to climate change for kids", noting that it represented "present day" atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide as 280 parts per million (ppm), which was true in 391 BC but short of 2023's actual concentration of 420 ppm.In 2023, the state of Florida approved a public school curriculum including videos produced by conservative advocacy group PragerU, likening climate change skeptics to those who fought Communism and Nazism, implying renewable energy harms the environment, and saying current global warming occurs naturally.In Texas, which has a large influence on school textbooks published nationwide, proposed textbooks in 2023 that included more information about the climate crisis than editions a decade earlier. However, some books clouded the human causes of climate change and downplayed the role of fossil fuels, with Texas' Republican Congressional representative August Pfluger emphasizing the importance of "secure, reliable energy" (oil and natural gas) produced in the Permian Basin. Pfluger urged in his Congressional website in September 2023 that "we cannot allow the radical climate lobby to infiltrate Texas middle schools and brainwash our children", claiming that liquefied natural gas is "not only... good for our economy, but it's good for the environment". International The Clexit Coalition describes itself as: "A new international organisation [which] aims to prevent ratification of the costly and dangerous Paris global warming treaty". It has members in 26 countries. According to The Guardian: "Clexit leaders are heavily involved in tobacco and fossil fuel-funded organizations". Publishers, websites In November 2021, a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified "ten fringe publishers" that together were responsible for nearly 70 percent of Facebook user interactions with content that denied climate change. Facebook said the percentage was overstated and called the study misleading.The "toxic ten" publishers: Breitbart News, The Western Journal, Newsmax, Townhall, Media Research Center, The Washington Times, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, RT (TV network), and The Patriot Post. The Rebel Media and its director, Ezra Levant, have promoted climate change denial and oil sands extraction in Alberta. Emotional and psychological aspects The director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication said that one "almost couldn't design a worse fit for our underlying psychology or our institutions of decision-making" than dealing with climate change—owing primarily to the short-term focus of humans and their institutions. Florida Republican Tom Lee described the emotional impact and reactions of individuals to climate change, saying "If these predictions do bear out, that it's just economically daunting. ... That's why I use the term emotionally shut down, because I think you lose people at hello a lot of times in the Republican conversation over this."Personal reactions to climate change may include anxiety, depression, despair, dissonance, uncertainty, insecurity, and distress, with one psychologist suggesting that "despair about our changing climate may get in the way of fixing it." The American Psychological Association has urged psychologists and other social scientists to work on psychological barriers to taking action on climate change. The immediacy of a growing number of extreme weather events, and tax incentives for energy efficiency and for purchasing electric vehicles, are thought to motivate people to deal with climate change.A study published in PLOS Climate studied defensive and secure forms of national identity—respectively called "national narcissism" and "secure national identification"—for their correlation to support for policies to mitigate climate change and to transition to renewable energy. The researchers concluded that secure national identification tends to support policies promoting renewable energy; however, national narcissism was found to be inversely correlated with support for such policies—except to the extent that such policies, as well as greenwashing, enhance the national image. Right-wing political orientation, which may indicate susceptibility to climate conspiracy beliefs, was also concluded to be negatively correlated with support for genuine climate mitigation policies. Public opinion Public opinion on climate change is significantly affected by media coverage of climate change, and the effects of climate change denial campaigns. Campaigns to undermine public confidence in climate science have decreased public belief in climate change, which in turn have affected legislative efforts to curb CO2 emissions. Another reason why the public is skeptical about climate change is their lack of knowledge. United States In a 2006 ABC News/Time/Stanford Poll, 56% of Americans correctly answered that average global temperatures had risen over the previous three years. However, in the same poll, two-thirds said they believed that scientists had "a lot of disagreement" about "whether or not global warming is happening".From 2001 to 2012, the number of Americans who said they believe in anthropogenic global warming decreased from 75 percent to 44 percent. A study found that public climate change policy support and behavior are significantly influenced by public beliefs, attitudes and risk perceptions. As of March 2018 the rate of acceptance among U.S. TV forecasters that the climate is changing has increased to ninety-five percent. The number of local television stories about global warming has also increased, by fifteen-fold. Climate Central has received some of the credit for this because they provide classes for meteorologists and graphics for television stations.The popular media in the U.S. gives greater attention to climate change skeptics than the scientific community as a whole, and the level of agreement within the scientific community has not been accurately communicated. In some cases, news outlets have allowed climate change skeptics to explain the science of climate change instead of experts in climatology. US and UK media coverage differ from that presented in other countries, where reporting is more consistent with the scientific literature. Some journalists attribute the difference to climate change denial being propagated, mainly in the US, by business-centered organizations employing tactics worked out previously by the US tobacco lobby. In France, the US and the UK, the opinions of climate change skeptics appear much more frequently in conservative news outlets than other news, and in many cases those opinions are left uncontested.The efforts of Al Gore and other environmental campaigns have focused on the effects of global warming and have managed to increase awareness and concern, but despite these efforts, the number of Americans believing humans are the cause of global warming was holding steady at 61% in 2007, and those believing the popular media was understating the issue remained about 35%. A recent poll from 2015 suggests that while Americans are growing more aware of the dangers and implications of climate change for future generations, the majority are not worried about it. From a survey conducted in 2004, it was found that more than 30% of news presented in the previous decade showed equal attention to both human and non human contributions to global warming.In 2018, the National Science Teachers Association urged teachers to "emphasize to students that no scientific controversy exists regarding the basic facts of climate change." Europe Climate change denial has been promoted by several far-right European parties, including Spain's Vox, Finland's far-right Finns Party, Austria's far-right Freedom Party, and Germany's anti-immigration Alternative for Deutschland (AfD).In April 2023, French political scientist Jean-Yves Dormagen indicates that it is the modest and conservative classes that are the most restive, and therefore climate-skeptical, to climate change. In a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation published the same month, climate skepticism is compared to a new populism whose representative lately would be Steven E. Koonin, as well as for others their spokesman. Lobbying Efforts to lobby against environmental regulation have included campaigns to manufacture doubt about the science behind climate change, and to obscure the scientific consensus and data. These efforts have undermined public confidence in climate science, and impacted climate change lobbying.The political advocacy organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, funded by brothers David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, were important in supporting the Tea Party movement and in encouraging the movement to focus on climate change.Other conservative organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, Cato Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute were significant participants in these lobbying attempts, seeking to halt or eliminate environmental regulations.This approach to downplay the significance of climate change was copied from tobacco lobbyists; in the face of scientific evidence linking tobacco to lung cancer, to prevent or delay the introduction of regulation. Lobbyists attempted to discredit the scientific research by creating doubt and manipulating debate. They worked to discredit the scientists involved, to dispute their findings, and to create and maintain an apparent controversy by promoting claims that contradicted scientific research. "'Doubt is our product,' boasted a now infamous 1969 industry memo. Doubt would shield the tobacco industry from litigation and regulation for decades to come." In 2006, George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian about similarities between the methods of groups funded by Exxon, and those of the tobacco giant Philip Morris, including direct attacks on peer-reviewed science, and attempts to create public controversy and doubt.Former National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz, who, according to an article by Mark Hertsgaard in Vanity Fair, earned about US$585,000 in the 1970s and 1980s as a consultant to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, went on to chair groups such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the George C. Marshall Institute alleged to have made efforts to "downplay" global warming. Seitz stated in the 1980s that "Global warming is far more a matter of politics than of climate." Seitz authored the Oregon Petition, a document published jointly by the Marshall Institute and Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in opposition to the Kyoto protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed: The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. ... We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution. George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian that this petition, which he criticizes as misleading and tied to industry funding, "has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth". Efforts by climate change denial groups played a significant role in the eventual rejection of the Kyoto protocol in the US.Monbiot has written about another group founded by the tobacco lobby, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), that now campaigns against measures to combat global warming. In again trying to manufacture the appearance of a grass-roots movement against "unfounded fear" and "over-regulation", Monbiot states that TASSC "has done more damage to the campaign to halt [climate change] than any other body".The work of economic consultancy Charles River Associates forecasting the impact on employment of the 2003 Climate Stewardship Act was criticized by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005 for using unrealistic economic assumptions and producing directionally incorrect estimates. A 2021 study concluded their work from the 1990s to the 2010s overestimated predicted costs and ignored potential policy benefits, and was often presented by politicians and lobbyists as independent rather than sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. Other papers published during that time by economists at MIT and Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, also with funding from the fossil fuel industry, produced similar conclusions. Private sector, institutes and foundations Research conducted at an Exxon archival collection at the University of Texas and interviews with former employees by journalists indicate the scientific opinion within the company and their public posture towards climate change was contradictory. A systematic review of Exxon's climate modeling projections concluded that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully, correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age in favor of a "carbon dioxide induced super-interglacial", and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming.Between 1989 and 2002, the Global Climate Coalition, a group of mainly United States businesses, used aggressive lobbying and public relations tactics to oppose action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight the Kyoto Protocol. The coalition was financed by large corporations and trade groups from the oil, coal and auto industries. The New York Times reported that "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion [towards skepticism], its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted". In 2000, Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition as a result of pressure from environmentalists, followed by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, the Southern Company and General Motors subsequently left to GCC. The organization closed in 2002. From January 2009 through June 2010, the oil, coal and utility industries spent $500 million in lobby expenditures in opposition to legislation to address climate change.In early 2015, several media reports emerged saying that Willie Soon, a popular scientist among climate change deniers, had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 scientific papers published since 2008. They reported that he received a total of $1.25m from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute and a foundation run by the Koch brothers. Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where Soon was based, said that allowing funders of Soon's work to prohibit disclosure of funding sources was a mistake, which will not be permitted in future grant agreements.Lewandowsky reports that by asking four questions about the free market he is able to predict with "67% "confidence" (that is, variance)" an individual's attitudes towards climate change.According to documents leaked in February 2012, The Heartland Institute is developing a curriculum for use in schools which frames climate change as a scientific controversy. In 2017, Glenn Branch, Deputy Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), wrote that "the Heartland Institute is continuing to inflict its climate change denial literature on science teachers across the country". He also described how some science teachers were reacting to Heartland's mailings: "Fortunately, the Heartland mailing continues to be greeted with skepticism and dismissed with scorn." Each significant claim was rated for accuracy by scientists who were experts on that topic. Overall, they scored the accuracy of the booklet with an "F": "it could hardly score lower", and "the 'Key Findings' section are incorrect, misleading, based on flawed logic, or simply factually inaccurate". The NCSE has prepared Classroom Resources in response to Heartland and other anti-science threats. Public sector The Republican Party in the United States is unique in denying anthropogenic climate change among conservative political parties across the Western world. In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view". (In 2006, Luntz said he still believes "back [in] '97, '98, the science was uncertain", but he now agrees with the scientific consensus.) From 2008 to 2017, the Republican Party went from "debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist", according to The New York Times. In 2011, "more than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators" said "that the threat of global warming, as a human-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter 'hoax'" according to Judith Warner writing in The New York Times Magazine. In 2014, more than 55% of congressional Republicans were climate change deniers, according to NBC News. According to PolitiFact in May 2014, Jerry Brown's statement that "virtually no Republican" in Washington accepts climate change science, was "mostly true"; PolitiFact counted "eight out of 278, or about 3 percent" of Republican members of Congress who "accept the prevailing scientific conclusion that global warming is both real and man-made."In 2005, The New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, former fossil fuel lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute and President George W. Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents". Sharon Begley reported in Newsweek that Cooney "edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as 'lack of understanding' and 'considerable uncertainty'." Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon another lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job." Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke, but a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, in a June 2017 interview with CNBC, acknowledged the existence of climate change and impact from humans, but said that he did not agree with the idea that carbon dioxide was the primary driver of global warming pointing instead to "the ocean waters and this environment that we live in". The American Meteorological Society responded in a letter to Perry saying that it is "critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause", pointing to conclusions of scientists worldwide.Republican Jim Bridenstine, the first elected politician to serve as NASA administrator, had previously stated that global temperatures were not rising. A month after the Senate confirmed his NASA position in April 2018, he acknowledged that human emissions of greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures.Although climate denial have started to decrease among the Republican Party leadership towards an acknowledgement that "the climate is changing", a 2019 study from several major think tanks describes the climate right as "fragmented and underfunded".Acknowledgement of climate change by politicians, while expressing uncertainty as to how much climate change can be attributed to human activity, has been described as a new form of climate denial, and "a reliable tool to manipulate public perception of climate change and stall political action". Funding for scientists and networks who are deniers In 2015, according to The New York Times and others, oil companies knew that burning oil and gas could cause global warming since the 1970s but, nonetheless, funded deniers for years.Several large corporations within the fossil fuel industry provide significant funding for attempts to mislead the public about the trustworthiness of climate science. ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have been identified as especially influential funders of climate change contrarianism. The bankruptcy of the coal company Cloud Peak Energy revealed it funded the Institute for Energy Research, a climate denial think tank, as well as several other policy influencers.After the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) offered British, American and other scientists $10,000 plus travel expenses to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute had received more than US$1.6 million from Exxon, and its vice-chairman of trustees was former head of Exxon Lee Raymond. Raymond sent letters that alleged the IPCC report was not "supported by the analytical work." More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration.The authors of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt, provide documentation for the assertion that professional deniers have tried to sow seeds of doubt in public opinion in order to halt any meaningful social or political progress to reduce the impact of human carbon emissions. The fact that only half of the American population believes global warming is caused by human activity could be seen as a victory for these deniers. One of the authors' main arguments is that most prominent scientists who have been voicing opposition to the near-universal consensus are being funded by industries, such as automotive and oil, that stand to lose money by government actions to regulate greenhouse gases.The Global Climate Coalition was an industry coalition that funded several scientists who expressed skepticism about global warming. In the year 2000, several members left the coalition when they became the target of a national divestiture campaign run by John Passacantando and Phil Radford at Ozone Action. According to The New York Times, when Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition, it was "the latest sign of divisions within heavy industry over how to respond to global warming". After that, between December 1999 and early March 2000, the GCC was deserted by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, energy firm the Southern Company and General Motors. The Global Climate Coalition closed in 2002, or in their own words, 'deactivated'.Documents obtained by Greenpeace under the US Freedom of Information Act show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave climate change denier Willie Soon two grants totaling $175,000 in 2005/6 and again in 2010. Multiple grants to Soon from the American Petroleum Institute between 2001 and 2007, totaled $274,000, and from ExxonMobil totaled $335,000 between 2005 and 2010. Other coal and oil industry sources which funded him include the Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation and the Electric Power Research Institute. Soon, acknowledging that he received this money, stated unequivocally that he has "never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research". In February 2015, Greenpeace disclosed papers documenting that Soon failed to disclose to academic journals funding including more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel industry related interests including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Southern Company.Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, has said that deniers such as Michaels are lobbyists more than researchers, and "I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical," he said. He said donations to deniers amounts to "trying to get a political message across".Global warming denier Reid Bryson said in June 2007, "There is a lot of money to be made in this ... If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide'." Similar positions have been advanced by University of Alabama, Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer, Spencer's University of Alabama, Huntsville colleague and IPCC contributor John Christy, University of London biogeographer Philip Stott, Accuracy in Media, and Ian Plimer.Richard Lindzen, a professor of Meteorology at MIT has been the recipient of money from energy interests such as OPEC and the Western Fuels Association, including "$2,500 a day for his consulting services", as well as funding from US federal sources including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA. Lindzen has criticized the scientific consensus on global climate change. He has been called a contrarian, in relation to climate change and other issues.There is evidence that some of those alleging climate change conspiracy theories are part of well-funded misinformation campaigns designed to manufacture controversy, undermine the scientific consensus on climate change and downplay the projected effects of global warming. Individuals and organisations kept the global warming debate alive long after most scientists had reached their conclusions. These doubts have influenced policymakers in both Canada and the US, and have helped to form government policies. Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. Between 2002 and 2010, the combined annual income of 91 climate change counter-movement organizations—think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations—was roughly $900 million. During the same period, billionaires secretively donated nearly $120 million (£77 million) via the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organizations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change.Robert Brulle analysed the funding of 91 organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which he termed the "climate change counter-movement". Between 2003 and 2013, the donor-advised funds Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, combined, were the largest funders, accounting for about one quarter of the total funds, and the American Enterprise Institute was the largest recipient, 16% of the total funds. The study also found that the amount of money donated to these organizations by means of foundations whose funding sources cannot be traced had risen.As of the end of 2019, in the United States, 97 percent of the coal industry's political contributions and 88 percent of the oil and gas industries' contributions had gone to Republicans, leading economist Paul Krugman to call the Republicans "the world's only major climate-denialist party". ExxonMobil The Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change", 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". In 2006, the Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate".The Greenpeace research project ExxonSecrets, as well as various academics, have linked several scientists who are climate deniers—Fred Singer, Fred Seitz and Patrick Michaels—to organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Philip Morris for the purpose of promoting global warming denial. These organizations include the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Similarly, groups employing global warming deniers, such as the George C. Marshall Institute, have been criticized for their ties to fossil fuel companies.On 2 February 2007, The Guardian stated that Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar with AEI, had sent letters to scientists in the UK and the U.S., offering US$10,000 plus travel expenses and other incidental payments in return for essays with the purpose of "highlight[ing] the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC process", specifically regarding the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.Greenpeace presented evidence of the energy industry funding climate change denial in their 'Exxon Secrets' project. An analysis conducted by The Carbon Brief in 2011 found that 9 out of 10 of the most prolific authors who cast doubt on climate change or speak against it had ties to ExxonMobil. Greenpeace have said that Koch industries invested more than US$50 million in the past 50 years on spreading doubts about climate change.ExxonMobil announced in 2008 that it would cut its funding to many of the groups that "divert attention" from the need to find new sources of clean energy, although in 2008 still funded over "two dozen other organisations who question the science of global warming or attack policies to solve the crisis." A survey carried out by the UK Royal Society found that in 2005 ExxonMobil distributed US$2.9 million to 39 groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".The Union of Concerned Scientists produced a report titled 'Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air', that criticizes ExxonMobil for "underwriting the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry" and for "funnelling about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue". In 2006, Exxon said that it was no longer going to fund these groups though that statement has been challenged by Greenpeace.To investigate how widespread such hidden funding was, senators Barbara Boxer, Edward Markey and Sheldon Whitehouse wrote to a number of companies. Koch general counsel refused the request and said it would infringe the company's first amendment rights. Effects on public opinion and climate inaction Climate change conspiracy theories and denial have resulted in poor action or no action at all to effectively mitigate the damage done by global warming. In some countries like the United States of America, 40% of Americans believed (ca. 2017) that climate change is a hoax in spite of the fact that there is a 100% consensus among climate scientists that it is not according to a report in 2019.A study in 2015 stated: “Exposure to conspiracy theories reduced people’s intentions to reduce their carbon footprint, relative to people who were given refuting information."In 2023, an increase in climate change denial was noted, particularly among supporters of the far right. Climate change deniers threatened meteorologists, accusing them of causing a drought, falsifying thermometer readings, and cherry-picking warmer weather stations to misrepresent global warming. Similarly, after Elon Musk's 2022 takeover of Twitter, key figures in the company who ensured trusted content was prioritized were removed, and climate scientists received a large increase in hostile, threatening, harassing and personally abusive tweets from deniers.Manufactured uncertainty over climate change, the fundamental strategy of climate change denial, has been very effective, particularly in the US. It has contributed to low levels of public concern and to government inaction worldwide. An Angus Reid poll released in 2010 indicates that global warming skepticism in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has been rising. There may be multiple causes of this trend, including a focus on economic rather than environmental issues, and a negative perception of the United Nations and its role in discussing climate change.Another cause may be weariness from overexposure to the topic: secondary polls suggest that the public may have been discouraged by extremism when discussing the topic, while other polls show 54% of U.S. voters believe that "the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is." A poll in 2009 regarding the issue of whether "some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming" showed that 59% of Americans believed it "at least somewhat likely", with 35% believing it was "very likely".According to Tim Wirth, "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. ... Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." This approach has been propagated by the US media, presenting a false balance between climate science and climate skeptics. Newsweek reports that the majority of Europe and Japan accept the consensus on scientific climate change, but only one third of Americans considered human activity to play a major role in climate change in 2006; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot." A 2007 Newsweek poll found these numbers were declining, although majorities of Americans still believed that scientists were uncertain about climate change and its causes.Rush Holt wrote a piece for Science, which appeared in Newsweek: For more than two decades scientists have been issuing warnings that the release of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO2), is probably altering Earth's climate in ways that will be expensive and even deadly. The American public yawned and bought bigger cars. Statements by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others underscored the warnings and called for new government policies to deal with climate change. Politicians, presented with noisy statistics, shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing. Deliberate attempts by the Western Fuels Association "to confuse the public" have succeeded in their objectives. This has been "exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue". According to a Pew poll in 2012, 57% of the US public are unaware of, or outright reject, the scientific consensus on climate change. Some organizations promoting climate change denial have asserted that scientists are increasingly rejecting climate change, but this notion is contradicted by research showing that 97% of published papers endorse the scientific consensus, and that percentage is increasing with time.Social psychologist Craig Foster compares climate change denialists to flat-earth believers and the reaction to the latter by the scientific community. Foster states, "the potential and kinetic energy devoted to counter the flat-earth movement is wasteful and misguided ... I don't understand why anybody would worry about the flat-earth gnat while facing the climate change mammoth ... Climate change denial does not require belief. It only requires neglect."In 2016, Aaron McCright argued that anti-environmentalism—and climate change denial specifically—has expanded to a point in the US where it has now become "a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity".On the other hand, global oil companies have begun to acknowledge the existence of climate change and its risks. Still top oil firms are spending millions lobbying to delay, weaken or block policies to tackle climate change.Manufactured climate change denial is also influencing how scientific knowledge is communicated to the public. According to climate scientist Michael E. Mann, "universities and scientific societies and organizations, publishers, etc.—are too often risk averse when it comes to defending and communicating science that is perceived as threatening by powerful interests". Responses to denialism The documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle received criticism from several experts. George Monbiot described it as "the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years". Similarly, in response to James Delingpole, Monbiot stated that his Spectator article was "the usual conspiracy theories about the 'powerful and very extensive body of vested interests' working to suppress the truth, which presumably now includes virtually the entire scientific community and everyone from Shell to Greenpeace and The Sun to Science". Some Australian meteorologists also weighed in, saying that the film made no attempt to offer a "critical deconstruction of climate science orthodoxies", but instead used various other means to suggest that climate scientists are guilty of lying or are seriously misguided. Although the film's publicist's asserted that "global warming is 'the biggest scam of modern times'", these meteorologists concluded that the film was "not scientifically sound and presents a flawed and very misleading interpretation of the science".Former UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs David Miliband presented a rebuttal of the main points of the film and stated "There will always be people with conspiracy theories trying to do down the scientific consensus, and that is part of scientific and democratic debate, but the science of climate change looks like fact to me."National Geographic fact-checked 6 persistent scientific conspiracy theories. Regarding the persistent belief in a global warming hoax they note that the Earth is continuing to warm and the rate of warming is increasing as documented in numerous scientific studies. The rise in global temperature and its rate of increase coincides with the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity. Moreover, global warming is causing Arctic sea ice to thaw at historic rates, many species of plants are blooming earlier than expected, and the migration routes of many birds, fish, mammals, and insects are changing. The role of emotions and persuasive argument Climate denial "is not simply overcome by reasoned argument", because it is not a rational response. Attempting to overcome denial using techniques of persuasive argument, such as supplying a missing piece of information, or providing general scientific education may be ineffective. A person who is in denial about climate is most likely taking a position based on their feelings, especially their feelings about things they fear.Academics have stated that "It is pretty clear that fear of the solutions drives much opposition to the science."It can be useful to respond to emotions, including with the statement "It can be painful to realise that our own lifestyles are responsible", in order to help move "from denial to acceptance to constructive action." Writing about people who have changed their position Some climate change skeptics have changed their positions regarding global warming. Ronald Bailey, author of Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths (published in 2002), stated in 2005, "Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up." By 2007, he wrote "Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.... as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable.""I used to be a climate-change skeptic", conservative columnist Max Boot admitted in 2018, one who believed that "the science was inconclusive" and that worry was "overblown". Now, he says, referencing the Fourth National Climate Assessment, "the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing." Climate change doubter Bob Inglis, a former US representative for South Carolina, changed his mind after appeals from his son on his environmental positions, and after spending time with climate scientist Scott Heron studying coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Inglis lost his House race in 2010, and went on to found republicEn, a nonprofit promoting conservative voices and solutions on climate change.Jerry Taylor promoted climate denialism for 20 years as former staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and former vice president of the Cato Institute. Taylor began to change his mind after climate scientist James Hansen challenged him to reread some Senate testimony. He became President of the Niskanen Center in 2014, where he is involved in turning climate skeptics into climate activists, and making the business case for climate action.In 2009, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his opinion that climate change was "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects". After the devastating 2010 Russian wildfires damaged agriculture and left Moscow choking in smoke, Medvedev commented, "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change."Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, reached a tipping point in 2006 as a result of his increasing familiarity with scientific evidence, and decided there was "overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming". Journalist Gregg Easterbrook, an early skeptic of climate change who authored the influential book A Moment on the Earth, also changed his mind in 2006, and wrote an essay titled "Case Closed: The Debate About Global Warming is Over". In 2006, he stated, "based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert."Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro expressed skepticism or cynicism about anthropogenic global warming for some years, but by 2010, he had become involved in explaining the connections between man-made climate change and extreme weather.Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, funded by Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, has been a prominent critic of prevailing climate science. In 2011, he stated that "following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause." Approaches with farmers One study of climate change denial among farmers in Australia found that farmers were less likely to take a position of climate denial if they had experienced improved production from climate-friendly practices, or identified a younger person as a successor for their farm. Therefore, seeing positive economic results from efforts at climate-friendly agricultural practices, or becoming involved in intergenerational stewardship of a farm may play a role in turning farmers away from denial. In the United States, rural climate dialogues sponsored by the Sierra Club have helped neighbors overcome their fears of political polarization and exclusion, and come together to address shared concerns about climate impacts in their communities. Some participants who start out with attitudes of anthropogenic climate change denial have shifted to identifying concerns which they would like to see addressed by local officials. See also Agnotology Anti-environmentalism Carbon bubble CO2 Coalition – advocacy organization whose claims conflict with the scientific consensus Effects of climate change Environmental skepticism Global warming controversy Media coverage of climate change Motivated reasoning Political activities of the Koch family Renewable energy commercialization: Non-technical barriers to acceptance Right-wing antiscience Semmelweis reflex Soft climate change denial Tobacco industry playbook Films: Climate Change Denial Disorder, satirical parody film about a fictional disease Before the Flood, documenting climate change denial and lobbying processes Notes References === Sources ===

climate change in the maldives

Climate change in the Maldives is a major issue for the country. As an archipelago of low-lying islands and atolls, many parts of the Maldives are threatened by sea level rise, with some predictions suggesting most of the nation will become uninhabitable during the 21st century. The country is striving to adapt to climate change, and Maldivian authorities have been prominent in international political advocacy to implement climate change mitigation. Sea level rise Climate change severely threatens the existence of the Maldives, as an archipelago of low-lying islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. According to the World Bank, with "future sea levels projected to increase in the range of 10 to 100 centimeters by the year 2100, the entire country could be submerged". By 2050, 80% of the country could become uninhabitable due to global warming.In 1988, Maldivian authorities believed that rising seas could already entirely cover the nation within the next 30 years, stating that "an estimated rise of 20 to 30 centimetres in the next 20 to 40 years [would] be 'catastrophic'". By 2021, 90% of islands in the Maldives experienced severe erosion, 97% of the country no longer had fresh groundwater, and more than 50% of the national budget was being spent on efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change. The country had also lost one of its primary natural defenses in a 2016 bleaching event that affected about 60% of its coral reefs.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report predicted the upper limit of the sea level rises will be 59 centimetres (23 in) by 2100, which means that most of the republic's 200 inhabited islands may need to be abandoned. According to researchers from the University of Southampton, the Maldives are the third most endangered island nation due to flooding from climate change as a percentage of population.In 2020, a three-year study at the University of Plymouth which looked at the Maldives and the Marshall Islands, found that tides move sediment to create a higher elevation, a morphological response that the researchers suggested could help low-lying islands adjust to sea level rise and keep the islands habitable. The research also reported that sea walls were compromising the islands’ ability to adjust to rising sea levels and that island drowning is an inevitable outcome for islands with coastal structures like sea walls. Hideki Kanamaru, natural resources officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization in Asia-Pacific, said the study provided a "new perspective" on how island nations could tackle the challenge of sea-level rise, and that even if islands can adapt naturally to higher seas by raising their own crests, humans still needed to double down on global warming and protection for island populations. Effects on people Most people in the Maldives live on small, flat, densely populated atolls that are threatened by violent storms or even the slightest sea level rise. The capital Malé is especially threatened because it is on a small, flat, extremely densely populated atoll that is surrounded by sea walls, and other barriers to protect against storms. This means the Malé atoll cannot change shape in response to rising sea levels and is increasingly reliant on expensive engineering solutions.Climate change will also have significant implications for tourism in the Maldives. Effects on the environment Coral reefs in the Maldives are impacted by climate change. The 2016 global coral bleaching event greatly impacted coral reefs across the country, with such events expected to become more frequent and severe due to climate change. Mitigation and adaptation Mitigation In 2009, President Mohamed Nasheed announced a plan to make the country carbon neutral and pursue a renewable energy transition in the following decade. Maldives planned to eliminate or offset all of its greenhouse gas emissions. At the 2009 International Climate Talks, Nasheed explained that:For us swearing off fossil fuels is not only the right thing to do, but it is also in our economic self-interest... Pioneering countries will free themselves from the unpredictable price of foreign oil; they will capitalise on the new green economy of the future, and they will enhance their moral standing giving them greater political influence on the world stage.In 2017, the government of Abdulla Yameen changed the policy, instead aiming to be a low carbon country and prioritising development. Environment minister Thoriq Ibrahim said "We are going nowhere. The dream [of making the Maldives carbon neutral] is over. We are looking to be a low-carbon country." Adaptation To defend against climate change and the resulting sea level rise, the national government of the Maldives has prepared a comprehensive National Adaptation Programme of Action, that attempts to critically consider and alleviate many of the serious threats the Maldives faces. The Maldives have already implemented several measures to combat sea level rise, including building a wall around the capital Malé and refurbishing local infrastructure, particularly ports. The country began a large-scale land reclamation project in Hulhumalé in the late 1990s, partly in preparation for relocation from elsewhere in the country. Also a Dutch company has proposed building 5000 floating homes near Malé.In 2008, Nasheed announced plans to look into purchasing new land in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia because of his concerns about global warming, and the possibility of much of the islands being inundated by the rising sea. The purchase of land will be made from a fund generated by tourism. The president explained his intentions: "We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades". International cooperation Advocacy for climate change mitigation is a key component of the country's foreign policy. Concerns over sea level rise were also expressed by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom at the 1997 United Nations General Assembly. President Mohamed Nasheed said in 2012 that "If carbon emissions continue at the rate they are climbing today, my country will be under water in seven years." He called for more climate change mitigation action while on the American television shows The Daily Show and the Late Show with David Letterman, and hosted "the world's first underwater cabinet meeting" in 2009 to raise awareness of the threats posed by climate change.Former President of the Maldives Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said in 2016 "to the three hundred thousand inhabitants of the Maldives none of these threats compare, in magnitude and likelihood, to global climate change and consequent sea level rise." Former environment minister for the Maldives, Mohamed Aslam, said "If Maldives can do it, you can do it. It's important to us not just to talk but to lead by example". Society and climate change Public opinion A 2017 study of Maldivians' public opinion on climate change found that "more than 50% of respondents perceive future sea-level rise to be a serious challenge at the national level and they accept that migration from islands to other countries might be a potential option", although religious and cultural factors played a role. See also Effects of climate change on island nations Climate change in South Asia Malé Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change The Island President References External links Maldives Summary at World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal Preparing for Rising Seas in the Maldives at NASA Earth Observatory Video: "The Maldives - vulnerabilities and climate change challenges" by Ministry of Environment

public opinion on climate change

Public opinion on climate change is the aggregate of attitudes or beliefs held by a population concerning issues relating to "anthropogenic climate change, perceptions of climate change risks, concern about its seriousness, and thoughts on what, if anything, should be done to address it." Public opinion on climate change is related to a broad set of variables, including the effects of sociodemographic, political, cultural, economic, and environmental factors" as well as media coverage and interaction with different news and social media.International public opinion on climate change shows a majority viewing the crisis as an emergency. In January 2021, the United Nations Development Programme reported results of The Peoples' Climate Vote. This was the largest-ever climate survey, with responses from 1.2 million people in 50 countries, which indicated that 64% of respondents considered climate change to be an emergency, with forest and land conservation being the most popular solutions. According to the report's authors, the results present "a clear and convincing call for decision-makers to step up their ambition". Public surveys According to a 2015 journal article based on a literature review of thousands of articles related to over two hundred studies covering the period from 1980 to 2014, there was an increase in public awareness of climate change in the 1980s and early 1990s, followed by a period of growing concern— mixed with the rise of conflicting positions—in the later 1990s and early 2000s. This was followed by a period of "declining public concern and increasing skepticism" in some countries in the mid-2000s to late-2000s. From 2010 to 2014, there was a period suggesting "possible stabilization of public concern about climate change".The 2021 Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll conducted by Gallup found that 67% of people viewed climate change as a threat to people in their country, which is a slight decrease from 69% in 2019, possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on health and livelihoods being pressing issues. The 2021 poll was conducted in 121 countries and included over 125,000 interviews. The study also revealed that many countries and regions with high experience of disasters related to natural hazards, including those made more frequent and severe by climate change, are also those with low resilience.Several survey studies found different types of climate change believers and non-believers. Accordingly scholars have described "Global Warming's Five Germanys" or "Global Waming's Six Americas". For Germany, these types include Alarmed Actives, Convinced, Cautious, Disengaged, and Dismissive. Results from climate survey of European Investment Bank in 2021 91% of Chinese respondents to an EU survey in 2021, 73% of Britons, 70% of Europeans and 60% of Americans support stronger policies for climate change mitigation. 63% of EU residents, 59% of Britons, 50% of Americans and 60% of Chinese respondents are in favor of switching to renewable energy. 18% of Americans are in favor of natural gas as a source of energy. For Britons and EU citizens, nuclear energy is a more popular energy alternative. 69% of EU respondents, 71% of UK respondents, 62% of US respondents and 89% of Chinese respondents support a tax on the items and services that contribute the most to global warming.In the 2022 edition of the same climate survey, in the European Union and the United Kingdom 87% of respondents agree that their government has moved too slowly to address climate change, compared to 76% and 74%, respectively, in China and the United States. The majority of persons polled in the European Union and China (80% and 91%, respectively) think that climate change has an impact on their daily life. Meanwhile, Americans (67%) and Britons (65%) have a less extreme picture of this. More findings from the survey show that 63% of people in the European Union want energy costs to be dependent on use, with the greatest consumers paying more. This is compared to 83% in China, 63% in the UK and 57% in the US.Compared to 84% in China, 66% in the United States, and 52% in the United Kingdom, 64% of EU respondents want polluting activities like air travel and SUVs to be taxed more heavily to account for their environmental impact. 88% of Chinese, 83% of British, and 72% of American respondents, 84% of EU respondents believe that a worldwide catastrophe is inevitable if the consumption of products and energy is not lowered in the next years.According to the European Investment Bank's climate survey from 2022, 84% of EU respondents stated that if we do not significantly cut back on our consumption of goods and energy in the near future, the negative effects would be non-reversible. 63% of EU citizens want energy prices to be based on consumption, with higher costs for those individuals or businesses who use the most energy and 40% of respondents from the EU believe that their government should lower energy-related taxes in the near future. 87% of EU respondents and 85% of UK respondents believe that their governments are moving too slowly to halt climate change. Few respondents from the UK, EU, and the US believe that their governments will be successful in decreasing carbon emissions by 2030. Older surveys (prior to 2013) In Europe, the notion of human influence on climate gained wide acceptance more rapidly than in the United States and other countries (data from 2007). A 2009 survey found that Europeans rated climate change as the second most serious problem facing the world, between "poverty, the lack of food and drinking water" and "a major global economic downturn". 87% of Europeans considered climate change to be a very serious or serious problem, while ten per cent did not consider it a serious problem.A 15-nation poll conducted in 2006, by Pew Global found that there "is a substantial gap in concern over global warming—roughly two-thirds of Japanese (66%) and Indians (65%) say they personally worry a great deal about global warming. Roughly half of the populations of Spain (51%) and France (46%) also express great concern over global warming, based on those who have heard about the issue. But there is no evidence of alarm over global warming in either the United States or China—the two largest producers of greenhouse gases. Just 19% of Americans and 20% of the Chinese who have heard of the issue say they worry a lot about global warming—the lowest percentages in the 15 countries surveyed. Moreover, nearly half of Americans (47%) and somewhat fewer Chinese (37%) express little or no concern about the problem."A 47-nation poll by Pew Global Attitudes conducted in 2007, found, "Substantial majorities 25 of 37 countries say global warming is a 'very serious' problem."Matthew C. Nisbet and Teresa Myers' 2007 article—"Twenty Years of Public Opinion about Global Warming"—covered two decades in the United States starting in 1980—in which they investigated public awareness of the causes and impacts of global warming, public policy, scientific consensus on climate change, public support for the Kyoto Accord, and their concerns about the economic costs of potential public policies that responded to climate change. They found that from 1986 to 1990, the proportion of respondents who reported having heard about climate change increased from 39% to 74%. However, they noted "levels of overall understanding were limited".A 2010 journal article in Risk Analysis compared and contrasted a 1992 survey and a 2009 survey of lay peoples' awareness and opinions of climate change. In 1992, the general public did not differentiate between climate change and the depletion of the ozone layer. Using a mental models methodology, researchers found that while there was a marked increase in understanding of climate change by 2009, many did not accept that global warming was "primarily due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere", or that the "single most important source of this carbon dioxide is the combustion of fossil fuels". Influences on individual opinion Geographic region For a list of countries and their opinion see "Climate change opinion by country" below The first major worldwide poll, conducted by Gallup in 2008–2009 in 127 countries, found that some 62% of people worldwide said they knew about global warming. In the industrialized countries of North America, Europe, and Japan, 67% or more knew about it (97% in the U.S., 99% in Japan); in developing countries, especially in Africa, fewer than a quarter knew about it, although many had noticed local weather changes. The survey results suggest that between 2007 and 2010 only 42% of the world's population were aware of climate change and believed that it is caused by human activity. Among those who knew about global warming, there was a wide variation between nations in belief that the warming was a result of human activities.Adults in Asia, with the exception of those in developed countries, are the least likely to perceive global warming as a threat. In developed Asian countries like South Korea, perceptions of climate change are associated with strong emotional beliefs about its causes. In the western world, individuals are the most likely to be aware and perceive it as a very or somewhat serious threat to themselves and their families; although Europeans are more concerned about climate change than those in the United States. However, the public in Africa, where individuals are the most vulnerable to global warming while producing the least carbon dioxide, is the least aware – which translates into a low perception that it is a threat.These variations pose a challenge to policymakers, as different countries travel down different paths, making an agreement over an appropriate response difficult. While Africa may be the most vulnerable and produce the least amount of greenhouse gases, they are the most ambivalent. The top five emitters (China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan), who together emit half the world's greenhouse gases, vary in both awareness and concern. The United States, Russia, and Japan are the most aware at over 85% of the population. Conversely, only two-thirds of people in China and one-third in India are aware. Japan expresses the greatest concern of the 5, which translates into support for environmental policies. People in China, Russia, and the United States, while varying in awareness, have expressed a similar proportion of aware individuals concerned. Similarly, those aware in India are likely to be concerned, but India faces challenges spreading this concern to the remaining population as its energy needs increase over the next decade.An online survey on environmental questions conducted in 20 countries by Ipsos MORI, "Global Trends 2014", shows broad agreement, especially on climate change and if it is caused by humans, though the U.S. ranked lowest with 54% agreement. It has been suggested that the low U.S. ranking is tied to denial campaigns.A 2010 survey of 14 industrialized countries found that skepticism about the danger of global warming was highest in Australia, Norway, New Zealand and the United States, in that order, correlating positively with per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. Education In countries varying in awareness, an educational gap translates into a gap in awareness. However an increase in awareness does not always result in an increase in perceived threat. In China, 98% of those who have completed four years or more of college education reported knowing something or a great deal of climate change while only 63% of those who have completed nine years of education reported the same. Despite the differences in awareness in China, all groups perceive a low level of threat from global warming. In India, those who are educated are more likely to be aware, and those who are educated there are far more likely to report perceiving global warming as a threat than those who are not educated. In Europe, individuals who have attained a higher level of education perceive climate change as a serious threat. There is also a strong association between education and Internet use. Europeans who use the Internet more are more likely to perceive climate change as a serious threat. However, a survey of American adults found "little disagreement among culturally diverse citizens on what science knows about climate change. In the US, individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on climate change.In the states of Washington, California, Oregon, and Idaho, people with more education were more likely to support the building of new fossil fuel power plants than people with less of an education. Demographics In general, there is a substantial variation in the direction in which demographic traits, like age or gender, correlate with climate change concern. While women and younger people tend to be more concerned about climate change in English-speaking constituencies, the opposite is true in most African countries.Residential demographics affect perceptions of global warming. In China in 2008, 77% of those who lived in urban areas were aware of global warming compared to 52% in rural areas. This trend was mirrored in India with 49% to 29% awareness, respectively.Of the countries where at least half the population is aware of global warming, those with the majority who believe that global warming is due to human activities have a greater national GDP per unit energy—or, a greater energy efficiency.In Europe, individuals under fifty-five are more likely to perceive both "poverty, lack of food and drinking water" and climate change as a serious threat than individuals over fifty-five. Male individuals are more likely to perceive climate change as a threat than female individuals. Managers, white-collar workers, and students are more likely to perceive climate change as a greater threat than house persons and retired individuals. In the western states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California, older residents are more likely to support policies for building new fossil fuel power plants.In the United States, conservative white men are more likely than other Americans to deny climate change. Men are also less likely to believe that climate change is human caused or that there is a consensus message talking about the issues of climate change among scientists. A very similar trend has been documented in Norway, where 63% of conservative men deny anthropogenic climate change compared to just 36% of the general Norwegian population. In Sweden, political conservatism was similarly found to correlate with climate change denial, while in Brazil, climate change denial has been found to be more correlated with gender, with men being significantly more likely to express denialist viewpoints compared to women.Women are more likely to support egalitarian policies and well as social programs for their community. Although there are differences between men and women when it comes to environmental public policy, both are less likely to support policies such as ones for CO2 regulations if the economy is doing poorly.In Great Britain, a movement of by women known as "birthstrikers" advocates for refraining from procreation until the possibility of "climate breakdown and civilisation collapse" is averted.In 2021 a global survey was conducted to understand the opinion of people in the age 16-25 about climate change. According to the study, 4 from 10 are hesitating about having children because they are afraid of climate change. 6 from 10 feel extreme anxiety about the issue. Similar number felt betrayed by older generations and governments. Political identification Public opinion on climate change can be influenced by who people vote for. Although media coverage influences how some view climate change, research shows that voting behavior influences climate change skepticism. This shows that people's views on climate change tend to align with the people they voted for.In Europe, opinion is not strongly divided among left and right parties. Although European political parties on the left, including Green parties, strongly support measures to address climate change, conservative European political parties maintain similar sentiments, most notably in Western and Northern Europe. For example, Margaret Thatcher, never a friend of the coal mining industry, was a strong supporter of an active climate protection policy and was instrumental in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. Some speeches, as to the Royal Society on 27 September 1988 and to the UN general assembly in November 1989 helped to put climate change, acid rain, and general pollution in the British mainstream. After her career, however, Thatcher was less of a climate activist, as she called climate action a "marvelous excuse for supranational socialism", and called Al Gore an "apocalyptic hyperbole". France's center-right President Chirac pushed key environmental and climate change policies in France in 2005–2007. Conservative German administrations (under the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union) in the past two decades have supported European Union climate change initiatives; concern about forest dieback and acid rain regulation were initiated under Kohl's archconservative minister of the interior Friedrich Zimmermann. In the period after former President George W. Bush announced that the United States was leaving the Kyoto Treaty, European media and newspapers on both the left and right criticized the move. The conservative Spanish La Razón, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Danish Berlingske Tidende, and the Greek Kathimerini all condemned the Bush administration's decision, as did left-leaning newspapers.In Norway, a 2013 poll conducted by TNS Gallup found that 92% of those who vote for the Socialist Left Party and 89% of those who vote for the Liberal Party believe that global warming is caused by humans, while the percentage who held this belief is 60% among voters for the Conservative Party and 41% among voters for the Progress Party.The shared sentiments between the political left and right on climate change further illustrate the divide in perception between the United States and Europe on climate change. As an example, conservative German Prime Ministers Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel have differed with other parties in Germany only on how to meet emissions reduction targets, not whether or not to establish or fulfill them.A 2017 study found that those who changed their opinion on climate change between 2010 and 2014 did so "primarily to align better with those who shared their party identification and political ideology. This conforms with the theory of motivated reasoning: Evidence consistent with prior beliefs is viewed as strong and, on politically salient issues, people strive to bring their opinions into conformance with those who share their political identity". Furthermore, a 2019 study examining the growing skepticism of climate change among American Republicans argues that persuasion and rhetoric from party elites play a critical role in public opinion formation, and that these elite cues are propagated through mainstream and social media sources.Those who care about the environment and want change are not happy about some policies, for example the support of the cap and trade policy but very few people are willing to pay more than 15 dollars per month for a program that is supposed to help the environment. According to a 2015 article published in Environmental Politics, while most Americans were aware of climate change, only 2% of respondents ranked the environment as the top issue in the US.A 2014–2018 survey of Oklahoma (U.S.) residents found that partisans on the political right have much more unstable beliefs about climate change than partisans on the left. Contradicting previous literature indicating that climate beliefs are firmly held and invariable, the researchers said the results imply that opinions on the right are more susceptible to change. Individual risk assessment and assignment The IPCC attempts to orchestrate global (climate) change research to shape a worldwide consensus according to a 1996 article. However, the consensus approach has been dubbed more a liability than an asset in comparison to other environmental challenges. In 2010, an article in Current Sociology, said that the linear model of policy-making, based on a more knowledge we have, the better the political response will be was said to have not been working and was in the meantime rejected by sociology.In a 1999 article, Sheldon Ungar, a Canadian sociologist, compared the different public reactions towards ozone depletion and climate change. The public opinion failed to tie climate change to concrete events which could be used as a threshold or beacon to signify immediate danger. Scientific predictions of a temperature rise of two to three degrees Celsius over several decades do not respond with people, e.g. in North America, that experience similar swings during a single day. As scientists define global warming a problem of the future, a liability in "attention economy", pessimistic outlooks in general and assigning extreme weather to climate change have often been discredited or ridiculed (compare Gore effect) in the public arena. While the greenhouse effect per se is essential for life on Earth, the case was quite different with the ozone shield and other metaphors about the ozone depletion. The scientific assessment of the ozone problem also had large uncertainties. But the metaphors used in the discussion (ozone shield, ozone hole) reflected better with lay people and their concerns. The chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) regulation attempts of the end of the 1980s benefited from those easy-to-grasp metaphors and the personal risk assumptions taken from them. As well, the fate of celebrities like President Ronald Reagan, who had skin cancer removal in 1985 and 1987, was of high importance. In the case of public opinion on climate change, no imminent danger is perceived. Ideology and religion In the United States, ideology is an effective predictor of party identification, where conservatives are more prevalent among Republicans, and moderates and liberals among independents and Democrats. A shift in ideology is often associated with in a shift in political views. For example, when the number of conservatives rose from 2008 to 2009, the number of individuals who felt that global warming was being exaggerated in the media also rose. The 2006 BBC World Service poll found that when asked about various policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – tax incentives for alternative energy research and development, instalment of taxes to encourage energy conservation, and reliance on nuclear energy to reduce fossil fuels. The majority of those asked felt that tax incentives were the path of action that they preferred. As of May 2016, polls have repeatedly found that a majority of Republican voters, particularly young ones, believe the government should take action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.After a country hosts the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) climate legislation increases, which causes policy diffusion. There is strong evidence of policy diffusion, which is when a policy is made it is influenced by the policy choices made elsewhere.This can have a positive effect on climate legislation.Scientific analyses of international survey data show that right-wing orientation and individualism are strongly correlated to climate change denial in the US and other English-speaking countries, but much less in most non-English speaking nations.Political ideologies are seen as one of the most consistent factors of the support or rejection of climate change public policies.A person's political ideology is seen to affect the a person's cognitive and emotional appraisals which then affect how somebody sees climate change and if the dangers of it will inflict harm to them.Certain religious beliefs like end times theology have also been found to be correlated with climate change denial, though they are not as reliable as predictors of it as political conservatism is. Charts A 2018 study found that individuals were more likely to accept that global temperatures were increasing if they were shown the information in a chart rather than in text. Income Income has a strong influence on public opinion regarding policies such as building more fossil fuel power plants or whether we should lighten up on environmental standards in industries. People that have bigger incomes in the states of Washington. Oregon, California and Idaho are more likely to support the policy regarding building new power plants and support lightening up on environmental standards in industries compared to people with a smaller income. Economic Factors Development of climate change policies is influenced by economic conditions. For a long period of time, such conditions were seen to play an important role in influencing political behavior. Economic issues and environmental issues are often seen as a trade-off since something that helps one was believed to negatively affect the other. Accordingly, the environment is usually seen as a problem that is not as big and crucial as the economy. Consensus Messages from Scientists Using consensus messages from scientists would make progress in helping people understand and accept the realities of climate change and its dangers. There was an influence in getting conservative people to believe in pro-social climate change beliefs when researchers used consensus messages from scientists with the help of pretesting and protesting their climate change beliefs. However, the consensus messages did little to help influence the skeptical people that do not believe in the danger of climate change. Visibility Personal experience and noticing weather changes due to climate change are likely to motivate people to find solutions and act on them. After experiencing crop failures due to dry spells in Nepal, citizens were more likely find and incorporate adaptive strategies to fight thing from the vulnerability they face. Outside of studying the differences in perception of climate change in large geographic areas, researchers have studied the effects of visibility to the individual citizen. In the scientific and academic community, there is an ongoing debate about whether visibility or seeing the effects of climate change literally with one's own eyes is helpful. Though some scientists are dismissive of anecdotal evidence, direct accounts have been studied to better reach local communities and understand their perception of climate change. Climate solutions presented to the public and the private sector have focused on bringing visual learning and practical everyday actions designed to promote further engagement such as community members conducting climate change tours and mapping the trees in their neighborhood.Risk perception, as opposed to risk assessment, was constantly evaluated in these smaller, local studies. In a 2018 study of those residing near the Everglades, a prominent wetland ecosystem in Florida, participation in outdoor recreational activities, and elevation and distance from the shoreline of their residential location from the mean sea-level affected one's support in environmental conservation policy. Frequent beach goers and other outdoor recreational enthusiasts concerned by differing sea levels were cited to be potential likely mobilizers. Another 2018 study found 56% of the recreational fishermen polled in the area said “being able to see other wildlife” was very or extremely important, and 60% reported being “very much concerned” about the health of the Everglades ecosystem. In key American cities, the visibility of water stress and/or proximity to bodies of water increased the strength of water conservation policy in that area. Perceived shrinking water supply or flooding can be seen as motivating public stance on climate change. However, in arid areas where water was less visible, this brings up concerns of weaker policy in locales that truly need it. Farmers in the Punjab region of Pakistan are now witnessing a significant decrease in rice production due to climate change. Those who rely on agriculture for their livelihood are the most concerned, based on a 2014 study of 450 households. More than half of those households adapted their farming to climate change.Bodies of water and water scarcity, though very prominent concepts in this field of study, are not the only major factors when weighing the idea of visible climate change. For example, a 2021 study on the citizens’ perception of geohazards was conducted in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy as part of the European Project RESPONSe (Interreg Italy–Croatia). Younger people were shown to be more invested in individual environmental impact versus older adults who were concerned about geohazards. The study was split between those who lived in the hinterlands and low coastal areas. Those shown living in the hinterlands were more inclined to be wary of geohazards and their risks. As those areas were said to be more susceptible to natural disasters, the study highlighted a larger awareness of natural hazards by those who historically are more vulnerable due to their proximity. While residents in general were aware due to their closeness to water sources, research also implies that there is translation needed between the framing of climate change and the immediate impacts to their living area for those who did not live in particularly affected areas.There are other factors when it comes to visibility for the individual and personally witnessing climate change. While education has been aforementioned and studied as a factor, materials of one's study have also been investigated as a factor of visibility. After studying Portuguese public higher education institutions in 2021, those in the natural and environmental sciences are more inclined to do environment-friendly practices such as recycle and willingness to work for lower salaries for companies that commit to climate change action. Students in the sciences and engineering majors were least likely to do so. While this result can be attributed to initial interest in those areas to begin with, most students were said to be concerned about climate change and said that there needed to be more material about climate change needed to be implemented in their institution's curriculum. Younger students were more likely to be extremely concerned, although the authors' speculated this to be a product of greater social media literacy. Social media Across different cultures and languages, the use of social media as a news source is associated with lower levels of climate skepticism. A particular dynamic of social media discussion of climate change is the platform it provides for direct engagement by activists. In a study of the use of the comments sections on YouTube videos relating to climate change, for instance, a core group of users—both climate activists and skeptics—appeared repeatedly across these comments sections, with the majority taking a climate activist standpoint. Although often criticised as reinforcing rather than challenging users' view, social media has also been shown to have a role in cognitive reflection. A study of fora on Reddit highlighted that "while some communities are dominated by particular ideological viewpoints, others are more suggestive of deliberative debate." Voicing believed wrongdoings People can find motivation to act in the climate change movement when they are acting in the way to express disagreement with the decisions made by a higher power. In a 2017 Earth Day march, a majority of scientists and nonscientists were both seen to join the march to speak up to the Trump administration about what they have done regarding climate change. In addition, people felt motivated to join the march to protect the use of science to benefit the community and for its use in public good. Issues Science A scientific consensus on climate change exists, as recognized by national academies of science and other authoritative bodies. However, research has identified substantial geographical variation in the public's understanding of the scientific consensus. Economics Economic debates weigh the benefits of limiting industrial emissions of mitigating global warming against the costs that such changes would entail. While there is a greater amount of agreement over whether global warming exists, there is less agreement over the appropriate response. Electric or petroleum distribution may be government owned or utilities may be regulated by government. The government owned or regulated utilities may, or may not choose to make lower emissions a priority over economics, in unregulated counties industry follows economic priorities. An example of the economic priority is Royal Dutch Shell PLC reporting CO2 emissions of 81 million metric tonnes in 2013. Media The popular media in the U.S. gives greater attention to skeptics relative to the scientific community as a whole, and the level of agreement within the scientific community has not been accurately communicated. US popular media coverage differs from that presented in other countries, where reporting is more consistent with the scientific literature. Some journalists attribute the difference to climate change denial being propagated, mainly in the US, by business-centered organizations employing tactics worked out previously by the US tobacco lobby. However, one study suggests that these tactic are less prominent in the media and that the public instead draws their opinions on climate mainly from the cues of political party elites.The efforts of Al Gore and other environmental campaigns have focused on the effects of global warming and have managed to increase awareness and concern, but despite these efforts, as of 2007, the number of Americans believing humans are the cause of global warming was holding steady at 61%, and those believing that the popular media was understating the issue remained at about 35%. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of Americans who believe the media under-reports the seriousness of global warming has been increasing, and the number who think media overstates it has been falling. According to a 2013 Gallup US opinion poll, 57% believe global warming is at least as bad as portrayed in the media (with 33% thinking media has downplayed global warming and 24% saying coverage is accurate). Less than half of Americans (41%) think the problem is not as bad as media portrays it. Politics Public opinion impacts on the issue of climate change because governments need willing electorates and citizens in order to implement policies that address climate change. Further, when climate change perceptions differ between the populace and governments, the communication of risk to the public becomes problematic. Finally, a public that is not aware of the issues surrounding climate change may resist or oppose climate change policies, which is of considerable importance to politicians and state leaders.Public support for action to forestall global warming is as strong as public support has been historically for many other government actions; however, it is not "intense" in the sense that it overrides other priorities.A 2017 journal article said that shifts in public opinion in the direction of pro-environmentalism strongly increased the adoption of renewable energy policies in Europe. A 2020 journal article said that countries in which more people believe in human-made climate change tend to have higher carbon prices.According to a 2011 Gallop poll, the proportion of Americans who believe that the effects of global warming have begun or will begin in a few years rose to a peak in 2008 where it then declined, and a similar trend was found regarding the belief that global warming is a threat to their lifestyle within their lifetime. Concern over global warming often corresponds with economic downturns and national crisis such as 9/11 as Americans prioritize the economy and national security over environmental concerns. However the drop in concern in 2008 is unique compared to other environmental issues. Considered in the context of environmental issues, Americans consider global warming as a less critical concern than the pollution of rivers, lakes, and drinking water; toxic waste; fresh water needs; air pollution; damage to the ozone layer; and the loss of tropical rain forests. However, Americans prioritize global warming over species extinction and acid rain issues. Since 2000 the partisan gap has grown as Republican and Democratic views diverge. Climate change opinion by country Climate change opinion is the aggregate of public opinion held by the adult population. Cost constraints often restrict surveys to sample only one or two countries from each continent or focus on only one region. Because of differences among questions, wording, and methods—it is difficult to reliably compare results or to generalize them to opinions held worldwide. In 2007–2008, the Gallup Poll surveyed individuals from 128 countries in the first comprehensive study of global opinions. The Gallup Organization aggregated opinion from the adult population fifteen years of age and older, either through the telephone or personal interviews, and in both rural and urban areas except in areas where the safety of interviewer was threatened and in scarcely populated islands. Personal interviews were stratified by population size or geography and cluster sampling was achieved through one or more stages. Although error bounds vary, they were all below ±6% with 95% confidence. Weighting countries to a 2008 World Bank population estimate, 61% of individuals worldwide were aware of global warming, developed countries more aware than developing, with Africa the least aware. The median of people perceiving it as a threat was 47%. Latin America and developed countries in Asia led the belief that climate change was a result of human activities, while Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East, and countries from the Former Soviet Union led in the opposite. Awareness often translates to concern, although of those aware, individuals in Europe and developed countries in Asia perceived global warming as a greater threat than others. In January 2021, the UNDP worked with Oxford University to release the world's largest survey of public opinion on climate change. It surveyed 50 countries, spanning all inhabited regions, and a majority of the world's population. Its finding suggested a growing concern for climate change. Overall, 64% of respondents believed climate change was an emergency. This belief was high among all regions, the highest being Western Europe and North America at 72%, and the lowest being Sub-Saharan Africa at 61%. It also identified a link between average income and concern for climate change. In the high income countries, 72% believed it was an emergency. This was 62% for middle income countries and 58% for low income countries. It asked people whether or not they supported 18 key policies over 6 areas, ranging from economy to transport. There was general support for all policy suggestions. For example, 8 of the 10 countries with the highest emissions saw a majority of respondents favor more renewable energy. The general impression was that the public wanted more policies to be implemented, and demanded more from policy makers. Overall, 59% of respondents who believed climate change was an emergency said the world should do 'everything necessary and urgently in response' to the crisis. Conversely, there was remarkably little support among respondents for no policies at all, with the highest being Pakistan at only 5%. The report indicated a widespread public awareness, concern, and desire for greater action among all regions of the world. Using the Pew Research Center's 2015 Global Attitudes Survey, the journal article entitled Cross-national variation in determinants of climate change concern found that the most consistent predictor of concern about climate change in 36 countries surveyed proved to be 'commitment to democratic principles'. Believing that free elections, freedom of religion, equal rights for women, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and lack of Internet censorship were 'very' rather than 'somewhat' important increased the probability of believing climate change is a very serious problem by 7 to 25 percent points in 26 of the 36 nations surveyed. It was the strongest predictor in 17. Views on climate change by region Africa People in Africa are relatively concerned about climate change compared to the Middle East and parts of Asia. However, they are less concerned than most of Latin America and Europe. In 2015, 61% of people in Africa considered climate change to be a very serious problem, and 52% believe that climate change is harming people now. While 59% of Africans were worried about droughts or water shortages, only 16% were concerned about severe weather, and 3% are concerned about rising sea levels. By 2007, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were especially troubled about increasing desertification even as they account for .04% of global carbon dioxide emissions. In 2011, concern in Sub-Saharan Africa over climate change dropped; only 34% of the population considered climate change to be a "very" or "somewhat serious issue". Even so, according to the Pew Research Center 2015 Global Attitudes Survey, some countries were more concerned than others. In Uganda, 79% of people, 68% in Ghana, 45% in South Africa and 40% in Ethiopia considered climate change to be a very serious problem.In 2022, 51% of African respondents to a survey claimed climate change is one of the biggest problems they are facing. 41% saw inflation and 39% saw access to health care as the biggest issues. 76% responded that they prefer renewable energy as the main source of energy and 3 out of 4 respondents want renewable energy to be prioritized. 13% cite using fossil fuels. Latin America Latin America has a higher percentage of people concerned with climate change than other regions of the world. According to the Pew Research Center 74% consider climate change to be a serious problem and 77% say that it is harming people now, 20 points higher than the global median. The same study showed that 63% of people in Latin America are very concerned that climate change will harm them personally. When looked at more specifically, people in Mexico and Central America are the most worried, with 81.5% believing that climate change is a very serious issue. South America is slightly less anxious at 75% and the Caribbean, at the relatively high rate of 66.7%, is the least concerned. Brazil is an important country in global climate change politics because it is the eleventh largest emitter and unlike other large emitter countries, 86% consider global warming to be a very serious problem. Compared to the rest of the world, Latin America is more consistently concerned with high percentages of the population worried about climate change. Further, in Latin America, 67% believe in personal responsibility for climate change and say that people will have to make major lifestyle modifications. Europe Europeans have a tendency to be more concerned about climate change than much of the world, with the exception of Latin America. However, there is a divide between Eastern Europe, where people are less worried about climate change, and Western Europe. A global climate survey by the European Investment Bank showed that climate is the number one concern for Europeans. Most respondents said they were already feeling the effects of climate change. Many people believed climate change can still be reversed with 68% of Spanish respondents believing it can be reversed and 80% seeing themselves as part of the solution. In Europe, there is a range from 88% to 97% of people feeling that climate change is happening and similar ranges are present for agreeing that climate change is caused by human activity and that the impacts of it will be bad. Generally Eastern European countries are slightly less likely to believe in climate change, or the dangers of it, with 63% saying it is very serious, 24% considering it to be fairly serious and only 10% saying it is not a serious problem. When asked if they feel a personal responsibility to help reduce climate change, on a scale of 0, not at all, to 10, a great deal, Europeans respond with the average score of 5.6. When looked at more specifically, Western Europeans are closer to the response of 7 while Eastern European countries respond with an average of less than 4. When asked if Europeans are willing to pay more for climate change, 49% are willing, however only 9% of Europeans have already switched to a greener energy supply. While a large majority of Europeans believe in the dangers of climate change, their feelings of personal responsibility to deal with the issue are much more limited. Especially in terms of actions that could already have been taken - such as having already switched to greener energies discussed above - one can see Europeans' feelings of personal responsibility are limited. 90% of Europeans interviewed for the European Investment Bank Climate Survey 2019 believe their children will be impacted by climate change in their everyday lives and 70% are willing to pay an extra tax to fight climate change.According to the European Investment Bank's climate survey from 2022, the majority of Europeans believe that the conflict in Ukraine encourages them to conserve energy and lessen their reliance on fossil fuels, with 66% believing that the invasion's effects on the price of oil and gas should prompt actions to speed up the transition to a greener economy. This opinion is shared by responders from Britain and China, while Americans are divided.Many people believe that the government should take a role in fostering individual behavioral changes to engage in climate change mitigation. Two-thirds of Europeans (66%) support harsher government measures requiring people to adjust their behavior in order to combat climate change (72% of respondents under 30 would welcome such restrictions). Asia/Pacific Asia and the Pacific have a tendency to be less concerned about climate change, except small island states, with developing countries in Asia being less concerned than developed countries. In Asia and the Pacific, around 45% of people believe that climate change is a very serious problem and similarly 48% believe that it is harming people now. Only 37% of people in Asia and the Pacific are very concerned that climate change will harm them personally. There is a large gap between developing Asia and developed Asia. Only 31% of developing Asia considers global warming to be a "very" or "somewhat" serious threat and 74% of developed Asia considers global warming to be a serious threat. It could be argued that one reason for this is that people in more developed countries in Asia are more educated on the issues, especially given that developing countries in Asia do face significant threats from climate change. The most relevant views on climate change are those of the citizens in the countries that are emitting the most. For example, in China, the world's largest emitter, 68% of Chinese people are satisfied with their government's efforts to preserve the environment. And in India, the world's third largest emitter, 77% of Indian people are satisfied with their country's efforts to preserve the environment. 80% of Chinese citizens interviewed in the European Investment Bank Climate Survey 2019 believe climate change is still reversible, 72% believe their individual behaviour can make a difference in addressing climate change. India A research team led by Yale University's Anthony Leiserowitz, conducted an audience segmentation analysis in 2011 for India—"Global Warming's Six Indias", The 2011 study broke down the Indian public into six distinct audience groups based on climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions and policy preferences: informed (19%), experienced (24%), undecided (15%), unconcerned (15%), indifferent (11%), and the disengaged (16%). While the informed are the most concerned and aware of climate change and its threats, the disengaged do not care or have an opinion. The experienced believe it is happening or have felt the effects of climate change and can identify it when provided with a short description. The undecided, unconcerned and indifferent, all have varying levels of worry, concern and risk perception. The same survey resulted in a different study, “Climate Change in the Indian Mind” showing that 41% of respondents had either never heard of the term global warming, or did not know what it meant while 7% claimed to know “a lot” about global warming. When provided with a description of global warming and what it might entail, 72% of the respondents agreed that it was happening. The study revealed that 56% of respondents perceived it to be caused by human activities while 31% perceived it to be caused primarily by natural changes in the environment. 54% agreed that hot days had become more frequent in their local area, in comparison to 21% of respondents perceiving frequency of severe storms as having increased. A majority of respondents (65%) perceived a severe drought or flood as having a medium to large impact on their lives. These impacts include effects on drinking water, food supply, healthy, income and their community. Higher education levels tended to correspond with higher levels of concern or worry regarding global warming and its effects on them personally. 41% of the respondents agreed that the government should be doing more to address issues stemming from climate change, with the most support (70%) for a national program to elevate climate literacy. 53% of respondents agreed that protecting the environment is important event at a cost to economic growth, highlighting the tendency of respondents to display egalitarian over individualistic values. Personal experiences with climate change risks are an important predictor of risk perception and policy support. Coupled with trust in different sources, mainly scientists and environmental organizations, higher usage of media and attention to news, policy support, public engagement and belief in global warming are seen to increase. Pakistan Middle East While the increasing severity of droughts and other dangerous realities are and will continue to be a problem in the Middle East, the region has one of the smallest rates of concern in the world. 38% believe that climate change is a very serious problem and 26% believe that climate change is harming people now. Of the four Middle Eastern countries polled in a Pew Global Study, on what is their primary concern, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon named ISIS, and Turkey stated United States encroachment. 38% of Israel considers climate change to be a major threat to their country, 40% of Jordan, 58% of Lebanon and 53% of Turkey. This is compared to relatively high numbers of residents who believe that ISIS is a major threat to their country ranging from 63% to 97%. In the poll, 38% of the Middle East are concerned about drought and 19% are concerned about long periods of unusually hot weather. 42% are satisfied with their own country's current efforts to preserve the environment. North America North America has mixed perceptions on climate change ranging from Mexico and Canada that are both more concerned, and the United States, the world's second largest emitter, that is less concerned. Mexico is the most concerned about climate change of the three countries in North America. 90% consider climate change to be a very serious problem and 83% believe that climate change is harming people substantially right now. Canadians are also seriously concerned, 20% are extremely concerned, 30% are definitely concerned, 31% are somewhat concerned and only 19% are not very/not at all concerned about climate change. While the United States which is the largest emitter of CO2 in North America and the second largest emitter of CO2 in the world has the lowest degrees of concern about climate change in North America. While 61% of Americans say they are concerned about climate change, that is 30% lower than Mexico and 20% lower than Canada. 41% believe that climate change could impact them personally. Nonetheless, 70% of Americans believe that environmental protections are more important than economic growth according to a Yale climate opinion study. 76% of US citizens interviewed for the European Investment Bank Climate Survey 2019 believe developed countries have a responsibility to help developing countries address climate change. United States In the U.S. global warming is nowadays often a partisan political issue. Republicans tend to oppose action against a threat that they regard as unproven, while Democrats tend to support actions that they believe will reduce global warming and its effects through the control of greenhouse gas emissions.In the United States, support for environmental protection was relatively non-partisan in the twentieth century. Republican Theodore Roosevelt established national parks whereas Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Soil Conservation Service. Republican Richard Nixon was instrumental in founding the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and tried to install a third pillar of NATO dealing with environmental challenges such as acid rain and the greenhouse effect. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was Nixon's NATO delegate for the topic.This non-partisanship began to erode during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration described environmental protection as an economic burden. Views over global warming began to seriously diverge between Democrats and Republicans during the negotiations that led up to the creation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998. In a 2008 Gallup poll of the American public, 76% of Democrats and only 41% of Republicans said that they believed global warming was already happening. The opinions of the political elites, such as members of Congress, tends to be even more polarized.From 2017 to March 2021, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication conducted the Climate Change in the American Mind survey—a "nationally-representative survey of public opinion on climate change in the United States".Since 2007 and continuing into 2021, Yale University researchers have been analysing public opinion on climate change using a six-group framework, called the Six Americas, to describe and quantify positions people hold in terms of "levels of engagement and concern and awareness" of an issue. Their 139-page 2009 report, "Global Warming's Six Americas: An Audience Segmentation", they identified six audiences with different opinions about global warming: The alarmed (18%), the concerned (33%), the cautious (19%), the disengaged (12%), the doubtful (11%) and the dismissive (7%). The alarmed and concerned make out the largest percentage and think something should be done about global warming. The cautious, disengaged and doubtful are less likely to take action. The dismissive are convinced global warming is not happening. These audiences can be used to define the best approaches for environmental action. In 2011, they conducted a similar study on India which resulted in the report—"Global Warming's Six Indias". According to the report on the 2017-2021 Climate Change in the American Mind survey, the percentages had changed—the "Alarmed" increasing to 24% of the population, the "Concerned" to 30%, "Cautious" remained the same at 19%, "Disengaged" decreased to 5%, the "Doubtful" increased to 15%, and the "Dismissive" increased to 10%.An April 18, 2012 article in The New York Times cited the results of the 2011 poll, commissioned by Anthony Leiserowitz and his colleagues at Yale and George Mason universities. The Times said that, as one striking result in their poll was that 35% of the American public had said they had been "affected by extreme weather" in 2011—there was a string of natural disasters in the United States in 2011, which included "droughts, floods, tornadoes and heat waves" affecting almost every region in the country.One April 2012 Stanford Social Innovation Review article said that public opinion in the United States varies intensely enough to be considered a culture war.In a January 2013 survey, Pew found that 69% of Americans say there is solid evidence that the Earth's average temperature has gotten warmer over the past few decades, up six points since November 2011 and 12 points since 2009.A Gallup poll in 2014 concluded that 51% of Americans were a little or not at all worried about climate change, 24% a great deal and 25% were worried a fair amount.The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reported that 32% of Americans in 2015 were worried about global warming as a great deal. Those numbers rose to 37% in 2016, and 45% in 2017. A poll taken in 2016 shows that 52% of Americans believe climate change to be caused by human activity, while 34% state it is caused by natural changes. A Gallup poll showed that 62% of Americans believe that the effects of global warming were happening in 2017.A 2016 Gallup poll found that 64% of Americans were worried about global warming, that 59% believed that global warming was already happening, and 65% were convinced that global warming was caused by human activities. These numbers show that awareness of global warming was increasing in the United States.In 2019, Gallup poll found that one-third of Americans blame unusual winter temperatures on climate change.In 2019, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 69% of Americans believe that climate change is happening. However, Americans underestimate the number of fellow Americans who believe that global warming is taking place. Americans estimated that only 54% of Americans believed that climate change is happening, when the number was much higher.A survey conducted in 2021 by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication indicated that Americans are "alarmed" (33%), "concerned" (25%), "cautious" (17%), "disengaged" (5%), "doubtful" (10%), and "dismissive" (9%) about climate change. Differences between regions While climate change affects the entire planet, opinions about these affects vary significantly among regions of the world. The Middle East has one of the lowest rates of concern in the world, especially compared to Latin America. Europe and Africa have mixed views on climate change but lean towards action by a significant degree. Europeans focus substantially on climate change in comparison to United States residents, who are less concerned than the global median, even as the United States remains the second biggest emitter in the world. Droughts/water shortages are one of the biggest fears experienced about the impacts of climate change, especially in Latin America and Africa. Developed countries in Asia have levels of concern about climate change similar to Latin America, which has one of the highest rates of concern. This is surprising as developing countries in Asia have levels of worry similar to the Middle East, one of the areas with the lowest levels. Large emitters such as China usually ignore issues surrounding climate change as people in China have very low levels of concern about it. The only significant exceptions to this tendency by large emitters are Brazil and India. India is the third-biggest while Brazil is the eleventh-biggest emitter in the world; both have high levels of concern about climate change, similar to much of Latin America. Developing countries vs developed countries Awareness about climate change is higher in developed countries than in developing countries. A large majority of people in Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria do not know about climate change, particularly in Muslim-majority countries. There is often awareness about environmental changes in developing countries, but the framework for understanding it is limited. In both developing and developed countries, people similarly believe that poor countries have a responsibility to act on climate change. Since the 2009 Copenhagen summit, concern over climate change in wealthy countries has diminished. In 2009, 63% of people in OECD member states considered climate change to be "very serious", but by 2015, only 48% did. Support for national leadership addressing climate change has also diminished. Of the 21 countries surveyed in GlobeScan's 2015 survey, Canada, France, Spain and the UK are the only ones with a majority of the population supporting further action by their leaders to meet Paris climate accord emission targets. While concern and desire for action has dropped in developed countries, awareness is higher; since 2000, twice as many people connect extreme weather events to human-caused climate change. See also Global warming controversy Scientific opinion on climate change References Further reading Erika Bolstad (1 March 2017). "Maps Show Where Americans Care about Climate Change; The updated Yale Climate Opinion maps suggest Americans' opinions on climate change differ sharply from that of the president". ClimateWire. Retrieved 20 March 2017 – via Scientific American. External links Leiserowitz, A.; Carman, J.; Buttermore, N.; Wang, X.; et al. (June 2021). International Public Opinion on Climate Change (PDF). New Haven, CT, U.S.: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Facebook Data for Good. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 June 2021.

politics of climate change

The politics of climate change results from different perspectives on how to respond to climate change. Global warming is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases due to human economic activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, certain industries like cement and steel production, and land use for agriculture and forestry. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have provided the main source of energy for economic and technological development. The centrality of fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries has resulted in much resistance to climate friendly policy, despite widespread scientific consensus that such policy is necessary. Climate change first emerged as a political issue in the 1970s. Efforts to mitigate climate change have been prominent on the international political agenda since the 1990s, and are also increasingly addressed at national and local level. Climate change is a complex global problem. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contribute to global warming across the world, regardless of where the emissions originate. Yet the impact of global warming varies widely depending on how vulnerable a location or economy is to its effects. Global warming is on the whole having negative impact, which is predicted to worsen as heating increases. Ability to benefit from both fossil fuels and renewable energy sources vary substantially from nation to nation. Different responsibilities, benefits and climate related threats faced by the world's nations contributed to early climate change conferences producing little beyond general statements of intent to address the problem, and non-binding commitments from the developed countries to reduce emissions. In the 21st century, there has been increased attention to mechanisms like climate finance in order for vulnerable nations to adapt to climate change. In some nations and local jurisdictions, climate friendly policies have been adopted that go well beyond what was committed to at international level. Yet local reductions in GHG emission that such policies achieve have limited ability to slow global warming unless the overall volume of GHG emission declines across the planet. Since entering the 2020s, the feasibility of replacing energy from fossil fuel with renewable energy sources significantly increased, with some countries now generating almost all their electricity from renewables. Public awareness of the climate change threat has risen, in large part due to social movement led by youth and visibility of the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events and flooding caused by sea level rise. Many surveys show a growing proportion of voters support tackling climate change as a high priority, making it easier for politicians to commit to policies that include climate action. The COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession lead to widespread calls for a "green recovery", with some polities like the European Union successfully integrating climate action into policy change. Outright climate change denial had become a much less influential force by 2019, and opposition has pivoted to strategies of encouraging delay or inaction. Policy debate Like all policy debates, the political debate on climate change is fundamentally about action. Various distinct arguments underpin the politics of climate change - such as different assessments of the urgency of the threat, and on the feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of various responses. But essentially, these all relate to potential responses to climate change.The statements that form political arguments can be divided into two types: positive and normative statements. Positive statements can generally be clarified or refuted by careful definition of terms, and scientific evidence. Whereas normative statements about what one "ought" to do often relate at least partly to morality, and are essentially a matter of judgement. Experience has indicated that better progress is often made at debates if participants attempt to disentangle the positive and normative parts of their arguments, reaching agreement on the positive statements first. In the early stages of a debate, the normative positions of participants can be strongly influenced by perceptions of the best interests of whatever constituency they represent. In achieving exceptional progress at the 2015 Paris conference, Christiana Figueres and others noted it was helpful that key participants were able to move beyond a competitive mindset concerning competing interests, to normative statements that reflected a shared abundance based collaborative mindset.Actions in response to climate change can be divided into three classes: mitigation – actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to enhance carbon sinks, adaptation – actions to defend against the negative results of global warming, and solar geoengineering – a technology in which sunlight would be reflected back to outer space.Most 20th century international debate on climate change focused almost entirely on mitigation. It was sometimes considered defeatist to pay much attention to adaptation. Also, compared to mitigation, adaptation is more a local matter, with different parts of the world facing vastly different threats and opportunities from climate change. By the early 21st century, while mitigation still receives most attention in political debates, it is no longer the sole focus. Some degree of adaptation is now widely considered essential, and is discussed internationally at least at high level, though which specific actions to take remain mostly a local matter. A commitment to provide $100 billion per year worth of funding to developing countries was made at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. At Paris, it was clarified that allocation of the funding should involve a balanced split between adaptation and mitigation, though as of December 2020, not all funding had been provided, and what had been delivered was going mainly to mitigation projects. By 2019, possibilities for geoengineering were also increasingly being discussed, and were expected to become more prominent in future debates.Political debate on how to mitigate tends to vary depending on the scale of governance concerned. Different considerations apply for international debate, compared with national and municipal level discussion. In the 1990s, when climate change first became prominent on the political agenda, there was optimism that the problem could be successfully tackled. The then recent signing of the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer had indicated that the world was able to act collectively to address a threat warned about by scientists, even when it was not yet causing significant harm to humans. Yet by the early 2000s GHG emissions had continued to rise, with little sign of agreement to penalise emitters or reward climate friendly behaviour. It had become clear that achieving global agreement for effective action to limit global warming would be much more challenging. Some politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger with his slogan "terminate pollution", say that activists should generate optimism by focusing on the health co-benefits of climate action. Multilateral Climate change became a fixture on the global political agenda in the early 1990s, with United Nations Climate Change conferences set to run yearly. These annual events are also called Conferences of the Parties (COPs). Major landmark COPs were the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and the 2015 Paris conference. Kyoto was initially considered promising, yet by the early 2000s its results had proved disappointing. Copenhagen saw a major attempt to move beyond Kyoto with a much stronger package of commitments, yet largely failed. Paris was widely considered successful, yet how effective it will be at reducing long term global warming remains to be seen. At international level, there are three broad approaches to emissions reduction that nations can attempt to negotiate. Firstly, the adoption of emissions reductions targets. Secondly, setting a carbon price. Lastly, creating a largely voluntary set of processes to encourage emission reduction, which include the sharing of information and progress reviews. These approaches are largely complementary, though at various conferences much of the focus has often been on a single approach. Until about 2010, international negotiations focused largely on emissions targets. The success of the Montreal treaty in reducing emissions that damaged the ozone layer suggested that targets could be effective. Yet in the case of greenhouse gas reductions, targets have not in general led to substantial cuts in emissions. Ambitious targets have usually not been met. Attempts to impose severe penalties that would incentivise more determined efforts to meet challenging targets, have always been blocked by at least one or two nations.In the 21st century, there is widespread agreement that a carbon price is the most effective way to reduce emissions, at least in theory. Generally though, nations have been reluctant to adopt a high carbon price, or in most cases any price at all. One of the main reasons for this reluctance is the problem of carbon leakage – the phenomena where activities producing GHG emissions are moved out of the jurisdiction that imposes the carbon price thus depriving the jurisdiction of jobs & revenue, and to no benefit, as the emissions will be released elsewhere. Nonetheless, the percentage of the worlds' emissions that are covered by a carbon price rose from 5% in 2005, to 15% by 2019, and should reach over 40% once China's carbon price comes fully into force. Existing carbon price regimes have been implemented mostly independently by the European Union, nations and sub national jurisdictions acting autonomously.The largely voluntary pledge and review system where states make their own plans for emissions reduction was introduced in 1991, but abandoned before the 1997 Kyoto treaty, where the focus was on securing agreement for "top down" emissions targets. The approach was revived at Copenhagen, and gained further prominence with the 2015 Paris Agreement, though pledges came to be called nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These are meant to be re-submitted in enhanced form every 5 years. How effective this approach is remains to be seen. Some countries submitted elevated NDCs in 2021, around the time of the Glasgow conference. Accounting rules for carbon trading were agreed at the 2021 Glasgow COP meeting. Regional, National and sub national Policies to reduce GHG emissions are set by either national or sub national jurisdictions, or at regional level in the case of the European Union. Much of the emission reduction policies that have been put into place have been beyond those required by international agreements. Examples include the introduction of a carbon price by some individual US states, or Costa Rica reaching 99% electrical power generation by renewables in the 2010s. Actual decisions to reduce emissions or deploy clean technologies are mostly not made by governments themselves, but by individuals, businesses and other organisations. Yet it is national and local governments that set policies to encourage climate friendly activity. Broadly these policies can be divided into four types: firstly, the implementation of a carbon price mechanism and other financial incentives; secondly prescriptive regulations, for example mandating that a certain percentage of electricity generation must be from renewables; thirdly, direct government spending on climate friendly activity or research; and fourthly, approaches based on information sharing, education and encouraging voluntary climate friendly behaviour. Local politics is sometimes combined with air pollution, for example the politics of creating low emission zones in cities may also aim to reduce carbon emissions from road transport. Non-governmental actors Individuals, businesses and NGOs can affect the politics of climate change both directly and indirectly. Mechanisms include individual rhetoric, aggregate expression of opinion by means of polls, and mass protests. Historically, a significant proportion of these protests have been against climate friendly policies. Since the 2000 UK fuel protests there have been dozens of protests across the world against fuel taxes or the ending of fuel subsidies. Since 2019 and the advent of the school strike and Extinction Rebellion, pro climate protests have become more prominent. Indirect channels for apolitical actors to effect the politics of climate change include funding or working on green technologies, and the fossil fuel divestment movement. Special interests and lobbying by non-country actors There are numerous special interest groups, organizations, and corporations who have public and private positions on the multifaceted topic of global warming. The following is a partial list of the types of special interest parties that have shown an interest in the politics of global warming: Fossil fuel companies: Traditional fossil fuel corporations stand to lose from stricter global warming regulations, though there are exceptions. The fact fossil fuel companies are engaged in energy trading might mean that their participation in trading schemes and other such mechanisms could give them a unique advantage, so it is unclear whether every traditional fossil fuel companies would always be against stricter global warming policies. As an example, Enron, a traditional gas pipeline company with a large trading desk heavily lobbied the United States government to regulate CO2: they thought that they would dominate the energy industry if they could be at the center of energy trading. Farmers and agribusiness are an important lobby but vary in their views on effects of climate change on agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and, for example, the role of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Financial Institutions: Financial institutions generally support policies against global warming, particularly the implementation of carbon trading schemes and the creation of market mechanisms that associate a price with carbon. These new markets require trading infrastructures, which banking institutions can provide. Financial institutions are also well positioned to invest, trade and develop various financial instruments that they could profit from through speculative positions on carbon prices and the use of brokerage and other financial functions like insurance and derivative instruments. Environmental groups: Environmental advocacy groups generally favor strict restrictions on CO2 emissions. Environmental groups, as activists, engage in raising awareness. Renewable energy and energy efficiency companies: companies in wind, solar and energy efficiency generally support stricter global warming policies. They expect their share of the energy market to expand as fossil fuels are made more expensive through trading schemes or taxes. Nuclear power companies: support and benefit from carbon pricing or subsidies of low-carbon energy production, as nuclear power produces minimal greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity distribution companies: may lose from solar panels but benefit from electric vehicles. Traditional retailers and marketers: traditional retailers, marketers, and the general corporations respond by adopting policies that resonate with their customers. If "being green" provides customer appeal, then they could undertake modest programs to please and better align with their customers. However, since the general corporation does not make a profit from their particular position, it is unlikely that they would strongly lobby either for or against a stricter global warming policy position. Medics: often say that climate change and air pollution can be tackled together and so save millions of lives. Information and communications technology companies: say their products help others combat climate change, tend to benefit from reductions in travel, and many purchase green electricity.The various interested parties sometimes align with one another to reinforce their message, for example electricity companies fund the purchase of electric school buses to benefit medics by reducing the load on the health service whilst at the same time selling more electricity. Sometimes industries will fund specialty nonprofit organizations to raise awareness and lobby on their behest. Collective action Current climate politics are influenced by a number of social and political movements focused on different parts of building political will for climate action. This includes the climate justice movement, youth climate movement and movements to divest from fossil fuel industries. Divestment movement Youth movement Current outlook Historical political attempts to agree on policies to limit global warming have largely failed. Commentators have expressed optimism that the 2020s can be more successful, due to various recent developments and opportunities that were not present during earlier periods. Other commentators have expressed warnings that there is now very little time to act in order to have any chance of keeping warming below 1.5 °C, or even to have a good chance of keeping global heating under 2 °C. Opportunities In the late 2010s, various developments conducive to climate friendly politics saw commentators express optimism that the 2020s might see good progress in addressing the threat of global heating. Tipping point in public opinion The year 2019 has been described as "the year the world woke up to climate change", driven by factors such growing recognition of the global warming threat resulting from recent extreme weather events, the Greta effect and the IPPC 1.5 °C report.In 2019, the secretary general of OPEC recognised the school strike movement as the greatest threat faced by the fossil fuel industry. According to Christiana Figueres, once about 3.5% of a population start participating in non violent protest, they are always successful in sparking political change, with the success of Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement suggesting that reaching this threshold may be obtainable.A 2023 review study published in One Earth stated that opinion polls show that most people perceive climate change as occurring now and close by. The study concluded that seeing climate change as more distant does not necessarily result in less climate action, and reducing psychological distancing does not reliably increase climate action. Reduced influence of climate change denial By 2019, outright climate change denial had become a much less influential force than it had been in previous years. Reasons for this include the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, more effective communication on the part of climate scientists, and the Greta effect. As an example, in 2019 the Cato Institute closed down its climate shop. Growth of renewable energy Renewable energy is an inexhaustible source of naturally replenishing energy. The major renewable energy sources are wind, hydropower, solar, geothermal, and biomass. In 2020, renewable energy generated 29% of world electricity.In the wake of the Paris Agreement, 168 countries have adopted national renewable energy targets and 115 counties as well, have national renewable energy targets. There are many different efforts used by these countries to help include renewable energy investments such as 102 countries have implemented tax credits, 101 countries include some sort of public investment, and 100 countries currently use tax reductions. The largest CO2 emitters tend to be industrialized countries like the US, China, UK, and India. These countries aren't implementing enough industrial policies (188) compared to deployment policies (more than 1,000). It's clear that these policies must be created in a way where they build upon each other, so they are most effective. In November 2021, the 26th United Nation Conference of the Parties (COP26) took place in Glasgow, Scotland. Almost 200 nations agreed to accelerate the fight against climate change and commit to more effective climate pledges. Some of the new pledges included reforms on methane gas pollution, deforestation, and coal financing. Surprisingly, the US and China (the two largest carbon emitters) also both agreed to work together on efforts to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some scientists, politicians, and activist say that not enough was done at this summit and that we will still reach that 1.5 degree tipping point. An Independent report by Climate Action Tracker said the commitments were "lip service" and "we will emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5 degrees."As of 2020, the feasibility of replacing energy from fossil fuel with nuclear and especially renewable energy has much increased, with dozens of countries now generating more than half of their electricity from renewable sources. Green recovery Challenges Despite various promising conditions, commentators tend to warn that several difficult challenges remain, which need to be overcome if climate change politics is to result in a substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For example, increasing tax on meat can be politically difficult. Urgency As of 2021, CO2 levels have already increased by about 50% since the pre-industrial era, with billions of tons more being released each year. Global warming has already passed the point where it is beginning to have a catastrophic impact in some localities. So major policy changes need to be implemented very soon if the risk of escalating environmental impact is to be avoided. Centrality of fossil fuel Energy from fossil fuels remains central to the worlds economy, accounting for about 80% of its energy generation as of 2019. Suddenly removing fossil fuel subsidies from consumers has often been found to cause riots. While clean energy can sometimes be cheaper, provisioning large amounts of renewable energy in a short period of time tends to be challenging. According to a 2023 report by the International Energy Agency, coal emissions grew 243 Mt to a new all-time high of almost 15.5 Gt. This 1.6% increase was faster than the 0.4% annual average growth over the past decade. In 2022 the European Central Bank argued that high energy prices were accelerating the energy transition away from fossil fuel, but that governments should take steps to prevent energy poverty without hindering the move to low carbon energy. Inactivism While outright denial of climate change is much less prevalent in the 2020s compared to the preceding decades, many arguments continue to be made against taking action to limit GHG emissions. Such arguments include the view that there are better ways to spend available funds (such as adaptation), that it would be better to wait until new technology is developed as that would make mitigation cheaper, that technology and innovation will render climate change moot or resolve certain aspects, and that the future negative effects of climate change should be heavily discounted compared to current needs. Fossil fuel lobby and political spending The largest oil and gas corporations that comprise Big Oil and their industry lobbyist arm, the American Petroleum Institute (API), spend large amounts of money on lobbying and political campaigns, and employ hundreds of lobbyists, to obstruct and delay government action to address climate change. The fossil fuel lobby has considerable clout in Washington, D.C. and in other political centers, including the European Union and the United Kingdom. Fossil fuel industry interests spend many times as much on advancing their agenda in the halls of power than do ordinary citizens and environmental activists, with the former spending $2 billion in the years 2000–2016 on climate change lobbying in the United States. The five largest Big Oil corporations spent hundreds of millions of euros to lobby for its agenda in Brussels. Big Oil companies often adopt "sustainability principles" that are at odds with the policy agenda their lobbyists advocate, which often entails sowing doubt about the reality and impacts of climate change and forestalling government efforts to address them. API launched a public relations disinformation campaign with the aim of creating doubt in the public mind so that "climate change becomes a non-issue." This industry also spends lavishly on American political campaigns, with approximately 2/3 of its political contributions over the past several decades fueling Republican Party politicians, and outspending many-fold political contributions from renewable energy advocates. Fossil fuel industry political contributions reward politicians who vote against environmental protections. According to a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, as voting by a member of United States Congress turned more anti-environment, as measured by his/her voting record as scored by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), the fossil fuel industry contributions that this member of Congress received increased. On average, a 10% decrease in the LCV score was correlated with an increase of $1,700 in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry for the campaign following the Congressional term. Suppression of climate science Big Oil companies, starting as early as the 1970s, suppressed their own scientists' reports of major climate impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels. ExxonMobil launched a corporate propaganda campaign promoting false information about the issue of climate change, a tactic that has been compared to Big Tobacco's public relations efforts to hoodwink the public about the dangers of smoking. Fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks harassed climate scientists who were publicly discussing the dire threat of climate change. As early as the 1980s when larger segments of the American public began to become aware of the climate change issue, the administrations of some United States presidents scorned scientists who spoke publicly of the threat fossil fuels posed for the climate. Other U.S. administrations have silenced climate scientists and muzzled government whistleblowers. Political appointees at a number of federal agencies prevented scientists from reporting their findings regarding aspects of the climate crisis, changed data modeling to arrive at conclusions they had set out a prior to prove, and shut out the input of career scientists of the agencies. Targeting of climate activists Climate and environmental activists, including, increasingly, those defending woodlands against the logging industry, have been killed in several countries, such as Colombia, Brazil and the Philippines. The perpetrators of most such killings have not been punished. A record number of such killings was recorded for the year 2019. Indigenous environmental activists are disproportionately targeted, comprising as many as 40% of fatalities worldwide. Domestic intelligence services of several governments, such as those of the U.S. government, have targeted environmental activists and climate change organizations as "domestic terrorists," surveilling them, investigating them, questioning them, and placing them on national "watchlists" that could make it more difficult for them to board airplanes and could instigate local law enforcement monitoring. Other U.S. tactics have included preventing media coverage of American citizen assemblies and protests against climate change, and partnering with private security companies to monitor activists. Doomism In the context of climate change politics, doomism refers to pessimistic narratives that claim that it is now too late to do anything about climate change. Doomism can include exaggeration of the probability of cascading climate tipping points, and their likelihood in triggering runaway global heating beyond human ability to control, even if humanity was able to immediately stop all burning of fossil fuels. In the US, polls found that for people who did not support further action to limit global warming, a belief that it is too late to do so was given as a more common reason than skepticism about man made climate change. Lack of compromise Several climate friendly policies have been blocked in the legislative process by environmental and/or left leaning pressure groups and parties. For example, in 2009, the Australian green party voted against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as they felt it did not impose a high enough carbon price. In the US, the Sierra Club helped defeat a 2016 climate tax bill which they saw as lacking in social justice. Some of the attempts to impose a carbon price in US states have been blocked by left wing politicians because they were to be implemented by a cap and trade mechanism, rather than a tax. Multi-sector governance The issue of climate change usually fits into various sectors, which means that the integration of climate change policies into other policy areas is frequently called for. Thus the problem is difficult, as it needs to be addressed at multiple scales with diverse actors involved in the complex governance process. Maladaptation Successful adaptation to climate change requires balancing competing economic, social, and political interests. In the absence of such balancing, harmful unintended consequences can undo the benefits of adaptation initiatives. For example, efforts to protect coral reefs in Tanzania forced local villagers to shift from traditional fishing activities to farming that produced higher greenhouse gas emissions. Technology The promise of technology is seen as both a threat and a potential boon. New technologies can open up possibilities for new and more effective climate policies. Most models that indicate a path to limiting warming to 2 °C have a big role for carbon dioxide removal, one of the approaches of climate change mitigation. Commentators from across the political spectrum tend to welcome CO2 removal. But some are sceptical that it will be ever be able to remove enough CO2 to slow global warming without there also being rapid cuts in emissions, and they warn that too much optimism about such technology may make it harder for mitigation policies to be enacted.Solar radiation management is another technology aiming to reduce global warming. At least with stratospheric aerosol injection, there is broad agreement that it would be effective in bringing down average global temperatures. Yet the prospect is considered unwelcome by many climate scientists. They warn that side effects would include possible reductions in agricultural yields due to reduced sunlight and rainfall, and possible localised temperature rises and other weather disruptions. According to Michael Mann, the prospect of using solar management to reduce temperatures is another argument used to reduce willingness to enact emissions reduction policy. Just transition Economic disruption due to phaseout of carbon-intensive activities, such as coal mining, cattle farming or bottom trawling, can be politically sensitive due to the high political profile of coal miners, farmers and fishers in some countries. Many labor and environmental groups advocate for a just transition that minimizes the harm and maximizes the benefits associated with climate-related changes to society, for example by providing job training. Different responses on the political spectrum Climate friendly policies are generally supported across the political spectrum, though there have been many exceptions among voters and politicians leaning towards the right, and even politicians on the left have rarely made addressing climate change a top priority. In the 20th century, right wing politicians led much significant action against climate change, both internationally and domestically, with Richard Nixon and Margaret Thatcher being prominent examples. Yet by the 1990s, especially in some English speaking countries and most especially in the US, the issue began to be polarised. Right wing media started arguing that climate change was being invented or at least exaggerated by the left to justify an expansion in the size of government. As of 2020, some right wing governments have enacted increased climate friendly policies. Various surveys indicated a slight trend for even U.S. right wing voters to become less sceptical of global warming, and groups like American Conservation Coalition indicate young Republican voters embrace climate as a central policy field. Though in the view of Anatol Lieven, for some right wing US voters, being sceptical of climate change has become part of their identity, so their position on the matter cannot easily be shifted by rational argument.A 2014 study from the University of Dortmund concluded that countries with centre and left-wing governments had higher emission reductions than right-wing governments in OECD countries during 1992–2008. Historically, nationalist governments have been among the worst performers in enacting policies. Though according to Lieven, as climate change is increasingly seen as a threat to the ongoing existence of nation states, nationalism is likely to become one of the most effective forces to drive determined mitigation efforts. The growing trend to securitize the climate change threat may be especially effective for increasing support among nationalist and conservatives. Effects of climate change History Relationship to climate science In the scientific literature, there is an overwhelming consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. The politicization of science in the sense of a manipulation of science for political gains is a part of the political process. It is part of the controversies about intelligent design (compare the Wedge strategy) or Merchants of Doubt, scientists that are under suspicion to willingly obscure findings. e.g. about issues like tobacco smoke, ozone depletion, global warming or acid rain. However, e.g. in case of ozone depletion, global regulation based on the Montreal Protocol was successful, in a climate of high uncertainty and against strong resistance while in case of climate change, the Kyoto Protocol failed.While the IPCC process tries to find and orchestrate the findings of global climate change research to shape a worldwide consensus on the matter it has itself been the object of a strong politicization. Anthropogenic climate change evolved from a mere science issue to a top global policy topic.The IPCC process having built a broad science consensus does not stop governments following different, if not opposing goals. For ozone depletion, global regulation was already being put into place before a scientific consensus was established. So a linear model of policy-making, based on a the more knowledge we have, the better the political response will be view is not necessarily accurate. Instead knowledge policy, successfully managing knowledge and uncertainties as a foundation for political decision making; requires a better understanding of the relation between science, public (lack of) understanding and policy.Most of the policy debate concerning climate change mitigation has been framed by projections for the twenty-first century. Academics have criticised this as short term thinking, as decisions made in the next few decades will have environmental consequences that will last for many millennia.It has been estimated that only 0.12% of all funding for climate-related research is spent on the social science of climate change mitigation. Vastly more funding is spent on natural science studies of climate change and considerable sums are also spent on studies of the impact of and adaptation to climate change. It has been argued that this is a misallocation of resources, as the most urgent challenge is to work out how to change human behavior to mitigate climate change, whereas the natural science of climate change is already well established and there will be decades and centuries to handle adaptation. Political economy of climate change Political economy of climate change is an approach that applies the political economy thinking concerning social and political processes to study the critical issues surrounding decision-making on climate change. The ever-increasing awareness and urgency of climate change had led scholars to explore a better understanding of the multiple actors and influencing factors that affect climate change negotiation, and to seek more effective solutions to tackle climate change. Analyzing these complex issues from a political economy perspective helps to explain the interactions between different stakeholders in response to climate change impacts, and provides opportunities to achieve better implementation of climate change policies. Introduction Background Climate change has become one of the most pressing environmental concerns and global challenges in society today. As the issue rises in prominence the international agenda, researchers from different academic sectors have for long been devoting great efforts to explore effective solutions to climate change. Technologists and planners have been devising ways of mitigating and adapting to climate change; economists estimating the cost of climate change and the cost of tackling it; development experts exploring the impact of climate change on social services and public goods. However, Cammack (2007) points out two problems with many of the above discussions, namely the disconnection between the proposed solutions to climate change from different disciplines; and the devoid of politics in addressing climate change at the local level. Further, the issue of climate change is facing various other challenges, such as the problem of elite-resource capture, the resource constraints in developing countries and the conflicts that frequently result from such constraints, which have often been less concerned and stressed in suggested solutions. In recognition of these problems, it is advocated that “understanding the political economy of climate change is vital to tackling it”.Meanwhile, the unequal distribution of the impacts of climate change and the resulting inequity and unfairness on the poor who contribute least to the problem have linked the issue of climate change with development study, which has given rise to various programs and policies that aim at addressing climate change and promoting development. Although great efforts have been made on international negotiations concerning the issue of climate change, it is argued that much of the theory, debate, evidence-gathering and implementation linking climate change and development assume a largely apolitical and linear policy process. In this context, Tanner and Allouche (2011) suggest that climate change initiatives must explicitly recognize the political economy of their inputs, processes and outcomes so as to find a balance between effectiveness, efficiency and equity. Definition In its earliest manifestations, the term “political economy” was basically a synonym of economics, while it is now a rather elusive term that typically refers to the study of the collective or political processes through which public economic decisions are made. In the climate change domain, Tanner and Allouche (2011) define the political economy as “the processes by which ideas, power and resources are conceptualized, negotiated and implemented by different groups at different scales”. While there have emerged a substantial literature on the political economy of environmental policy, which explains the “political failure” of the environmental programmes to efficiently and effectively protect the environment, systematic analysis on the specific issue of climate change using the political economy framework is relatively limited. Current Context: The Urgent Need for Political Economy Characteristics of Climate Change The urgent need to consider and understand the political economy of climate change is based on the specific characteristics of the problem. The key issues include: The cross-sectoral nature of climate change: The issue of climate change usually fits into various sectors, which means that the integration of climate change policies into other policy areas is frequently called for. Thus the problem is complicated as it needs to be tackled at multiple scales, with diverse actors involved in the complex governance process. The interaction of these facets leads to political processes with multiple and overlapping conceptualizations, negotiation and governance issues, which requires the understanding of political economy processes. The problematic perception of climate change as simply a “global” issue: Climate change initiatives and governance approaches have tended to be driven from a global scale. While the development of international agreements has witnessed a progressive step of global political action, this globally-led governance of climate change issue may be unable to provide adequate flexibility for specific national or sub-national conditions. Besides, from the development point of view, the issue of equity and global environmental justice would require a fair international regime within which the impact of climate change and poverty could be simultaneously prevented. In this context, climate change is not only a global crisis that needs the presence of international politics, but also a challenge for national or sub-national governments. The understanding of the political economy of climate change could explain the formulation and translation of international initiatives to specific national and sub-national policy context, which provides an important perspective to tackle climate change and achieve environmental justice. The growth of climate change finance: Recent years have witnessed a growing number of financial flows and the development of financing mechanisms in the climate change arena. The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico committed a significant amount of money from developed countries to developing a world in supportive of the adaptation and mitigation technologies. In short terms, the fast start finance will be transferred through various channels including bilateral and multilateral official development assistance, the Global Environment Facility, and the UNFCCC. Besides, a growing number of public funds have provided greater incentives to tackle climate change in developing countries. For instance, the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience aims at creating an integrated and scaled-up approach of climate change adaptation in some low-income countries and preparing for future finance flows. In addition, climate change finance in developing countries could potentially change the traditional aid mechanisms, through the differential interpretations of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ by developing and developed countries. Based on equity and climate justice, climate change resource flows are increasingly called on the developed world according to the culpability for damages. As a result, it is inevitable to change the governance structures so as for developing countries to break the traditional donor-recipient relationships. Within these contexts, the understanding of the political economy processes of financial flows in the climate change arena would be crucial to effectively govern the resource transfer and to tackling climate change. Different ideological worldviews of responding to climate change: Nowadays, because of the perception of science as a dominant policy driver, much of the policy prescription and action in climate change arena have concentrated on assumptions around standardized governance and planning systems, linear policy processes, readily transferable technology, economic rationality, and the ability of science and technology to overcome resource gaps. As a result, there tends to be a bias towards technology-led and managerial approaches to address climate change in apolitical terms. Besides, a wide range of different ideological worldviews would lead to a high divergence of the perception of climate change solutions, which also has a great influence on decisions made in response to climate change. Exploring these issues from a political economy perspective provides the opportunity to better understand the “complexity of politic and decision-making processes in tackling climate change, the power relations mediating competing claims over resources, and the contextual conditions for enabling the adoption of technology”. Unintended negative consequences of adaptation policies that fail to factor in environmental-economic trade-offs: Successful adaptation to climate change requires balancing competing economic, social, and political interests. In the absence of such balancing, harmful unintended consequences can undo the benefits of adaptation initiatives. For example, efforts to protect coral reefs in Tanzania forced local villagers to shift from traditional fishing activities to farming that produced higher greenhouse gas emissions. Socio-political Constraints The role of political economy in understanding and tackling climate change is also founded upon the key issues surrounding the domestic socio-political constraints: The problems of fragile states: Fragile states—defined as poor performers, conflict and/or post-conflict states—are usually incapable of using the aid for climate change effectively. The issues of power and social equity have exacerbated the climate change impacts, while insufficient attention has been paid to the dysfunction of fragile states. Considering the problems of fragile states, the political economy approach could improve the understanding of the long-standing constraints upon capacity and resilience, through which the problems associated with weak capacity, state-building and conflicts could be better addressed in the context of climate change. Informal governance: In many poorly performing states, decision-making around the distribution and use of state resources is driven by informal relations and private incentives rather than formal state institutions that are based on equity and law. This informal governance nature that underlies in the domestic social structures prevents the political systems and structures from rational functioning and thus hinders the effective response towards climate change. Therefore, domestic institutions and incentives are critical to the adoption of reforms. The political economy analysis provides an insight into the underlying social structures and systems that determine the effectiveness of climate change initiatives (1). The difficulty of social change: Developmental change in underdeveloped countries is painfully slow because of a series of long-term collective problems, including the societies’ incapacity of working collectively to improve wellbeing, the lack of technical and social ingenuity, the resistance and rejection to innovation and change. In the context of climate change, these problems significantly hinder the promotion of climate change agenda. Taking a political economy view in the underdeveloped countries could help to understand and create incentives to promote transformation and development, which lays a foundation for the expectation of implementing a climate change adaptation agenda. Research focuses and approaches Brandt and Svendsen (2003) introduce a political economy framework that is based on the political support function model by Hillman (1982) into the analysis of the choice of instruments to control climate change in the European Union policy to implement its Kyoto Protocol target level. In this political economy framework, the climate change policy is determined by the relative strength of stakeholder groups. By examining the different objective of different interest groups, namely industry groups, consumer groups and environmental groups, the authors explain the complex interaction between the choices of an instrument for the EU climate change policy, specifically the shift from the green taxation to a grandfathered permit system. A report by the Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (2011) takes a political economy approach to explain why some countries adopt climate change policies while others do not, specifically among the countries in the transition region. This work analyzes the different political economy aspects of the characteristics of climate change policies so as to understand the likely factors driving climate change mitigation outcomes in many transition countries. The main conclusions are listed below: The level of democracy alone is not a major driver of climate change policy adoption, which means that the expectations of contribution to global climate change mitigation are not necessarily limited by the political regime of a given country. Public knowledge, shaped by various factors including the threat of climate change in a particular country, the national level of education and existence of free media, is a critical element in climate change policy adoption, as countries with the public more aware of the climate change causes are significantly more likely to adopt climate change policies. The focus should, therefore, be on promoting public awareness of the urgent threat of climate change and prevent information asymmetries in many transition countries. The relative strength of the carbon-intensive industry is a major deterrent to the adoption of climate change policies, as it partly accounts for the information asymmetries. However, the carbon-intensive industries often influence government’s decision-making on climate change policy, which thus calls for a change of the incentives perceived by these industries and a transition of them to a low-carbon production pattern. Efficient means include the energy price reform and the introduction of international carbon trading mechanisms. The competitive edge gained national economies in the transition region in a global economy, where increasing international pressure is put to reduce emissions, would enhance their political regime’s domestic legitimacy, which could help to address the inherent economic weaknesses underlying the lack of economic diversification and global economic crisis.Tanner and Allouche (2011) propose a new conceptual and methodological framework for analyzing the political economy of climate change in their latest work, which focuses on the climate change policy processes and outcomes in terms of ideas, power and resources. The new political economy approach is expected to go beyond the dominant political economy tools formulated by international development agencies to analyse climate change initiatives that have ignored the way that ideas and ideologies determine the policy outcomes (see table). The authors assume that each of the three lenses, namely ideas, power and resources, tends to be predominant at one stage of the policy process of the political economy of climate change, with “ideas and ideologies predominant in the conceptualisation phase, power in the negotiation phase and resource, institutional capacity and governance in the implementation phase”. It is argued that these elements are critical in the formulation of international climate change initiatives and their translation to national and sub-national policy context. See also Business action on climate change Carbon emission trading Climate change policy of the United States Climate movement Climate target Clean Development Mechanism Climate legislation Economics of global warming Environmental politics Fossil fuel phase-out Green New Deal Green politics List of climate change initiatives List of international environmental agreements Low-carbon economy Climate change Environmental policy Political economy World Wide Fund for Nature Greenpeace Stop Climate Chaos Carbon Disclosure Project Notes References Dryzek, John; Norgaard, Richard; Schlosberg, David, eds. (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-956660-0. Andrew Dessler; Edward A Parson (2020). The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-63132-4. Christiana Figueres; Tom Rivett-Carnac (2020). The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis. Manilla Press. ISBN 978-1-838-770-82-2. Anatol Lieven (2020). Climate Change and the Nation State. Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-241-39407-6. Michael E. Mann (2021). The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-541-75822-3. Further reading Naomi Klein (2019). On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal, Allen Lane, ISBN 978-0241410721. "No Brainers and Low-Hanging Fruit in National Climate Policy | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal". voxeu.org. Retrieved 15 October 2021.

climate change in popular culture

References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games. Science historian Naomi Oreskes noted in 2005 "a huge disconnect between what professional scientists have studied and learned in the last 30 years, and what is out there in the popular culture." An academic study in 2000 contrasted the relatively rapid acceptance of ozone depletion as reflected in popular culture with the much slower acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change. Cultural responses have been posited as an important part of communicating climate change, but commentators have noted covering the topic has posed challenges due to its abstract nature. The prominence of climate change in popular culture increased during the 2010s, influenced by the climate movement, shifts in public opinion and changes in media coverage. Art Film Fictional films Climate change has been an occasional topic in fictional cinema. Nicholas Barber opined in BBC Culture that Hollywood films seldom feature climate change mechanisms due to the difficulty of tying the topic to individual characters, and due to fears of alienating audiences; instead, impacts of climate change have been more frequently depicted as a consequence of nuclear or geoengineering accidents. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) – A meteor shower ignites the Van Allen radiation belt and causes abrupt global warming that will render Earth uninhabitable within three weeks, which the United Nations attempts to solve by sending the submarine USOS Seaview into the Mariana Trench to fire a nuclear missile at the flaming belt. The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) – Nuclear weapons testing by the United States and the Soviet Union tilt the Earth's nutation by 11 degrees, causing Earth to begin spiraling towards the Sun and global temperatures to rise. The world's governments attempt to solve the problem by detonating nuclear bombs in Siberia to correct the tilt. Soylent Green (1973), film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston. Set in a dystopian future of dying oceans and year-round humidity due to the greenhouse effect, resulting in suffering from pollution, poverty, overpopulation and depleted resources. Blade Runner (1982), a film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, is set in a humid rainy climate changed Los Angeles in an alternate 2015, based loosely on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Its 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049 is also noted for its depiction of a warmer climate. Split Second, 1992 film starring Rutger Hauer and Kim Cattrall is set in 2008, in a London that is flooded as a result of global warming. Waterworld (1995) starring Kevin Costner. Set in 2500, where the polar ice caps have melted due to global warming and the Earth is almost entirely covered with water. The Arrival (1996), starring Charlie Sheen. Extraterrestrial aliens attempt to secretly cause global warming and thereby terraform Earth into an environment more suited to their needs. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), set in climate changed world near flooded ruins of New York City, where global warming has led to ecological disasters all over the world in the mid-22nd century. 2,000 years later, the world has entered a new ice age and is populated by advanced robots known as Specialists. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Dennis Quaid. An abrupt shutdown of thermohaline circulation causes catastrophic abrupt climate change, plunging the Northern Hemisphere into a new ice age. As a result, the Northern United States, Canada, Europe, East Asia, and Russia are devastated by massive winter storms, and the surviving population of the United States is evacuated to Mexico. The film has been cited as one of the few blockbuster films to discuss climate change. The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) – Klaatu lands on Earth as an alien delegation to either convince humanity to halt its destructive behavior or destroy it. The film notably updates the original film's Cold War-era concern with nuclear warfare and mutually assured destruction into the contemporary issue of climate change. The Thaw (2009) – Melting ice caps defrost the remains of a woolly mammoth infected with deadly parasites, which spread to a research crew sent to Banks Island. The Age of Stupid (2009), drama-documentary-animation hybrid directed by Franny Armstrong and starring Pete Postlethwaite as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and asking "Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?" Earth 2100 (2009), predictions of possible attempts at adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of continuing global warming. Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) and Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (2013), where global warming mutates birds to begin attacking humanity. The Expedition to the End of the World (2013), director: Daniel Dencik, relating to the Greenland ice sheet and the retreat of glaciers since 1850. The Colony (2013), climate modification towers are built to cool the planet, but cause an Ice Age, forcing humans to live underground. Snowpiercer is a 2014 fictional film regarding a problematic solar geoengineering attempt that inadvertently freezes the earth. Into the Storm (2014), in which a character hints that major storms are becoming more frequent. First Reformed is a 2017 film in which an Reformed Church in America pastor discovers the causes and effects of climate change and attempts to take violent action against those he considers responsible. Climate Change Denial Disorder is a satirical short film which parodies climate change denial and perspectives on climate change through discussion of a fictional disease. Downsizing (2017) – In the future scientists discover a method to shrink humans to size of five inches to solve climate change and overpopulation. The technique fails when only three percent of the population choose to undergo it, with its inventor discovering that humanity will go extinct from positive feedback of Arctic methane emissions within 100 years. Geostorm (2017) – Natural disasters caused by climate change lead humanity to construct a network of weather modification satellites in 2019, which malfunction and cause severe weather across the world in 2022. Fast Color (2018), is set in a future American Midwest suffering from an eight-year drought. Bo Burnham: Inside (2021), the special includes several references to climate change and the danger of a climate apocalypse. For instance, the lyric "20,000 years of this, seven more to go," in the song "That Funny Feeling" is believed to be a reference to the Climate Clock showing the time left to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before 1.5 C global warming becomes inevitable. The Tomorrow War (2021), melting ice sheets from global warming thaw a frozen spaceship under the Academy of Sciences Glacier from the 10th century AD filled with weaponized bio-engineered aliens known as "Whitespikes" in November 2048, which completely overrun Earth and almost completely annihilate humanity by 2051. Reminiscence (2021), a film set in a post-apocalyptic future where Miami has been flooded by the ocean due to climate change. Don't Look Up (2021). An apocalyptic black comedy film, in which two astronomers from Michigan State University unsuccessfully attempt to warn the world of a comet coming to impact Earth and destroy humanity within six months. The film is intended to satirize public denial and apathy towards climate change from governments, the media, and corporations. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022), based on the non-fictional book of the same name by Andreas Malm Documentary films An Inconvenient Truth (2006) is an American documentary film made in 2006 directed by Davis Guggenheim which covers former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign related to raising awareness about global warming. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a follow-up film released in 2017. The 11th Hour (2007), created, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. Signos: Banta ng Pagbabagong Klima, a 2008 Philippine television documentary presented and narrated by actor Richard Gutierrez and aired on GMA Network. The Great Global Warming Swindle, a 2009 polemical film that denies the existence of climate change. Carbon Nation, a 2010 documentary film. Chasing Ice, a 2012 documentary film. White Knight, a 2012 documentary film Thin Ice, a 2013 documentary film. Merchants of Doubt, a 2014 documentary based on the 2010 book of the same name Before the Flood, a 2016 documentary Chasing Coral, a 2017 documentary 2040, a 2019 documentary by Damon Gameau Climate Change – The Facts, a 2019 BBC documentary presented by David Attenborough Planet of the Humans, a 2019 documentary directed by Michael Moore I Am Greta, a documentary following teenaged climate activist Greta Thunberg Literature Non-fiction This refers to the classification non-fiction, without regard to whether the books are accurate or intended to be accurate. The End of Nature 1989 book by Bill McKibben, which has been cited as the first book on climate change written for a general audience. Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991) by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl Earth in the Balance (1992) by Al Gore, recommending a "Global Marshall Plan" to resolve ecological crises such as climate change The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era 1999 book by former oil geologist Jeremy Leggett The Coming Global Superstorm (1999) by Whitley Streiber and Art Bell, predicting the possibility of abrupt climate change from a shutdown of thermohaline circulation The Discovery of Global Warming 2003 Spencer R. Weart book describing the history of climate change science The Weather Makers (2005) by Tim Flannery, a series of essays describing the effects of climate change Field notes from a catastrophe: man, nature, and climate change (2006) by Elizabeth Kolbert describing effects from climate change already occurring in the natural world, as well as opposition to climate change mitigation from corporations and the Bush administration Hell and High Water (2006) by Joseph J. Romm warning about the consequences of sea level rise An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It is a 2006 book by Al Gore released in conjunction with the film An Inconvenient Truth. Based on Gore's lecture tour on the topic of global warming this book elaborates upon points offered in the film. It "brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming." Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) by Mark Lynas. It presents the consequences of climate change for each additional degree Celsius of warming, culminating in a possible 6 degree scenario in which release of methane hydrate leads to an extinction event similar to the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event. The book was also adapted into a National Geographic Channel film. Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change (2007) by Clive Hamilton, criticizing the government of Australia for blocking international climate change mitigation Break Through (2007) by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, arguing that the paradigms motivating the environmentalist movement are poorly suited to resolve climate change An Appeal to Reason (2008) by Nigel Lawson, criticizing the scientific consensus on climate change Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008) by Thomas Friedman, arguing that the United States could reclaim a sense of purpose after the September 11 attacks and the end of the Cold War by solving issues of overpopulation and climate change Why We Disagree About Climate Change (2009) by Mike Hulme, exploring the reasons for differing ethical, political, cultural, and economic views on climate change across the world Carbon Shift (2009) by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison, explaining how the likely effects of peak oil and climate change on Canada Requiem for a Species (2010) by Clive Hamilton, arguing that climate change has already progressed past the point at which catastrophic impacts for the world and human society, including possible societal collapse or extinction, can be avoided Merchants of Doubt (2010) by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, which examines the history of climate change denial and its relationship with the tobacco industry playbook. The God Species (2011) by Mark Lynas, postulating that climate change indicates that Earth has entered an anthropocene epoch in which natural systems are under human control 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012) by Jørgen Randers, arguing that current trends suggest carbon emissions will peak around 2030 but that it will be insufficient to prevent 2 degree Celsius warming which will limit future economic growth The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (2012) by Michael E. Mann, explaining the temperature record of the last 2,000 years and his work on the so-called "hockey stick graph" This Changes Everything (2014) by Naomi Klein, which criticises capitalism as a root cause of climate change. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2015) by Elizabeth Kolbert, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and explained the concept of the Holocene extinction The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016) by Amitav Ghosh, arguing that climate change is driven by neoimperialism Drawdown (2017) which ranks different climate change solutions. Deep Adaptation (2018) by Jem Bendell, arguing that climate change has progressed too far to prevent societal collapse and that people must accept major changes to their way of life to adjust to the coming changes Losing Earth (2019) by Nathaniel Rich, based on a New York Times Magazine article, examining attempts to implement climate change policies in the United States from 1979 into the 1980s. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019) by Greta Thunberg, collection of speeches presented before the United Nations, the European Union, the World Economic Forum, the United States Congress, the French National Assembly, and climate protests The Uninhabitable Earth (2019) by David Wallace-Wells, based on a 2017 magazine series of the same name explaining the likely consequences of climate change on human society in future years. On Fire (2019) by Naomi Klein, advocating substantial climate change mitigation tactics such as the Green New Deal. A Life on Our Planet (2020) by David Attenborough, an autobiography describing his career in the BBC since the 1950s during the Holocene extinction and warning about the consequences of biodiversity loss from unmitigated climate change How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021) by Bill Gates, providing tactics to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, particularly greater investment in sustainable energy technology How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021) by Andreas Malm, advocating violent techniques such as sabotage in climate activism The New Climate War (2021) by Michael Mann, describing resistance to climate change mitigation from the fossil fuel industry Under a White Sky (2021) by Elizabeth Kolbert, exploring possible technological solutions to climate change such as solar geoengineering Fiction Music Climate change has been a topic of some popular music, particularly during the 2010s. The topic has been discussed in various genres, including pop, folk, electronic music and heavy metal. The New York Times found 192 references to climate change in English-language songs that entered the Billboard charts between 1999 and 2019, with around half of those (87 songs) between 2015 and 2019.American thrash metal band Testament released a song titled "Greenhouse Effect" on 1989 album Practice What You Preach and later referenced climate change in "Fall of Sipledome" on The Gathering (1999). American rapper Mos Def's "New World Water" (1999) on Black on Both Sides discusses the history of water access and scarcity, including the impact of climate change. American pop rock group Smash Mouth make reference to climate change in their songs "Walkin' on the Sun" (1997) and "All Star" (1999). French metal band Gojira have released several songs about climate change and environmental issues, particularly "Global Warming", "World to Come" and other songs on From Mars to Sirius (2005). Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up" (2006), which was the theme song to the film An Inconvenient Truth. Climate change is a theme of English rock band Radiohead's 2000 song "Idioteque" and 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool. Frontman Thom Yorke has also explored climate change on his solo album The Eraser (2006). Thirty Seconds to Mars' 2007 single "A Beautiful Lie" was released alongside a music video that was filmed in Greenland, and highlights impacts of climate change on the island. The band also launched a tie-in website promoting individual action on climate change. American rapper Pitbull has released albums titled Global Warming (2012) and Climate Change (2017). Indonesian band Kotak through the 2012 album Terbaik contains a song called "Hijaukan Bumi", the lyrics and music video contain every cause and impact of climate change. "Love Song to the Earth" was a 2015 charity single produced in the run up to the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference. Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow and Sean Paul all sang on the single. British musician Anohni's 2016 song "4 Degrees" discusses climate change and extinction. It references projected rise in global temperature and impacts of climate change on biodiversity by 2100. OneRepublic's "Truth to Power" (2017) which was the theme song to An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. American rapper Childish Gambino's "Feels Like Summer" (2018). Singer-songwriter Weyes Blood's Titanic Rising (2019) features several songs that discuss climate change. Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have released several songs about climate change, and it is a central theme of 2019 album Infest the Rats' Nest which follows characters who are forced to leave Earth to escape climate change impacts. Composer Matthew Burtner's Glacier Music (2019) is intended as emulating melting glaciers. Lil Dicky released charity single "Earth" in 2019, featuring numerous celebrities and other musicians. American pop singer Billie Eilish's 2019 single "All the Good Girls Go to Hell" makes reference to California wildfires and sea level rise. English band The 1975's eponymous 2019 song features a spoken word passage by environmental activist Greta Thunberg. Adapted from her "Our House Is on Fire" speech, her passage in the song calls for civil disobedience to demand action on climate change. Proceeds from the song were donated to activist group Extinction Rebellion. Japanese-British singer Rina Sawayama has said her 2020 single "XS" is a critique of capitalism in the context of climate change. Canadian musician Grimes's 2020 album Miss Anthropocene is a concept album about an "anthropomorphic goddess of climate change" and human extinction. The music video for Pearl Jam's 2020 single "Retrograde" depicts the impacts of climate change, and features climate activist Greta Thunberg. Brazilian metal band Sepultura's 2020 song "Guardians of Earth" is about climate change, deforestation and indigenous people in their home country. Trip-hop group Massive Attack released a song on their 2020 EP Eutopia that features a speech by Christiana Figueres, the diplomat who wrote the Paris Agreement, urging for action on climate change. Marina's 2021 single "Purge the Poison" Climate change is a central theme of Australian rock band Midnight Oil's final album Resist (2022). Greg Barnett's triple album "The Flat White Album" (2020) is bookended by two climate related tracks, The C-Bomb and Frogs in a Pan. Theater The Contingency Plan (2009) by Steve Waters is a diptych of plays first performed at the Bush Theatre in London. They are set in the near future, at a time during which severe tidal surges begin to submerge parts of coastal Britain. The Climate Monologues (2010). The Heretic (2011) 2071 (2014) by climate scientist Chris Rapley and playwright Duncan Macmillan. Television Television documentaries Years of Living Dangerously, nine-part 2014 Showtime documentary television series Fictional television Captain Planet and the Planeteers had numerous episodes which dealt with global-warming including "Two Futures" Part 1 & 2, "Heat Wave", "Domes of Doom", "The Ark", "Summit to Save Earth" Parts 1 & 2, "Greenhouse Planet", "A Perfect World", and "Planeteers Under Glass" "The World Set Free" (Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey), 2014 TV series episode South Park spoofed global warming in seven episodes: "Spontaneous Combustion", (1999) - Randy Marsh wins a Nobel Prize by discovering that a string of spontaneous combustions around South Park was caused by partners refusing to fart in front of each other and solving the crisis by having the town's residents fart every few seconds, only for the resultant methane emissions to cause global warming and a massive heat wave. "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow" - Environmentalists host an Earth Day festival at South Park to raise awareness about global warming, brainwashing its residents into supporting propagandistic slogans using Jedi mind tricks. The boys struggle to arrange for Canadian comedians Terrance and Phillip to perform at the festival. "Goobacks" (2004) - Climate refugees from the year 3045 begin using a time portal to travel to Earth in 2004 for work, leading to a controversy mirroring the debate over illegal immigration as they work for low wages. "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow", (2005) - Stan Marsh pretends that a flood caused by him crashing a boat into a beaver dam was caused by global warming, leading to a panic. The episode was meant to parody the government response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as explanations that it was caused by climate change. "Smug Alert!" (2006) - Drivers of hybrid cars cause massive emissions of "smug," causing a superstorm which annihilates San Francisco and South Park. "ManBearPig" (2006) - Al Gore visits South Park warning about a giant carnivorous monster known as the ManBearPig and takes the protagonists to search for it in the Cave of the Winds, only for it to become evident that Gore is using the incident to get attention. The episode parodies Gore's climate change activism and reflects series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's climate change skepticism at the time of the episode's release. "Time to Get Cereal"/"Nobody Got Cereal?" (2018) - The ManBearPig proves to have actually been real and begins attacking South Park's residents, some of whom nevertheless remain skeptical of its existence. The boys are forced to apologize to Gore to get him to help, although he remains self-aggrandizing. At the end of the arc the townsfolk finally admit that the ManBearPig was real and begin negotiating for it to leave but are constantly unable to accept the creature's terms for its departure. Parker and Stone wrote the episode as an apology for the show's previous depictions of climate change, and Gore himself praised the episode. Star Trek: The Next Generation had several global-warming themed episodes: Episode "Deja Q" (1990) - The crew suggests an artificial amplification of global warming using greenhouse gases to counter the cooling effects of dust from the impact of a moon on a planet. Episode "A Matter of Time" (Season 5 EP 9) - A passing cloud of dust from an asteroid causes global cooling on a planet, the crew of the enterprise use a phaser to release frozen deposits of carbon dioxide on the planet. "The Inner Light" (1992) - Jean-Luc Picard lives a lifetime on a planet experiencing Global Warming and aridification. Ultimately, the climate change becomes serious enough to threaten all life on the planet. This Hugo Award winner is among the 5 most popular out of all 178 episodes in the TNG series. The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon has four episodes dealing with global warming. In "Shredder's Mom", Shredder and Krang use a mirror fixed to a satellite to warm up the Earth if the political leaders do not surrender to them. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get help from General Yogure to stop them. In Northern Lights Out, a man named Eric Red in Norway plans to melt the polar ice cap and flood all the coastal cities on the Earth by blowing up underground volcanoes, which will make it "easy" for Eric Red and his gang to take over the Earth. In "A Real Snow Job", set in the Alps in Austria, Krang and Shredder use a Zoetropic wave device to melt the world's ice, flooding the coastal cities and making the Earth easy for Krang and Shredder to take over. In "Too Hot to Handle", Vernon Fenwick's nephew Foster has an invention that brings the Earth closer to the Sun, a "Solar Magnet". The 1980s Transformers animated series had at least one global-warming themed episode: "The Revenge of Bruticus". There, the Combaticons (a faction of the series' main villains, the Decepticons, created by rebel Decepticon Starscream) use the Space Bridge device to hurl Earth toward the Sun, hoping to destroy the Earth and all enemies. The Autobots are forced to help the humans endure the heat while putting aside their differences with the Decepticons in a race against time to restore Earth to its natural orbit. The TV series Utopia (2013-14) is a violent thriller about a fictional conspiracy that has a number of secret agents embedded in key places in government and industry. The conspiracy, known as "The Network", seeks to frighten the populace into taking a vaccine which will, as a side-effect, cause mass infertility. Their aim in doing so is to reduce the number of humans on the planet, in order to tackle climate change, resource shortages and other environmental issues. The Simpsons: "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" (2005) - Springfield Elementary School goes on a field trip to the Springfield Glacier, which is almost completely melted because of climate change. "The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly," - (2009) Lisa is assigned to write a report on the year 2059 and becomes depressed after learning about the future effects of climate change, terrifying the class with her reports. "White Christmas Blues", episode of The Simpsons (2013) - Global warming causes no snowfall on Christmas for the entire United States except in Springfield, which is cooled by smog from Mr. Burns's nuclear power plant and the local tire factory The science fiction TV drama Life Force (2000) depicts much of Earth flooded by runaway global warming in 2025. The vast majority of its ecologically-driven plot aspects spring naturally from this situation, such as climate refugees being brutally used for farming slave labour in episode 4 ("Greenhouse Effect"), civilians turning to look for old parts for electricity generators at scrap heaps or local markets using Euros and bartering as currency instead of pound sterling in episode 7 ("Beware of the Dog"), and manipulative sun-worshipping cults luring people in with rare natural ingredients for protective cream in episode 9 ("Siren Song").In episode 2, season 1, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Loki, "The Variant" (2021), Earth experiences a series of climate-related natural disasters in the mid-21st century implied to have been caused by climate change. Mobius M. Mobius mentions that the extinction of the swallow at that time resulted in ecological collapse. A variant of Loki, Sylvie, evades the Time Variance Authority by hiding in the Roxxcart superstore in Alabama shortly before its destruction by a hurricane in 2050, thus preventing any branches of the timeline. Doctor Who, "Orphan 55" (2020) - The Thirteenth Doctor takes Graham O'Brien, Ryan Sinclair, and Yasmin Khan to a spa in the future which proves to be a trap on the abandoned planet Orphan 55. They later discover it is an abandoned version of Earth wrecked by climate change and nuclear warfare, and inhabited by mutant humans known as "Dregs." The episode ends with the Doctor telling them that although it is only one possible future she cannot guarantee it will not come to pass. The first ever crossover episodes of rival British soap operas Casualty, Coronation Street, Doctors, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Holby City and Hollyoaks aired in 2021, which all featured references to climate change in the lead up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Late-night television On September 22, 2021, a group of American late-night television hosts—Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, James Corden, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon—devoted portions of their respective shows to climate change-related material. Comic books Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures from Archie Comics. Mostly set in their present (late 1980s and early 1990s), but also including time travels to a future, in which New York City is flooded because of global warming and the greenhouse effect. Video games Civilization (1991) is a strategy game in which the pollution created by industrial production and transportation, if left unchecked, leads to desertification and coastal regions becoming swamps. Fuel (2009) is a racing video game set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by extreme weather fueled by global warming. In 2008, the TamaTown website featured a game that taught children how to prevent global warming. Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (2019) includes a mechanic where carbon emissions lead to sea level rise, permanent coastal flooding and an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Battlefield 2042 (2021) is set in 2041 where a global military conflict is driven by the exacerbation of tensions from resource depletion and extreme weather caused by climate change. A massive influx of climate refugees and category 6 hurricanes lead to an economic depression in 2034 and the dissolution of the European Union following the collapse of Germany in 2035. Although technological development causes human society to begin to recover in 2037, a Kessler syndrome event destroying 70 percent of Earth's satellites pushes the world into war between stateless proxies fighting for the United States and Russia. Stand-up comedy Comedians including Michelle Wolf, Nate Bargatze, and Joel Kim Booster have made jokes related to climate change. Other Climate fiction is a popular media genre which frequently features stories of climate apocalypse. Examples include Ishmael, a 1992 philosophical novel, and Mad Max: Fury Road, a 2015 action film. Concern over a climate apocalypse has been the subject of satirical news articles. One theme is popular revolt against power brokers. Another are fantasies about the romance and adventure of people experiencing the chaos of ecological and societal collapse.What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?, a 2009 satirical cartoon by Joel Pett Keep Cool, a board game Mothers of Invention, a feminist podcast See also Climate change art Catastrophes in popular culture Climate fiction Media coverage of climate change Climate communication Footnotes == References ==

scientific consensus on climate change

There is a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and that this warming is mainly caused by human activities. This consensus is supported by various studies of scientists' opinions and by position statements of scientific organizations, many of which explicitly agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis reports. Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists say humans are causing climate change. Surveys of the scientific literature are another way to measure scientific consensus. A 2019 review of scientific papers found the consensus on the cause of climate change to be at 100%, and a 2021 study concluded that over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause of climate change. The small percentage of papers that disagreed with the consensus often contain errors or cannot be replicated.As stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the largest contributor to global warming is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since 1750, particularly from fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and land use changes such as deforestation.: 10–11  The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) stated already in 2013: Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes. This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4. It is extremely likely (95–100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century The evidence for global warming due to human influence has been recognized by the national science academies of all the major industrialized countries. In the scientific literature, there is a very strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view. A few organizations with members in extractive industries hold non-committal positions, and some have tried to persuade the public that climate change is not happening, or if the climate is changing it is not because of human influence, attempting to sow doubt in the scientific consensus (see climate change denial). Consensus points The current scientific consensus is that: Earth's climate has warmed significantly since the late 1800s. Human activities (primarily greenhouse gas emissions) are the primary cause. Continuing emissions will increase the likelihood and severity of global effects. People and nations can act individually and collectively to slow the pace of global warming, while also preparing for unavoidable climate change and its consequences.Changes in global temperature are usually expressed in terms of temperature anomalies: "In climate change studies, temperature anomalies are more important than absolute temperature. A temperature anomaly is the difference from an average, or baseline, temperature. The baseline temperature is typically computed by averaging 30 or more years of temperature data."Several studies of the consensus have been undertaken. Among the most cited is a 2013 study of nearly 12,000 abstracts of peer-reviewed papers on climate science published since 1990, of which just over 4,000 papers expressed an opinion on the cause of recent global warming. Of these, 97% agree, explicitly or implicitly, that global warming is happening and is human-caused. It is "extremely likely" that this warming arises from "human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere. Natural change alone would have had a slight cooling effect rather than a warming effect.This scientific opinion is expressed in synthesis reports, by scientific bodies of national or international standing, and by surveys of opinion among climate scientists. Individual scientists, universities, and laboratories contribute to the overall scientific opinion via their peer-reviewed publications, and the areas of collective agreement and relative certainty are summarised in these respected reports and surveys. Assessment reports by IPCC Synthesis reports are assessments of scientific literature that compile the results of a range of stand-alone studies in order to achieve a broad level of understanding, or to describe the state of knowledge of a given subject. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in 2021 to 2023 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in 2014 The conclusions are summarized below: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia." "Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years." Human influence on the climate system is clear. It is extremely likely (95–100% probability) that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming between 1951 and 2010. "Increasing magnitudes of [global] warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts." "A first step towards adaptation to future climate change is reducing vulnerability and exposure to present climate variability." "The overall risks of climate change impacts can be reduced by limiting the rate and magnitude of climate change" Without new policies to mitigate climate change, projections suggest an increase in global mean temperature in 2100 of 3.7 to 4.8 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels (median values; the range is 2.5 to 7.8 °C including climate uncertainty). The current trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions is not consistent with limiting global warming to below 1.5 or 2 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels. Pledges made as part of the Cancún Agreements are broadly consistent with cost-effective scenarios that give a "likely" chance (66–100% probability) of limiting global warming (in 2100) to below 3 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of the Fourth Assessment Report. According to this summary, the Fourth Assessment Report found that human actions are "very likely" the cause of global warming, meaning a 90% or greater probability. Global warming in this case was indicated by an increase of 0.75 degrees in average global temperatures over the last 100 years.The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report stated that: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as evidenced by increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, the widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. Most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human activities.Benefits and costs of climate change for [human] society will vary widely by location and scale. Some of the effects in temperate and polar regions will be positive, and others elsewhere will be negative. Overall, net effects are more likely to be strongly negative with larger or more rapid warming. The range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time. The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g. flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g. land-use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, over-exploitation of resources). Other key reports U.S. Global Change Research Program Thirteen federal agencies, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), worked together under the auspices of the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) to prepare the country's Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in two volumes as described below. The Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I (October 2017) provided the following summary: This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence. Background Formerly: Climate Change Science ProgramThe U.S. Global Change Research Program reported in June 2009 that: Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities. The 2009 report, which is about the effects that climate change is having in the United States, also said: Climate-related changes have already been observed globally and in the United States. These include increases in air and water temperatures, reduced frost days, increased frequency and intensity of heavy downpours, a rise in sea level, and reduced snow cover, glaciers, permafrost, and sea ice. A longer ice-free period on lakes and rivers, lengthening of the growing season, and increased water vapor in the atmosphere have also been observed. Over the past 30 years, temperatures have risen faster in winter than in any other season, with average winter temperatures in the Midwest and northern Great Plains increasing more than 7 °F (3.9 °C). Some of the changes have been faster than previous assessments had suggested. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment In 2004, the intergovernmental Arctic Council and the non-governmental International Arctic Science Committee released the synthesis report of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment: Climate conditions in the past provide evidence that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are associated with rising global temperatures. Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), and secondarily the clearing of land, have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide, methane, and other heat-trapping ("greenhouse") gases in the atmosphere. ... There is international scientific consensus that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. Statements by scientific organizations of national or international standing This is a list of scientific bodies of national or international standing, that have issued formal statements of opinion, classifies those organizations according to whether they concur with the IPCC view, are non-committal, or dissent from it. The California Governor's Office website lists nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action. Concurring Academies of science (general science) Since 2001, 34 national science academies, three regional academies, and both the international InterAcademy Council and International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences have made formal declarations confirming human induced global warming and urging nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The 34 national science academy statements include 33 who have signed joint science academy statements and one individual declaration by the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2007. Joint national science academy statements 2001 Following the publication of the IPCC Third Assessment Report, seventeen national science academies issued a joint statement, entitled "The Science of Climate Change", explicitly acknowledging the IPCC position as representing the scientific consensus on climate change science. The statement, printed in an editorial in the journal Science on 18 May 2001, was signed by the science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. 2005 The national science academies of the G8 nations, plus Brazil, China and India, three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world, signed a statement on the global response to climate change. The statement stresses that the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action, and explicitly endorsed the IPCC consensus. The eleven signatories were the science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 2007 In preparation for the 33rd G8 summit, the national science academies of the G8+5 nations issued a declaration referencing the position of the 2005 joint science academies' statement, and acknowledging the confirmation of their previous conclusion by recent research. Following the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the declaration states, "It is unequivocal that the climate is changing, and it is very likely that this is predominantly caused by the increasing human interference with the atmosphere. These changes will transform the environmental conditions on Earth unless counter-measures are taken." The thirteen signatories were the national science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 2007 In preparation for the 33rd G8 summit, the Network of African Science Academies submitted a joint "statement on sustainability, energy efficiency, and climate change": A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change. The IPCC should be congratulated for the contribution it has made to public understanding of the nexus that exists between energy, climate and sustainability. 2008 In preparation for the 34th G8 summit, the national science academies of the G8+5 nations issued a declaration reiterating the position of the 2005 joint science academies' statement, and reaffirming "that climate change is happening and that anthropogenic warming is influencing many physical and biological systems". Among other actions, the declaration urges all nations to "[t]ake appropriate economic and policy measures to accelerate transition to a low carbon society and to encourage and effect changes in individual and national behaviour". The thirteen signatories were the same national science academies that issued the 2007 joint statement. 2009 In advance of the UNFCCC negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, the national science academies of the G8+5 nations issued a joint statement declaring, "Climate change and sustainable energy supply are crucial challenges for the future of humanity. It is essential that world leaders agree on the emission reductions needed to combat negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change". The statement references the IPCC's Fourth Assessment of 2007, and asserts that "climate change is happening even faster than previously estimated; global CO2 emissions since 2000 have been higher than even the highest predictions, Arctic sea ice has been melting at rates much faster than predicted, and the rise in the sea level has become more rapid". The thirteen signatories were the same national science academies that issued the 2007 and 2008 joint statements. Polish Academy of Sciences In December 2007, the General Assembly of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk), which has not been a signatory to joint national science academy statements issued a declaration endorsing the IPCC conclusions, and stating: it is the duty of Polish science and the national government to, in a thoughtful, organized and active manner, become involved in realisation of these ideas. Problems of global warming, climate change, and their various negative impacts on human life and on the functioning of entire societies are one of the most dramatic challenges of modern times. PAS General Assembly calls on the national scientific communities and the national government to actively support Polish participation in this important endeavor. Additional national science academy and society statements American Association for the Advancement of Science as the world's largest general scientific society, adopted an official statement on climate change in 2006: The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. ... The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now. Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies in 2008 published FASTS Statement on Climate Change which states: Global climate change is real and measurable. ... To reduce the global net economic, environmental and social losses in the face of these impacts, the policy objective must remain squarely focused on returning greenhouse gas concentrations to near pre-industrial levels through the reduction of emissions. The spatial and temporal fingerprint of warming can be traced to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which are a direct result of burning fossil fuels, broad-scale deforestation and other human activity. United States National Research Council through its Committee on the Science of Climate Change in 2001, published Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. This report explicitly endorses the IPCC view of attribution of recent climate change as representing the view of the scientific community: The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. ... The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue. Royal Society of New Zealand having signed onto the first joint science academy statement in 2001, released a separate statement in 2008 in order to clear up "the controversy over climate change and its causes, and possible confusion among the public": The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Measurements show that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are well above levels seen for many thousands of years. Further global climate changes are predicted, with impacts expected to become more costly as time progresses. Reducing future impacts of climate change will require substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. The Royal Society of the United Kingdom has not changed its concurring stance reflected in its participation in joint national science academies' statements on anthropogenic global warming. According to the Telegraph, "The most prestigious group of scientists in the country was forced to act after fellows complained that doubts over man made global warming were not being communicated to the public". In May 2010, it announced that it "is presently drafting a new public facing document on climate change, to provide an updated status report on the science in an easily accessible form, also addressing the levels of certainty of key components." The society says that it is three years since the last such document was published and that, after an extensive process of debate and review, the new document was printed in September 2010. It summarises the current scientific evidence and highlights the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate, and where substantial uncertainties remain. The society has stated that "this is not the same as saying that the climate science itself is in error – no Fellows have expressed such a view to the RS". The introduction includes this statement: There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, including agriculture and deforestation. International science academies African Academy of Sciences in 2007 was a signatory to the "statement on sustainability, energy efficiency, and climate change". This joint statement of African science academies, was organized through the Network of African Science Academies. Its stated goal was "to convey information and spur action on the occasion of the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June 2007": A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change. European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2007 issued a formal declaration on climate change titled Let's Be Honest: Human activity is most likely responsible for climate warming. Most of the climatic warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Documented long-term climate changes include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones. The above development potentially has dramatic consequences for mankind's future. European Science Foundation in a 2007 position paper states: There is now convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases have become a major agent of climate change ... On-going and increased efforts to mitigate climate change through reduction in greenhouse gases are therefore crucial. InterAcademy Council As the representative of the world's scientific and engineering academies, the InterAcademy Council issued a report in 2007 titled Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future. Current patterns of energy resources and energy usage are proving detrimental to the long-term welfare of humanity. The integrity of essential natural systems is already at risk from climate change caused by the atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases. Concerted efforts should be mounted for improving energy efficiency and reducing the carbon intensity of the world economy. International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS) in 2007, issued a Statement on Environment and Sustainable Growth: As reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), most of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human-produced emission of greenhouse gases and this warming will continue unabated if present anthropogenic emissions continue or, worse, expand without control. CAETS, therefore, endorses the many recent calls to decrease and control greenhouse gas emissions to an acceptable level as quickly as possible. Physical and chemical sciences American Chemical Society American Institute of Physics American Physical Society Australian Institute of Physics European Physical Society Earth sciences American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) adopted a statement on Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases in 1998. A new statement, adopted by the society in 2003, revised in 2007, and revised and expanded in 2013, affirms that rising levels of greenhouse gases have caused and will continue to cause the global surface temperature to be warmer: Human activities are changing Earth's climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase. Human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly 0.8 °C (1.5 °F) over the past 140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present, and future emissions will influence the climate system for millennia. While important scientific uncertainties remain as to which particular impacts will be experienced where, no uncertainties are known that could make the impacts of climate change inconsequential. Furthermore, surprise outcomes, such as the unexpectedly rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, may entail even more dramatic changes than anticipated. American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America In May 2011, the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) issued a joint position statement on climate change as it relates to agriculture: A comprehensive body of scientific evidence indicates beyond reasonable doubt that global climate change is now occurring and that its manifestations threaten the stability of societies as well as natural and managed ecosystems. Increases in ambient temperatures and changes in related processes are directly linked to rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. Unless the emissions of GHGs are curbed significantly, their concentrations will continue to rise, leading to changes in temperature, precipitation, and other climate variables that will undoubtedly affect agriculture around the world. Climate change has the potential to increase weather variability as well as gradually increase global temperatures. Both of these impacts have the potential to negatively impact the adaptability and resilience of the world's food production capacity; current research indicates climate change is already reducing the productivity of vulnerable cropping systems. European Federation of Geologists In 2008, the European Federation of Geologists (EFG) issued the position paper Carbon Capture and geological Storage: The EFG recognizes the work of the IPCC and other organizations, and subscribes to the major findings that climate change is happening, is predominantly caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2, and poses a significant threat to human civilization. It is clear that major efforts are necessary to quickly and strongly reduce CO2 emissions. The EFG strongly advocates renewable and sustainable energy production, including geothermal energy, as well as the need for increasing energy efficiency. CCS [Carbon Capture and geological Storage] should also be regarded as a bridging technology, facilitating the move towards a carbon free economy. European Geosciences Union In 2005, the Divisions of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) issued a position statement in support of the Joint national science academy statements on global response to climate change. The statement refers to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as "the main representative of the global scientific community", and asserts that the IPCC: represents the state-of-the-art of climate science supported by the major science academies around the world and by the vast majority of science researchers and investigators as documented by the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Additionally, in 2008, the EGU issued a position statement on ocean acidification which states, "Ocean acidification is already occurring today and will continue to intensify, closely tracking atmospheric CO2 increase. Given the potential threat to marine ecosystems and its ensuing impact on human society and economy, especially as it acts in conjunction with anthropogenic global warming, there is an urgent need for immediate action." The statement then advocates for strategies "to limit future release of CO2 to the atmosphere and/or enhance removal of excess CO2 from the atmosphere". And, in 2018 the EGU issued a statement concurring with the findings of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, with Jonathan Bamber, president of the organisation, noting: "EGU concurs with, and supports, the findings of the SR15 that action to curb the most dangerous consequences of human-induced climate change is urgent, of the utmost importance and the window of opportunity extremely limited." Geological Society of America In 2006, the Geological Society of America adopted a position statement on global climate change. It amended this position on 20 April 2010, with more explicit comments on need for CO2 reduction: Decades of scientific research have shown that climate can change from both natural and anthropogenic causes. The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed and that human activities (mainly greenhouse‐gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s. If current trends continue, the projected increase in global temperature by the end of the twenty first century will result in large impacts on humans and other species. Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will require a combination of adaptation to the changes that are likely to occur and global reductions of CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources. Geological Society of London In November 2010, the Geological Society of London issued the position statement Climate change: evidence from the geological record: The last century has seen a rapidly growing global population and much more intensive use of resources, leading to greatly increased emissions of gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, from the burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), and from agriculture, cement production and deforestation. Evidence from the geological record is consistent with the physics that shows that adding large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere warms the world and may lead to: higher sea levels and flooding of low-lying coasts; greatly changed patterns of rainfall; increased acidity of the oceans; and decreased oxygen levels in seawater. There is now widespread concern that the Earth's climate will warm further, not only because of the lingering effects of the added carbon already in the system, but also because of further additions as human population continues to grow. Life on Earth has survived large climate changes in the past, but extinctions and major redistribution of species have been associated with many of them. When the human population was small and nomadic, a rise in sea level of a few metres would have had very little effect on Homo sapiens. With the current and growing global population, much of which is concentrated in coastal cities, such a rise in sea level would have a drastic effect on our complex society, especially if the climate were to change as suddenly as it has at times in the past. Equally, it seems likely that as warming continues some areas may experience less precipitation leading to drought. With both rising seas and increasing drought, pressure for human migration could result on a large scale. International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics In July 2007, the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) adopted a resolution titled "The Urgency of Addressing Climate Change". In it, the IUGG concurs with the "comprehensive and widely accepted and endorsed scientific assessments carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and regional and national bodies, which have firmly established, on the basis of scientific evidence, that human activities are the primary cause of recent climate change". They state further that the "continuing reliance on combustion of fossil fuels as the world's primary source of energy will lead to much higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, which will, in turn, cause significant increases in surface temperature, sea level, ocean acidification, and their related consequences to the environment and society". National Association of Geoscience Teachers In July 2009, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) adopted a position statement on climate change in which they assert that "Earth's climate is changing [and] "that present warming trends are largely the result of human activities": NAGT strongly supports and will work to promote education in the science of climate change, the causes and effects of current global warming, and the immediate need for policies and actions that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Meteorology and oceanography American Meteorological Society The American Meteorological Society (AMS) statement adopted by their council in 2012 concluded: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth's lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities. This scientific finding is based on a large and persuasive body of research. The observed warming will be irreversible for many years into the future, and even larger temperature increases will occur as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. Avoiding this future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. The ongoing warming will increase risks and stresses to human societies, economies, ecosystems, and wildlife through the 21st century and beyond, making it imperative that society respond to a changing climate. To inform decisions on adaptation and mitigation, it is critical that we improve our understanding of the global climate system and our ability to project future climate through continued and improved monitoring and research. This is especially true for smaller (seasonal and regional) scales and weather and climate extremes, and for important hydroclimatic variables such as precipitation and water availability. Technological, economic, and policy choices in the near future will determine the extent of future impacts of climate change. Science-based decisions are seldom made in a context of absolute certainty. National and international policy discussions should include consideration of the best ways to both adapt to and mitigate climate change. Mitigation will reduce the amount of future climate change and the risk of impacts that are potentially large and dangerous. At the same time, some continued climate change is inevitable, and policy responses should include adaptation to climate change. Prudence dictates extreme care in accounting for our relationship with the only planet known to be capable of sustaining human life. A 2016 survey found that two-thirds of AMS members think that all or most of climate change is caused by human activity. Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society has issued a Statement on Climate Change, wherein they conclude: Global climate change and global warming are real and observable ... It is highly likely that those human activities that have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been largely responsible for the observed warming since 1950. The warming associated with increases in greenhouse gases originating from human activity is called the enhanced greenhouse effect. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by more than 30% since the start of the industrial age and is higher now than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years. This increase is a direct result of burning fossil fuels, broad-scale deforestation and other human activity. Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences In November 2005, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) issued a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada stating that: We concur with the climate science assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 ... We endorse the conclusions of the IPCC assessment that 'There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities'. ... There is increasingly unambiguous evidence of changing climate in Canada and around the world. There will be increasing impacts of climate change on Canada's natural ecosystems and on our socio-economic activities. Advances in climate science since the 2001 IPCC Assessment have provided more evidence supporting the need for action and development of a strategy for adaptation to projected changes. Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society In November 2009, a letter to the Canadian Parliament by The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society states: Rigorous international research, including work carried out and supported by the Government of Canada, reveals that greenhouse gases resulting from human activities contribute to the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans and constitute a serious risk to the health and safety of our society, as well as having an impact on all life. Royal Meteorological Society (UK) In February 2007, after the release of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, the Royal Meteorological Society issued an endorsement of the report. In addition to referring to the IPCC as "[the] world's best climate scientists", they stated that climate change is happening as "the result of emissions since industrialization and we have already set in motion the next 50 years of global warming – what we do from now on will determine how worse it will get." World Meteorological Organization In its Statement at the Twelfth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change presented on 15 November 2006, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms the need to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". The WMO concurs that "scientific assessments have increasingly reaffirmed that human activities are indeed changing the composition of the atmosphere, in particular through the burning of fossil fuels for energy production and transportation". The WMO concurs that "the present atmospheric concentration of CO2 was never exceeded over the past 420,000 years"; and that the IPCC "assessments provide the most authoritative, up-to-date scientific advice". American Quaternary Association The American Quaternary Association (AMQUA) has stated: Few credible scientists now doubt that humans have influenced the documented rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. The first government-led U.S. Climate Change Science Program synthesis and assessment report supports the growing body of evidence that warming of the atmosphere, especially over the past 50 years, is directly impacted by human activity. International Union for Quaternary Research The statement on climate change issued by the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) reiterates the conclusions of the IPCC, and urges all nations to take prompt action in line with the UNFCCC principles: Human activities are now causing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide—to rise well above pre-industrial levels ... Increases in greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise ... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action ... Minimizing the amount of this carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere presents a huge challenge but must be a global priority. Biology and life sciences Life science organizations have outlined the dangers climate change pose to wildlife. American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians American Institute of Biological Sciences. In October 2009, the leaders of 18 US scientific societies and organizations sent an open letter to the United States Senate reaffirming the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and is primarily caused by human activities. The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) adopted this letter as their official position statement. The letter goes on to warn of predicted impacts on the United States such as sea level rise and increases in extreme weather events, water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems. It then advocates for a dramatic reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases. American Society for Microbiology Australian Coral Reef Society Institute of Biology (UK) Society of American Foresters issued two position statements pertaining to climate change in which they cite the IPCC and the UNFCCC. The Wildlife Society (international) Human health A number of health organizations have warned about the numerous negative health effects of global warming: American Academy of Pediatrics American College of Preventive Medicine American Medical Association American Public Health Association Australian Medical Association in 2004 and in 2008 World Federation of Public Health Associations World Health Organization The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and "Doomsday clock" In 1945, Albert Einstein and other scientists who created atomic weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki founded the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and created the "Doomsday Clock". The goal of the clock is to convey threats to humanity and the planet, and to create public awareness that will lead to solutions. In the beginning, the Doomsday Clock focused on the dangers of nuclear war, but in the 21st century, it has begun to deal with other issues like climate change and disinformation on the internet. On 23 January 2020 the organization moved the doomsday clock to 100 seconds before midnight, closer than ever. It explained that it did it because of three factors: Increasing danger of nuclear war, Increasing danger from climate change, and Increasing danger from disinformation in the internet regarding the issues in points 1 and 2 and other "disruptive technologies".The organization praised the climate movement of young people and called to citizens and governments to act to take greater action on climate change. Miscellaneous A number of other national scientific societies have also endorsed the opinion of the IPCC: American Astronomical Society American Statistical Association Canadian Council of Professional Engineers The Institution of Engineers Australia International Association for Great Lakes Research Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) Non-committal The last national or international scientific body to drop dissent was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which in 2007 updated its statement to its current non-committal position. Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions. American Association of Petroleum Geologists As of June 2007, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Position Statement on climate change stated: the AAPG membership is divided on the degree of influence that anthropogenic CO2 has on recent and potential global temperature increases ... Certain climate simulation models predict that the warming trend will continue, as reported through NAS, AGU, AAAS and AMS. AAPG respects these scientific opinions but wants to add that the current climate warming projections could fall within well-documented natural variations in past climate and observed temperature data. These data do not necessarily support the maximum case scenarios forecast in some models. Prior to the adoption of this statement, the AAPG was the only major scientific organization that rejected the finding of significant human influence on recent climate, according to a statement by the Council of the American Quaternary Association. Explaining the plan for a revision, AAPG president Lee Billingsly wrote in March 2007: Members have threatened to not renew their memberships ... if AAPG does not alter its position on global climate change ... And I have been told of members who already have resigned in previous years because of our current global climate change position ... The current policy statement is not supported by a significant number of our members and prospective members. AAPG President John Lorenz announced the "sunsetting" of AAPG's Global Climate Change Committee in January 2010. The AAPG Executive Committee determined: Climate change is peripheral at best to our science ... AAPG does not have credibility in that field ... and as a group we have no particular knowledge of global atmospheric geophysics. American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG) The official position statement from AIPG on the Environment states that "combustion of fossil fuel include and the generation of GHGs [greenhouse gases] including carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Emissions of GHGs are perceived by some to be one of the largest, global environmental concerns related to energy production due to potential effects on the global energy system and possibly global climate. Fossil fuel use is the primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of GHGs since industrialization".In March 2010, AIPG's Executive Director issued a statement regarding polarization of opinions on climate change within the membership and announced that the AIPG Executive had made a decision to cease publication of articles and opinion pieces concerning climate change in AIPG's news journal, The Professional Geologist. Opposing Since 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement, no longer does any national or international scientific body reject the findings of human-induced effects on climate change. Surveys of scientists and scientific literature Various surveys have been conducted to evaluate scientific opinion on global warming. They have concluded that almost all climate scientists support the idea of anthropogenic climate change.A 2012 analysis of published research on global warming and climate change between 1991 and 2012 found that of the 13,950 articles in peer-reviewed journals, only 24 rejected anthropogenic global warming. A follow-up analysis looking at 2,258 peer-reviewed climate articles with 9,136 authors published between November 2012 and December 2013 revealed that only one of the 9,136 authors rejected anthropogenic global warming. His 2015 paper on the topic, covering 24,210 articles published by 69,406 authors during 2013 and 2014 found only five articles by four authors rejecting anthropogenic global warming. Over 99.99% of climate scientists did not reject AGW in their peer-reviewed research.A 2013 study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed 11,944 abstracts from papers published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature between 1991 and 2011, identified by searching the ISI Web of Science citation index engine for the text strings "global climate change" or "global warming". The authors found that 3974 of the abstracts expressed a position on anthropogenic global warming, and that 97% of those endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming. The authors found that of the 11,944 abstracts, 3896 endorsed that consensus, 7930 took no position on it, 78 rejected the consensus, and 40 expressed uncertainties about it. This study was criticised in 2016 by Richard Tol, but strongly defended by a companion paper in the same volume.James Lawrence Powell reported in 2017 that using rejection as the criterion of consensus, five surveys of the peer-reviewed literature from 1991 to 2015, including several of those above, combine to 54,195 articles with an average consensus of 99.94%. In November 2019, his survey of over 11,600 peer-reviewed articles published in the first seven months of 2019 showed that the consensus had reached 100%.A survey conducted in 2021 found that of a random selection of 3,000 papers examined from 88,125 peer-reviewed studies related to climate that were published since 2012, only 4 were sceptical about man-made climate change.Depending on expertise, a 2021 survey of 2780 Earth scientist showed that between 91% and 100% agreed human activity is causing climate change. Among climate scientists, 98.7% agreed, a number that grows to 100% when only the climate scientists with high level of expertise are counted (20+ papers published). Surveys prior to 2010 In 2004, the geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change. She analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Seventy-five per cent of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories (either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view); 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. None of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable". According to the report, "authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point." In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. 97% of the scientists surveyed agreed that global temperatures had increased during the past 100 years; 84% said they personally believed human-induced warming was occurring, and 74% agreed that "currently available scientific evidence" substantiated its occurrence. Catastrophic effects in 50–100 years would likely be observed according to 41%, while 44% thought the effects would be moderate and about 13 percent saw relatively little danger. 5% said they thought human activity did not contribute to greenhouse warming.Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey in August 2008 of 2058 climate scientists from 34 countries. A total of 373 responses were received giving an overall response rate of 18.2%. No paper on climate change consensus based on this survey has been published yet (February 2010), but one on another subject has been published based on the survey. To the question "How convinced are you that climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic, is occurring now?", 67.1% said they very much agreed, 26.7% agreed to some large extent, 6.2% said to they agreed to some small extent (2–4), none said they did not agree at all. To the question "How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?" the responses were 34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent, 15.1% to a small extent, and 1.35% not agreeing at all. A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who "listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change" believed that mean global temperatures had risen compared to pre-1800s levels. Seventy-five of 77 believed that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature. Economic geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in significant human involvement. The authors summarised the findings: It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes. A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed "1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC [anthropogenic climate change] outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers". Judith Curry has said "This is a completely unconvincing analysis", whereas Naomi Oreskes said that the paper shows "the vast majority of working [climate] research scientists are in agreement [on climate change]... Those who don't agree, are, unfortunately—and this is hard to say without sounding elitist—mostly either not actually climate researchers or not very productive researchers." Jim Prall, one of the coauthors of the study, acknowledged "it would be helpful to have lukewarm [as] a third category." Existence of a scientific consensus A question that frequently arose in popular discussion was whether there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Several scientific organizations have explicitly used the term "consensus" in their statements: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006: "The conclusions in this statement reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Joint National Academies' statement." US National Academy of Sciences: "In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth's warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. ... On climate change, [the National Academies' reports] have assessed consensus findings on the science ..." Joint Science Academies' statement, 2005: "We recognise the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." Joint Science Academies' statement, 2001: "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus." American Meteorological Society, 2003: "The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers—the validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately—can be exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus ... IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year intervals by a large international group of experts who represent the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the results of the full body of peer-reviewed research ... They provide an analysis of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the various statements and conclusions." Network of African Science Academies: "A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change." International Union for Quaternary Research, 2008: "INQUA recognizes the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." Australian Coral Reef Society, 2006: "There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth's climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases ... There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming ..." Surveys of scientists' views on climate change Surveys of scientists' views on climate change – with a focus on human-caused or anthropogenic global warming (AGW) – have been undertaken since the 1990s. A 2016 paper (which was co-authored by Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton and John Cook, and which was based on a half a dozen independent studies by the authors) concluded that "the finding of 97% consensus [that humans are causing recent global warming] in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies." A 2019 study found scientific consensus to be at 100%, and a 2021 study found that consensus exceeded 99%. 2020s Myers et al., 2021 Krista Myers led a paper which surveyed 2780 Earth scientists. Depending on expertise, between 91% (all scientists) to 100% (climate scientists with high levels of expertise, 20+ papers published) agreed human activity is causing climate change. Among the total group of climate scientists, 98.7% agreed. The agreement was lowest among scientists who chose Economic Geology as one of their fields of research (84%). Lynas et al., 2021 In 2021, Mark Lynas et al assessed studies published between 2012 and 2020. They found over 80,000 studies. They analysed a random subset of 3000. Four of these were skeptical of the human cause of climate change, 845 were endorsing the human cause perspective at different levels, and 1869 were indifferent to the question. The authors estimated the proportion of papers not skeptical of the human cause as 99.85% (95% confidence limit 99.62%–99.96%). Excluding papers which took no position on the human cause led to an estimate of the proportion of consensus papers as 99.53% (95% confidence limit 98.80%–99.87%). They confirmed their numbers by explicitly looking for alternative hypotheses in the entire dataset, which resulted in 28 papers. 2010s Powell, 2019 In 2019, James L. Powell, a former member of the National Science Board, analysed titles of peer-reviewed studies published in the first seven months of 2019 and found not a single study disagreed with the consensus view. When the titles implied uncertainty about the cause of climate change, the abstracts or the article in its entirety were examined. The total amount of articles found via Web of Science was 11,602. Verheggen et al., 2014 In 2014, Bart Verheggen of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency surveyed 1,868 climate scientists. They found that, consistent with other research, the level of agreement on anthropogenic causation correlated with expertise - 90% of those surveyed with more than 10 peer-reviewed papers related to climate (just under half of survey respondents) explicitly agreed that greenhouse gases were the main cause of global warming. They included researchers on mitigation and adaptation in their surveys in addition to physical climate scientists, leading to a slightly lower level of consensus compared to previous studies. Powell, 2013 James L. Powell analyzed published research on global warming and climate change between 1991 and 2012 and found that of the 13,950 articles in peer-reviewed journals, only 24 (<0.2%) rejected anthropogenic global warming. This was a follow-up to an analysis looking at 2,258 peer-reviewed articles published between November 2012 and December 2013 revealed that only one of the 9,136 authors rejected anthropogenic global warming. John Cook et al., 2013 Cook et al. examined 11,944 abstracts from the peer-reviewed scientific literature from 1991 to 2011 that matched the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. They found that, while 66.4% of them expressed no position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), of those that did, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are contributing to global warming. They also invited authors to rate their own papers and found that, while 35.5% rated their paper as expressing no position on AGW, 97.2% of the rest endorsed the consensus. In both cases the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position was marginally increasing over time. They concluded that the number of papers actually rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.In their discussion of the results, the authors said that the large proportion of abstracts that state no position on AGW is as expected in a consensus situation, as anticipated in a chapter published in 2007, adding that "the fundamental science of AGW is no longer controversial among the publishing science community and the remaining debate in the field has moved on to other topics."A 2016 study entitled Learning from mistakes in climate research examined the quality of the 3% of peer-reviewed papers discovered by this work to reject the consensus view. They discovered that "replication reveals a number of methodological flaws, and a pattern of common mistakes emerges that is not visible when looking at single isolated cases". Farnsworth and Lichter, 2011 In an October 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, researchers from George Mason University analyzed the results of a survey of 998 scientists working in academia, government, and industry. The scientists polled were members of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) or the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and listed in the 23rd edition of American Men and Women of Science, a biographical reference work on leading American scientists, and 489 returned completed questionnaires. Of those who replied, 97% agreed that global temperatures have risen over the past century. 84% agreed that "human-induced greenhouse warming is now occurring," 5% disagreed, and 12% didn't know.When asked what they regard as "the likely effects of global climate change in the next 50 to 100 years," on a scale of 1 to 10, from Trivial to Catastrophic: 13% of respondents replied 1 to 3 (trivial/mild), 44% replied 4 to 7 (moderate), 41% replied 8 to 10 (severe/catastrophic), and 2% didn't know. Anderegg, Prall, Harold, and Schneider, 2010 Anderegg et al., in a 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers, based on authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on multisignatory statements about anthropogenic climate change. The number of climate-relevant publications authored or coauthored by each researcher was used to define their 'expertise', and the number of citations for each of the researcher's four highest-cited papers was used to define their 'prominence'. Removing researchers who had authored fewer than 20 climate publications reduced the database to 908 researchers but did not materially alter the results. The authors of the paper say that their database of researchers "is not comprehensive nor designed to be representative of the entire climate science community," but say that since they drew the researchers from the most high-profile reports and public statements, it is likely that it represents the "strongest and most credentialed" researchers both 'convinced by the evidence' (CE) and 'unconvinced by the evidence' (UE) on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change.Anderegg et al. drew the following two conclusions: (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. 2000s Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 This paper is based on the Zimmerman 2008 MS thesis; the full methods are in the MS thesis. A web-based poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department, University of Illinois at Chicago. They received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. The survey was designed to take less than two minutes to complete. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures had generally risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature. 76 out of the 79 respondents who "listed climate science as their area of expertise, and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change", thought that mean global temperatures had risen compared to pre-1800s levels. Of those 79 scientists, 75 out of the 77 (97.4%) answered that human activity was a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. The remaining two were not asked, because in question one they responded that temperatures had remained relatively constant. Economic geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent respectively thinking that human activity was a significant contributing factor. In summary, Doran and Zimmerman wrote: It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes. Bray and von Storch, 2008 Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre in Germany, conducted an online survey in August 2008, of 2,059 climate scientists from 34 different countries, the third survey on this topic by these authors. A web link with a unique identifier was given to each respondent to eliminate multiple responses. A total of 375 responses were received giving an overall response rate of 18%. The climate change consensus results were published by Bray, and another paper has also been published based on the survey.The survey was composed of 76 questions split into a number of sections. There were sections on the demographics of the respondents, their assessment of the state of climate science, how good the science is, climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation, their opinion of the IPCC, and how well climate science was being communicated to the public. Most of the answers were on a scale from 1 to 7 from 'not at all' to 'very much'.In the section on climate change impacts, questions 20 and 21 were relevant to scientific opinion on climate change. Question 20, "How convinced are you that climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic, is occurring now?" Answers: 67.1% very much convinced (7), 26.7% to some large extent (5–6), 6.2% said to some small extent (2–4), none said not at all. Question 21, "How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?" Answers: 34.6% very much convinced (7), 48.9% being convinced to a large extent (5–6), 15.1% to a small extent (2–4), and 1.35% not convinced at all (1). STATS, 2007 In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that "currently available scientific evidence" substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; 41% say they thought the effects of global warming would be near catastrophic over the next 50–100 years; 44% say said effects would be moderately dangerous; 13% saw relatively little danger; 56% say global climate change is a mature science; 39% say it is an emerging science. Oreskes, 2004 A 2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change. The essay concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The author analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, listed with the keywords "global climate change". Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. 75% of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories, thus either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change; none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable". According to the report, "authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point." Bray and von Storch, 2003 In 2003, Bray and von Storch conducted a survey of the perspectives of climate scientists on global climate change. The survey received 530 responses from 27 different countries. The 2003 survey has been strongly criticized on the grounds that it was performed on the web with no means to verify that the respondents were climate scientists or to prevent multiple submissions. The survey required entry of a username and password, but the username and password were circulated to a climate change denial mailing list and elsewhere on the internet. Bray and von Storch defended their results and accused climate change deniers of interpreting the results with bias. Bray's submission to Science on 22 December 2004 was rejected.One of the questions asked in the survey was "To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?", with a value of 1 indicating strongly agree and a value of 7 indicating strongly disagree. The results showed a mean of 3.62, with 50 responses (9.4%) indicating "strongly agree" and 54 responses (9.7%) indicating "strongly disagree". The same survey indicates a 72% to 20% endorsement of the IPCC reports as accurate, and a 15% to 80% rejection of the thesis that "there is enough uncertainty about the phenomenon of global warming that there is no need for immediate policy decisions." 1990s In 1996, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch undertook a survey of climate scientists on attitudes towards global warming and related matters. The results were subsequently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The paper addressed the views of climate scientists, with a response rate of 40% from a mail survey questionnaire to 1000 scientists in Germany, the United States and Canada. Most of the scientists accepted that global warming was occurring and appropriate policy action should be taken, but there was wide disagreement about the likely effects on society and almost all agreed that the predictive ability of currently existing models was limited. On a scale of 1 (highest confidence) to 7 (lowest confidence) regarding belief in the ability to make "reasonable predictions" the mean was 4.8 and 5.2 for 10- and 100-year predictions, respectively. On the question of whether global warming is occurring or will occur, the mean response was 3.3, and for future prospects of warming the mean was 2.6. A Gallup poll of 400 members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society along with an analysis of reporting on global warming by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a report on which was issued in 1992. Accounts of the results of that survey differ in their interpretation and even in the basic statistical percentages: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting states that the report said that 67% of the scientists said that human-induced global warming was occurring, with 11% disagreeing and the rest undecided. George Will reported "53 percent do not believe warming has occurred, and another 30 percent are uncertain." (Washington Post, 3 September 1992). In a correction Gallup stated: "Most scientists involved in research in this area believe that human-induced global warming is occurring now." Stewart, T. R., Mumpower, J. L., and Reagan-Cirincione, P. (1992). Scientists' opinions about global climate change: Summary of the results of a survey. NAEP (National Association of Environmental Professionals) Newsletter, 17(2), 6–7. In 1991, the Center for Science, Technology, and Media conducted a survey of 118 scientists regarding views on the climate change. Analysis by the authors of the respondents projections of warming and agreement with statements about warming resulted in them categorizing response in 3 "clusters": 13 (15%) expressing skepticism of the 1990 IPCC estimate, 39 (44%) expressing uncertainty with the IPCC estimate, and 37 (42%) agreeing with the IPCC estimate. Global Environmental Change Report, 1990: GECR climate survey shows strong agreement on action, less so on warming. Global Environmental Change Report 2, No. 9, pp. 1–3 See also References Sources IPCC AR4 WG2 (2007), Parry, M. L.; Canziani, O. F.; Palutikof, J. P.; van der Linden, P. J.; Hanson, C. E. (eds.), Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-88010-7, archived from the original on 2018-11-10, retrieved 2013-05-21 (pb: 978-0-521-70597-4). IPCC AR4 SYR (2007), Core Writing Team; Pachauri, R. K.; Reisinger, A. (eds.), Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report (SYR), Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, ISBN 978-92-9169-122-7. IPCC AR5 WG1 (2013), Stocker, T.F.; et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group 1 (WG1) Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5), Cambridge University Press. Climate Change 2013 Working Group 1 website. IPCC AR5 WG2 A (2014), Field, C.B.; et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II (WG2) to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge University Press, archived from the original on 16 April 2014. Archived IPCC AR5 WG3 (2014), Edenhofer, O.; et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III (WG3) to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge University Press, archived from the original on 29 October 2014. Archived

united nations framework convention on climate change

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an international environmental treaty to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system", in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It was signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. Its original secretariat was in Geneva but relocated to Bonn in 1996. It entered into force on 21 March 1994.The treaty called for ongoing scientific research and regular meetings, negotiations, and future policy agreements designed to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.The Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and ran from 2005 to 2020, was the first implementation of measures under the UNFCCC. The Kyoto Protocol was superseded by the Paris Agreement, which entered into force in 2016. By 2022, the UNFCCC had 198 parties. Its supreme decision-making body, the Conference of the Parties (COP), meets annually to assess progress in dealing with climate change. Because key signatory states are not adhering to their individual commitments, the UNFCCC has been criticized as being unsuccessful in reducing the emission of carbon dioxide since its adoption.The treaty established different responsibilities for three categories of signatory states. These categories are developed countries, developed countries with special financial responsibilities, and developing countries. The developed countries, also called Annex 1 countries, originally consisted of 38 states, 13 of which were Eastern European states in transition to democracy and market economies, and the European Union. All belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Annex I countries are called upon to adopt national policies and take corresponding measures on the mitigation of climate change by limiting their anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases as well as to report on steps adopted with the aim of returning individually or jointly to their 1990 emission levels. Developed countries with special financial responsibilities are called Annex II countries. They include all Annex I countries with the exception of those in transition to democracy and market economies. Annex II countries are called upon to provide new and additional financial resources to meet the costs incurred by developing countries in complying with their obligation to produce national inventories of their emissions by sources and their removals by sinks for all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol. Developing countries are then required to submit their inventories to the UNFCCC secretariat. Treaties Convention Agreement in 1992 The text of the Convention was produced during the meeting of an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in New York from 30 April to 9 May 1992. The Convention was adopted on 9 May 1992 and opened for signature on 4 June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro (known by its popular title, the Earth Summit). On 12 June 1992, 154 nations signed the UNFCCC, which upon ratification committed signatories' governments to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases with the goal of "preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate system". This commitment would require substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (see the later section, "Stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations"). Parties to the Convention have met annually from 1995 in Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to assess progress in dealing with climate change.Article 3(1) of the Convention states that Parties should act to protect the climate system on the basis of "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities", and that developed country Parties should "take the lead" in addressing climate change. Under Article 4, all Parties make general commitments to address climate change through, for example, climate change mitigation and adapting to the eventual impacts of climate change. Article 4(7) states: The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties. The Convention specifies the aim of Annex I Parties was stabilizing their greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases not regulated under the Montreal Protocol) at 1990 levels, by 2000."UNFCCC" is also the name of the United Nations Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the convention, with offices on the UN Campus in Bonn, Germany. Offices were formerly located in Haus Carstanjen and in a building on the UN Campus known as Langer Eugen. From 2010 to 2016 the head of the secretariat was Christiana Figueres. In July 2016, Patricia Espinosa succeeded Figueres, and Espinosa was replaced by Simon Stiell in 2022. The secretariat, augmented through the parallel efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), aims to gain consensus through meetings and the discussion of various strategies. Since the signing of the UNFCCC treaty, Conferences of the Parties (COPs) have discussed how to achieve the treaty's aims. Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) is a term adopted by the UNFCCC in 2015 to have a better name for this topic than "Article 6". It refers to Article 6 of the convention's original text (1992), focusing on six priority areas: education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on these issues. The implementation of all six areas has been identified as the pivotal factor for everyone to understand and participate in solving the challenges presented by climate change. ACE calls on governments to develop and implement educational and public awareness programmes, train scientific, technical and managerial personnel, foster access to information, and promote public participation in addressing climate change and its effects. It also urges countries to cooperate in this process, by exchanging good practices and lessons learned, and strengthening national institutions. This wide scope of activities is guided by specific objectives that, together, are seen as crucial for effectively implementing climate adaptation and mitigation actions, and for achieving the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC. Kyoto Protocol The 1st Conference of the Parties (COP1) decided that the aim of Annex I Parties stabilizing their emissions at 1990 levels by 2000 was "not adequate", and further discussions at later conferences led to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol was concluded and established legally binding obligations under international law, for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the period 2008–2012. The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference produced an agreement stating that future global warming should be limited to below 2 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level. The Kyoto Protocol had two commitment periods, the first of which lasted from 2008 to 2012. The Protocol was amended in 2012 to encompass the second one for the period 2013–2020 in the Doha Amendment.One of the first tasks set by the UNFCCC was for signatory nations to establish national greenhouse gas inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, which were used to create the 1990 benchmark levels for accession of Annex I countries to the Kyoto Protocol and for the commitment of those countries to GHG reductions. Updated inventories must be submitted annually by Annex I countries. The US did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, while Canada denounced it in 2012. The Kyoto Protocol was ratified by all the other Annex I Parties. All Annex I Parties, excluding the US, participated in the 1st Kyoto commitment period. Thirty-seven Annex I countries and the EU agreed to second-round Kyoto targets. These countries are Australia, all members of the European Union, Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine stated that they might withdraw from the Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia participated in Kyoto's first round but did not take on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets were Canada (which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States. All countries that remained parties to the Kyoto Protocol met their first commitment period targets. National communication A "National Communication" is a type of report submitted by the countries that have ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Developed countries are required to submit National Communications every four years and developing countries should do so. Some Least Developed Countries have not submitted National Communications in the past 5–15 years, largely due to capacity constraints. National Communication reports are often several hundred pages long and cover a country's measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions as well as a description of its vulnerabilities and impacts from climate change. National Communications are prepared according to guidelines that have been agreed by the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC. The (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that form the basis of the Paris Agreement are shorter and less detailed but also follow a standardized structure and are subject to technical review by experts. Paris Agreement The parties met in Durban, South Africa in 2011 and expressed "grave concern" that efforts to limit global warming to less than 2 or 1.5 °C, relative to the pre-industrial level, appeared inadequate. They committed to develop an "agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties".At the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris the then-196 parties agreed to aim to limit global warming to less than 2 °C, and try to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. The Paris Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016 in those countries that had ratified the Agreement, and other countries had ratified the Agreement since. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions At the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties in Warsaw in 2013, the UNFCCC created a mechanism for Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to be submitted in the run up to the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP21) in 2015. Countries were given freedom and flexibility to ensure that these climate change mitigation and adaptation plans were nationally appropriate. This flexibility, especially regarding the types of actions to be undertaken, allowed for developing countries to tailor their plans to their specific adaptation and mitigation needs, as well as towards other needs. In the aftermath of COP21, these INDCs became Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as each country ratified the Paris Agreement, unless a new NDC was submitted to the UNFCCC at the same time. The 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) in Marrakesh focused on these Nationally Determined Contributions and their implementation, after the Paris Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016.The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) created a guide for NDC implementation, for the use of decision makers in Less Developed Countries. In this guide, CDKN identified a series of common challenges countries face in NDC implementation, including how to: build awareness of the need for, and benefits of, action among stakeholders, including key government ministries; mainstream and integrate climate change into national planning and development processes; strengthen the links between subnational and national government plans on climate change; build capacity to analyse, develop and implement climate policy; establish a mandate for coordinating actions around NDCs and driving their implementation; and address resource constraints for developing and implementing climate change policy. Further commitments In addition to the Kyoto Protocol (and its amendment) and the Paris Agreement, parties to the Convention have agreed to further commitments during UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties. These include the Bali Action Plan (2007), the Copenhagen Accord (2009), the Cancún agreements (2010), and the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (2012). Bali Action PlanAs part of the Bali Action Plan, adopted in 2007, all developed country Parties have agreed to "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives, while ensuring the comparability of efforts among them, taking into account differences in their national circumstances." Developing country Parties agreed to "[nationally] appropriate mitigation actions context of sustainable development, supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building, in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner." 42 developed countries have submitted mitigation targets to the UNFCCC secretariat, as have 57 developing countries and the African Group (a group of countries within the UN). Copenhagen Accord and Cancún agreementsAs part of the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations, a number of countries produced the Copenhagen Accord. The Accord states that global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F). The Accord does not specify what the baseline is for these temperature targets (e.g., relative to pre-industrial or 1990 temperatures). According to the UNFCCC, these targets are relative to pre-industrial temperatures.114 countries agreed to the Accord. The UNFCCC secretariat notes that "Some Parties ... stated in their communications to the secretariat specific understandings on the nature of the Accord and related matters, based on which they have agreed to [the Accord]." The Accord was not formally adopted by the Conference of the Parties. Instead, the COP "took note of the Copenhagen Accord."As part of the Accord, 17 developed country Parties and the EU-27 submitted mitigation targets, as did 45 developing country Parties. Some developing country Parties noted the need for international support in their plans. As part of the Cancún agreements, developed and developing countries submitted mitigation plans to the UNFCCC. These plans were compiled with those made as part of the Bali Action Plan. UN Race-to-Zero Emissions BreakthroughsAt the 2021 annual meeting UNFCCC launched the 'UN Race-to-Zero Emissions Breakthroughs'. The aim of the campaign is to transform 20 sectors of the economy in order to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions. At least 20% of each sector should take specific measures, and 10 sectors should be transformed before COP 26 in Glasgow. According to the organizers, 20% is a tipping point, after which the whole sector begins to irreversibly change. Developing countriesAt Berlin, Cancún, and Durban, the development needs of developing country parties were reiterated. For example, the Durban Platform reaffirms that: [...] social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing country Parties, and that a low-emission development strategy is central to sustainable development, and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs. Parties As of 2022, the UNFCCC has 198 parties including all United Nations member states, United Nations General Assembly observers the State of Palestine and the Holy See, UN non-member states Niue and the Cook Islands, and the supranational union European Union. Classification of Parties and their commitments Parties to the UNFCCC are classified as: Annex I: There are 43 Parties to the UNFCCC listed in Annex I of the convention, including the European Union. These Parties are classified as industrialized (developed) countries and "economies in transition" (EITs). The 14 EITs are the former centrally-planned (Soviet) economies of Russia and Eastern Europe. Annex II: Of the Parties listed in Annex I of the convention, 24 are also listed in Annex II of the convention, including the European Union. These Parties are made up of members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): these Parties consist of the members of the OECD in 1992, minus Turkey, plus the EU. Annex II Parties are required to provide financial and technical support to the EITs and developing countries to assist them in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions (climate change mitigation) and manage the impacts of climate change (climate change adaptation). Least-developed countries (LDCs): 49 Parties are LDCs, and are given special status under the treaty in view of their limited capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change. Non-Annex I: Parties to the UNFCCC not listed in Annex I of the convention are mostly low-income developing countries. Developing countries may volunteer to become Annex I countries when they are sufficiently developed. List of parties Annex I countries There are 43 Annex I Parties including the European Union. These countries are classified as industrialized countries and economies in transition. Of these, 24 are Annex II Parties, including the European Union, and 14 are Economies in Transition. Notes Conferences of the Parties (CoP) The United Nations Climate Change Conference are yearly conferences held in the framework of the UNFCCC. They serve as the formal meeting of the UNFCCC Parties (Conferences of the Parties) (COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change, and beginning in the mid-1990s, to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2005 the Conferences also served as the Meetings of Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) and since 2016 the Conferences also serve as Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA). The first conference (COP1) was held in 1995 in Berlin. The 3rd conference (COP3) was held in Kyoto and resulted in the Kyoto protocol, which was amended during the 2012 Doha Conference (COP18, CMP 8). The COP21 (CMP11) conference was held in Paris and resulted in adoption of the Paris Agreement. The COP26 (CMA3) was held in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. COP28 is taking place at the United Arab Emirates and Sultan al-Jaber has been nominated by the ruler to lead the same. Subsidiary bodies A subsidiary body is a committee that assists the Conference of the Parties. Subsidiary bodies include: Permanents: The Subsidiary Body of Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) is established by Article 9 of the convention to provide the Conference of the Parties and, as appropriate, its other subsidiary bodies with timely information and advice on scientific and technological matters relating to the convention. It serves as a link between information and assessments provided by expert sources (such as the IPCC) and the COP, which focuses on setting policy. The Subsidiary Body of Implementation (SBI) is established by Article 10 of the convention to assist the Conference of the Parties in the assessment and review of the effective implementation of the convention. It makes recommendations on policy and implementation issues to the COP and, if requested, to other bodies. Temporary: Ad hoc Group on Article 13 (AG13), active from 1995 to 1998; Ad hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate (AGBM), active from 1995 to 1997; Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP), established in 2005 by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to consider further commitments of industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol for the period beyond 2012; it concluded its work in 2012 when the CMP adopted the Doha Amendment; Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), established in Bali in 2007 to conduct negotiations on a strengthened international deal on climate change; Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), established at COP 17 in Durban in 2011 "to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties." The ADP concluded its work in Paris on 5 December 2015. Secretariat The work under the UNFCCC is facilitated by a secretariat in Bonn, Germany. The secretariat is established under Article 8 of the Convention and headed by the Executive Secretary. Patricia Espinosa was appointed Executive Secretary on 18 May 2016 by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and took office on 18 July 2016. Espinosa retired on 16 July 2022. UN Under Secretary General Ibrahim Thiaw served as the acting Executive Secretary in the interim. On 15 August 2022, Secretary-General António Guterres appointed former Grenadian climate minister Simon Stiell as Executive Secretary, replacing Espinosa.Former executive secretaries are: Commentaries and analysis Interpreting article 2 The ultimate objective of the Framework Convention is "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e., human-caused] interference with the climate system". Article 2 of the convention says this "should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner". To stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations, global anthropogenic GHG emissions would need to peak then decline (see climate change mitigation). Lower stabilization levels would require emissions to peak and decline earlier compared to higher stabilization levels. The graph above shows projected changes in annual global GHG emissions (measured in CO2-equivalents) for various stabilization scenarios. The other two graphs show the associated changes in atmospheric GHG concentrations (in CO2-equivalents) and global mean temperature for these scenarios. Lower stabilization levels are associated with lower magnitudes of global warming compared to higher stabilization levels. There is uncertainty over how GHG concentrations and global temperatures will change in response to anthropogenic emissions (see climate change feedback and climate sensitivity). The graph opposite shows global temperature changes in the year 2100 for a range of emission scenarios, including uncertainty estimates. Dangerous anthropogenic interference There are a range of views over what level of climate change is dangerous. Scientific analysis can provide information on the risks of climate change, but deciding which risks are dangerous requires value judgements.The global warming that has already occurred poses a risk to some human and natural systems (e.g., coral reefs). Higher magnitudes of global warming will generally increase the risk of negative impacts. According to Field et al. (2014), climate change risks are "considerable" with 1 to 2 °C of global warming, relative to pre-industrial levels. 4 °C warming would lead to significantly increased risks, with potential impacts including widespread loss of biodiversity and reduced global and regional food security.Climate change policies may lead to costs that are relevant to the article 2. For example, more stringent policies to control GHG emissions may reduce the risk of more severe climate change, but may also be more expensive to implement. ProjectionsThere is considerable uncertainty over future changes in anthropogenic GHG emissions, atmospheric GHG concentrations, and associated climate change. Without mitigation policies, increased energy demand and extensive use of fossil fuels could lead to global warming (in 2100) of 3.7 to 4.8 °C relative to pre-industrial levels (2.5 to 7.8 °C including climate uncertainty).To have a likely chance of limiting global warming (in 2100) to below 2 °C, GHG concentrations would need to be limited to around 450 ppm CO2-eq. The current trajectory of global emissions does not appear to be consistent with limiting global warming to below 1.5 or 2 °C. Precautionary principle In decision making, the precautionary principle is considered when possibly dangerous, irreversible, or catastrophic events are identified, but scientific evaluation of the potential damage is not sufficiently certain (Toth et al., 2001, pp. 655–656). The precautionary principle implies an emphasis on the need to prevent such adverse effects. Uncertainty is associated with each link of the causal chain of climate change. For example, future GHG emissions are uncertain, as are climate change damages. However, following the precautionary principle, uncertainty is not a reason for inaction, and this is acknowledged in Article 3.3 of the UNFCCC (Toth et al., 2001, p. 656). Criticisms of the UNFCCC process The overall umbrella and processes of the UNFCCC and the adopted Kyoto Protocol have been criticized by some as not having achieved their stated goals of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide (the primary driver of rising global temperatures of the 21st century). At a speech given at his alma mater, Todd Stern—the US Climate Change envoy—expressed the challenges with the UNFCCC process as follows: "Climate change is not a conventional environmental issue ... It implicates virtually every aspect of a state's economy, so it makes countries nervous about growth and development. This is an economic issue every bit as it is an environmental one." He went on to explain that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a multilateral body concerned with climate change and can be an inefficient system for enacting international policy. Because the framework system includes over 190 countries and because negotiations are governed by consensus, small groups of countries can often block progress.The failure to achieve meaningful progress and reach effective CO2-reducing policy treaties among the parties over the past eighteen years has driven some countries like the United States to hold back from ratifying the UNFCCC's most important agreement—the Kyoto Protocol—in large part because the treaty did not cover developing countries which now include the largest CO2 emitters. However, this failed to take into account both the historical responsibility for climate change since industrialisation, which is a contentious issue in the talks, and also responsibility for emissions from consumption and importation of goods. It has also led Canada to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011 out of a wish not to make its citizens pay penalties that would result in wealth transfers out of Canada. Both the US and Canada are looking at internal Voluntary Emissions Reduction schemes to curb carbon dioxide emissions outside the Kyoto Protocol.The perceived lack of progress has also led some countries to seek and focus on alternative high-value activities like the creation of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants which seeks to regulate short-lived pollutants such as methane, black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which together are believed to account for up to 1/3 of current global warming but whose regulation is not as fraught with wide economic impacts and opposition.In 2010, Japan stated that it will not sign up to a second Kyoto term, because it would impose restrictions on it not faced by its main economic competitors, China, India and Indonesia. A similar indication was given by the Prime Minister of New Zealand in November 2012. At the 2012 conference, last-minute objections at the conference by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan were ignored by the governing officials, and they have indicated that they will likely withdraw or not ratify the treaty. These defections place additional pressures on the UNFCCC process that is seen by some as cumbersome and expensive: in the UK alone, the climate change department has taken over 3,000 flights in two years at a cost of over £1,300,000 (British pounds sterling).Further, the UNFCCC (mainly during the Kyoto protocol) failed to facilitate the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (SETs) which are mechanisms used to decrease the vulnerability of the human race against the unfavourable effects of climate change. One of the more widely used of these being renewable energy sources. The UNFCCC created the body "technology mechanism" who would distribute these resources to developing countries; however this distribution was too moderate and, coupled with the failings of the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, led to low ratification numbers for the second commitment (resulting in it not going ahead). Before the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, National Geographic magazine added to the criticism, writing: "Since 1992, when the world's nations agreed at Rio de Janeiro to avoid 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,' they've met 20 times without moving the needle on carbon emissions. In that interval we've added almost as much carbon to the atmosphere as we did in the previous century." Benchmarking Benchmarking is the setting of a policy target based on some frame of reference. An example of benchmarking is the UNFCCC's original target of Annex I Parties limiting their greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. Goldemberg et al. (1996) commented on the economic implications of this target. Although the target applies equally to all Annex I Parties, the economic costs of meeting the target would likely vary between Parties. For example, countries with initially high levels of energy efficiency might find it more costly to meet the target than countries with lower levels of energy efficiency. From this perspective, the UNFCCC target could be viewed as inequitable, i.e., unfair. Benchmarking has also been discussed in relation to the first-round emissions targets specified in the Kyoto Protocol (see views on the Kyoto Protocol and Kyoto Protocol and government action). International trade Academics and environmentalists criticize article 3(5) of the convention, which states that any climate measures that would restrict international trade should be avoided. Engagement of civil society In 2014, The UN with Peru and France created the Global Climate Action Portal NAZCA for writing and checking all the climate commitments.Civil Society Observers under the UNFCCC have organized themselves in loose groups, covering about 90% of all admitted organisations. Some groups remain outside these broad groupings, such as faith groups or national parliamentarians.An overview is given in the table below: UNFCCC secretariat also recognizes the following groups as informal NGO groups (2016): See also Global Climate Observing System Climate ethics Climate debt Climate target Development safeguard Individual and political action on climate change List of international environmental agreements Post–Kyoto Protocol negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification Keeling curve Non-state Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA) portal Earth for All initiative References Sources External links UNFCCC Newsroom United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Ratifications Earth Negotiations Bulletin Archived 9 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine: detailed summaries of all COPs and SBs Road to Doha, a project following COP18 in Qatar by Carboun UNFCCC on India Environment Portal Conference of Parties (COP) Introductory note by Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, procedural history note and audiovisual material on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Historic Archives of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law Text of the UNFCCC

center for climate and energy solutions

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) is an environmental nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Virginia. Launched in 2011, C2ES is the successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. C2ES works closely with policymakers and stakeholders to promote pragmatic, effective policies at the state, national, and international levels. Leadership Nathaniel Keohane became the president of C2ES in July 2021, following roles as Senior Vice President for Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund and as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment under former president Barack Obama. Bob Perciasepe, the former deputy administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was the organization's president from 2014 to 2021 and now serves as a senior adviser to C2ES. Perciasepe succeeded Eileen Claussen, the center's founding president. The C2ES board of directors is led by Chair Theodore Roosevelt IV. Areas of work C2ES aims to advance policies and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote and accelerate the clean energy transition, strengthen adaptation and resilience to climate impacts, and facilitate the necessary financial investments to achieve this. The organization provides information and analysis on the scientific, economic, technological, and policy dimensions of climate and energy challenges. Their solutions are formed by stakeholder processes, bringing together business leaders, the environmental community, policymakers, and other stakeholders to advance climate policy. C2ES supports market-based strategies for cost-effective greenhouse gas emissions reduction. C2ES produces reports and a broad collection of white papers and briefs by noted climate experts covering a range of critical topics including economics, environmental impacts, policy, science, business, and technology. Experts from the organization have regularly testified before the United States Congress and met with legislators to share ideas for addressing climate change. Much of their work falls under the following program areas: Business Leadership: C2ES convenes the Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC), the largest U.S.-based association of companies committed to advancing both policy and business solutions to climate change. The Council started with 13 members in 1998, and by 2008 included 44 companies with $2.8 trillion in market capitalization. In 2021, the BELC included 38 mainly Fortune 500 companies with a combined revenue of nearly $3 trillion. The Pew Center also served as a founding and active member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), an influential business-NGO coalition calling on Congress to establish a mandatory national climate policy. Climate Innovation 2050: This initiative launched in 2018 brings together more than three dozen companies from different sectors to examine pathways for decarbonizing the U.S. economy. Climate Innovation 2050 has produced policy briefs and major reports that put the U.S. on a path towards achieving carbon neutrality no later than 2050. Climate Resilience: C2ES has published a series of briefs citing strategies to strengthen resilience to climate-related events and extreme weather as well as web pages explaining the link between climate change and extreme weather events. The organization also works with cities, states, and businesses to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Carbon Capture: C2ES co-founded the Carbon Capture Coalition which brings together businesses and organizations to build federal policy support to enable the broad deployment of carbon capture technologies. International Climate Policy: C2ES is involved in the UN climate negotiations and organizes informal discussions among key negotiators. The group led discussions before 2015 to explore options for the Paris Agreement.C2ES has organized sign-on statements with leading businesses to publicize their support for climate action. In 2017, full-page ads published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post showed a letter from 25 major companies urging President Trump to stay in the Paris Agreement. In December 2020, more than 40 companies called on Congress to work with incoming President Biden to address the threats of climate change, including by rejoining the Paris Agreement. In July 2021, C2ES released a statement signed by 41 companies urging Congress to prioritize clean energy and climate spending as they considered an infrastructure package. In September 2021, C2ES was selected to form the Executive Secretariat of the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, a new independent governance body to oversee carbon offsets and accelerate the transition to net-zero. C2ES, and previously the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, has consistently ranked among the world's top environmental think tanks in the Global Go To Think Tank Rankings, a survey of hundreds of scholars and experts conducted by the University of Pennsylvania. It most recently ranking No. 43 for think tanks in the United States and No. 5 for top environment policy think tanks in the world in 2021. See also Low-carbon economy Climate change policy of the United States References External links Center for Climate and Energy Solutions homepage Business Environmental Leadership Council

effects of climate change on small island countries

The effect of climate change on small island countries can be extreme because of low-lying coasts, relatively small land masses, and exposure to extreme weather. The effects of climate change, particularly sea level rise and increasingly intense tropical cyclones, threaten the existence of many island countries, island peoples and their cultures, and will alter their ecosystems and natural environments. Several Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are among the most vulnerable nations to climate change. Some small and low population islands are without adequate resources to protect their islands, inhabitants, and natural resources. In addition to the risks to human health, livelihoods, and inhabitable space, the pressure to leave islands is often barred by the inability to access the resources needed to relocate. The nations of the Caribbean, Pacific Islands and Maldives are already experiencing considerable impacts of climate change, making efforts to implement climate change adaptation a critical issue for them.Efforts to combat these environmental changes are ongoing and multinational. Due to their vulnerability and limited contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, some island countries have made advocacy for global cooperation on climate change mitigation a key aspect of their foreign policy. Governments face a complex task when combining gray infrastructure with green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to help with disaster risk management in areas such as flood control, early warning systems, nature-based solutions, and integrated water resource management. As of March 2022, the Asian Development Bank has committed $3.62 billion to help small island developing states with climate change, transport, energy, and health projects. Greenhouse gas emissions Small Island Developing States make minimal contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, with a combined total of less than 1%. However, that does not indicate that greenhouse emissions are not produced at all, and it is recorded that the annual total greenhouse gas emissions from islands could range from 292.1 to 29,096.2 [metric] tonne CO2-equivalent. Impacts on the natural environment Expected impacts on small islands include: extreme weather events changes in sea level increased sensitivity and exposure to the effects of climate change. deterioration in coastal conditions, such as beach erosion and coral bleaching, which will likely affect local resources such as fisheries, as well as the value of tourism destinations. increased inundation, storm surge, erosion, and other coastal hazards caused by sea-level rise, threatening vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities. reduction of already limited water resources to the point that they become insufficient to meet demand during low-rainfall periods by mid-century, especially on small islands (such as in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean) invasion by non-native species increasing with higher temperatures, particularly in mid- and high-latitude islands.There are many secondary effects of climate change and sea-level rise particular to island nations. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, climate change in the Pacific Islands will cause "continued increases in air and ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific, increased frequency of extreme weather events, and increased rainfall during the summer months and a decrease in rainfall during the winter months". This would entail distinct changes to the small, diverse, and isolated island ecosystems and biospheres present within many of these island nations. Sea level rise One of the dominant manifestations of climate change is sea level rise. NOAA estimates that "since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches per year". Similarly NASA calculates that the average sea level rise is 3.41 mm per year and that sea-level rise is directly caused by the expansion of water as it warms and the melting of polar ice caps. Both of these changes are dependent on global warming as a result of climate change. Sea level rise is especially threatening to low-lying island nations because seas are encroaching upon limited habitable land and threatening existing cultures. Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of Ocean Physics at Potsdam University in Germany notes "even limiting warming to 2 degrees, in my view, will still commit some island nations and coastal cities to drown."Research published in 2015 contradicts the claim that rising sea levels will necessarily submerge island nations. Studies by Paul Kench, a geomorphologist at the University of Auckland, have shown that "reef islands change shape and move around in response to shifting sediments, and that many of them are growing in size, not shrinking, as sea level inches upward". At the same time Kench says that "for the areas that have been transformed by human development, such as the capitals of Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Maldives, the future is considerably gloomier" because these islands cannot adapt to rising sea levels and are therefore greatly threatened. Impacts on people The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2001 that small island countries will experience considerable economic and social consequences due to climate change.A study that engaged the experiences of residents in atoll communities found that the cultural identities of these populations are strongly tied to these lands. Human rights activists argue that the potential loss of entire atoll countries, and consequently the loss of national sovereignty, self-determination, cultures, and indigenous lifestyles cannot be compensated for financially. Some researchers suggest that the focus of international dialogues on these issues should shift from ways to relocate entire communities to strategies that instead allow for these communities to remain on their lands. Agriculture and fisheries Climate change poses a risk to food security in many Pacific Islands, impacting fisheries and agriculture. As sea level rises, island nations are at increased risk of losing coastal arable land to degradation as well as salination. Once the limited available soil on these islands becomes salinated, it becomes very difficult to produce subsistence crops such as breadfruit. This would severely impact the agricultural and commercial sector in nations such as the Marshall Islands and Kiribati.In addition, local fisheries would also be affected by higher ocean temperatures and increased ocean acidification. As ocean temperatures rise and the pH of oceans decreases, many fish and other marine species would die out or change their habits and range. As well as this, water supplies and local ecosystems such as mangroves, are threatened by global warming. Economic impacts SIDS may also have reduced financial and human capital to mitigate climate change risk, as many rely on international aid to cope with disasters like severe storms. Worldwide, climate change is projected to have an average annual loss of 0.5% GDP by 2030; in Pacific SIDS, it will be 0.75–6.5% GDP by 2030. Caribbean SIDS will have average annual losses of 5% by 2025, escalating to 20% by 2100 in projections without regional mitigation strategies. The tourism sector of many island countries is particularly threatened by increased occurrences of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts. Public health Climate change impacts small island ecosystems in ways that have a detrimental effect on public health. In island nations, changes in sea levels, temperature, and humidity may increase the prevalence of mosquitoes and diseases carried by them such as malaria and Zika virus. Rising sea levels and severe weather such as flooding and droughts may render agricultural land unusable and contaminate freshwater drinking supplies. Flooding and rising sea levels also directly threaten populations, and in some cases may be a threat to the entire existence of the island. Mitigation and adaptation Relocation and migration Climate migration has been discussed in popular media as a potential adaptation approach for the populations of islands threatened by sea level rise. A 2015 review in Climatic Change found that these depictions are often sensationalist or problematic, although migration may likely form a part of adaptation. Mobility has long been a part of life in islands, but could be used in combination with local adaptation measures. Climate resilient economies Many SIDS now understand the need to move towards low-carbon, climate resilient economies, as set out in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) implementation plan for climate change-resilient development. SIDS often rely heavily on imported fossil fuels, spending an ever-larger proportion of their GDP on energy imports. Renewable technologies have the advantage of providing energy at a lower cost than fossil fuels and making SIDS more sustainable. Barbados has been successful in adopting the use of solar water heaters (SWHs). A 2012 report published by the Climate & Development Knowledge Network showed that its SWH industry now boasts over 50,000 installations. These have saved consumers as much as US$137 million since the early 1970s. The report suggested that Barbados' experience could be easily replicated in other SIDS with high fossil fuel imports and abundant sunshine. International cooperation The governments of several island nations have made political advocacy for greater international ambition on climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation a component of their foreign policy and international alliances. The Alliance of Small Island States (ASIS) have had some sway in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 43 members of the alliance have held the position of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and advocated for this at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, influencing the goals of the Paris Agreement. Marshall Islands Prime Minister Tony deBrum was central in forming the High Ambition Coalition at the conference. Meetings of the Pacific Islands Forum have also discussed the issue.The Maldives and Tuvalu particularly have played a prominent role on the international stage. In 2002, Tuvalu threatened to sue the United States and Australia in the International Court of Justice for their contribution to climate change and for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The governments of both of these countries have cooperated with environmental advocacy networks, non-governmental organisations and the media to draw attention to the threat of climate change to their countries. At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Tuvalu delegate Ian Fry spearheaded an effort to halt negotiations and demand a comprehensive, legally binding agreement. By country and region Caribbean East Timor East Timor's agriculture and food security is threatened by climate change. Sea level rise also threatens its coastal areas, including capital city Dili. Maldives Pacific islands Fiji Kiribati The existence of the nation of Kiribati is imperilled by rising sea levels, with the country losing land every year. Many of its islands are currently or becoming inhabitable due to their shrinking size. Thus, the majority of the country's population resides in only a handful of islands, with more than half of its residents living on one island alone, Tarawa. This leads to other issues such as severe overcrowding in such a small area. In 1999, the uninhabited islands of Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea both disappeared underwater. The government's Kiribati Adaptation Program was launched in 2003 to mitigate the country's vulnerability to the issue. In 2008, fresh water supplies began being encroached by seawater, prompting President Anote Tong to request international assistance to begin relocating the country's population elsewhere. Marshall Islands Palau Solomon Islands Between 1947 and 2014, six islands of the Solomon Islands disappeared due to sea level rise, while another six shrunk by between 20 and 62 per cent. Nuatambu Island was the most populated of these with 25 families living on it; 11 houses washed into the sea by 2011.The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that the climate crisis has worsened human rights conditions in the Solomon Islands greatly (5.0 out of 6). Human rights experts provided that the climate crisis has contributed to conflict in communities, negative future socio-economic outlook, and food instability. Tuvalu Tuvalu is a small Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean. It can be found about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. It is made up of nine tiny islands, five of which are coral atolls while the other four consists of land rising from the sea bed. All are low-lying islands with no point on Tuvalu being higher than 4.5m above sea level. Beside Funafuti, the capital of Tuvalu, sea-level rise is estimated at 1.2 ± 0.8 mm/year. As well as this, the dangerous peak high tides in Tuvalu are becoming higher causing greater danger. In response to sea level rise, Tuvalu is considering resettlement plans in addition to pushing for increased action in confronting climate change at the UN. São Tomé and Príncipe Seychelles In the Seychelles, the impacts of climate change were observable in precipitation, air temperature and sea surface temperature by the early 2000s. Climate change poses a threat to its coral reef ecosystems, with drought conditions in 1999 and a mass bleaching event in 1998. Water management will be critically impacted. Singapore See also Alliance of Small Island States Climate change in the Caribbean Small Island Developing States Islands First Majuro Declaration Ambo Declaration Tarawa Climate Change Conference References Further reading Thomas, Adelle; Baptiste, April; Martyr-Koller, Rosanne; Pringle, Patrick; Rhiney, Kevon (17 October 2020). "Climate Change and Small Island Developing States". Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 45 (1): 1–27. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-012320-083355. ISSN 1543-5938. Betzold, Carola (1 December 2015). "Adapting to climate change in small island developing states". Climatic Change. 133 (3): 481–489. Bibcode:2015ClCh..133..481B. doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1408-0. ISSN 1573-1480. S2CID 153937782. External links Small Islands - IPCC

2009 united nations climate change conference

The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 and 18 December. The conference included the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 5th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol. According to the Bali Road Map, a framework for climate change mitigation beyond 2012 was to be agreed there.On Friday 18 December, the final day of the conference, international media reported that the climate talks were "in disarray". Media also reported that in lieu of a summit collapse, only a "weak political statement" was anticipated at the conclusion of the conference. The Copenhagen Accord was drafted by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa on 18 December, and judged a "meaningful agreement" by the United States government. It was "taken note of", but not "adopted", in a debate of all the participating countries the next day, and it was not passed unanimously. The document recognised that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the present day and that actions should be taken to keep any temperature increases to below 2 °C. The document is not legally binding and does not contain any legally binding commitments for reducing CO2 emissions. Background and lead-up The conference was preceded by the Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions scientific conference, which took place in March 2009 and was also held at the Bella Center. The negotiations began to take a new format when in May 2009 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon attended the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, organised by the Copenhagen Climate Council (COC), where he requested that COC councillors attend New York's Climate Week at the Summit on Climate Change on 22 September and engage with heads of government on the topic of the climate problem. Negotiating position of the European Union On 28 January 2009, the European Commission released a position paper, "Towards a comprehensive climate agreement in Copenhagen." The position paper "addresses three key challenges: targets and actions; financing [of "low-carbon development and adaptation"]; and building an effective global carbon market".Leading by example, the European Union had committed to implementing binding legislation, even without a satisfactory deal in Copenhagen. Last December, the European Union revised its carbon allowances system called the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) designed for the post-Kyoto period (after 2013). This new stage of the system aims at further reducing greenhouse gases emitted in Europe in a binding way and at showing the commitments the EU had already done before the Copenhagen meeting. To avoid carbon leakage—relocation of companies in other regions not complying with similar legislation—the EU Commission will foresee that sectors exposed to international competition, should be granted some free allocations of CO2 emissions provided that they are at least at the same level of a benchmark. Other sectors should buy such credits on an international market. Energy intensive industries in Europe have advocated for this benchmark system in order to keep funds in investment capacities for low carbon products rather than for speculations. The European chemical industry claims here the need to be closer to the needs of citizens in a sustainable way. To comply with such commitments for a low-carbon economy, this requires competitiveness and innovations.The French Minister for Ecology Jean-Louis Borloo pushes the creation of the "Global Environment Organisation" as France's main institutional contribution, to offer a powerful alternative to the UNEP. Official pre-Copenhagen negotiation meetings A draft negotiating text for finalisation at Copenhagen was publicly released. It was discussed at a series of meetings before Copenhagen. Bonn – second negotiating meeting Delegates from 183 countries met in Bonn from 1 to 12 June 2009. The purpose was to discuss key negotiating texts. These served as the basis for the international climate change agreement at Copenhagen. At the conclusion the Ad Hoc Working Group under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) negotiating group was still far away from the emission reduction range that has been set out by science to avoid the worst ravages of climate change: a minus 25% to minus 40% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020. The AWG-KP still needs to decide on the aggregate emission reduction target for industrialised countries, along with individual targets for each country. Progress was made in gaining clarification of the issues of concern to parties and including these concerns in the updated draft of the negotiating text. Seventh session Bangkok The first part of the seventh session of the AWG-LCA was held in Bangkok, Thailand, from Monday, 28 September until 9 October, at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Bangkok, Thailand. Barcelona The resumed session was held in Barcelona, Spain, from 2 to 6 November 2009. Thereafter, the AWG-LCA met to conclude its work at its eighth session, concurrently with the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties which opened in Copenhagen on 7 December 2009. Listing of proposed actions During the conference some countries stated what actions they were proposing to take if a binding agreement was achieved. In the end, no such agreement was reached and the actions will instead be debated in 2010. Listing by country or political union. Sections in alphabetic order, table according to higher objectives. Australia To cut carbon emissions by 25% below 2000 levels by 2020 if the world agrees to an ambitious global deal to stabilise levels of CO2e to 450 ppm or lower. To cut carbon emissions by 15% below 2000 levels by 2020 if there is an agreement where major developing economies commit to substantially restrain emissions and advanced economies take on commitments comparable to Australia.To cut carbon emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020 unconditionally.It is clearly stated in proceedings from the Australian Senate and policy statements from the government that the Australian emission reductions include land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) with the form of inclusion remaining undecided and whilst acknowledging that they are subject to the forming of accounting guidelines from this Copenhagen conference. In contention is the Australian Government's preference for the removal of non-human induced LULUCF emissions – and perhaps their abatement – from the account, such as from lightning induced bushfires and the subsequent natural carbon sequestering regrowth.Using Kyoto accounting guidelines, these proposals are equivalent to an emissions cut of 24%, 14% and 4% below 1990 levels by 2020 respectively. Raw use of UNFCCC CO2e data including LULUCF as defined during the conference by the UNFCCC for the years 2000 (404.392 Tg CO2e) and 1990 (453.794 Tg CO2e) leads to apparent emissions cuts of 33% (303.294 Tg CO2e), 25% (343.733 Tg CO2e) and 15% (384.172 Tg CO2e) respectively. Brazil To cut emissions by 38–42% below projected 2020 levels (if no action was taken) by the year 2020.This is equivalent to a change to emissions to between 5% above and 1.8% below 1990 levels by 2020. Canada In 2009 the goal was to cut carbon emissions by 20% below 2006 levels by 2020; an equivalent of 3% below 1990 levels by 2020. The goal was later changed in early 2010 to 17% of 2005 levels by 2020; an equivalent of 2.5% above 1990 levels.The three most populous provinces disagree with the federal government goal and announced more ambitious targets on their jurisdictions. Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia announced respectively 20%, 15% and 14% reduction target below their 1990 levels while Alberta is expecting a 58% increase in emissions. People's Republic of China To cut CO2 emissions intensity by 40–45% below 2005 levels by 2020. Costa Rica To become carbon neutral by 2021. European Union To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% (including LULUCF) below 1990 levels by 2020 if an international agreement is reached committing other developed countries and the more advanced developing nations to comparable emission reductions.To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% (excluding LULUCF) below 1990 levels by 2020 unconditionally.Member country Germany has offered to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Iceland To cut carbon emissions by 15% below 1990 levels by 2020. India To cut carbon emissions intensity by 20–25% below 2005 levels by 2020. Indonesia To reduce carbon emissions by 26% by 2020, based on business-as-usual levels. With enhanced international assistance, President of Indonesia Dr. Yudhoyono offered an increased reduction of 41% by 2020, based on business-as-usual levels. Japan To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. Kazakhstan To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15% below 1992 levels by 2020. Liechtenstein To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20–30% below 1990 levels by 2020. Maldives To become carbon neutral by 2019. Mexico To reduce emissions 50% by 2050 below 2000 levels. Monaco To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. New Zealand To reduce emissions between 10% and 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 if a global agreement is secured that limits carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) to 450 ppm and temperature increases to 2 °C, effective rules on forestry, and New Zealand having access to international carbon markets. Norway To reduce carbon emissions by 30% below 1990 levels by 2020.During his speech at the conference, Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg offered a 40% cut in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020 if it could contribute to an agreement. Philippines To reduce emissions 5% below 1990 levels. Russia Prior to the meeting, Russia pledged to reduce emissions between 20% and 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 if a global agreement is reached committing other countries to comparable emission reductions. This target had not been announced to the UNFCCC Secretariat before the COP 15 meeting. In the COP 15 negotiations, Russia only pledged to make a 10% to 15% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, but said that it would reduce emissions by 20% to 25% as part of an agreement on long-term cooperative action. Singapore To reduce emissions by 16% by 2020, based on business-as-usual levels. South Africa To cut emissions by 34% below current expected levels by 2020.This is equivalent to an absolute emissions cut of about 18% below 1990 levels by 2020. South Korea To reduce emissions unilaterally by 4% below 2005 levels by 2020. Switzerland To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20–30% below 1990 levels by 2020. Ukraine To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. United States To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050.Raw use of UNFCCC CO2e data excluding LULUCF as defined during the conference by the UNFCCC for the years 2005 (7802.213 Tg CO2e) and 1990 (6084.490 Tg CO2e) leads to apparent emissions cuts of about 4% (5878.24 Tg CO2e), 33% (4107.68 Tg CO2e) and 80% (1203.98 Tg CO2e) respectively. Technology measures UNEP At the fifth Magdeburg Environmental Forum held from 3 to 4 July 2008, in Magdeburg, Germany, United Nations Environment Programme called for the establishment of infrastructure for electric vehicles. At this international conference, 250 high-ranking representatives from industry, science, politics and non-government organizations discussed solutions for future road transportation under the motto of "Sustainable Mobility– United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009|the Post-2012 CO2 Agenda". Technology Action Programs Technology Action Programs (TAPs) have been proposed as a means for organizing future technology efforts under the UNFCCC. By creating programs for a set of adaptation and mitigation technologies, the UNFCCC would send clear signals to the private and finance sector, governments, research institutions as well as citizens of the world looking for solutions to the climate problem. Potential focus areas for TAPs include early warning systems, expansion of salinity-tolerant crops, electric vehicles, wind and solar energy, efficient energy grid systems, and other technologies.Technology roadmaps will address barriers to technology transfer, cooperative actions on technologies and key economic sectors, and support implementation of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) and National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs). Side Event on Technology Transfer The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) have been assigned the task of co-convening a process to support UN system-wide coherence and international cooperation on climate change-related technology development and transfer. This COP15 Side Event will feature statements and input from the heads of UNDESA, UNDP, GEF, WIPO, UNIDO, UNEP, IRENA as well as the UN Foundation. Relevant topics such as the following will be among the many issues discussed: Technology Needs Assessments (TNA) The Poznan Strategic Programme on Technology Transfer UN-ENERGY Regional Platforms and Renewable Energy Technologies Related public actions The Danish government and key industrial organizations have entered a public-private partnership to promote Danish cleantech solutions. The partnership, Climate Consortium Denmark, is an integrated part of the official portfolio of activities before, during and after the COP15.There is also a European Conference for the Promotion of Local Actions to Combat Climate Change. The entire morning session on 25 September was devoted to the Covenant of Mayors.The Local Government Climate Lounge will be an advocacy and meeting space located directly in the COP 15 building, at the heart of the negotiations. Conference Connie Hedegaard was president of the conference until 16 December 2009, handing over the chair to Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen in the final stretch of the conference, during negotiations between heads of state and government. Activism Some small protests occurred during the first week of the conference. A much larger march was held in Copenhagen on 12 December calling for a global agreement on climate. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people attended. 968 protesters were detained at the event, including 19 who were arrested for carrying pocket knives and wearing masks during the demonstration. Of these all but 13 were released without charge. One police officer was injured by a rock and a protester was injured by fireworks. Some protestors were kettled by police and detained for several hours without access to food, water or toilets, before being arrested and taken to a holding facility on coaches. Activists claimed that the police used wire-taps, undercover officers and pepper spray on people who had been detained. The police said the measures were necessary to deal with organisations such as Never Trust A COP which stated on its website that it would "consciously attack the structures supporting the COP15". Per Larsen, the chief coordinating officer for the Copenhagen police force told The New York Times that it was "surely the biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history."The Climate Justice Action network organised several mass direct actions during the conference, including the 'Reclaim Power' action on 16 December.The Yes Men made a false statement purporting to be from the Canadian environment minister Jim Prentice, which pledged to cut carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The statement was followed by another faked statement from the Ugandan delegation, praising the original pledge and The Yes Men also released a spoof press conference on a fake form of the official website. The statement was written about by The Wall Street Journal before being revealed as a hoax. Jim Prentice described the hoax as "undesirable".Four Greenpeace activists gatecrashed a dinner that heads of states were attending on 18 December. They unfurled banners saying "Politicians talk, leaders act" before being arrested. They were held without charge for almost three weeks and were not questioned by police until two weeks after their arrest. Eventually Greenpeace Nordic was fined 75,000 DKK and activists that participated, including those that planned it, received a suspended sentence (14 days in prison if convicted of a crime again) for falsely representing themselves as police and representatives of state, forging documents and violating the domestic peace. They were acquitted of charges of Lèse-majesté. International activism An estimated 20,000 people took part in a march held in London, one week before the conference started. They called on British leaders to force developed nations to cut their emissions by 40% by 2020 and to provide $150 billion a year by 2020 to assist the world's poorest countries in adapting to climate change.As many as 50,000 people took part in a number of marches in Australia, during the conference, calling for world leaders to create a strong and binding agreement. The largest march took place in Melbourne. Klimaforum09 – People's Climate Summit An alternative conference, Klimaforum09, was attended by about 50,000 people during the conference. Environmental activists from regions of the world most affected by climate change convened at Klimaforum09 with leaders such as Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya, and author Naomi Klein. A People's Declaration was formulated before and during the People's Climate Summit calling for "System change – not climate change" and handed over to the 15th Conference of the Parties at 18 December.SevenMeters, a series of art installations made by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot, was displayed during the COP15 summit. Danish Text A leaked document known as "The Danish Text" has started an argument between developed and developing nations. The document was subtitled as "The Copenhagen Agreement" and proposes measures to keep average global temperature rises to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Developing countries reacted to the document by saying that the developed countries had worked behind closed doors and made an agreement according to their wish without the consent of the developing nations. Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, chairman of the G77, said, "It's an incredibly imbalanced text intended to subvert, absolutely and completely, two years of negotiations. It does not recognize the proposals and the voice of developing countries". A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries showed deep unease over details of the text. "Tuvalu Protocol" The Tuvaluan delegation, led by Ian Fry, played an active role in the Conference, attracting media attention. The country submitted a proposed protocol which would have imposed deeper, legally binding emissions cuts, including on developing nations. The proposal -dubbed by the media and by NGOs as the "Tuvalu Protocol"- was "immediately supported by other small island states, including Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and several African states", but opposed by countries including China, India and Saudi Arabia. The disagreement caused a suspension in negotiations, and prompted supportive campaign groups to "demonstrate[...] outside the meeting in favour of Tuvalu, chanting: 'Tuvalu is the new deal.'" Tuvalu's position was supported by, among others, East Timor, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Vanuatu, and by Papua New Guinean chief negotiator Kevin Conrad. Tuvalu and its representative Ian Fry "were the toast of the thousands of environmentalists at the conference, who held a noisy demonstration in support of the island state's position". In an article entitled "You caused it, you fix it: Tuvalu takes off the gloves", The Sydney Morning Herald noted that, by asking for a protocol that would legally bind developing countries, Tuvalu had "cracked a diplomatic axiom that has prevailed since the UN climate convention came into being in 1992: rich countries caused global warming, and it was their responsibility to fix it". The Economic Times in India noted that the Tuvaluan proposal had " take[n] centre stage", holding up proceedings for two consecutives days until it was rejected due to opposition from larger nations. Australian Senator Christine Milne described Tuvalu as "the mouse that roared" at the Conference. Fry refused to support the final agreement reached by the Conference, describing it as "30 pieces of silver to betray our future and our people", after delivering a final plea in a speech with tears in his eyes, concluding "The fate of my country rests in your hands". His "tear-jerking performance [...] prompted wild applause among the crowded Copenhagen conference floor". Indigenous rights Indigenous rights organization Survival International has raised concerns that some measures to mitigate the problem of climate change affect the survival of tribal people as much as climate change. The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has expressed similar concerns. Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, explains that "projects that victimise the people and harm the environment cannot be promoted or marketed as green projects". Survival International calls attention to the fact that these people, who least contribute to the problem of climate change, are already the most affected by it; and that we must seek solutions that involve indigenous people. Andrew E. Miller, human rights campaigner at Amazon Watch, said, "Many indigenous peoples, understandably, are skeptical that the latest silver bullet is really in their interest. In fact, serious concerns have arisen that implementation of REDD [Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation] could counteract fundamental indigenous rights, in the same way that countless conservation schemes have limited local subsistence activities and led to displacement around the world." Similar criticism came out of the climate justice network Climate Justice Now!. In March 2010, Executive Secretary, Estebancio Castro, of the International Alliance of Indigenous Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests suggested that "indigenous people need recognition of their rights at the local and national level, to be reflected in the negotiating process." Negotiating problems On 16 December, The Guardian reported that the summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy. "We have made no progress" said a source close to the talks. "What people don't realise is that we are now not really ready for the leaders. These talks are now 17 hours late." Negotiators were openly talking of the best possible outcome being a "weak political agreement that would leave no clear way forward to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions". This would mean that negotiations would continue into 2010 increasing the damage done by emissions.On 18 December, the head of the United Nations Environmental Program told the BBC that "the summit as of this morning is a summit in crisis" and that only the arrival of heads of state could bring the summit to a successful conclusion. Head of climate change for WWF in Britain, said that the proposals made so far, especially those from industrialised countries "all far short of what the world needs". Hopenhagen Hopenhagen is a climate change campaign organized by the United Nations and the International Advertising Association to support COP15, – the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009. The creative council was chaired by Bob Isherwood and the ad agencies that created the campaign included Ogilvy & Mather, Euro RSCG, McCann Worldgroup, Draftfcb, Saatchi & Saatchi, Interbrand, Tribal DDB and Digitas. The campaign ran from the web site https://web.archive.org/web/20090718030312/http://www.hopenhagen.org/ where users could sign a petition. Together with The Huffington Post it also included sponsoring of a "Hopenhagen Ambassador", – a citizen journalist selected in a contest.Photographer John Clang was also involved in the campaign. Outcome On 18 December after a day of frantic negotiations between heads of state, it was announced that a "meaningful agreement" had been reached between on one hand the United States and on the other, in a united position as the BASIC countries (China, South Africa, India, and Brazil). An unnamed US government official was reported as saying that the deal was a "historic step forward" but was not enough to prevent dangerous climate change in the future. However, the BBC's environment correspondent said: "While the White House was announcing the agreement, many other – perhaps most other – delegations had not even seen it. A comment from a UK official suggested the text was not yet final and the Bolivian delegation has already complained about the way it was reached – 'anti-democratic, anti-transparent and unacceptable'. With no firm target for limiting the global temperature rise, no commitment to a legal treaty and no target year for peaking emissions, countries most vulnerable to climate impacts have not got the deal they wanted." The use of "meaningful" in the announcement was viewed as being political spin by an editorial in The Guardian.Early on Saturday 19 December, delegates approved a motion to "take note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009". This was due to the opposition of countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela, Sudan and Tuvalu who registered their opposition to both the targets and process by which the Copenhagen Accord was reached. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the US-backed climate deal as an "essential beginning" however debate has remained as to the exact legal nature of the Accord. The Copenhagen Accord recognises the scientific case for keeping temperature rises below 2 °C, but does not contain a baseline for this target, nor commitments for reduced emissions that would be necessary to achieve the target. One part of the agreement pledges US$30 billion to the developing world over the next three years, rising to US$100 billion per year by 2020, to help poor countries adapt to climate change. Earlier proposals, that would have aimed to limit temperature rises to 1.5 °C and cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 were dropped. The Accord also favors developed countries' paying developing countries to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, known as "REDD". The agreement made was non-binding but US President Obama said that countries could show the world their achievements. He said that if they had waited for a binding agreement, no progress would have been made.Many countries and non-governmental organisations were opposed to this agreement, but, throughout 2010, 138 countries had either formally signed on to agreement or signaled they would. Tony Tujan of the IBON Foundation suggests the perceived failure of Copenhagen may prove useful, if it allows people to unravel some of the underlying misconceptions and work towards a new, more holistic view of things. This could help gain the support of developing countries. Malta's Ambassador for Climate Change, Michael Zammit Cutajar, extends this to suggest "the shock has made people more open to dialogue" Reactions Governments US President Barack Obama said that the agreement would need to be built on in the future and that "We've come a long way but we have much further to go." Gregg Easterbrook noted that Obama's speech was exactly what George H W Bush had said after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. However, there had been no progress in regulating greenhouse gases since 1992.Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain said "We have made a start" but that the agreement needed to become legally binding quickly. He accused a small number of nations of holding the Copenhagen talks to ransom. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said "I will not hide my disappointment regarding the non-binding nature of the agreement here." French President Nicolas Sarkozy commented "The text we have is not perfect" however "If we had no deal, that would mean that two countries as important as India and China would be freed from any type of contract."The head of China's delegation said that "The meeting has had a positive result, everyone should be happy." Wen Jiabao, China's premier said that the weak agreement was because of distrust between nations: "To meet the climate change challenge, the international community must strengthen confidence, build consensus, make vigorous efforts and enhance co-operation." India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has been reported as saying, "We can be satisfied that we were able to get our way" and that India had "come out quite well in Copenhagen".Brazil's climate change ambassador called the agreement "disappointing". The head of the G77 group of countries, which actually represents 130 nations, said that the draft text asked African countries to sign a "suicide pact" and that it would "maintain the economic dominance of a few countries". The values the solution was based on were "the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces". Representatives of the Venezuela, and Tuvalu were unhappy with the outcome. Bolivian president, Evo Morales said that, "The meeting has failed. It's unfortunate for the planet. The fault is with the lack of political will by a small group of countries led by the US."John Ashe, the chair of the talks that led to the Kyoto protocol, was also disappointed with the agreement made, stating: "Given where we started and the expectations for this conference, anything less than a legally binding and agreed outcome falls far short of the mark." Non-governmental organizations Rajendra K. Pachauri stated the Copenhagen Accord is "good but not adequate." John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK stated that "The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight ... It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen." According to him "there are too few politicians in this world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self-interest". Nnimmo Bassey, of Friends of the Earth international called the conference "an abject failure". Lydia Baker of Save the Children said that world leaders had "effectively signed a death warrant for many of the world's poorest children. Up to 250,000 children from poor communities could die before the next major meeting in Mexico at the end of next year." Tim Jones, climate policy officer from the World Development Movement said that leaders had "refused to lead and instead sought to bribe and bully developing nations to sign up to the equivalent of a death warrant." "The United Nation’s Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Fifth Emissions Gap report shows there is an urgent need for governments to ramp up their 2020 commitments to cut greenhouse gases if the world is to stay within the global carbon budget needed to keep climate disrupting temperature increases below 20C… "Canada needs to seize these opportunities by committing to ramping up investments in renewable energy to power our homes, buildings and vehicles", said John Bennett, Sierra Club of Canada. Kim Carstensen of the World Wide Fund for Nature stated: "Well-meant but half-hearted pledges to protect our planet from dangerous climate change are simply not sufficient to address a crisis that calls for completely new ways of collaboration across rich and poor countries ... We needed a treaty now and at best, we will be working on one in half a year's time. What we have after two years of negotiation is a half-baked text of unclear substance." Robert Bailey, of Oxfam International, said: "It is too late to save the summit, but it's not too late to save the planet and its people. We have no choice but to forge forward towards a legally binding deal in 2010. This must be a rapid, decisive and ambitious movement, not business as usual." Analysis and aftermath Despite widely held expectations that the Copenhagen summit would produce a legally binding treaty, the conference was plagued by negotiating deadlock and the resulting "Copenhagen Accord" which is not legally enforceable. BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin attributed the failure of the summit to live up to expectations to a number of factors including the recent global recession and conservative domestic pressure in the US and China.Gregg Easterbrook described the Copenhagen Accord as "vague, nonbinding comments about how other people should use less fossil fuel". According to Easterbrook, international climate change negotiations are "complex, expensive and goin' nowhere" and are prone to creating the appearance of action while distracting attention from the lack of real change.In the week following the end of the Copenhagen summit, carbon prices in the EU dropped to a six-month low.The Copenhagen Accord asked countries to submit emissions targets by the end of January 2010, and paves the way for further discussions to occur at the 2010 UN climate change conference in Mexico and the mid-year session in Bonn. By early February, 67 countries had registered their targets. Countries such as India and Association of Island States made clear that they believed that Copenhagen Accord could not replace negotiations within the UNFCCC. Other commentators consider that "the future of the UN's role in international climate deals is now in doubt." Failure blamed on developed countries George Monbiot blamed the failure of the conference to achieve a binding deal on the United States Senate and Barack Obama. By negotiating the Copenhagen Accord with only a select group of nations, most of the UN member states were excluded. If poorer nations did not sign the Accord then they would be unable to access funds from richer nations to help them adapt to climate change. He noted how the British and American governments have both blamed China for the failure of the talks but said that Obama placed China in "an impossible position" – "He demanded concessions while offering nothing." Martin Khor blamed Denmark for convening a meeting of only 26 nations in the final two days of the conference. He says that it undermined the UN's multilateral and democratic process of climate negotiations. It was in these meetings that China vetoed long-term emission-reduction goals for global emissions to decrease by 50%, and developed countries emissions to fall by 80% by 2050 compared to 1990. Khor states that this is when other countries began to blame the failures on China. If China had accepted this, by 2050 their emissions per capita would have had to be around one half to one fifth per capita of those of the United States.According to Kishore Mahbubani, President Obama interrupted a negotiating session to which he had not been invited and began yelling at members of the Chinese delegation, including Premier Wen Jiabao, eliciting an angry response from Xie Zhenhua. White House staffer Alyssa Mastromonaco describes the US delegation including Obama and Clinton, breaking into a "secret" BASIC negotiating session, and the prior confusion over whether the Indian delegation had abandoned the conference. Failure blamed on developing countries The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has reported that India, China and other emerging nations cooperated at Copenhagen to thwart attempts at establishing legally binding targets for carbon emissions, in order to protect their economic growth.UK Climate Change secretary Ed Miliband accused China specifically of sinking an agreement, provoking a counter response from China that British politicians were engaging in a political scheme. Mark Lynas, who was attached to the Maldives delegation, accused China of "sabotaging" the talks and ensuring that Barack Obama would publicly shoulder the blame. The New York Times has quoted Lynas as further commenting: "...the NGO movement is ten years out of date. They’re still arguing for 'climate justice', whatever that means, which is interpreted by the big developing countries like India and China as a right to pollute up to Western levels. To me carbon equity is the logic of mutually assured destruction. I think NGOs are far too soft on the Chinese, given that it’s the world’s biggest polluter, and is the single most important factor in deciding when global emissions will peak, which in turn is the single most important factor in the eventual temperature outcome..."I think the bottom line for China is growth, and given that this growth is mainly based on coal, there is going to have to be much more pressure on China if global emissions are to peak within any reasonable time frame. In Beijing the interests of the Party come first, second and third, and global warming is somewhere further down the list. Growth delivers stability and prosperity, and keeps the party in power."China's Xinhua news agency responded to these allegations by asserting that Premier Wen Jiabao played a sincere, determined and constructive role at the last minute talks in Copenhagen and credited him with playing a key role in the "success" of the conference. However, Wen did not take part in critical closed-door discussions at the end of the conference. According to Wen himself, the Chinese delegation was not informed about the critical discussion.The editorial of The Australian newspaper, blamed African countries for turning Copenhagen into "a platform for demands that the world improve the continent's standard of living" and claimed that "Copenhagen was about old-fashioned anti-Americanism, not the environment".Indian journalist Praful Bidwai puts the blame on both developed and a few developing countries such as India, arguing that the "Copenhagen Accord is an illegitimate, ill-conceived, collusive deal between a handful of countries that are some of the world's greatest present and future emitters." He argues that India's policy is driven by elites determined to maintain high-consumer lifestyles which will have devastating effects for the vast majority of India's poor. Media An article by Gerald Traufetter for Spiegel Online described the Copenhagen summit as a "political disaster," and asserted that the US and China "joined forces to stymie every attempt by European nations to reach agreement." Traufetter's assertion was based on his analysis of "leaked diplomatic cables." An article by Damian Carrington for guardian.co.uk also included an analysis of WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables. According to Carrington, "America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for [the] Copenhagen accord." Academics Benito Müller commented on criticisms of the UNFCCC process. Müller is a programme director at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. In his view, the failure to get a better result at Copenhagen was due to a lack of political will in the months preceding the conference. Walter Russell Mead argues that the conference failed because environmentalists have changed from "Bambi to Godzilla." According to Mead, environmentalist used to represent the skeptical few who made valid arguments against big government programs which tried to impose simple but massive solutions on complex situations. Environmentalists' more recent advocacy for big economic and social intervention against global warming, according to Mead, has made them, "the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats" and thus has lost them the support of a public which is increasingly skeptical of global warming. Emissions reductions A preliminary assessment published in November 2010 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) suggests a possible "emissions gap" between the voluntary pledges made in the Copenhagen Accord and the emissions cuts necessary to have a "likely" (greater than 66% probability) chance of meeting the 2 °C objective.: 10–14  The UNEP assessment takes the 2 °C objective as being measured against the pre-industrial global mean temperature level. To having a likely chance of meeting the 2 °C objective, assessed studies generally indicated the need for global emissions to peak before 2020, with substantial declines in emissions thereafter. US government spying In January 2014, it was revealed that the US government negotiators were in receipt of information during the conference that was being obtained by eavesdropping on meetings and other subterfuge against other conference delegations. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and published by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information, showed how the US National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored communications between countries before and during the conference, in order to provide the US negotiators with advance information about the positions of other parties at the conference.Representatives of other nations involved have reacted angrily. The leaked documents show that the NSA provided US delegates with advance details of the Danish plan to "rescue" the talks should they flounder, and also about China's efforts before the conference to coordinate its position with that of India. Members of the Danish negotiating team said that the US delegation was "peculiarly well-informed" about closed-door discussions that had taken place. "They simply sat back, just as we had feared they would if they knew about our document,""The UN climate talks are supposed to be about building trust – that's been under threat for years because of the US backward position on climate action – these revelations will only crack that trust further," said Meena Raman, of Third World Network. "Fighting climate change is a global struggle, and these revelations clearly show that the US government is more interested in crassly protecting a few vested interests," said Brandon Wu of ActionAid. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, called the spying by the US "insane and disgusting". See also 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference Business action on climate change Climate Change TV Copenhagen Climate Challenge Energy Lobby Global warming controversy Individual and political action on climate change Politics of global warming Post–Kyoto Protocol negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Valby Internment World People's Conference on Climate Change References External links Official website United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations Summit on Climate Change Copenhaguen 2009: UN Chronicle Special Edition COP15 at Curlie Advance version (2009-09-15) of the UN FCCC agreement Climate Action Tracker Klimaforum09 – People's Climate Summit/Klimaforum A People’s Declaration from Klimaforum09 – System change – not climate change!

climate variability and change

Climate variability includes all the variations in the climate that last longer than individual weather events, whereas the term climate change only refers to those variations that persist for a longer period of time, typically decades or more. Climate change may refer to any time in Earth's history, but the term is now commonly used to describe contemporary climate change, often popularly referred to as global warming. Since the Industrial Revolution, the climate has increasingly been affected by human activities.The climate system receives nearly all of its energy from the sun and radiates energy to outer space. The balance of incoming and outgoing energy and the passage of the energy through the climate system is Earth's energy budget. When the incoming energy is greater than the outgoing energy, Earth's energy budget is positive and the climate system is warming. If more energy goes out, the energy budget is negative and Earth experiences cooling. The energy moving through Earth's climate system finds expression in weather, varying on geographic scales and time. Long-term averages and variability of weather in a region constitute the region's climate. Such changes can be the result of "internal variability", when natural processes inherent to the various parts of the climate system alter the distribution of energy. Examples include variability in ocean basins such as the Pacific decadal oscillation and Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Climate variability can also result from external forcing, when events outside of the climate system's components produce changes within the system. Examples include changes in solar output and volcanism. Climate variability has consequences for sea level changes, plant life, and mass extinctions; it also affects human societies. Terminology Climate variability is the term to describe variations in the mean state and other characteristics of climate (such as chances or possibility of extreme weather, etc.) "on all spatial and temporal scales beyond that of individual weather events." Some of the variability does not appear to be caused by known systems and occurs at seemingly random times. Such variability is called random variability or noise. On the other hand, periodic variability occurs relatively regularly and in distinct modes of variability or climate patterns.The term climate change is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change. Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes. Global warming became the dominant popular term in 1988, but within scientific journals global warming refers to surface temperature increases while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas levels affect.A related term, climatic change, was proposed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1966 to encompass all forms of climatic variability on time-scales longer than 10 years, but regardless of cause. During the 1970s, the term climate change replaced climatic change to focus on anthropogenic causes, as it became clear that human activities had a potential to drastically alter the climate. Climate change was incorporated in the title of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate change is now used as both a technical description of the process, as well as a noun used to describe the problem. Causes On the broadest scale, the rate at which energy is received from the Sun and the rate at which it is lost to space determine the equilibrium temperature and climate of Earth. This energy is distributed around the globe by winds, ocean currents, and other mechanisms to affect the climates of different regions.Factors that can shape climate are called climate forcings or "forcing mechanisms". These include processes such as variations in solar radiation, variations in the Earth's orbit, variations in the albedo or reflectivity of the continents, atmosphere, and oceans, mountain-building and continental drift and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. External forcing can be either anthropogenic (e.g. increased emissions of greenhouse gases and dust) or natural (e.g., changes in solar output, the Earth's orbit, volcano eruptions). There are a variety of climate change feedbacks that can either amplify or diminish the initial forcing. There are also key thresholds which when exceeded can produce rapid or irreversible change. Some parts of the climate system, such as the oceans and ice caps, respond more slowly in reaction to climate forcings, while others respond more quickly. An example of fast change is the atmospheric cooling after a volcanic eruption, when volcanic ash reflects sunlight. Thermal expansion of ocean water after atmospheric warming is slow, and can take thousands of years. A combination is also possible, e.g., sudden loss of albedo in the Arctic Ocean as sea ice melts, followed by more gradual thermal expansion of the water. Climate variability can also occur due to internal processes. Internal unforced processes often involve changes in the distribution of energy in the ocean and atmosphere, for instance, changes in the thermohaline circulation. Internal variability Climatic changes due to internal variability sometimes occur in cycles or oscillations. For other types of natural climatic change, we cannot predict when it happens; the change is called random or stochastic. From a climate perspective, the weather can be considered random. If there are little clouds in a particular year, there is an energy imbalance and extra heat can be absorbed by the oceans. Due to climate inertia, this signal can be 'stored' in the ocean and be expressed as variability on longer time scales than the original weather disturbances. If the weather disturbances are completely random, occurring as white noise, the inertia of glaciers or oceans can transform this into climate changes where longer-duration oscillations are also larger oscillations, a phenomenon called red noise. Many climate changes have a random aspect and a cyclical aspect. This behavior is dubbed stochastic resonance. Half of the 2021 Nobel prize on physics was awarded for this work to Klaus Hasselmann jointly with Syukuro Manabe for related work on climate modelling. While Giorgio Parisi who with collaborators introduced the concept of stochastic resonance was awarded the other half but mainly for work on theoretical physics. Ocean-atmosphere variability The ocean and atmosphere can work together to spontaneously generate internal climate variability that can persist for years to decades at a time. These variations can affect global average surface temperature by redistributing heat between the deep ocean and the atmosphere and/or by altering the cloud/water vapor/sea ice distribution which can affect the total energy budget of the Earth. Oscillations and cycles A climate oscillation or climate cycle is any recurring cyclical oscillation within global or regional climate. They are quasiperiodic (not perfectly periodic), so a Fourier analysis of the data does not have sharp peaks in the spectrum. Many oscillations on different time-scales have been found or hypothesized: the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – A large scale pattern of warmer (El Niño) and colder (La Niña) tropical sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean with worldwide effects. It is a self-sustaining oscillation, whose mechanisms are well-studied. ENSO is the most prominent known source of inter-annual variability in weather and climate around the world. The cycle occurs every two to seven years, with El Niño lasting nine months to two years within the longer term cycle. The cold tongue of the equatorial Pacific Ocean is not warming as fast as the rest of the ocean, due to increased upwelling of cold waters off the west coast of South America. the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) – An eastward moving pattern of increased rainfall over the tropics with a period of 30 to 60 days, observed mainly over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) – Indices of the NAO are based on the difference of normalized sea-level pressure (SLP) between Ponta Delgada, Azores and Stykkishólmur/Reykjavík, Iceland. Positive values of the index indicate stronger-than-average westerlies over the middle latitudes. the Quasi-biennial oscillation – a well-understood oscillation in wind patterns in the stratosphere around the equator. Over a period of 28 months the dominant wind changes from easterly to westerly and back. Pacific Centennial Oscillation - a climate oscillation predicted by some climate models the Pacific decadal oscillation – The dominant pattern of sea surface variability in the North Pacific on a decadal scale. During a "warm", or "positive", phase, the west Pacific becomes cool and part of the eastern ocean warms; during a "cool" or "negative" phase, the opposite pattern occurs. It is thought not as a single phenomenon, but instead a combination of different physical processes. the Interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO) – Basin wide variability in the Pacific Ocean with a period between 20 and 30 years. the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation – A pattern of variability in the North Atlantic of about 55 to 70 years, with effects on rainfall, droughts and hurricane frequency and intensity. North African climate cycles – climate variation driven by the North African Monsoon, with a period of tens of thousands of years. the Arctic oscillation (AO) and Antarctic oscillation (AAO) – The annular modes are naturally occurring, hemispheric-wide patterns of climate variability. On timescales of weeks to months they explain 20-30% of the variability in their respective hemispheres. The Northern Annular Mode or Arctic oscillation (AO) in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Southern Annular Mode or Antarctic oscillation (AAO) in the southern hemisphere. The annular modes have a strong influence on the temperature and precipitation of mid-to-high latitude land masses, such as Europe and Australia, by altering the average paths of storms. The NAO can be considered a regional index of the AO/NAM. They are defined as the first EOF of sea level pressure or geopotential height from 20°N to 90°N (NAM) or 20°S to 90°S (SAM). Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles – occurring on roughly 1,500-year cycles during the Last Glacial Maximum Ocean current changes The oceanic aspects of climate variability can generate variability on centennial timescales due to the ocean having hundreds of times more mass than in the atmosphere, and thus very high thermal inertia. For example, alterations to ocean processes such as thermohaline circulation play a key role in redistributing heat in the world's oceans. Ocean currents transport a lot of energy from the warm tropical regions to the colder polar regions. Changes occurring around the last ice age (in technical terms, the last glacial) show that the circulation is the North Atlantic can change suddenly and substantially, leading to global climate changes, even though the total amount of energy coming into the climate system didn't change much. These large changes may have come from so called Heinrich events where internal instability of ice sheets caused huge ice bergs to be released into the ocean. When the ice sheet melts, the resulting water is very low in salt and cold, driving changes in circulation. Life Life affects climate through its role in the carbon and water cycles and through such mechanisms as albedo, evapotranspiration, cloud formation, and weathering. Examples of how life may have affected past climate include: glaciation 2.3 billion years ago triggered by the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, which depleted the atmosphere of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and introduced free oxygen another glaciation 300 million years ago ushered in by long-term burial of decomposition-resistant detritus of vascular land-plants (creating a carbon sink and forming coal) termination of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago by flourishing marine phytoplankton reversal of global warming 49 million years ago by 800,000 years of arctic azolla blooms global cooling over the past 40 million years driven by the expansion of grass-grazer ecosystems External climate forcing Greenhouse gases Whereas greenhouse gases released by the biosphere is often seen as a feedback or internal climate process, greenhouse gases emitted from volcanoes are typically classified as external by climatologists. Greenhouse gases, such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, heat the climate system by trapping infrared light. Volcanoes are also part of the extended carbon cycle. Over very long (geological) time periods, they release carbon dioxide from the Earth's crust and mantle, counteracting the uptake by sedimentary rocks and other geological carbon dioxide sinks. Since the industrial revolution, humanity has been adding to greenhouse gases by emitting CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, changing land use through deforestation, and has further altered the climate with aerosols (particulate matter in the atmosphere), release of trace gases (e.g. nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, or methane). Other factors, including land use, ozone depletion, animal husbandry (ruminant animals such as cattle produce methane), and deforestation, also play a role.The US Geological Survey estimates are that volcanic emissions are at a much lower level than the effects of current human activities, which generate 100–300 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes. The annual amount put out by human activities may be greater than the amount released by supereruptions, the most recent of which was the Toba eruption in Indonesia 74,000 years ago. Orbital variations Slight variations in Earth's motion lead to changes in the seasonal distribution of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface and how it is distributed across the globe. There is very little change to the area-averaged annually averaged sunshine; but there can be strong changes in the geographical and seasonal distribution. The three types of kinematic change are variations in Earth's eccentricity, changes in the tilt angle of Earth's axis of rotation, and precession of Earth's axis. Combined, these produce Milankovitch cycles which affect climate and are notable for their correlation to glacial and interglacial periods, their correlation with the advance and retreat of the Sahara, and for their appearance in the stratigraphic record.During the glacial cycles, there was a high correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperatures. Early studies indicated that CO2 concentrations lagged temperatures, but it has become clear that this isn't always the case. When ocean temperatures increase, the solubility of CO2 decreases so that it is released from the ocean. The exchange of CO2 between the air and the ocean can also be impacted by further aspects of climatic change. These and other self-reinforcing processes allow small changes in Earth's motion to have a large effect on climate. Solar output The Sun is the predominant source of energy input to the Earth's climate system. Other sources include geothermal energy from the Earth's core, tidal energy from the Moon and heat from the decay of radioactive compounds. Both long term variations in solar intensity are known to affect global climate. Solar output varies on shorter time scales, including the 11-year solar cycle and longer-term modulations. Correlation between sunspots and climate and tenuous at best.Three to four billion years ago, the Sun emitted only 75% as much power as it does today. If the atmospheric composition had been the same as today, liquid water should not have existed on the Earth's surface. However, there is evidence for the presence of water on the early Earth, in the Hadean and Archean eons, leading to what is known as the faint young Sun paradox. Hypothesized solutions to this paradox include a vastly different atmosphere, with much higher concentrations of greenhouse gases than currently exist. Over the following approximately 4 billion years, the energy output of the Sun increased. Over the next five billion years, the Sun's ultimate death as it becomes a red giant and then a white dwarf will have large effects on climate, with the red giant phase possibly ending any life on Earth that survives until that time. Volcanism The volcanic eruptions considered to be large enough to affect the Earth's climate on a scale of more than 1 year are the ones that inject over 100,000 tons of SO2 into the stratosphere. This is due to the optical properties of SO2 and sulfate aerosols, which strongly absorb or scatter solar radiation, creating a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. On average, such eruptions occur several times per century, and cause cooling (by partially blocking the transmission of solar radiation to the Earth's surface) for a period of several years. Although volcanoes are technically part of the lithosphere, which itself is part of the climate system, the IPCC explicitly defines volcanism as an external forcing agent.Notable eruptions in the historical records are the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo which lowered global temperatures by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) for up to three years, and the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora causing the Year Without a Summer.At a larger scale—a few times every 50 million to 100 million years—the eruption of large igneous provinces brings large quantities of igneous rock from the mantle and lithosphere to the Earth's surface. Carbon dioxide in the rock is then released into the atmosphere. Small eruptions, with injections of less than 0.1 Mt of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, affect the atmosphere only subtly, as temperature changes are comparable with natural variability. However, because smaller eruptions occur at a much higher frequency, they too significantly affect Earth's atmosphere. Plate tectonics Over the course of millions of years, the motion of tectonic plates reconfigures global land and ocean areas and generates topography. This can affect both global and local patterns of climate and atmosphere-ocean circulation.The position of the continents determines the geometry of the oceans and therefore influences patterns of ocean circulation. The locations of the seas are important in controlling the transfer of heat and moisture across the globe, and therefore, in determining global climate. A recent example of tectonic control on ocean circulation is the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 5 million years ago, which shut off direct mixing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This strongly affected the ocean dynamics of what is now the Gulf Stream and may have led to Northern Hemisphere ice cover. During the Carboniferous period, about 300 to 360 million years ago, plate tectonics may have triggered large-scale storage of carbon and increased glaciation. Geologic evidence points to a "megamonsoonal" circulation pattern during the time of the supercontinent Pangaea, and climate modeling suggests that the existence of the supercontinent was conducive to the establishment of monsoons.The size of continents is also important. Because of the stabilizing effect of the oceans on temperature, yearly temperature variations are generally lower in coastal areas than they are inland. A larger supercontinent will therefore have more area in which climate is strongly seasonal than will several smaller continents or islands. Other mechanisms It has been postulated that ionized particles known as cosmic rays could impact cloud cover and thereby the climate. As the sun shields the Earth from these particles, changes in solar activity were hypothesized to influence climate indirectly as well. To test the hypothesis, CERN designed the CLOUD experiment, which showed the effect of cosmic rays is too weak to influence climate noticeably.Evidence exists that the Chicxulub asteroid impact some 66 million years ago had severely affected the Earth's climate. Large quantities of sulfate aerosols were kicked up into the atmosphere, decreasing global temperatures by up to 26 °C and producing sub-freezing temperatures for a period of 3–16 years. The recovery time for this event took more than 30 years. The large-scale use of nuclear weapons has also been investigated for its impact on the climate. The hypothesis is that soot released by large-scale fires blocks a significant fraction of sunlight for as much as a year, leading to a sharp drop in temperatures for a few years. This possible event is described as nuclear winter.Humans' use of land impact how much sunlight the surface reflects and the concentration of dust. Cloud formation is not only influenced by how much water is in the air and the temperature, but also by the amount of aerosols in the air such as dust. Globally, more dust is available if there are many regions with dry soils, little vegetation and strong winds. Evidence and measurement of climate changes Paleoclimatology is the study of changes in climate through the entire history of Earth. It uses a variety of proxy methods from the Earth and life sciences to obtain data preserved within things such as rocks, sediments, ice sheets, tree rings, corals, shells, and microfossils. It then uses the records to determine the past states of the Earth's various climate regions and its atmospheric system. Direct measurements give a more complete overview of climate variability. Direct measurements Climate changes that occurred after the widespread deployment of measuring devices can be observed directly. Reasonably complete global records of surface temperature are available beginning from the mid-late 19th century. Further observations are derived indirectly from historical documents. Satellite cloud and precipitation data has been available since the 1970s.Historical climatology is the study of historical changes in climate and their effect on human history and development. The primary sources include written records such as sagas, chronicles, maps and local history literature as well as pictorial representations such as paintings, drawings and even rock art. Climate variability in the recent past may be derived from changes in settlement and agricultural patterns. Archaeological evidence, oral history and historical documents can offer insights into past changes in the climate. Changes in climate have been linked to the rise and the collapse of various civilizations. Proxy measurements Various archives of past climate are present in rocks, trees and fossils. From these archives, indirect measures of climate, so-called proxies, can be derived. Quantification of climatological variation of precipitation in prior centuries and epochs is less complete but approximated using proxies such as marine sediments, ice cores, cave stalagmites, and tree rings. Stress, too little precipitation or unsuitable temperatures, can alter the growth rate of trees, which allows scientists to infer climate trends by analyzing the growth rate of tree rings. This branch of science studying this called dendroclimatology. Glaciers leave behind moraines that contain a wealth of material—including organic matter, quartz, and potassium that may be dated—recording the periods in which a glacier advanced and retreated. Analysis of ice in cores drilled from an ice sheet such as the Antarctic ice sheet, can be used to show a link between temperature and global sea level variations. The air trapped in bubbles in the ice can also reveal the CO2 variations of the atmosphere from the distant past, well before modern environmental influences. The study of these ice cores has been a significant indicator of the changes in CO2 over many millennia, and continues to provide valuable information about the differences between ancient and modern atmospheric conditions. The 18O/16O ratio in calcite and ice core samples used to deduce ocean temperature in the distant past is an example of a temperature proxy method. The remnants of plants, and specifically pollen, are also used to study climatic change. Plant distributions vary under different climate conditions. Different groups of plants have pollen with distinctive shapes and surface textures, and since the outer surface of pollen is composed of a very resilient material, they resist decay. Changes in the type of pollen found in different layers of sediment indicate changes in plant communities. These changes are often a sign of a changing climate. As an example, pollen studies have been used to track changing vegetation patterns throughout the Quaternary glaciations and especially since the last glacial maximum. Remains of beetles are common in freshwater and land sediments. Different species of beetles tend to be found under different climatic conditions. Given the extensive lineage of beetles whose genetic makeup has not altered significantly over the millennia, knowledge of the present climatic range of the different species, and the age of the sediments in which remains are found, past climatic conditions may be inferred. Analysis and uncertainties One difficulty in detecting climate cycles is that the Earth's climate has been changing in non-cyclic ways over most paleoclimatological timescales. Currently we are in a period of anthropogenic global warming. In a larger timeframe, the Earth is emerging from the latest ice age, cooling from the Holocene climatic optimum and warming from the "Little Ice Age", which means that climate has been constantly changing over the last 15,000 years or so. During warm periods, temperature fluctuations are often of a lesser amplitude. The Pleistocene period, dominated by repeated glaciations, developed out of more stable conditions in the Miocene and Pliocene climate. Holocene climate has been relatively stable. All of these changes complicate the task of looking for cyclical behavior in the climate. Positive feedback, negative feedback, and ecological inertia from the land-ocean-atmosphere system often attenuate or reverse smaller effects, whether from orbital forcings, solar variations or changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases. Certain feedbacks involving processes such as clouds are also uncertain; for contrails, natural cirrus clouds, oceanic dimethyl sulfide and a land-based equivalent, competing theories exist concerning effects on climatic temperatures, for example contrasting the Iris hypothesis and CLAW hypothesis. Impacts Life Vegetation A change in the type, distribution and coverage of vegetation may occur given a change in the climate. Some changes in climate may result in increased precipitation and warmth, resulting in improved plant growth and the subsequent sequestration of airborne CO2. The effects are expected to affect the rate of many natural cycles like plant litter decomposition rates. A gradual increase in warmth in a region will lead to earlier flowering and fruiting times, driving a change in the timing of life cycles of dependent organisms. Conversely, cold will cause plant bio-cycles to lag.Larger, faster or more radical changes, however, may result in vegetation stress, rapid plant loss and desertification in certain circumstances. An example of this occurred during the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse (CRC), an extinction event 300 million years ago. At this time vast rainforests covered the equatorial region of Europe and America. Climate change devastated these tropical rainforests, abruptly fragmenting the habitat into isolated 'islands' and causing the extinction of many plant and animal species. Wildlife One of the most important ways animals can deal with climatic change is migration to warmer or colder regions. On a longer timescale, evolution makes ecosystems including animals better adapted to a new climate. Rapid or large climate change can cause mass extinctions when creatures are stretched too far to be able to adapt. Humanity Collapses of past civilizations such as the Maya may be related to cycles of precipitation, especially drought, that in this example also correlates to the Western Hemisphere Warm Pool. Around 70 000 years ago the Toba supervolcano eruption created an especially cold period during the ice age, leading to a possible genetic bottleneck in human populations. Changes in the cryosphere Glaciers and ice sheets Glaciers are considered among the most sensitive indicators of a changing climate. Their size is determined by a mass balance between snow input and melt output. As temperatures increase, glaciers retreat unless snow precipitation increases to make up for the additional melt. Glaciers grow and shrink due both to natural variability and external forcings. Variability in temperature, precipitation and hydrology can strongly determine the evolution of a glacier in a particular season. The most significant climate processes since the middle to late Pliocene (approximately 3 million years ago) are the glacial and interglacial cycles. The present interglacial period (the Holocene) has lasted about 11,700 years. Shaped by orbital variations, responses such as the rise and fall of continental ice sheets and significant sea-level changes helped create the climate. Other changes, including Heinrich events, Dansgaard–Oeschger events and the Younger Dryas, however, illustrate how glacial variations may also influence climate without the orbital forcing. Sea level change During the Last Glacial Maximum, some 25,000 years ago, sea levels were roughly 130 m lower than today. The deglaciation afterwards was characterized by rapid sea level change. In the early Pliocene, global temperatures were 1–2˚C warmer than the present temperature, yet sea level was 15–25 meters higher than today. Sea ice Sea ice plays an important role in Earth's climate as it affects the total amount of sunlight that is reflected away from the Earth. In the past, the Earth's oceans have been almost entirely covered by sea ice on a number of occasions, when the Earth was in a so-called Snowball Earth state, and completely ice-free in periods of warm climate. When there is a lot of sea ice present globally, especially in the tropics and subtropics, the climate is more sensitive to forcings as the ice–albedo feedback is very strong. Climate history Various climate forcings are typically in flux throughout geologic time, and some processes of the Earth's temperature may be self-regulating. For example, during the Snowball Earth period, large glacial ice sheets spanned to Earth's equator, covering nearly its entire surface, and very high albedo created extremely low temperatures, while the accumulation of snow and ice likely removed carbon dioxide through atmospheric deposition. However, the absence of plant cover to absorb atmospheric CO2 emitted by volcanoes meant that the greenhouse gas could accumulate in the atmosphere. There was also an absence of exposed silicate rocks, which use CO2 when they undergo weathering. This created a warming that later melted the ice and brought Earth's temperature back up. Paleo-eocene thermal maximum The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a time period with more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event. This climate event occurred at the time boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene geological epochs. During the event large amounts of methane was released, a potent greenhouse gas. The PETM represents a "case study" for modern climate change as in the greenhouse gases were released in a geologically relatively short amount of time. During the PETM, a mass extinction of organisms in the deep ocean took place. The Cenozoic Throughout the Cenozoic, multiple climate forcings led to warming and cooling of the atmosphere, which led to the early formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, subsequent melting, and its later reglaciation. The temperature changes occurred somewhat suddenly, at carbon dioxide concentrations of about 600–760 ppm and temperatures approximately 4 °C warmer than today. During the Pleistocene, cycles of glaciations and interglacials occurred on cycles of roughly 100,000 years, but may stay longer within an interglacial when orbital eccentricity approaches zero, as during the current interglacial. Previous interglacials such as the Eemian phase created temperatures higher than today, higher sea levels, and some partial melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Climatological temperatures substantially affect cloud cover and precipitation. At lower temperatures, air can hold less water vapour, which can lead to decreased precipitation. During the Last Glacial Maximum of 18,000 years ago, thermal-driven evaporation from the oceans onto continental landmasses was low, causing large areas of extreme desert, including polar deserts (cold but with low rates of cloud cover and precipitation). In contrast, the world's climate was cloudier and wetter than today near the start of the warm Atlantic Period of 8000 years ago. The Holocene The Holocene is characterized by a long-term cooling starting after the Holocene Optimum, when temperatures were probably only just below current temperatures (second decade of the 21st century), and a strong African Monsoon created grassland conditions in the Sahara during the Neolithic Subpluvial. Since that time, several cooling events have occurred, including: the Piora Oscillation the Middle Bronze Age Cold Epoch the Iron Age Cold Epoch the Little Ice Age the phase of cooling c. 1940–1970, which led to global cooling hypothesisIn contrast, several warm periods have also taken place, and they include but are not limited to: a warm period during the apex of the Minoan civilization the Roman Warm Period the Medieval Warm Period Modern warming during the 20th centuryCertain effects have occurred during these cycles. For example, during the Medieval Warm Period, the American Midwest was in drought, including the Sand Hills of Nebraska which were active sand dunes. The black death plague of Yersinia pestis also occurred during Medieval temperature fluctuations, and may be related to changing climates. Solar activity may have contributed to part of the modern warming that peaked in the 1930s. However, solar cycles fail to account for warming observed since the 1980s to the present day. Events such as the opening of the Northwest Passage and recent record low ice minima of the modern Arctic shrinkage have not taken place for at least several centuries, as early explorers were all unable to make an Arctic crossing, even in summer. Shifts in biomes and habitat ranges are also unprecedented, occurring at rates that do not coincide with known climate oscillations. Modern climate change and global warming As a consequence of humans emitting greenhouse gases, global surface temperatures have started rising. Global warming is an aspect of modern climate change, a term that also includes the observed changes in precipitation, storm tracks and cloudiness. As a consequence, glaciers worldwide have been found to be shrinking significantly. Land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland have been losing mass since 2002 and have seen an acceleration of ice mass loss since 2009. Global sea levels have been rising as a consequence of thermal expansion and ice melt. The decline in Arctic sea ice, both in extent and thickness, over the last several decades is further evidence for rapid climate change. Variability between regions In addition to global climate variability and global climate change over time, numerous climatic variations occur contemporaneously across different physical regions. The oceans' absorption of about 90% of excess heat has helped to cause land surface temperatures to grow more rapidly than sea surface temperatures. The Northern Hemisphere, having a larger landmass-to-ocean ratio than the Southern Hemisphere, shows greater average temperature increases. Variations across different latitude bands also reflect this divergence in average temperature increase, with the temperature increase of northern extratropics exceeding that of the tropics, which in turn exceeds that of the southern extratropics.Upper regions of the atmosphere have been cooling contemporaneously with a warming in the lower atmosphere, confirming the action of the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion.Observed regional climatic variations confirm predictions concerning ongoing changes, for example, by contrasting (smoother) year-to-year global variations with (more volatile) year-to-year variations in localized regions. Conversely, comparing different regions' warming patterns to their respective historical variabilities, allows the raw magnitudes of temperature changes to be placed in the perspective of what is normal variability for each region.Regional variability observations permit study of regionalized climate tipping points such as rainforest loss, ice sheet and sea ice melt, and permafrost thawing. Such distinctions underlie research into a possible global cascade of tipping points. See also Climatological normal Anthropocene Notes References Cronin, Thomas N. (2010). Paleoclimates: understanding climate change past and present. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14494-0. IPCC (2007). Solomon, S.; Qin, D.; Manning, M.; Chen, Z.; et al. (eds.). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (PDF). Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-88009-1. (pb: 978-0-521-70596-7). IPCC (2008). The Core Writing Team; Pachauri, R.K.; Reisinger, A.R. (eds.). Climate Change 2008: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC. ISBN 978-92-9169-122-7.. Burroughs, William James (2001). Climate Change : A multidisciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge university press. ISBN 0521567718. Burroughs, William James (2007). Climate Change : A multidisciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-37027-4. Ruddiman, William F. (2008). Earth's climate : Past and Future. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN 978-0716784906. Rohli, Robert. V.; Vega, Anthony J. (2018). Climatology (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. ISBN 978-1284126563. External links Global Climate Change from NASA (US) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Climate Variability Archived 30 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine – NASA Science Climate Change and Variability, National Centers for Environmental Information Archived 21 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine

drawdown (climate)

Climate drawdown refers to the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline. Drawdown is a milestone in reversing climate change and eventually reducing global average temperatures. Project Drawdown refers to the nonprofit organization with the mission to help the world reach drawdown and stop catastrophic climate change quickly, safely, and equitably. In 2017, a publication titled "Drawdown" became a New York Times bestseller, which highlighted and described different solutions and efforts available to help reach this goal. Project Drawdown Project Drawdown is a climate change mitigation project initiated by Paul Hawken and climate activist Amanda Joy Ravenhill. The main principles of the project are to: Reduce sources by bringing emissions to zero and stopping pollution. Support sinks and uplift nature's carbon cycle. Improve society by fostering equality for all.Project Drawdown also organizes various solutions into groups that fit these principles to make up the Drawdown Framework. The Project Drawdown organization's website includes video lessons that explain the analysis and insights behind the efforts and research that make up the science behind the project. Central to the project is the compilation of a list of the "most substantive solutions to global warming". The list, which encompasses only technologically viable existing solutions, was compiled by a team of more than 200 scholars, scientists, policymakers, business leaders, and activists and is now online. The team measured and modeled each solution's carbon impact through the year 2050, its total and net cost to society, and its total lifetime savings. Project Drawdown uses different scenarios to assess what different changes to global climate efforts might look like. Scenario 1 shows a 2°C temperature rise by the year 2100, while Scenario 2 shows a 1.5°C temperature increase within the same temporal range. Below is a table of the top ten solutions included on the organization's website, with the impacts of their respective emissions based on either. The measurements refer to the gigatons of CO2 equivalent reduced/sequestered (2020–2050) with the minimum efforts required for the higher goal, and the maximum efforts required for the lower goal. Top ten solutions Nine Sectors The interactive website lists nine sectors where immediate action is needed to limit catastrophic climate change. They are: Electricity: Electricity production gives rise to 25% of heat-trapping emissions globally. The solutions that apply to this sector include enhancing efficiency, shifting production (away from fossil fuels to nuclear power/solar energy/wind power/geothermal power), and improving/upgrading the system. Food, Agriculture, and Land Use: Agriculture and forestry activities generate 24% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Solutions in this sector are focused on waste and diets, ecosystem protection, and better agricultural practices. Farming and forestry can also support the role of natural sinks, which help remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Industry: The industry is directly responsible for 21% of all heat-trapping emissions. The solutions in this sector include improving materials (as plastic, metals, and cement are some of the most common materials that need production improvement), utilizing waste, addressing refrigerants, and enhancing efficiency. The industry presents some of the biggest challenges for reducing emissions. Transportation: This sector is responsible for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Solutions in this sector address transportation alternatives (public transit, compact cities, intentional infrastructure), energy efficiency enhancements, and the electrification of vehicles completely replacing fossil fuels. However substantial, these solutions have the potential to save money while avoiding pollution. Buildings: Buildings produce 6% of heat-trapping emissions worldwide. They also use more than half of all electricity, which creates a large impact on electricity-generated emissions. The solutions for this sector encompass enhancing its efficiency, shifting energy sources, and addressing refrigerants. Health and Education: Currently, the human population totals 7.7 billion, and the United Nations estimates that number will grow to between 9.4 billion and 10.1 billion in 2050. Population interacts with the primary drivers of emissions, production, and consumption. However, almost half of the consumption-related emissions are generated by just 10% of people globally, giving point to the critical note of disparities in emissions from high-income countries compared to lower ones and between the wealthiest individuals and those of lesser means. The solutions for this sector are also focused on family planning, reproductive health, and education. Land Sinks: While the majority of heat-trapping emissions remain in the atmosphere, land sinks return 26% of human-caused emissions to Earth. This sector's solutions focus on protecting and restoring ecosystems, shifting agriculture practices, addressing waste and diets, and using degraded lands. (See also: Carbon sinks and land trusts) Coastal and Ocean Sinks: Oceans have absorbed at least 90% of the excess heat generated by recent climate changes and have taken up 20–30% of human-created carbon dioxide. Coastal and ocean sinks bring 17% of all heat-trapping emissions back to Earth. However, the more carbon dioxide in seawater makes the ocean more acidic and less hospitable. This also leads to a rise in water temperatures, marine heat waves, and sea levels. Solutions for coastal and ocean sinks center on ecosystem protection and restoration and improved agricultural practices. Engineered Sinks: The sheer quantity of excess greenhouse gases means that natural processes cannot do it all when it comes to carbon sequestration. Developing technologies show promise to help supplement previously mentioned natural sinks. Removing, capturing, and storing carbon are included in the central solution focus for this sector. Book Drawdown Review A 2020 review of the findings of the research that led to the 2017 book was published as a 104-page PDF in 2020. See also Azolla event Carbon sequestration References External links Project Drawdown, headquartered in San Francisco, US Drawdown Europe Research Association, headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

climate change in florida

The effects of climate change in Florida are attributable to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Floridians are experiencing increased flooding due to sea level rise, and are concerned about the possibility of more frequent or more intense hurricanes.The state has been described as America's "ground zero" for climate change, global warming and sea level rise, because "the majority of its population and economy is concentrated along low-elevation oceanfront."Florida residents think climate change is happening at higher rates than the national average. As of March 2023, about two-thirds of the state believes in anthropogenic climate change, up from 55% in April 2020. However, the state remains politically divided: while Democrats have reached a general consensus on the issue, only half of Republicans agree and support teaching about climate change in schools. Some communities in Florida have begun implementing climate change mitigation approaches; however, statewide initiatives have been hampered by the politicization of climate change in the United States, focusing on resilience rather than full scale mitigation and adaptation. Impact of sea level rise Flooding during high tides occurs in Miami Beach. The city is spending $500M on elevated roadways, seawalls, and pumping systems, as part of its Sea Level Rise Strategy. GIS mapping of areas subject to flooding during high tides, storm surges, and major storm events is available.In Key Largo and Big Pine Key, $517,000 is being spent to raise one mile of roads, as a "Sea Level Rise Pilot Project".A "Sea Level Scenario Sketch Planning Tool is used by the Florida Department of Transportation, MPOs, local governments, and regional planning agencies to assess potential impacts of sea level rise (SLR) on transportation facilities."Coastal protection, including beach renourishment, has been a focus of state government.A 2018 Florida International University study says that sea level rise will inundate the mangroves of the Florida Everglades. The stored carbon in the Everglades has been valued at between $2 billion and $3.4 billion. "As the ocean pushes westward and north into the Everglades and the Biscayne Aquifer," the water supply of Miami will be impacted. The loss of mangroves and wetlands due to sea level rise will also impact commercial fisheries.A 2017 study by Cornell University researchers says "nearly two million Floridians will be forced from their homes by 2100 because of climate-induced rising seas." Impact of climate change on Florida hurricanes A change in hurricane frequency or intensity is of concern for Floridians. The Climate Change Center at Florida State University and Climate.gov say the science is inconclusive regarding hurricane frequency or intensity. However, rainfall rates will increase according to most climate models, and the storm surge associated with hurricanes will increase with rising sea levels. After Hurricane Irma in 2017, which occurred just weeks after Hurricane Harvey, Governor Rick Scott did not attribute the possible changes in hurricane patterns to climate change.There is some evidence that hurricanes may slow down their rate of forward advance, like Hurricane Dorian, which spent a day and a half over Grand Bahama Island on its way to Florida.A category 5 hurricane is of most concern in the Tampa Bay area, and climate related sea level rise of as little as six inches would exacerbate its impact.According to the Fifth National Climate Assessment published in 2023, coastal states including California, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas are experiencing "more significant storms and extreme swings in precipitation". State climate change policy The Florida Climate Protection Act of 2008 created the Florida Energy and Climate Commission. It also urged the Department of Environmental Protection to develop a greenhouse gas reduction strategy. Governor Charlie Crist signed several executive orders related to climate change upon taking office. These executive orders included tailpipe emission limits for cars sold in Florida, called for reductions in the state's greenhouse gas emissions, and mandated a minimum of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 for Florida's electric utilities. The Public Service Commission rejected six new coal-fired power plants under Crist.Governor Rick Scott "denied the idea of anthropogenic global warming" during his first election in 2010. Use of the term "climate change" was discouraged during his administration. He also eliminated mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and appointed climate skeptics to posts such as the Public Service Commission. Scott vetoed $750,000 budgeted for pumping water out of Miami Beach, on the grounds that the money didn't provide "a clear statewide return for the investment," and did not reply directly when asked if he would support efforts to protect Miami's water supply. Scott was sued by a group of children aged 10–20 for his positions on climate.Governor Ron DeSantis established an Office of Resiliency and Coastal Protection. DeSantis was noted for actually speaking the word "climate change" in his statement: "This idea of – quote – 'climate change' has become politicized. My environmental policy is just to try to do things that benefit Floridians." However, DeSantis has not make climate mitigation, renewable energy, or greenhouse gas reduction a policy priority. In January 2020, DeSantis was given a D grade by the Sierra Club of Florida "for his work on environmental protection and sustainability."Florida's Republican candidates in local, state, and national office have emphasized risk mitigation and resilience for dealing with climate-related impacts, rather than climate mitigation efforts to prevent climate change.By contrast, South Florida Republicans, such as Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez, Representative Carlos Curbelo, and former Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, have said that "man-made climate change is real and needs to be taken seriously."Florida State Senator José Javier Rodriguez has attempted to draw attention to the problem of sunny day flooding by wearing black rainboots during legislative sessions. Public opinion The "Energy Poll", conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, found that 63% of Floridians in March 2023 believed climate change occurs. The same survey conducted in 2016 saw the number rise to 81%. An October 2020 survey conducted by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) found that over two-thirds of Florida residents expressed concerns about the impact of climate change on the state's future.In 2023, the FAU's "Florida Climate Resilience Survey" found that 65% of respondents, including 49% of Republicans, believe that climate change is predominantly the result of human activity. Impact on transportation The Florida Department of Transportation has studied how to use greenhouse gas calculation tools as part of the transportation planning processes, and analyzes transportation infrastructure for impacts of sea level rise. Impact on mangroves Mangroves are threatened in the Everglades, due to sea level rise. However, the range of mangroves is extending northwards as storms spread the mangrove seed-like propagules. There has been no hard freeze that kills mangroves in Northeast Florida for 30 years. Mangroves are especially important for carbon sequestration, and have been referred to as "blue carbon." The stored carbon in the mangroves of the Everglades has been estimated to be worth between $2 billion and $3.4 billion.Mangroves are also useful for flood control and storm protection. At the Tolomato Matanzas Research Reserve, mangroves create a flood barrier during storms, thereby protecting trees. Mangroves also produce soil, which helps maintain the height of the coastline.Economically destructive red tides are expected to continue as a result of pollution and warming water. Impact of climate change on real estate in coastal areas In 2017, the real estate website Zillow wrote that if climate predictions were correct, by 2100 "One in eight Florida homes would be under water, accounting for nearly half of the lost housing value nationwide." This calculation was based on comparing NOAA maps for a 6-foot sea level rise with the Zillow database of homes.Real estate website Curbed has presented a table with impacted cities in Florida, homes at risk, and dollar estimates. Curbed has estimated that "Roughly 64,000 homes—including 12,000 in Miami Beach, a nexus of real estate investment—will face chronic flooding," and has described how changes are needed in National Flood Insurance Program. AP cites data from climate risk analytics firm Jupiter Intelligence indicating that "extreme flooding could go from affecting 5% to 86% of Miami-Dade's residential real estate supply by 2030."A 2018 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, titled: Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate stated that Florida is the state with the most homes at risk from climate change: "about 1 million homes (more than 10% of the state's current residential properties)."Officials in the Florida Keys found that it would take 75 million dollars to save three miles of road serving about two dozen homes. A December 2019 New York Times article describing the decisions facing Monroe County was titled, "Florida Keys Deliver a Hard Message: As Seas Rise, Some Places Can't Be Saved." Some small islands in the Keys may disappear altogether.Climate gentrification is increasing real estate values in parts of Miami that are at higher elevation, and decreasing values in lower-elevation areas. By 2017, two poor black neighborhoods of Miami which are located on higher ground, Little Haiti and Liberty City, started becoming more attractive to investors. Home prices appreciated more slowly in 2018 in Miami Beach and lower-lying areas of Miami-Dade County.One flood assessment company describes the South Florida housing market as being kept afloat by "systemic fraudulent nondisclosure" of flood risks to property. A bill passed by the US House of Representatives to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks had not made it through the Senate as of February 2019. Climate change education Florida's climate change education standard states: "Identify, analyze, and relate the internal (earth system) and external (astronomical) conditions that contribute to global climate change." The standard falls short of the Next Generation Science Standards, which have been adopted by 20 states and the District of Columbia. The human-caused elements of climate change and role of human activity are treated "as an aside," according to a leader with the Alliance for Climate Education. Local climate mitigation efforts Miami-Dade County has built seawalls, implemented an Urban CO2 Reduction Plan, and participates in the South Florida Regional Climate Compact. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has pledged to make the city carbon neutral by 2050.Pensacola has formed a Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Task Force which meets monthly.Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer was "one of the nation's first mayors to sign onto the Climate Mayors' Pledge." Orlando plans to convert its city vehicle fleet to alternative fuels by 2030.Sarasota's Climate Adaption and Mitigation Center has been funded to work on "a curated database of peer-reviewed science to inform decision-making in academia, government and the private sector."In North Central Florida, where climate change denial is stronger, climate change efforts were starting to be visible in 2020 in Gainesville, Alachua County, St. Augustine and Jacksonville.In Broward County's Oakland Park, drainage installed with a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant prevented damage to 400 homes during Hurricane Irma.Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason has said, "We're working hard to create solutions until we inevitably must retreat." South Florida climate adaptation strategies Climate journalism The South Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, along with WLRN Public Media, have formed a collaboration to cover climate change issues. The collaboration provides news and feature coverage, and a website created by its editorial boards titled: The Invading Sea, Florida and the Climate Crisis. Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact is a partnership between Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach Counties. Its goal is "to work collaboratively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, implement adaptation strategies, and build climate resilience." Integrative Collaborative on Climate and Energy (ICCE) The Florida Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University has formed an Integrative Collaborative on Climate and Energy (ICCE) focused on issues of climate adaptation in Florida's urban and natural systems. Partners include the Florida Climate Initiative, the University of South Florida, and various government agencies. Miami-Dade County Climate Programs Miami has been described as "ground zero" for climate change and sea level rise." The Miami-Dade County Office of Resilience has implemented climate programs and a Climate Action Plan, and there is a Sea Level Rise Committee. Protecting the water supply and the Biscayne Aquifer is a priority. See also Climate of Florida Environment of Florida Climate change in the United States List of U.S. states and territories by carbon dioxide emissions Plug-in electric vehicles in Florida References Further reading Carter, L.; A. Terando; K. Dow; K. Hiers; K.E. Kunkel; A. Lascurain; D. Marcy; M. Osland; P. Schramm (2018). "Southeast". In Reidmiller, D.R.; C.W. Avery; D.R. Easterling; K.E. Kunkel; K.L.M. Lewis; T.K. Maycock; B.C. Stewart (eds.). Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II (Report). Washington, DC, USA: U.S. Global Change Research Program. pp. 872–940. doi:10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH19.—this chapter of the National Climate Assessment covers Southeast states (Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana). Ariza, Mario Alejandro (2020). Disposable city : Miami's future on the shores of climate catastrophe (First ed.). New York, NY: Bold Type Books. ISBN 978-1-5417-8846-6. OCLC 1123233347. External links Florida Climate Institute The Invading Sea, Florida and the Climate Crisis "Climate Change and Florida" (PDF). United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation. September 1997. Retrieved 2020-02-17. "Climate Change and the Everglades - Case Study" (PDF). United States Environmental Protection Agency / National Park Service / US Fish and Wildlife Service. Miami-Dade County Flood Zones GIS Tool

climate change – the facts

Climate Change – The Facts is a 2019 British documentary presented by David Attenborough that discusses climate change and possible solutions to counteract it. The one-hour programme made its debut on BBC One in the United Kingdom at 9pm on 18 April 2019. Reception The film won general praise from critics for highlighting the dangers that could be presented by not doing enough to tackle climate change. The Guardian called it a "rousing call to arms", while The Telegraph described the title as "robust" and praised the use of Attenborough as presenter: "At a time when public debate seems to be getting ever more hysterical, it's good to be presented with something you can trust. And we all trust Attenborough." References External links Climate Change – The Facts at BBC Online Climate Change – The Facts at IMDb

climate change in iraq

Climate change in Iraq has led to environmental impacts such as increasing temperatures, decreasing precipitation, land degradation, and water scarcity and poses numerous risks to human health, livelihoods, political stability, and the sustainable development of the nation. The combination of ecological factors, conflict, weak governance, and an impeded capacity to mitigate climate change, has made Iraq uniquely at risk to the negative effects of climate change, with the UN ranking them the 5th most vulnerable country to climate change. Rising temperatures, intensified droughts, declining precipitation, desertification, salinization, and the increasing prevalence of dust storms are challenges Iraq faces due in to the negative impacts of climate change. National and regional political instability and conflict have made it difficult to mitigate the effects of climate change, address transnational water management, and develop sustainably. Climate change has negatively impacted Iraq's population through loss of economic opportunity, food insecurity, water scarcity, and displacement. Water-related challenges are at the forefront of Iraq’s environmental problems. Models predict that precipitation will decrease by 9% and mean annual temperatures will increase by 2 °C by 2050. The flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which provide 98% of Iraq’s surface water, has decreased by 30-40% in the past 40 years. The water resources of these two rivers are also shared with neighboring countries. Iraq’s water supplies have significantly decreased over time due to dam construction of upstream nations. In 2019 Iraq contributed 0.5% to global carbon emissions. Iraq’s energy sector and fugitive emissions account for three-fourths of the nation's emissions. Specifically, Iraq’s oil and gas sectors produced 9% of global methane emissions in 2019, a portion of which is from gas flares. The waste, industrial, and agriculture sectors are the second greatest contributors to emissions in Iraq. Impacts on the natural environment Iraq is ecologically more vulnerable to climate change due to a variety of interconnected reasons. Iraq is in a dry region of the world and it can be divided into three areas: the arid deserts of the south, the semi-arid alluvial plains, and the mountainous northern region. Along with its arid land, Iraq has faced political turmoil, poor management of scarce resources, and the degradation of key ecosystems. Temperature and weather changes Heat Waves and the average temperature have been increasing rapidly in Iraq. The mean temperature of Iraq has increased at a rate of .7 degrees celsius per century. These rising global temperatures have intensified water scarcity and desertification in Iraq. The normal weather conditions of Iraq consist of a wet and dry season , however, climate change intensifies these seasons which leads to extreme drought and flooding events. The southern and central regions of Iraq show display patterns of decreased precipitation.The changes in temperature and precipitation have led to an increase in dust and sand storms throughout Iraq. Desertification, or the degradation of biologically productive land into infertile desert, is increasing in Iraq. A study monitoring the spatial land patterns of Iraq found that from 1990 to 2014 the amount of desert area increased by 5%. Water resources The Tigris-Euphrates River System and its given watershed account for 98% of surface water in Iraq, integral to the diverse ecosystem. The total catchment area (the area in which rainfall flows into bodies of water) is estimated to have a size of 430,000 Square Kilometers (km²), about 46% of the whole country. Iraq's waterbodies and river basins are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of Climate Change in the 21st century. Through global warming, declining precipitation rates, altered distribution patterns, salinity, and evaporation. Iraq is facing acute water stress. With the decrease in precipitation rates, models have predicted that the available water will decrease while the demand for crop water increases. Studies have also found that increasing global temperatures are Iraq's most significant driver of water scarcity. The significant drops in annual rainfall will not only affect water levels and flow but will have detrimental impacts on agriculture and human health. According to studies, due to a combination of factors, water flow will decrease in Iraq by 25 to 50%.As water levels fall, increasing salinity of the water supply has become a concern in southern Iraq, especially in Basra. Extreme weather events Climate change has intensified extreme weather events, particularly droughts and floods. Decreased rainfall and increasing temperatures are the main drivers of drought. Iraq’s drought problem has only deepened, with 2018 and 2021 being the first and second driest recorded years respectively. Impacts on people Climate change has led to numerous negative impacts on the people of Iraq including health issues, displacement from land, economic struggles, and resource scarcity. Rising temperatures, lowered precipitation, land degradation, and drought have negatively impacted agriculture leading to lower yields, and loss of arable land. These impacts cause agriculture-reliant rural populations to move to urban centers because of decreasing natural resources and economic opportunities. The food security of Iraq is also threatened by these agricultural impacts. Water scarcity and water pollution have led to waterborne illnesses and improper means of sanitation. Additionally, the relationship between climate change and regional conflict dynamics in Iraq has negative consequences on livelihoods.The combination of weak governance, scarce natural resources, and conflict poses unique challenges to the livelihoods of the Iraqi people; for instance, resource scarcity that leads to in-community tension or weak governance leading to mismanagement of water. Economic impacts Iraq's economy is extremely dependent on oil, which makes the nation more at risk to market volatility. Iraq’s agricultural sector accounts for approximately 5% of the nation's GDP and is the source of livelihood for about 25% of the population. Iraq's largest food-producing industries, agriculture, livestock husbandry, and fishing, have all been negatively affected by the effects of climate change. With reduced precipitation and scarce water, desertification, and soil degradation, both livelihoods and food security are put at risk. Internally Displaced People Climate change both negatively impacts and contributes to Iraq's large population of internally displaced people. Research has found the strongest predictors for the risk of climate change-related displacement are: water-related issues, food security, lack of infrastructure and services, and reliance on land for their livelihood. Drought and desertification in rural areas, which leads to loss the of livelihood and crop failure, has caused internal displacement and increased rural to urban migration. Health Impacts Climate change-related hazards and risks cause several negative human health impacts. Rising temperatures have led to more cases of heat stroke. Reduced water quality and quantity increases the incidence of water-borne illnesses such as cholera. In 2021 Unicef estimated that 3 out of 5 children in Iraq do not have access to safe drinking water. Severe dust and sand storms, which are projected to increase, cause respiratory infection and long-term health issues. Agriculture is impeded by the combined effects of climate change, which puts food security at risk. The presence of extreme weather events such as flooding and storms has led to displacement, injury, and death. Power grid failure, food spoilage, and heat illness Iraq's power grid failed in Basra, Dhi Qar and Maysan on August 6, 2022, due to temperatures reaching as high as 51C. A public holiday was declared until the following Tuesday, the beginning of the religious festival of Muharram. Historical and Political Factors Iraq’s arid land is ecologically more likely to face negative impacts of climate change, however, a history of war, political instability, and mismanagement of natural resources are also responsible for intensifying the negative effects of climate change. Saddam Hussein In 1992 during the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein ordered for the draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes of southern Iraq to punish the Marsh Arabs for revolting during the 1991 Iraqi Uprising against Saddam Hussein's government. Over 90% of the marshes was lost during Husseins Rules which has intensified the effects of climate change. Society and culture Activism Due to the fragility of Iraq's government body, NGOs and Civil Society should play a huge role in fighting climate change in Iraq. In reality, climate activism is only just getting off the ground in recent years. During Saddam Husseins regime, activism and governmental accountability was completely stifled. Since then, in 2010, the government established the Civil Society Organization Law, a framework to register as a civil society organization. As of 2023, there are from 6,000 to 12,000 non-governmental organizations, 185 are environmental. Notable recent and current activism efforts include- Save Basra campaign against water pollution in 2018, Nature Iraq, Save the Tigris, and the Tishereen Movement. In the 21st century, from Human Rights Watch reports, environmental activists have been abducted, detained and prosecuted. Demonstrations and clashes over water rights have occurred in southern Iraq. Private Sector Efforts Private Sector efforts are both internal and external. USAID, an United States governmental agency investing in foreign development, has put in 150 Million to improve water quality, access and handling. The United Nations, alongside the government of Iraq, the United States and international donors created the Funding Facility for Stabilization (FFS) with over 1.4 billion dollars allocated for restoring essential services. Controversies Controversies surrounding climate change in Iraq include the 2018 Safe Basra protests in response to the ongoing water crisis and pollution. Three civilian protesters were killed and forty-seven were injured, according to the Human Rights Watch organization. Quoting this organization, the "interior ministry force used excessive and unnecessary force" in response to the climate protesters. Other controversies include the Marsh Arab Displacement (1970s to 2000s). In July 2022, electricity blackouts were exacerbated by attacks on power lines by militants, combined with a reduction in power supplied by Iran. Protests were held in Baghdad and Sadr City, where residents were left without air conditioning in 50C heat. Arts and Media Media plays a huge role in the dissemination of information throughout Iraq, expanding the conversation worldwide . Outlets such as Al-Jazeera English have published documentary films on the ongoing water crisis. As well, opportunities such as - peacebuilding series: Climate Change in Iraq - aims to engage with the youth. Mitigation And Adaption Mitigation With a complicated and controversial political climate tied in with the lack of voice given to civilians, mitigations and adaptation efforts are struggling to pick up steam. Many international organizations are developing mitigation approaches for localized and statewide use. Economic and political reform will in turn help developing strategies to fight climate change. With increasing oil prices, Iraqs wealth will grow and many are pushing the Iraqi government to use this to invest in mitigation strategies through budget allocations. As well, increasing the regional dialogue on climate change has begun, in the largest cities such as Baghdad. Mitigation tactics including reducing methane. Seen by many groups, scientists, and activists as one of the most cost-effective and simplest ways to reduce climate change. As Iraq contributes heavily to methane emissions due to gas and oil production, the Iraqi government has aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emission by 15 percent by 2030. This goal developed out of the Paris Agreement and joint collaboration with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). Adaptation Adaptation methods look to adjusting and preparing for the impacts of climate change. To increase climate resilience in Iraq many initiatives have been launched in the last decade. Among these is the National Adaptation Plan (NAP). A three-year initiative to bolster technological, institutional and financial capabilities in order to guarantee future adaptation strategies are incorporated into the countries development. Agriculture and climate resilience projects have become significant, with international funding and backing in projects working towards addressing the crisis facing farmers across Iraq. The Swedish Government has promised over 10 million to build climate resilient agriculture strategies. See also Climate of Iraq External links UNFCCC Iraq documents Nationally Determined Contributions Iraq emissions at Climate Trace Live carbon emissions from electricity generation Methane map [1] References This article incorporates public domain material from the USAID.

effects of climate change on ecosystems

Climate change has adversely affected terrestrial and marine ecosystems, including tundras, mangroves, coral reefs, and caves. Increasing global temperature, more frequent occurrence of extreme weather, and rising sea level are examples of the most impactful effects of climate change. Possible consequences of these effects include species decline and extinction and overall significant loss of biodiversity, change within ecosystems, increased prevalence of invasive species, loss of habitats, forests converting from carbon sinks to carbon sources, ocean acidification, disruption of the water cycle, increased occurrence and severity of natural disasters like wildfires and flooding, and lasting effects on species adaptation. General Climate change is affecting terrestrial ecoregions. Increasing global temperature means that ecosystems are changing; some species are being forced out of their habitats (possibly to extinction) because of changing conditions. An example is migration. Due to the ever hotter weather, birds are forced to move to foreign lands. Other effects of global warming include less snow fall, rising sea levels, Ozone depleting and weather changes. These may influence human activities and the ecosystem.Within the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, experts assessed the literature on the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. Rosenzweig et al. (2007) concluded that over the last three decades, human-induced warming had likely had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems (p. 81). Schneider et al. (2007) concluded, with very high confidence, that regional temperature trends had already affected species and ecosystems around the world (p. 792). They also concluded that climate change would result in the extinction of many species and a reduction in the diversity of different types of ecosystems (p. 792). Terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity: With a warming of 4-5 °C, relative to 2010 levels, it is likely that global terrestrial vegetation would become a net source of carbon (Schneider et al., 2007:792). With high confidence, Schneider et al. (2007:788) concluded that a global mean temperature increase of around 4 °C (above the 2010–2015) by 2100 would lead to major extinctions around the world. Marine ecosystems and biodiversity: With high confidence, scientists concluded that a warming of 2-3 °C above 2010 levels would result in mass mortality of coral reefs globally. In addition, several studies dealing with planktonic organisms and modelling have shown that temperature plays a transcendental role in marine microbial food webs, which may have a deep influence on the biological carbon pump of marine planktonic pelagic and mesopelagic ecosystems. Freshwater ecosystems: Above about a 4 °C increase in global mean temperature by 2100 (relative to 2010), scientists concluded, with high confidence, that many freshwater species would become extinct or largely endangered. Biodiversity Extinction Studying the association between Earth climate and extinctions over the past 520 million years, scientists from the University of York write, "The global temperatures predicted for the coming centuries may trigger a new 'mass extinction event', where over 50 percent of animal and plant species would be wiped out."Many of the species at risk are Arctic and Antarctic fauna such as polar bears and emperor penguins. In the Arctic, the waters of Hudson Bay are ice-free for three weeks longer than they were thirty years ago, affecting polar bears, which prefer to hunt on sea ice. Species that rely on cold weather conditions such as gyrfalcons, and snowy owls that prey on lemmings that use the cold winter to their advantage may be negatively affected. Marine invertebrates achieve peak growth at the temperatures they have adapted to, and cold-blooded animals found at high latitudes and altitudes generally grow faster to compensate for the short growing season. Warmer-than-ideal conditions result in higher metabolism and consequent reductions in body size despite increased foraging, which in turn elevates the risk of predation. Indeed, even a slight increase in temperature during development impairs growth efficiency and survival rate in rainbow trout.Mechanistic studies have documented extinctions due to recent climate change: McLaughlin et al. documented two populations of Bay checkerspot butterfly being threatened by precipitation change. Parmesan states, "Few studies have been conducted at a scale that encompasses an entire species" and McLaughlin et al. agreed "few mechanistic studies have linked extinctions to recent climate change". Daniel Botkin and other authors in one study believe that projected rates of extinction are overestimated. For "recent" extinctions, see Holocene extinction. Many species of freshwater and saltwater plants and animals are dependent on glacier-fed waters to ensure a cold water habitat that they have adapted to. Some species of freshwater fish need cold water to survive and to reproduce, and this is especially true with salmon and cutthroat trout. Reduced glacier runoff can lead to insufficient stream flow to allow these species to thrive. Ocean krill, a cornerstone species, prefer cold water and are the primary food source for aquatic mammals such as the blue whale. Alterations to the ocean currents, due to increased freshwater inputs from glacier melt, and the potential alterations to thermohaline circulation of the worlds oceans, may affect existing fisheries upon which humans depend as well. The white lemuroid possum, only found in the Daintree mountain forests of northern Queensland, may be the first mammal species to be driven extinct by global warming in Australia. In 2008, the white possum has not been seen in over three years. The possums cannot survive extended temperatures over 30 °C (86 °F), which occurred in 2005.A 27-year study of the largest colony of Magellanic penguins in the world, published in 2014, found that extreme weather caused by climate change is responsible for killing 7% of penguin chicks per year on average, and in some years studied climate change accounted for up to 50% of all chick deaths. Since 1987, the number of breeding pairs in the colony has reduced by 24%.Furthermore, climate change may disrupt ecological partnerships among interacting species, via changes on behaviour and phenology, or via climate niche mismatch. The disruption of species-species associations is a potential consequence of climate-driven movements of each individual species towards opposite directions. Climate change may, thus, lead to another extinction, more silent and mostly overlooked: the extinction of species' interactions. As a consequence of the spatial decoupling of species-species associations, ecosystem services derived from biotic interactions are also at risk from climate niche mismatch. While, climate change is making abrupt changes in the ecosystem more likely, it is also intensifying human-wildlife conflict around the globe. Human-wildlife conflict is defined as interactions between humans and wildlife that have harmful effects for either one or both groups. Human-wildlife conflict induced by climate change has the ability to reshape ecosystems by furthering the decline and extinctions of species. These types of changes driven by climate change can threaten social-ecological systems. Behaviour change Rising temperatures are beginning to have a noticeable impact on birds, and butterflies nearly 160 species from 10 different zones have shifted their ranges northward by 200 km in Europe and North America. The migration range of larger animals may be constrained by human development. In Britain, spring butterflies are appearing an average of 6 days earlier than two decades ago.A 2002 article in Nature surveyed the scientific literature to find recent changes in range or seasonal behaviour by plant and animal species. Of species showing recent change, 4 out of 5 shifted their ranges towards the poles or higher altitudes, creating "refugee species". Frogs were breeding, flowers blossoming and birds migrating an average 2.3 days earlier each decade; butterflies, birds and plants moving towards the poles by 6.1 km per decade. A 2005 study concludes human activity is the cause of the temperature rise and resultant changing species behaviour, and links these effects with the predictions of climate models to provide validation for them. Scientists have observed that Antarctic hair grass is colonizing areas of Antarctica where previously their survival range was limited.Climate change is leading to a mismatch between the snow camouflage of arctic animals such as snowshoe hares with the increasingly snow-free landscape.The impacts of climate change on ecosystems are becoming increasingly noticeable, with many species shifting their ranges towards the poles or higher altitudes as a result of rising temperatures, as noted in a 2021 study by Parmesan and Yohe in the journal Earth's Future (Parmesan and Yohe, 2021). Invasive species Forests and climate change As the northern forests are a carbon sink, while dead forests are a major carbon source, the loss of such large areas of forest has a positive feedback on global warming. In the worst years, the carbon emission due to beetle infestation of forests in British Columbia alone approaches that of an average year of forest fires in all of Canada or five years worth of emissions from that country's transportation sources.Research suggests that slow-growing trees are only stimulated in growth for a short period under higher CO2 levels, while faster growing plants like liana benefit in the long term. In general, but especially in rainforests, this means that liana become the prevalent species; and because they decompose much faster than trees their carbon content is more quickly returned to the atmosphere. Slow growing trees incorporate atmospheric carbon for decades.The impacts of climate change on different sectors of society are interrelated. Drought can harm food production and human health. Wildfires Healthy and unhealthy forests appear to face an increased risk of forest fires because of the warming climate. The 10-year average of boreal forest burned in North America, after several decades of around 10,000 km2 (2.5 million acres), has increased steadily since 1970 to more than 28,000 km2 (7 million acres) annually. Though this change may be due in part to changes in forest management practices, in the western U.S., since 1986, longer, warmer summers have resulted in a fourfold increase of major wildfires and a sixfold increase in the area of forest burned, compared to the period from 1970 to 1986. A similar increase in wildfire activity has been reported in Canada from 1920 to 1999.Forest fires in Indonesia have dramatically increased since 1997 as well. These fires are often actively started to clear forest for agriculture. They can set fire to the large peat bogs in the region and the CO2 released by these peat bog fires has been estimated, in an average year, to be 15% of the quantity of CO2 produced by fossil fuel combustion. A 2018 study found that trees grow faster due to increased carbon dioxide levels, however, the trees are also eight to twelve percent lighter and denser since 1900. The authors note, "Even though a greater volume of wood is being produced today, it now contains less material than just a few decades ago."The Arctic region, is particularly sensitive and warming faster than most other regions. Particles of smoke can land on snow and ice, causing them to absorb sunlight that it would otherwise reflect, accelerating the warming. Fires in the Arctic also increase the risk of permafrost thawing that releases methane - strong greenhouse gas. Improving forecasting systems is important to solve the problem. In view of the risks, WMO has created a Vegetation Fire and Smoke Pollution Warning and Advisory System for forecasting fires and related impacts and hazards across the globe. WMO's Global Atmosphere Watch Programme has released a short video about the issue. Invasive species in forests An invasive species is any kind of living organism that is not native to an ecosystem that adversely affects it. These negative effects can include the extinction of native plants or animals, biodiversity destruction, and permanent habitat alteration. A study from 2011 found that in the last century plants and wildlife have moved to higher elevations at a rate of 36 feet per decade, making room for invasive species to invade.Pine forests in British Columbia have been devastated by a pine beetle infestation, which has expanded unhindered since 1998 at least in part due to the lack of severe winters since that time; a few days of extreme cold kill most mountain pine beetles and have kept outbreaks in the past naturally contained. The infestation, which (by November 2008) has killed about half of the province's lodgepole pines (33 million acres or 135,000 km2) is an order of magnitude larger than any previously recorded outbreak. One reason for unprecedented host tree mortality may be due to that the mountain pine beetles have higher reproductive success in lodgepole pine trees growing in areas where the trees have not experienced frequent beetle epidemics, which includes much of the current outbreak area. In 2007 the outbreak spread, via unusually strong winds, over the continental divide to Alberta. An epidemic also started, be it at a lower rate, in 1999 in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. The United States forest service predicts that between 2011 and 2013 virtually all 5 million acres (20,000 km2) of Colorado's lodgepole pine trees over five inches (127 mm) in diameter will be lost. Taiga Climate change is having a disproportionate impact on boreal forests, which are warming at a faster rate than the global average. leading to drier conditions in the Taiga, which leads to a whole host of subsequent issues. Climate change has a direct impact on the productivity of the boreal forest, as well as health and regeneration. As a result of the rapidly changing climate, trees are migrating to higher latitudes and altitudes (northward), but some species may not be migrating fast enough to follow their climatic habitat. Moreover, trees within the southern limit of their range may begin to show declines in growth. Drier conditions are also leading to a shift from conifers to aspen in more fire and drought-prone areas. Assisted migration Assisted migration, the act of moving plants or animals to a different habitat, has been proposed as a solution to the above problem. For species that may not be able to disperse easily, have long generation times or have small populations, this form of adaptive management and human intervention may help them survive in this rapidly changing climate.The assisted migration of North American forests has been discussed and debated by the science community for decades. Many of the species within historically survived changes in climate by migrating, and researchers have suggested that their natural migration will be too slow to outpace modern climate change. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia finally acted and modified their tree reseeding guidelines to account for the northward movement of forest's optimal ranges. British Columbia even gave the green light for the relocation of a single species, the western larch, 1000 km northward. Mountain pine beetle and forest fires Climate change and the associated changing weather patterns occurring worldwide have a direct effect on biology, population ecology, and the population of eruptive insects, such as the mountain pine beetle (MPB). This is because temperature is a factor which determines insect development and population success. Mountain Pine Beetle are a species native to Western North America. Prior to climatic and temperature changes, the mountain pine beetle predominately lived and attacked lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees at lower elevations, as the higher elevation Rocky Mountains and Cascades were too cold for their survival. Under normal seasonal freezing weather conditions in the lower elevations, the forest ecosystems that pine beetles inhabit are kept in a balance by factors such as tree defense mechanisms, beetle defense mechanisms, and freezing temperatures. It is a simple relationship between a host (the forest), an agent (the beetle) and the environment (the weather & temperature). However, as climate change causes mountain areas to become warmer and drier, pine beetles have more power to infest and destroy the forest ecosystems, such as the whitebark pine forests of the Rockies. This is a forest so important to forest ecosystems that it is called the "rooftop of the rockies". Climate change has led to a threatening pine beetle pandemic, causing them to spread far beyond their native habitat. This leads to ecosystem changes, forest fires, floods and hazards to human health.The whitebark pine ecosystem in these high elevations plays many essential roles, providing support to plant and animal life. They provide food for grizzly bears and squirrels, as well as shelter and breeding grounds for elk and deer; protects watersheds by sending water to parched foothills and plains; serves as a reservoir by dispensing supplies of water from melted snowpacks that are trapped beneath the shaded areas; and creates new soil which allows for growth of other trees and plant species. Without these pines, animals do not have adequate food, water, or shelter, and the reproductive life cycle, as well as quality of life, is affected as a consequence. Normally, the pine beetle cannot survive in these frigid temperatures and high elevation of the Rocky Mountains. However, warmer temperatures means that the pine beetle can now survive and attack these forests, as it no longer is cold enough to freeze and kill the beetle at such elevations. Increased temperatures also allow the pine beetle to increase their life cycle by 100%: it only takes a single year instead of two for the pine beetle to develop. As the Rockies have not adapted to deal with pine beetle infestations, they lack the defenses to fight the beetles. Warmer weather patterns, drought, and beetle defense mechanisms together dries out sap in pine trees, which is the main mechanism of defense that trees have against the beetle, as it drowns the beetles and their eggs. This makes it easier for the beetle to infest and release chemicals into the tree, luring other beetles in an attempt to overcome the weakened defense system of the pine tree. As a consequence, the host (forest) becomes more vulnerable to the disease-causing agent (the beetle).The whitebark forests of the Rockies are not the only forests that have been affected by the mountain pine beetle. Due to temperature changes and wind patterns, the pine beetle has now spread through the Continental Divide of the Rockies and has invaded the fragile boreal forests of Alberta, known as the "lungs of the Earth". These forests are imperative for producing oxygen through photosynthesis and removing carbon in the atmosphere. But as the forests become infested and die, carbon dioxide is released into the environment, and contributes even more to a warming climate. Ecosystems and humans rely on the supply of oxygen in the environment, and threats to this boreal forest results in severe consequences to our planet and human health. In a forest ravaged by pine beetle, the dead logs and kindle which can easily be ignited by lightning. Forest fires present dangers to the environment, human health and the economy. They are detrimental to air quality and vegetation, releasing toxic and carcinogenic compounds as they burn. Due to human induced deforestation and climate change, along with the pine beetle pandemic, the strength of forest ecosystems decrease. The infestations and resulting diseases can indirectly, but seriously, effect human health. As droughts and temperature increases continue, so does the frequency of devastating forest fires, insect infestations, forest diebacks, acid rain, habitat loss, animal endangerment and threats to safe drinking water. Mountain habitats Mountains cover approximately 25 percent of earth's surface and provide a home to more than one-tenth of global human population. Changes in global climate pose a number of potential risks to mountain habitats. Researchers expect that over time, climate change will affect mountain and lowland ecosystems, the frequency and intensity of forest fires, the diversity of wildlife, and the distribution of fresh water. Studies suggest a warmer climate would cause lower-elevation habitats to expand into the higher alpine zone. Such a shift would encroach on rare alpine meadows and other high-altitude habitats. High-elevation plants and animals have limited space available for new habitat as they move higher on the mountains in order to adapt to long-term changes in regional climate. Such uphill shifts of both ranges and abundances have been recorded for various groups of species across the world.Changes in climate are melting glaciers and reducing the depth of the mountain snowpacks. Any changes in their seasonal melting can have powerful impacts on areas that rely on freshwater runoff from mountains. Rising temperature may cause snow to melt earlier and faster in the spring and shift the timing and distribution of runoff. These changes could affect the availability of freshwater for natural systems and human uses. Marine ecosystems Monitoring studies on tropical coral reefs were made by Bak and Nieuwland (1995) in order to explore climate change on the sublittoral communities in the North Sea. "Bak and Nieuwland (1995) monitored permanent quadrates for over two decades and showed a significant decrease in coral colonies, particularly at disturbed shallower reefs. Whereas most of the degradation processes are directly related to human influence, a rise in the temperature of ocean waters will lead to drastic reef degradation in the long run." Rising temperatures increase the risk of irreversible loss of marine and coastal ecosystems Freshwater ecosystems Salt water contamination and cool water species Species of fish living in cold or cool water can see a reduction in population of up to 50% in the majority of U.S. fresh water streams, according to most climate change models. The increase in metabolic demands due to higher water temperatures, in combination with decreasing amounts of food will be the main contributors to their decline. Additionally, many fish species (such as salmon) utilize seasonal water levels of streams as a means of reproducing, typically breeding when water flow is high and migrating to the ocean after spawning. Because snowfall is expected to be reduced due to climate change, water runoff is expected to decrease which leads to lower flowing streams, effecting the spawning of millions of salmon. To add to this, rising seas will begin to flood coastal river systems, converting them from fresh water habitats to saline environments where indigenous species will likely perish. In southeast Alaska, the sea rises by 3.96 cm/year, redepositing sediment in various river channels and bringing salt water inland. This rise in sea level not only contaminates streams and rivers with saline water, but also the reservoirs they are connected to, where species such as Sockeye Salmon live. Although this species of Salmon can survive in both salt and fresh water, the loss of a body of fresh water stops them from reproducing in the spring, as the spawning process requires fresh water. Undoubtedly, the loss of fresh water systems of lakes and rivers in Alaska will result in the imminent demise of the state's once-abundant population of salmon. Species migration In the Arctic, the prevalent rise of CO2 and temperatures are changing the tundra plants and other xerophytic shrub composition in the ecosystem. For example, in the Siberian subarctic, species migration is contributing to another warming albedo-feedback, as needle-shedding larch trees are being replaced with dark-foliage evergreen conifers which can absorb some of the solar radiation that previously reflected off the snowpack beneath the forest canopy. It has been projected many fish species will migrate towards the North and South poles as a result of climate change, and that many species of fish near the Equator will go extinct as a result of global warming.Migratory birds are especially at risk for endangerment due to the extreme dependability on temperature and air pressure for migration, foraging, growth, and reproduction. Much research has been done on the effects of climate change on birds, both for future predictions and for conservation. The species said to be most at risk for endangerment or extinction are populations that are not of conservation concern. It is predicted that a 3.5 degree increase in surface temperature will occur by year 2100, which could result in between 600 and 900 extinctions, which mainly will occur in the tropical environments. Species adaptation Climate change has affected many different species of Arctic animals. Warm spring temperatures and cool fall temperatures act as cues to signal when to migrate, mate, and find food. Unknown impacts can occur in these ecosystems and to the animals that live in them if these schedules are shifted by only a few days or weeks. Unfortunately changes in these seasonal timings have already begun to occur. These shifts change how they care and raise young and how they search for food. Researchers have found that predators and pray respond differently to climate change causing a disruption of the equilibrium between the two.Climate change has also affected the gene pool of the red deer population on Rùm, one of the Inner Hebrides islands, Scotland. Warmer temperatures resulted in deer giving birth on average three days earlier for each decade of the study. The gene which selects for earlier birth has increased in the population because those with the gene have more calves over their lifetime.A study in Chicago showed that the length of birds' lower leg bones (an indicator of body sizes) shortened by an average of 2.4% and their wings lengthened by 1.3%. A study from central Amazon showed that birds have decreased in mass (an indicator of size) by up to 2% per decade, and increased in wing length by up to 1% per decade, with links to temperature and precipitation shifts. The findings of these studies suggest the morphological changes are the result of climate change, and may demonstrate an example of evolutionary change following Bergmann's rule.Data from a study on vertebrates shows that higher temperatures lower the rates of physiological and niche evolution, and that it is easier for the animals to adapt to a colder climate than a warmer climate.The Jutfelt Fish Ecophysiology lab at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), under their director professor Fredrik Jutfelt, investigates how evolution can lead to physiological adaptation to the temperature environment where the fish live. They recently performed a large artificial selection experiment, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), showing that evolution of tolerance to warming can occur in fish. The rate of evolution, however, was suggested to be too slow for evolutionary rescue to protect fish from the impacts of climate change. Impacts of species degradation due to climate change on livelihoods The livelihoods of nature dependent communities depend on abundance and availability of certain species. Climate change conditions such as increase in atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide concentration directly affect availability of biomass energy, food, fiber and other ecosystem services. Degradation of species supplying such products directly affect the livelihoods of people relying on them more so in Africa. The situation is likely to be exacerbated by changes in rainfall variability which is likely to give dominance to invasive species especially those that are spread across large latitudinal gradients. The effects that climate change has on both plant and animal species within certain ecosystems has the ability to directly affect the human inhabitants who rely on natural resources. Frequently, the extinction of plant and animal species create a cyclic relationship of species endangerment in ecosystems which are directly affected by climate change. Climate-induced species extinction not only disrupts ecosystems but also increases the susceptibility of communities that depend on these interconnected resources. See also Effects of climate change on the water cycle Mycorrhizae and climate change == References ==

climate change in australia

Climate change in Australia has been a critical issue since the beginning of the 21st century. Australia is becoming hotter and more prone to extreme heat, bushfires, droughts, floods, and longer fire seasons because of climate change. Climate issues include wildfires, heatwaves, cyclones, rising sea-levels, and erosion.Since the beginning of the 20th century, Australia has experienced an increase of over 1.4 °C in average annual temperatures, with warming occurring at twice the rate over the past 50 years compared with the previous 50 years. Recent climate events such as extremely high temperatures and widespread drought have focused government and public attention on the effects of climate change in Australia. Rainfall in southwestern Australia has decreased by 10–20% since the 1970s, while southeastern Australia has also experienced a moderate decline since the 1990s. Rainfall is expected to become heavier and more infrequent, as well as more common in summer rather than in winter. Australia's annual average temperatures are projected to increase 0.4–2.0 °C above 1990 levels by the year 2030, and 1–6 °C by 2070. Average precipitation in the southwest and southeast Australia is projected to decline during this time, while regions such as the northwest may experience increases in rainfall. Climate change is affecting the continent's environment and ecosystems. Australia is vulnerable to the effects of global warming projected for the next 50 to 100 years because of its extensive arid and semi-arid areas, and already warm climate, high annual rainfall variability. The continent's high fire risk increases this susceptibility to changes in temperature and climate. Meanwhile, Australia's coastlines will experience erosion and inundation from an estimated 8–88 cm increase in global sea level. Australia's unique ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and many animal species are also at risk. Climate change also has diverse implications for Australia's economy, agriculture and public health. Projected impacts include more severe floods, droughts, and cyclones. Furthermore, Australia's population is highly concentrated in coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels, and existing pressures on water supply will be exacerbated. The exposure of Indigenous Australians to climate change impacts is exacerbated by existing socio-economic disadvantages which are linked to colonial and post-colonial marginalisation. The communities most affected by climate changes are those in the North where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 30% of the population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities located in the coastal north are the most disadvantaged due to social and economic issues and their reliance on traditional land for food, culture, and health. This has raised the question for many community members in these areas, "Should we stay or move away?"Australia is also a contributor to climate change, with its greenhouse gas emissions per capita above the world average. The country is highly reliant on coal and other fossil fuels, although renewable energy coverage is increasing. National mitigation efforts include a commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 under the Paris Agreement, although Australia has repeatedly ranked poorly in the Climate Change Performance Index and other international rankings for its climate targets and implementation. Adaptation can be performed at national and local levels and was identified as a priority for Australia in the 2007 Garnaut Review. Climate change has been a divisive or politicised issue in Australian politics since the 2000s, contributing to successive governments implementing and repealing mitigation policies such as carbon pricing. Some Australian media outlets have promoted climate misinformation. The issue has sparked protests in support of climate change policies, including some of the largest demonstrations in Australia's history. Greenhouse gas emissions Impacts on the natural environment Temperature and weather changes Australia's instrumental record from 1885 to the present shows the following broad picture: Conditions from 1885 to 1898 were generally fairly wet, though less so than in the period since 1968. The only noticeably dry years in this era were 1888 and 1897. Although some coral core data suggest that 1887 and 1890 were, with 1974, the wettest years across the continent since settlement, rainfall data for Alice Springs, then the only major station covering the interior of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, strongly suggest that 1887 and 1890 were overall not as wet as 1974 or even 2000. In New South Wales and Queensland, however, the years 1886–1887 and 1889–1894 were indeed exceptionally wet. The heavy rainfall over this period has been linked with a major expansion of the sheep population and February 1893 saw the disastrous 1893 Brisbane flood. A drying of the climate took place from 1899 to 1921, though with some interruptions from wet El Niño years, especially between 1915 and early 1918 and in 1920–1921, when the wheat belt of the southern interior was drenched by its heaviest winter rains on record. Two major El Niño events in 1902 and 1905 produced the two driest years across the whole continent, whilst 1919 was similarly dry in the eastern States apart from the Gippsland. The period from 1922 to 1938 was exceptionally dry, with only 1930 having Australia-wide rainfall above the long-term mean and the Australia-wide average rainfall for these seventeen years being 15 to 20 per cent below that for other periods since 1885. This dry period is attributed in some sources to a weakening of the Southern Oscillation and in others to reduced sea surface temperatures. Temperatures in these three periods were generally cooler than they are currently, with 1925 having the coolest minima of any year since 1910. However, the dry years of the 1920s and 1930s were also often quite warm, with 1928 and 1938 having particularly high maxima. The period from 1939 to 1967 began with an increase in rainfall: 1939, 1941 and 1942 were the first close-together group of relatively wet years since 1921. From 1943 to 1946, generally dry conditions returned, and the two decades from 1947 saw fluctuating rainfall. 1950, 1955 and 1956 were exceptionally wet except 1950 and 1956 over arid and wheatbelt regions of Western Australia. 1950 saw extraordinary rains in central New South Wales and most of Queensland: Dubbo's 1950 rainfall of 1,329 mm (52.3 in) can be estimated to have a return period of between 350 and 400 years, whilst Lake Eyre filled for the first time in thirty years. In contrast, 1951, 1961 and 1965 were very dry, with complete monsoon failure in 1951/1952 and extreme drought in the interior during 1961 and 1965. Temperatures over this period initially fell to their lowest levels of the 20th century, with 1949 and 1956 being particularly cool, but then began a rising trend that has continued with few interruptions to the present. Since 1968, Australia's rainfall has been 15 per cent higher than between 1885 and 1967. The wettest periods have been from 1973 to 1975 and 1998 to 2001, which comprise seven of the thirteen wettest years over the continent since 1885. Overnight minimum temperatures, especially in winter, have been markedly higher than before the 1960s, with 1973, 1980, 1988, 1991, 1998 and 2005 outstanding in this respect. There has been a marked decrease in the frequency of frost across Australia.According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Australia's annual mean temperature for 2009 was 0.9 °C above the 1961–90 average, making it the nation's second-warmest year since high-quality records began in 1910.According to the Bureau of Meteorology's 2011 Australian Climate Statement, Australia had lower than average temperatures in 2011 as a consequence of a La Niña weather pattern; however, "the country's 10-year average continues to demonstrate the rising trend in temperatures, with 2002–2011 likely to rank in the top two warmest 10-year periods on record for Australia, at 0.52 °C (0.94 °F) above the long-term average". Furthermore, 2014 was Australia's third warmest year since national temperature observations commenced in 1910. Sea level rise The Australian Government released a report saying that up to 247,600 houses are at risk from flooding from a sea level rise of 1.1 metres. There were 39,000 buildings located within 110 metres of 'soft' erodible shorelines, at risk from a faster erosion due to sea level rise. Adaptive responses to this specific climate change threat are often incorporated in the coastal planning policies and recommendations at the state level. For instance, the Western Australia State Coastal Planning Policy established a sea level rise benchmark for initiatives that address the problem over a 100-year period. Lower projections indicate that sea levels will rise by 40 to 90 cm upon the end of the century Water (droughts and floods) Bureau of Meteorology records since the 1860s show that a 'severe' drought has occurred in Australia, on average, once every 18 years. Australia is already the driest populated continent in the world. Rainfall in southwestern Australia has decreased by 10–20% since the 1970s, while southeastern Australia has also experienced a moderate decline since the 1990s. Rainfall is expected to become heavier and more infrequent, as well as more common in summer rather than in winter.In June 2008 it became known that an expert panel had warned of long-term, maybe irreversible, severe ecological damage for the whole Murray-Darling basin if it did not receive sufficient water by October of that year. Water restrictions were in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages resulting from the 2008 drought. In 2004 paleontologist Tim Flannery predicted that unless it made drastic changes the city of Perth, Western Australia, could become the world's first ghost metropolis—an abandoned city with no more water to sustain its population.In 2019 the drought and water resources minister of Australia David Littleproud, said, that he "totally accepts" the link between climate change and drought in Australia because he "live it". He says that the drought in Australia is already eight years long. He called for a reduction in greenhouse gas emission and massive installation of renewable energy. Former leader of the nationalists Barnaby Joyce said that if the drought became more fierce and dams will not be built, the coalition risk "political annihilation".According to the 2022 IPCC report, there has been an increase in flooding episodes and other catastrophic weather events because of global warming. These unusual weather changes in include rainfall in the north and severe droughts in the south. Less rainfall means less streamflow of water for major cities. The IPCC recommends a step up to our adaptation and finance policies in our systems to keep up with the drastic impacts of climate change for a sustainable development. Water resources Healthy and diverse vegetation is essential to river health and quality, and many of Australia's most important catchments are covered by native forest, maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Climate change will affect growth, species composition and pest incursion of native species and in turn, will profoundly affect water supply from these catchments. Increased re-afforestation in cleared catchments also has the prospect for water losses.The CSIRO predicts that the additional results in Australia of a temperature rise of between only 1 and 2 °C will be: 12–25% reduction inflow in the Murray River and Darling River basin. 7–35% reduction in Melbourne's water supply. Bushfires There is an increase in fire activity in Australia in the latest decades. The causes include "more dangerous fire weather conditions, increased risk factors associated with pyroconvection, including fire-generated thunderstorms, and increased ignitions from dry lightning, all associated to varying degrees with anthropogenic climate change".Firefighting officials are concerned that the effects of climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of bushfires under even a "low global warming" scenario. A 2006 report, prepared by CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Bushfire CRC, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, identified South Eastern Australia as one of the three most fire-prone areas in the world, and concluded that an increase in fire-weather risk is likely at most sites over the next several decades, including the average number of days when the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index rating is very high or extreme. It also found that the combined frequencies of days with very high and extreme FFDI ratings are likely to increase 4–25% by 2020 and 15–70% by 2050, and that the increase in fire-weather risk is generally largest inland.Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said that the fires were "a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority the need to tackle climate change". The Black Saturday Royal Commission recommended that "the amount of fuel-reduction burning done on public land each year should be more than doubled".In 2018, the fire season in Australia began in the winter. August 2018 was hotter and windier than the average. Those meteorological conditions led to a drought in New South Wales. The Government of the state already gave more than $1 billion to help the farmers. The hotter and drier climate led to more fires. The fire seasons in Australia are lengthening and fire events became more frequent in the latest 30 years. These trends are probably linked to climate change.The 2019–20 Australian bushfire season was by some measures Australia's "worst bushfire season on record". In New South Wales, the fires burnt through more land than any other blazes in the past 25 years, in addition to being the state's worst bushfire season on record. NSW also experienced the longest continuously burning bushfire complex in Australia's history, having burnt more than 4 million hectares (9,900,000 acres), with 70-metre-high (230 ft) flames being reported. Approximately 3 billion animals were killed or displaced by the bushfires and this made them one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. The chance of reaching the climatic conditions that fuels the fires became more than four times bigger since the year 1900 and will become eight times more likely to occur if the temperature will rise by 2 degrees from the preindustrial level. In December 2019 the New South Wales Government declared a state of emergency after record-breaking temperatures and prolonged drought exacerbated the bushfires.In 2019 bushfires linked to climate change created air pollution 11 times higher that the hazardous level in many areas of New South Wales. Many medical groups called to protect people from "public health emergency" and moving on from fossil fuels.According to the United Nations Environment Programme the megafires in Australia in 2019–2020 are probably linked to climate change that created the unusually dry and hot weather conditions. This is part of a global trend. Brazil, the United States, the Russian Federation, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all face similar problems. By the second week of January the fires burned a territory of approximately 100,000 square kilometres close to the territory of England, killed one billion animals and caused large economic damage.Researchers claim that the exceptionally strong wildfires in 2019–2020 were impossible without the effects of climate change. More than one-fifth of Australian forests were burned in one season, which was completely unprecedented. They say that: "In the case of recent events in Australia, there is no doubt that the record temperatures of the past year would not be possible without anthropogenic influence, and that under a scenario where emissions continue to grow, such a year would be average by 2040 and exceptionally cool by 2060." Climate change probably also caused drier weather conditions in Australia by impacting Indian Ocean Dipole, which also increase fires. In average, below 2% of Australian forests burn annually. Climate change has increased the likelihood of the wildfires in 2019–2020 by at least 30%, but researchers said the result is probably conservative. Extreme weather events Rainfall patterns and the degree of droughts and storms brought about by extreme weather conditions are likely to be affected. The CSIRO predicts that a temperature rise of between 2 and 3 °C on the Australian continent could incur some of the following extreme weather occurrences, in addition to standard patterns: Wind speeds of tropical cyclones could intensify by 5 to 10%. In 100 years, strong tides would increase by 12–16% along eastern Victoria's coast. The forest fire danger indices in New South Wales and Western Australia would grow by 10% and the forest fire danger indices in south, central and north-east Australia would increase by more than 10%. Heatwaves A report in 2014 revealed that, due to the change in climatic patterns, heat waves were found to be increasingly more frequent and severe, with an earlier start to the season and longer duration.Since temperatures began to be recorded in 1910, they have increased by an average of 1 °C, with most of this change occurring from 1950 onwards. This period has seen the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events increase.Summer 2013–14 was warmer than average for the entirety of Australia. Both Victoria and South Australia saw record-breaking temperatures. Adelaide recorded a total of 13 days reaching 40 °C or more, 11 of which reached 42 °C or more, as well as its fifth-hottest day on record—45.1 °C on 14 January. The number of days over 40 °C beat the previous record of summer 1897–1898, when 11 days above 40 °C were recorded. Melbourne recorded six days over 40 °C, while nighttime temperatures were much warmer than usual, with some nights failing to drop below 30 °C. Overall, the summer of 2013–2014 was the third-hottest on record for Victoria, fifth-warmest on record for New South Wales, and sixth-warmest on record for South Australia. This heatwave has been directly linked to climate change, which is unusual for specific weather events.Following the 2014 event, it was predicted that temperatures might increase by up to 1.5 °C by 2030.2015 was Australia's fifth-hottest year on record, continuing the trend of record-breaking high temperatures across the country. According to Australian Climate Council in 2017 Australia had its warmest winter on record, in terms of average maximum temperatures, reaching nearly 2 °C above average. January 2019 was the hottest month ever in Australia with average temperatures exceeding 30 °C (86 °F). Ecosystems and biodiversity Sustained climate change could have drastic effects on the ecosystems of Australia. For example, rising ocean temperatures and continual erosion of the coasts from higher water levels will cause further bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. Beyond that, Australia's climate will become even harsher, with more powerful tropical cyclones and longer droughts.The Department of Climate Change said in its Climate Change Impacts and Costs fact sheet: "...ecologically rich sites, such as the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland Wet Tropics, Kakadu Wetlands, Australian Alpine areas, south-western Australia and sub- Antarctic islands are all at risk, with significant loss of biodiversity projected to occur by 2020". It also said: "Very conservatively, 90 Australian animal species have so far been identified at risk from climate change, including mammals, insects, birds, reptiles, fish, and amphibians from all parts of Australia." Australia has some of the world's most diverse ecosystems and natural habitats, and it may be this variety that makes them the Earth's most fragile and at-risk when exposed to climate change. The Great Barrier Reef is a prime example. Over the past 20 years it has experienced unparalleled rates of bleaching. Additional warming of 1 °C is expected to cause substantial losses of species and of associated coral communities.The CSIRO predicts that the additional results in Australia of a temperature rise of between 2 and 3 °C will be: 97% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached annually. 10–40% loss of principal habitat for Victoria and montane tropical vertebrate species. 92% decrease in butterfly species' primary habitats. 98% reduction in Bowerbird habitat in Northern Australia. 80% loss of freshwater wetlands in Kakadu (30 cm sea level rise). Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef could be killed as a result of the rise in water temperature forecast by the IPCC. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the reef has experienced unprecedented rates of bleaching over the past two decades, and additional warming of only 1 °C is anticipated to cause considerable losses or contractions of species associated with coral communities. Lord Howe Island The coral reefs of the World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island could be killed as a result of the rise in water temperature forecast by the IPCC. As of April 2019, approximately 5% of the coral is dead. Impacts on people Economic impacts According to the Climate Commission (now the Climate Council) report in 2013, the extreme heatwaves, flooding and bushfires striking Australia have been intensified by climate change and will get worse in future in terms of their impacts on people, property, communities and the environment. The summer of 2012/2013 included the hottest summer, hottest month and hottest day on record. The cost of the 2009 bushfires in Victoria was estimated at A$4.4bn (£3bn) and the Queensland floods of 2010/2011 cost over A$5bn.In 2008 the Treasurer and the Minister for Climate Change and Water released a report that concluded the economy will grow with an emissions trading scheme in place.A report released in October 2009 by the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts, studying the effects of a 1-metre sea level rise, quite possible within the next 30–60 years, concluded that around 700,000 properties around Australia, including 80,000 buildings, would be inundated, the collective value of these properties is estimated at $155 billion.In 2019 the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences published a report about the impact of climate change on the profitability of the Australian agriculture, saying that the profit of the Australian farms was cut by 22% due to climate change in the years 2000–2019.According to the 2022 IPCC report Australia will lose billions of dollars due to loss of life, and physical damages. These natural disasters are caused by climate change and increasing global warming will worsen these events. The report estimates that under 2 degrees of warming Australia will lose $115 billion in the next decade, and $350 billion in the next twenty years. If warming goes up to under 3 degrees of warming Australia's economy will lose $200 billion and $600 billion by 2042. Agriculture forestry and livestock Small changes caused by global warming, such as a longer growing season, a more temperate climate and increased CO2 concentrations, may benefit Australian crop agriculture and forestry in the short term. However, such benefits are unlikely to be sustained with increasingly severe effects of global warming. Changes in precipitation and consequent water management problems will further exacerbate Australia's current water availability and quality challenges, both for commercial and residential use.The CSIRO predicts that the additional results in Australia of a temperature rise of between 3 and 4 °C will be: 32% possibility of diminished wheat production (without adaptation). 45% probability of wheat crop value being beneath present levels (without adaptation). 55% of primary habitat lost for Eucalyptus. 25–50% rise in common timber yield in cool and wet parts of South Australia. 25–50% reduction in common timber yield in North Queensland and the Top End. 6% decrease in Australian net primary production (for 20% precipitation decrease) 128% increase in tick-associated losses in net cattle production weight. Electricity demand Use of domestic air conditioners during severe heatwaves can double electricity demand, placing great stress on electricity generation and transmission networks, and lead to load shedding. Impacts on housing Settlements and infrastructure Global warming could lead to substantial alterations in climate extremes, such as tropical cyclones, heat waves and severe precipitation events. This would degrade infrastructure and raise costs through intensified energy demands, maintenance for damaged transportation infrastructure, and disasters, such as coastal flooding.: 5  In the coastal zone, sea level rise and storm surge may be more critical drivers of these changes than either temperature or precipitation.: 20 The CSIRO describes the additional impact on settlements and infrastructure for rises in temperature of only 1 to 2 °C: A 22% rise in 100-year storm surge height around Cairns; as a result, the area flooded doubles. Human settlements Climate change will have a higher impact on Australia's coastal communities, due to the concentration of population, commerce and industry. Climate modelling suggests that a temperature rise of 1–2 °C will result in more intense storm winds, including those from tropical cyclones. Combine this with sea level rise, and the result is greater flooding, due to higher levels of storm surge and wind speed. Coleman, T. (2002) The impact of climate change on insurance against catastrophes. Proceedings of Living with Climate Change Conference. Canberra, 19 December.) Tourism of coastal areas may also be affected by coastal inundation and beach erosion, as a result of sea level rise and storm events. At higher levels of warming, coastal impacts become more severe with higher storm winds and sea levels. Property A report released in October 2009 by the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the arts, studying the effects of a 1-metre sea level rise, possible within the next 30–60 years, concluded that around 700,000 properties around Australia, including 80,000 buildings, would be inundated. The collective value of these properties is estimated at $150 billion.A 1-metre sea level rise would have massive impacts, not just on property and associated economic systems, but in displacement of human populations throughout the continent. Queensland is the state most at risk due to the presence of valuable beachfront housing. Health impacts The CSIRO predicts that the additional results in Australia of a temperature rise of between only 1 and 2 °C will be: Southward spread of malaria receptive zones. Risk of dengue fever among Australians increases from 170,000 people to 0.75–1.6 million. 10% increase in diarrhoeal diseases among Aboriginal children in central Australia. 100% increase in a number of people exposed to flooding in Australia. Increased influx of refugees from the Pacific Islands.Based on some predictions for 2070, data suggests that people who are not accustomed to the warmer climate may experience as much as 45 days per year where they are unable to tolerate being outside, compared to the current 4–6 days per year. Impacts on indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians have a millennia long history of responding and adapting to social and environmental changes. Indigenous Australians have a high level of situated traditional knowledge and historical knowledge about climate change. However, the exposure of Indigenous Australians to climate change impacts is exacerbated by existing socio-economic disadvantages which are linked to colonial and post-colonial marginalisation.Some of these changes include a rise in sea levels, getting hotter and for a longer period of time, and more severe cyclones during the cyclone season. Climate issues include wild fires, heatwaves, floods, cyclones, rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and erosion. The communities most affected by climate changes are those in the North where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 30% of the population. Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander communities located in the coastal north are the most disadvantaged due to social and economic issues and their reliance on traditional land for food, culture, and health. This has begged the question for many community members in these regions, should they move away from this area or remain present.Many Aboriginal people live in rural and remote agricultural areas across Australia, especially in the Northern and Southern areas of the continent. There are a variety of different climate impacts on different Aboriginal communities which includes cyclones in the Northern region and flooding in Central Australia which negatively impacts cultural sites and therefore the relationship between indigenous people and the places that hold their traditional knowledge. Other effects include sea level rise, loss of land and hunting ground, changes in fire regimes, increased severity and duration of wet and dry seasons as well as reduced numbers of animals in the sea, rivers and creeks. Vulnerability The vulnerability comes from remote location where indigenous groups live, lower socio-economic status, and reliance of natural systems for economic needs. Disadvantages which are compounding Indigenous peoples vulnerability to climate change include inadequate health and educational services, limited employment opportunities as well as insufficient infrastructure. Top down institutions have also restricted Indigenous Australians ability to contribute to climate policy frameworks and have their culture and practices recognised.Many of the economic, political, and social-ecological issues present in indigenous communities are long term effects from colonialism and the continued marginalization of these communities. These issues are aggravated by climate change and environmental changes in their respective regions. Indigenous people are seen as particularly vulnerable to climate change because they already live in poverty, poor housing and have poor educational and health services, other socio-political factors place them at risk for climate change impacts. Indigenous people have been portrayed as victims and as vulnerable populations for many years by the media. Aboriginal Australians believe that they have always been able to adapt to climate changes in their geographic areas.Many communities have argued for more community input into strategies and ways to adapt to climate issues instead of top down approaches to combating issues surrounding environmental change. This includes self-determination and agency when deciding how to respond to climate change including proactive actions. Indigenous people have also commented on the need to maintain their physical and mental well-being in order to adapt to climate change which can be helped through the kinship relationships between community members and the land they occupy.In Australia, Aboriginal people have argued that in order for the government to combat climate change, their voices must be included in policy making and governance over traditional land. Much of the government and institutional policies related to climate change and environmental issues in Australia has been done so through a top down approach. Indigenous communities have stated that this limits and ignores Aboriginal Australian voices and approaches. Due to traditional knowledge held by these communities and elders within those communities, traditional ecological knowledge and frameworks are necessary to combat these and a variety of different environmental issues. Heat and drought Fires and droughts in Australia, including the Northern regions, occur mostly in savannas because of current environmental changes in the region. The majority of the fire prone areas in the savanna region are owned by Aboriginal Australian communities, the traditional stewards of the land. Aboriginal Australians have traditional landscape management methods including burning and clearing the savanna areas which are the most susceptible to fires. Traditional landscape management declined in the 19th century as Western landscape management took over. Today, traditional landscape management has been revitalized by Aboriginal Australians, including elders. This traditional landscape practices include the use of clearing and burning to get rid of old growth. Though the way in which indigenous communities in this region manage the landscape has been banned, Aboriginal Australian communities who use these traditional methods actually help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Impact of climate change on health Increased temperatures, wildfires, and drought are major issues in regard to the health of Aboriginal Australian communities. Heat poses a major risk to elderly members of communities in the North. This includes issues such as heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Many of the rural indigenous communities have faced thermal stress and increased issues surrounding access to water resources and ecological landscapes. This impacts the relationship between Aboriginal Australians and biodiversity, as well as impacts social and cultural aspects of society.Aboriginal Australians who live in isolated and remote traditional territories are more sensitive than non-indigenous Australians to changes that effect the ecosystems they are a part of. This is in large part due to the connection that exists between their health (including physical and mental), the health of their land, and the continued practice of traditional cultural customs. Aboriginal Australians have a unique and important relationship with the traditional land of their ancestors. Because of this connection, the dangerous consequences of climate change in Australia has resulted in a decline in health including mental health among an already vulnerable population. In order to combat health disparities among these populations, community based projects and culturally relevant mental and physical health programs are necessary and should include community members when running these programs. Traditional knowledge Indigenous people have always responded and adapted to climate change, including indigenous people of Australia. Aboriginal Australian people have existed in Australia for tens of thousands of years. Due to this continual habitation, Aboriginal Australians have observed and adapted to climatic and environmental changes for millennia which uniquely positions them to be able to respond to current climate changes. Though these communities have shifted and changed their practices overtime, traditional ecological knowledge exists that can benefit local and indigenous communities today. This knowledge is part of traditional cultural and spiritual practices within these indigenous communities. The practices are directly tied to the unique relationship between Aboriginal Australians and their ecological landscapes. This relationship results in a socio-ecological system of balance between humans and nature Indigenous communities in Australia have specific generational traditional knowledge about weather patterns, environmental changes and climatic changes. These communities have adapted to climate change in the past and have knowledge that non-Indigenous people may be able to utilize to adapt to climate change currently and in the future.Indigenous people have not been offered many opportunities or provided with sufficient platforms to influence and contribute their traditional knowledge to the creation of current international and local policies associated to climate change adaptation. Although, Indigenous people have pushed back on this reality, by creating their own platforms and trying to be active members in the conversation surrounding climate change including at international meetings. Specifically, Indigenous people of Australia have traditional knowledge to adapt to increased pressures of global environmental change.Though some of this traditional knowledge was not utilised and conceivably lost with the introduction of white settlers in the 18th century, recently communities have begun to revitalize these traditional practices. Australian Aboriginal traditional knowledge includes language, cultural, spiritual practices, mythology and land management. Responses to climate change Indigenous knowledge has been passed down through the generations with the practice of oral tradition. Given the historical relationship between the land and the people and the larger ecosystem Aboriginal Australians choose to stay and adapt in similar ways to their ancestors before them. Aboriginal Australians have observed short and long term environmental changes and are highly aware of weather and climate changes. Recently, elders have begun to be utilised by indigenous and non-indigenous communities to understand traditional knowledge related to land management. This includes seasonal knowledge means indigenous knowledge pertaining to weather, seasonal cycles of plants and animals, and land and landscape management. The seasonal knowledge allows indigenous communities to combat environmental changes and may result in healthier social-ecological systems. Much of traditional landscape and land management includes keeping the diversity of flora and fauna as traditional foodways. Ecological calendars is one traditional framework used by Aboriginal Australian communities. These ecological calendars are way for indigenous communities to organize and communicate traditional ecological knowledge. The ecological calendars includes seasonal weather cycles related to biological, cultural, and spiritual ways of life. Mitigation Climate change mitigation focuses on steps taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is the set of preventative measures taken to curb global warming and climate change. Examples would be investing in clean fuel and using renewable energy such as wind and solar power. According to the CSIRO and Garnaut Climate Change Review, climate change is expected to have numerous adverse effects on many species, regions, activities and much infrastructure and areas of the economy and public health in Australia. The Stern Report and Garnaut Review on balance expect these to outweigh the costs of mitigation.The World Resources Institute identifies policy uncertainty and over-reliance on international markets as the top threats to Australia's GHG mitigation. Emissions reductions Internationally, Australia pledged as part of Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Domestically, the Clean Energy Act 2011 addresses GHG with an emissions cap, carbon price, and subsidies. Emissions by the electric sector are addressed by Renewable Energy targets at multiple scales, Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), carbon capture and storage flagships, and feed-in tariffs on solar panels. Emissions by the industrial sector are addressed by the Energy Efficiency Opportunities (EEO) program.Emissions by the building sector are addressed by building codes, minimum energy performance standards, Commercial Building Disclosure program, state energy-saving obligations, and the National Energy Saving Initiative. Emissions by the transportation sector are addressed by reduced fuel tax credits and vehicle emissions performance standards. Emissions by the agricultural sector are addressed by the Carbon Farming Initiative and state land-clearing laws. Emissions by the land use sector are addressed by the Clean Energy Future Package, which consists of the Carbon Farming Futures program, Diversity Fund, Regional Natural Resources Management Planning for Climate Change Fund, Indigenous Carbon Farming Fund, and Carbon Farming Skills program. Forestry and forest-related options for carbon sinks In Australia, forestry and forest-related options are the most significant and most easily achieved carbon sink making up 105 Mt per year CO2-e or about 75 per cent of the total figure attainable for the Australian state of Queensland from 2010 to 2050. Among the forestry options, forestry with the primary aim of carbon storage (called carbon forestry) has the highest attainable carbon storage capacity (77 Mt CO2-e/yr) while strategy balanced with biodiversity plantings can return 7–12 times more native vegetation for a 10%–30% reduction of carbon storage performance.Legal strategies to encourage this form of biosequestration include permanent protection of forests in National Parks or on the World Heritage List, properly funded management and bans on use of rainforest timbers and inefficient uses such as woodchipping old growth forest. Policies and legislation to achieve mitigation Paris Agreement The Paris agreement is a legally international agreement adopted at the COP 21, its main goal is to limit global warming to below 1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels. The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are the plans to fight climate change adapted for each country. Every party in the agreement has different goals based on its own historical climate records and country's circumstances. All the goals for each country are stated in their NDC.Australia's target regarding reductions from 2005 year levels: 26–28% reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) until 2030 from 2005 levels. In 2022 the new Australian government officially declared the update of the targets to 43% reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. Gases covered in reductions: Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous oxide (N2O), Hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs), Perfluorinated compound (PFCs), Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) and Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3).Countries have different ways to achieve the established goals depending on resources. Australia's developed approach to support the NDC climate change plan is the following: Enabling new technologies with low emissions and promoting economic growth. Establish regional hydrogen exports to strengthen the country's industry and fund research in the field and enable distribution. Improve charging and refueling infrastructure to enable companies and fleets to integrate new more sustainable vehicle technology. The country has created a development fund whose purpose is for projects concerning carbon dioxide capture. The fund is for storage, use and carbon capture. Investments in technological development that reduces emissions in the sectors of agriculture, industry, transport and manufacturing. Climate solution package to increase investment in projects to generate clean energy. The package also includes extra funds to support development in the hard-to-reach sectors. Australia has a legalised obligation for the major emitting sectors in the country where the emissions are to be kept below their baseline.Australia has through funds such as Australia emission reduction fund contributed with 60 million tonnes reduction of greenhouse gases. The fund enables businesses to earn carbon credits. This is done by storing or preventing emissions through new sustainable techniques. Adaptation According to the IPCC's 2001 Assessment Report, no matter how much effort is put into mitigating climate change, some amount of climate change cannot be avoided. The report shared that climate change adaptation should complement mitigation efforts. Adaptation is the approach that focuses on alleviating current problems brought about by global warming and climate change. It is the attempt to live with the changes in the environment and the economy that global warming has generated and will continue to generate. In short, it involves taking action to deal with the problems brought about by global warming and climate change. Examples include building better flood defences and avoiding the building of residential areas near low-lying, flood-prone areas. In cities with a proven vulnerability to climate change, investment is likely to require the strengthening of urban infrastructure, including storm drain systems, water supply and treatment plants, and protection or relocation of solid waste management and power generation facilities. Coastal regions are likely to need large investment in physical infrastructure projects, specifically projects related to the effects of rising sea levels. Projects such as the construction of protective barriers against rising sea levels, the building of dams to retain and manage water, the redesign and development of port facilities and the improvement of the defence systems at coastal areas should be carried out.Federal, state and territory policy makers have supported a National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan that works to adapt to the impacts of climatic change and manage the effects on wildlife. National government programs Regional natural resource management (NRM) organisations Federal natural resource goals, government agencies and non-government organizations established 56 regional natural resource management (NRM) organisations beginning in the mid-1990s. NRM organisations fall under the federal government Natural Heritage Trust. NRM operate according to individual constitutions, usually by the state government and others by community associations. Their boards are appointed by either the local government or community stakeholders. NRM Planning for Climate Fund, put $13.6 million toward helping NRMs plan land use in light of climate change by building a base of detailed climatic information. National Climate Change Adaptation Programme The Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction has come up with the National Climate Change Adaptation Programme which aims to work with industries, scientific organisations, residents and other governments to create workable solutions. Some A$14 million over a period of four years (2008–2012) is to be spent on this initiative. The programme has forged strong research links in at-risk areas such as the Great Barrier Reef. Research conducted in the Great Barrier Reef is focused on developing methods to deal with climate change to protect the reef. It is hoped that this work will create a universal model for sustainable, cost-effective reef development. According to the programme's brochure: "National greenhouse mitigation policies and programmes are projected to reduce emissions by 94 million tonnes by 2010 – the equivalent of removing every motor vehicle in Australia from the road! However, the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and the growing emissions from around the world will affect our climate. Adaptation to climate change will complement action to reduce greenhouse gases". Climate Adaptation Flagship The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) started the Climate Adaptation Flagship. Its aim is "enabling Australia to adapt more effectively to the impacts of climate change and variability and informing national planning, regulation and investment decisions". This is part of the National Research Flagships Program. It is designed to bring various stakeholders, i.e. research companies, industries, international connections, eminent scientists and CSIRO, together in hope of delivering practical solutions that address the pressing issues of Australia. The Climate Adaptation Flagship project concerns both climate variability (or non-human causes, as defined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and climate change. The research budget for this Flagship for the year 2008–09 is close to A$30 million. There are four research prongs to this project: Pathways to adaptation; Sustainable cities and costs; Managing species and natural ecosystems; Adaptive primary industries, enterprises and communities. National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility The National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) is hosted by Griffith University in Queensland and "leads the research community in a national interdisciplinary effort to generate the information needed by decision-makers in government and in vulnerable sectors and communities to manage the risks of climate change impacts".The key roles of NCCARF include: developing National Adaptation Research Plans to identify critical gaps in the information available to decision-makers synthesising existing and emerging national and international research on climate change impacts and adaptation and developing targeted communication products undertaking a program of Integrative Research to address national priorities, and establishing and maintaining Adaptation Research Networks to link together key researchers and assist them in focusing on national research priorities.The facility is a partnership between the Australian government's Department of Climate Change and Griffith University, with a consortium of funding partners and universities drawn from across the country. The Local Adaptations Pathway Program The Australian government is of the view that local government is critical in managing the impacts of climate change and seeks to assist local councils in studying and applying adaptation options. The programme is the Australian government's initiative to enable councils to go through climate change risk assessments and come up with action plans to prepare for the impacts the phenomenon may have on local society. Up to A$50,000 will be released. A list of councils successful in procuring the funding is provided on the programme's website. Policies and legislation In November 1981, the Office of National Assessments (intelligence agency) presented prime minister Malcolm Fraser with a classified-confidential assessment noting scientific acceptance of the greenhouse effect and resultant "measurably warmer" temperatures and "related climatic changes", and also projecting effects of possible doubling and quadrupling of atmospheric CO2 levels by the middle and end of the 21st century. The assessment focused on the implications for the country's fossil fuel industry.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was clear Australian consensus about the need for action on climate change between the two major political parties. However, following the 1991 recession, incoming right wing governments began framing science of climate change as a continuing debate. In 1997, Australia joined the United States as the only countries to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.With voters influenced by events like the Millennium drought and 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, both parties went to the 2007 election promising action on climate change, with the then opposition calling climate change the "greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time". The incumbent Howard government lost, and the incoming Labor government immediately ratified the Kyoto Protocol. In 2009, before a bill could be passed, with the support of opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, the opposition changed leaders to Tony Abbott, and supported by The Greens but for the opposite reason that Rudd's scheme was too weak and potentially locked in failure, blocked Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.In 2010, the Rudd government decided to delay the implementation of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) until the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (ending in 2012). They cited the lack of bipartisan support for the CPRS and slow international progress on climate action as the reasons for the decision. In turn, the delay was strongly criticised by the Federal Opposition as well as community and grassroots action groups such as GetUp.Following the unsuccessful Copenhagen Summit, the Rudd was replaced by Gillard as Prime Minister, who stated that "there will be no 'carbon tax' under the government I lead". The Gillard Labor government established several government entities to manage Australia's response to climate change: The Climate Change Authority, an independent statutory body that provides advice and performs research for the federal government on climate change. The Clean Energy Regulator, an independent statutory body that administers federal government schemes to measure and reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), a corporate body that manages renewable energy programs. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), a government-owned corporation that invests in clean energy technologies.In 2011, Parliament passed the Clean Energy Act 2011, which introduced carbon pricing in Australia, colloquially known as a 'carbon tax'. It required large businesses, defined as those emitting over 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, to purchase emissions permits. The strong backlash lead by opposition leader Abbott led to her being replaced as leader by Rudd, then Abbott at the next election. Under his leadership, Australia became the first country to repeal a carbon pricing program.In 2015, Abbott was replaced as Prime Minister by Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull under the condition that his climate policy would not change. Australia attended the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference and adopted the Paris Agreement. In limiting further action on climate change, Australia joined Russia, Turkey and Brazil in citing US President Trump's promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.In 2018, Turnbull was replaced by Scott Morrison as leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister. Morrison won the 2019 election with an unchanged climate policy.In June 2021, the Sustainable Development Report 2021 scored Australia last out of 193 United Nations member countries for action taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, scoring 10 out of 100 in an assessment of fossil fuel emissions, emissions associated with imports and exports, and policies for pricing carbon.In May 2022, the Coalition lost the federal election to the Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese. In a machinery of government change, a new Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will be established. The new government committed to a 43% reduction in Australia's emissions by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels), and net zero emissions by 2050. History of climate change policy in Australia Domestic action to address climate change in Australia began in 1989, when Senator Graham Richardson proposed the first greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 20% by 2005. The Australian Government rejected this target. In 1990, Ros Kelly and Jon Kerin announced that the Australian Government would adhere to the goals initially proposed by Richardson but not to any economic detriment.Australia signed the UNFCCC in 1992. This was followed by the release of the National Greenhouse Response Strategy (NGRS), which provided states and territories with the mechanisms to adhere to UNFCCC emission guidelines. Australia attended the first session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Berlin in March 1995. Throughout the 1990s, Australia regularly failed to meet its own emission targets and those set by the UNFCCC.In 1997, Prime Minister John Howard announced that by 2010, an additional 2% of electricity would be sustainably sourced. The following year, the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) was established to monitor greenhouse gas reductions. The AGO later combined with the Department of Environment and Heritage. In April 1998, Australia became a party to the Kyoto Declaration. The Declaration was ratified in 2007 under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.In the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000, the Federal Government introduced the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target program, which aimed to sustainably source 10% of electrical energy by 2010. In 2011, the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target program was divided into the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target and the Small-Scale Renewable Energy Scheme. In January 2003, the New South Wales State Government implemented the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme (GGRS), which allowed carbon emissions to be traded. Under Rudd, the Labor Government proposed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which was intended to take effect in 2010. This scheme was rejected by the Greens for being too permissive and by Tony Abbott's Coalition for being economically detrimental. Under Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the Labor Party passed the Clean Energy Act 2011 to establish a carbon tax and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. This carbon tax was a divisive partisan issue.In 2012, the Coalition ran a campaign to repeal the carbon tax. Upon election victory in September 2013, Prime Minister Tony Abbott passed the Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill. In replacement of the carbon tax, Abbott introduced the Direct Action Scheme to financially reward businesses for voluntarily reducing their carbon emissions. This was followed by a decision not to participate in the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-19).Australia became a party to the Paris Agreement in 2015. In the agreement, Australia committed to reducing its emissions by 26% by 2030.In 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was criticised for a lack of commitment to addressing climate change while taking a vacation during the 2019 bushfires. International cooperation Internationally, Australia contributed to the creation of the Asia Pacific Rain Forest Partnership, International Coral Reef Initiative, International Partnership for Blue Carbon, Mission Innovation, Clean Energy Ministerial Forum, International Solar Alliance, and the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The government has also provided $1 billion to assist developing countries in reducing GHG emissions, partly through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Green Climate Fund. Australia's scientists also provide data on climate, emissions, impacts, and mitigation options for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments.Under the Paris Agreement, Australia has committed to reducing emission by 26-28% below 2005 levels. This would mean reducing emissions by half per capita and by two-thirds across the economy. The Department of Environment and Energy noted in a 2017 review that no one policy could achieve what multiple, sector-specific ones have. This approach has manifested in Australia meeting its first Kyoto Protocol target. Australia is now bound to reducing emissions to at least 5% by 2020 under the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun Agreements and 0.5% less than 1990 levels by 2020 under their second target for the Kyoto Protocol.While Australia opposed a 1.5 °C target at the 2015 negotiations for the Paris Agreement, in 2019, they supported the Kainaki II Declaration of the Pacific Islands Forum, which included this target. In 2022, Australia discussed hosting COP29 with its Pacific island neighbours in 2024 at the Pacific Islands Forum. Society and culture Politics Despite the support of a clear scientific consensus, climate change has been a divisive or controversial issue in Australian politics since the 2000s. It has sometimes been referred to as a "culture war" in the country. Conservatives have generally opposed climate mitigation policies and renewable energy, instead favouring or supporting the country's coal and fossil fuels industries, which make up a large part of the economy. Proposed carbon pricing during the premiership of Julia Gillard proved highly divisive, and was later repealed under Tony Abbott. Climate change was a key issue in the 2022 federal election, where the Australian Labor Party and teal independents made gains in part due to promoting environmental policies.Australian conservatives, with the support of strongly climate-skeptical media, have long opposed climate change mitigation and changes to energy policy. This is partly a strategy to foster the support of the country's coal and the fossil fuel industry, which are highly influential and a large employer in the country. Activism Climate change protests have taken place in Australia during the 21st century.In 2005, with support from Uniting Church and Catholic Earthcare, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the National Council of Churches Australia produced a brochure, Changing Climate, Changing Creation, which was distributed to churches across the country to call for action on climate change.Rising Tide held environmental direct action protests in February 2007, where more than 100 small and medium-sized craft, including swimmers and people on surfboards, gathered in Newcastle harbour. Young people from the Real Action On Climate Change shut down two coal-fired power stations in September 2007. A 2009 "Walk Against Warming" drew 40,000 participants in Melbourne. The Say Yes demonstrations took place on 5 June 2011, in which 45,000 people demonstrated in every major city nationwide in support of carbon pricing policies. Thousands of Australian children took part in school strikes for climate in 2018 and 2019. The September 2019 climate strikes attracted an estimated 180,000 to 300,000 participants across eight Australian capital cities and 140 urban centres, making it one of the largest protests in the country's history and one of the largest climate protests globally. Approximately 2,500 businesses also took part.The response to the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season sparked protests in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Victoria, Brisbane, Hobart, and outside the Australian High Commission in London. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was criticized for climate denial in the wake of the bushfires. Extinction Rebellion held rallies in London, Berlin, Madrid, Copenhagen and Stockholm calling for stronger climate action. Direct action group Blockade Australia began disruptive activism in 2021 and 2022. Litigation Groups including Rising Tide and Queensland Conservation have initiated legal challenges to coal mines under the Commonwealth EPBC legislation. In late 2006, Queensland Conservation lodged an objection to the greenhouse gas emissions from a large coal mine expansion proposed by Xstrata Coal Queensland Pty Ltd. QC's action aimed to have the true costs of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal mining recognised. The Newlands Coal Mine Expansion will produce 28.5 million tonnes of coal over its fifteen years of operation. The mining, transport and use of this coal will emit 84 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Queensland Conservation aims to have reasonable and practical measures imposed on new mines to avoid, reduce or offset the emissions from the mining, transport and use of their coal. The Land and Resources Tribunal ruled against the case. Media coverage Projected impacts by location The impacts of climate change will vary significantly across Australia. The Australian Government appointed Climate Commission have prepared summary reports on the likely impacts of climate change for regions across Australia, including: Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. Capital cities Adelaide Adelaide will get hotter and drier with rainfall predicted to decline 8% to 29% by 2090 and average temperature to increase between 4 and 0.9 degrees. The number of days above 35 degrees will increase by 50% in 2090 and the number of days above 40 degrees will double. Bringing it close to Northampton, Western Australia, for temperature and Kadina, South Australia, for rainfall.Sea levels will rise with predictions between 39 and 61 cm by 2090. And extreme seas are predicted to rise as well, with the CSIRO predicting buildings in Port Adelaide would need to be raised by 50 to 81 cm to keep the amount of flooding incidents the same as recorded between 1986 and 2005. Brisbane In a RCP 4.5 scenario Brisbane's temperature will be similar to that of Rockhampton today while rainfall will be closest to Gympie. The CSIRO predicts rainfall in Brisbane will fall between -23% (235 mm) and -4% (45.3 mm) annually by 2090 while temperature will rise between 4.2° and 0.9°. The number of hot days and hot nights will double by 2050, with many people needing to avoid outdoor activity in summer. Further urban growth increases the number of hot nights even further. Hot nights increase deaths amongst the elderly. Rainfall will be deposited in less frequent more intense rain events, fire days will also get more frequent while frost days will decrease. Sea levels are predicted to rise by 80 cm by 2100 and there will be more frequent sea level extremes. Darwin In a RCP 4.5 scenario Darwin's temperature will be similar to that of Daly River now, with its rainfall most like that of Milikapiti. In a RCP 8.5 scenario, indicating higher greenhouse gas emissions, Darwin's temperature loses any close comparison in Australia being significantly hotter than every town in Australia is today (with the exclusion of Halls Creek in Autumn). Sydney Suburbs of Sydney like Manly, Botany, Narrabeen, Port Botany, and Rockdale, which lie on rivers like the Parramatta, face risks of flooding in low-lying areas such as parks (like Timbrell Park and Majors Bay Reserve), or massive expenses in rebuilding seawalls to higher levels. Sea levels are predicted to rise between 38 and 66 cm by 2090.Temperature in Sydney will increase between 0.9° and 4.2°, while rainfall will decrease between -23% and -4% by 2090. Bringing Sydney's climate close to that of Beaudesert today (under a RCP 8.5 scenario). Different parts of Sydney will warm differently with the greatest impact expected in Western Sydney and Hawkesbury, these areas can expect 5 to 10 additional hot days by 2030. Similarly future rainfall patterns will be different to those today, with more rain expected to fall in summer and autumn and less expected in Winter and Spring. Fire danger days will increase in number by 2070. Melbourne Sea levels are projected to rise between 0.37 cm and 0.59 cm at Williamstown (the closest covered point) by 2090. At the higher end of this scale areas in and around Melbourne would be impacted. With some of the most vulnerable areas being the Docklands development and several marinas and berths in Port Phillip. Melbourne's climate will become similar in terms of total rainfall and average temperature to that of Dubbo today, with temperatures warming between 0.9° and 3.8° and total annual rainfall falling between -10% and -4% by 2090. Rainfall patterns will also change with 20% less rainfall predicted during spring in 2050, which may impact the severity of summer bushfires.The increases in temperature and decrease in rainfall will have a series of follow on effects on the city, including a possible 35% reduction in trees in Melbourne by 2040. And more frequent ambulance callouts and more deaths due to heatwaves. Climate change will cost Melbourne City $12.6bn by 2050. Perth In 2090 Perth is predicted to have the rainfall of Yanchep today and the temperature of Geraldton using the RCP 4.5 scenario. Rainfall is predicted to fall between -29% (-226 mm) and -8% (-66 mm) and temperature predicted to rise between 0.9° and 4°. Perth may see the number of days above 35° increase from 28 per year on average to 36 in 2030, and to between 40 and 63 in 2090. While frost days will decrease. Rainfall will increase in intensity while decreasing on average. Drought days in the south west as a whole may increase by as much as 80% versus 20% for Australia. The danger from fire will increase with more fire days for all of Western Australia. Hobart By 2090 Hobart's climate will warm between 3.8° and 0.9°, rainfall will decline between 4% and 10%. The temperature pattern will be similar to Port Lincoln while rainfall will be closer to Condoblin's today in a RCP 8.5 scenario. Warm spells are likely to last longer and rainfall will trend to more intense rain events dumping less rain annually, increasing the risk of erosion and flooding. Flooding on the Derwent river will become more regular and extreme with a current 1-in-100-year event being possibly a 2-to-6-year event in 2090. Hobart's fire season will get longer. Historical aspects Pre-instrumental climate change Paleoclimatic records indicate that during glacial maxima Australia was extremely arid, with plant pollen fossils showing deserts as far as northern Tasmania and a vast area of less than 12% vegetation cover over all of South Australia and adjacent regions of other states. Forest cover was largely limited to sheltered areas of the east coast and the extreme southwest of Western Australia. During these glacial maxima the climate was also much colder and windier than today. Minimum temperatures in winter in the centre of the continent were as much as 9 °C (48 °F) lower than they are today. Hydrological evidence for dryness during glacial maxima can also be seen at major lakes in Victoria's Western District, which dried up between around 20,000 and 15,000 years ago and re-filled from around 12,000 years ago.During the early Holocene, there is evidence from Lake Frome in South Australia and Lake Woods near Tennant Creek that the climate between 8,000 and 9,500 years ago and again from 7,000 to 4,200 years ago was considerably wetter than over the period of instrumental recording since about 1885. The research that gave these records also suggested that the rainfall flooding Frome was certainly summer-dominant rainfall because of pollen counts from grass species. Other sources suggest that the Southern Oscillation may have been weaker during the early Holocene and rainfall over northern Australia less variable as well as higher. The onset of modern conditions with periodic wet season failure is dated at around 4,000 years before the present. In southern Victoria, there is evidence for generally wet conditions except for a much drier spell between about 3,000 and 2,100 years before the present, when it is believed Lake Corangamite fell to levels well below those observed between European settlement and the 1990s. After this dry period, Western District lakes returned to their previous levels fairly quickly and by 1800 they were at their highest levels in the forty thousand years of record available. Elsewhere, data for most of the Holocene are deficient, largely because methods used elsewhere to determine past climates (like tree-ring data) cannot be used in Australia owing to the character of its soils and climate. Recently, however, coral cores have been used to examine rainfall over those areas of Queensland draining into the Great Barrier Reef. The results do not provide conclusive evidence of man-made climate change, but do suggest the following: There has been a marked increase in the frequency of very wet years in Queensland since the end of the Little Ice Age, a theory supported by there being no evidence for any large Lake Eyre filling during the LIA. The dry era of the 1920s and 1930s may well have been the driest period in Australia over the past four centuries.A similar study, not yet published, is planned for coral reefs in Western Australia.Records exist of floods in a number of rivers, such as the Hawkesbury, from the time of first settlement. These suggest that, for the period beginning with the first European settlement, the first thirty-five years or so were wet and were followed by a much drier period up to the mid-1860s, when usable instrumental records started. Development of an instrumental network for climate records Although rain gauges were installed privately by some of the earliest settlers, the first instrumental climate records in Australia were not compiled until 1840 at Port Macquarie. Rain gauges were gradually installed at other major centres across the continent, with the present gauges in Melbourne and Sydney dating from 1858 and 1859, respectively. In eastern Australia, where the continent's first large-scale agriculture began, a large number of rain gauges were installed during the 1860s and by 1875 a comprehensive network had been developed in the "settled" areas of that state. With the spread of the pastoral industry to the north of the continent during this period, rain gauges were established extensively in newly settled areas, reaching Darwin by 1869, Alice Springs by 1874, and the Kimberley, Channel Country and Gulf Savannah by 1880. By 1885, most of Australia had a network of rainfall reporting stations adequate to give a good picture of climatic variability over the continent. The exceptions were remote areas of western Tasmania, the extreme southwest of Western Australia, Cape York Peninsula, the northern Kimberley and the deserts of northwestern South Australia and southeastern Western Australia. In these areas good-quality climatic data were not available for quite some time after that. Temperature measurements, although made at major population centres from days of the earliest rain gauges, were generally not established when rain gauges spread to more remote locations during the 1870s and 1880s. Although they gradually caught up in number with rain gauges, many places which have had rainfall data for over 125 years have only a few decades of temperature records. See also References External links Climate Action Network Australia – the Australian branch of a worldwide network of NGOs Range Extension Database and Mapping Project, Australia – ecological monitoring project in the marine environment National Climate Change Adaptation Programme brochure Climate Change projections

top contributors to climate change

Top contributors to climate change are the companies, sources, and countries on Earth causing climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, which are mainly: Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide and the fluorinated gases bromofluorocarbon, chlorofluorocarbon, hydrochlorofluorocarbon, hydrofluorocarbon, nitrogen trifluoride, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluorideThe extraction and subsequent use of fossil fuels coal, oil and natural gas, as a fuel source, is the largest contributor to global warming. Carbon dioxide Ranked 10 most countries In million tonnes CO2e, China is the largest emitter with 12705; USA is second with 6001, India 3394, EU (which is 27 countries) 3383, Russia 2476, Japan 1166, Brazil 1057, Indonesia 1002, Iran 893, and Canada 736. Scope 1+3 emissions, cumulative of the years 1988 - 2015, from oil and gas extraction This heading uses data from a climate accountability report of Heede, van Der Vlugt and Griffin of the Carbon Disclosure Project. While data of emissions "Direct operational" and indirectly caused from the companies surveyed were indicated by the CDP, requests for data which were ignored by companies and emissions resulting from the use of products originating with companies were included as estimates by the researchers. The data used by the CDP scientists is a composite of quantities of emissions as described via the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (GHGPCS): Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions (not including Scope 2) - these three being all the possible emission types. 1 is direct emissions sources from a companies owned or possessed resources, 3 is indirect sources consequential of the production - divided by GHGPCS into upstream and downstream, and 15 categories. Scope 3 emissions are thought to be approximately 90% of the total from any company and result from the combustion of coal, and, or, oil, and, or, gas during the conversion of these into energy i.e. as fuel; which is categorized as a downstream. The relevant tables below have a ranking of 20 industrial greenhouse gas emitters from 1988 to 2015 from the Carbon Majors Database (CDP) report, a July 10, 2017 dataset of GtCO2e.The table below shows the total combined (cumulative) emissions as a percentage of all emissions. Oil and gas production data was obtained from annual reports from company websites and the SEC (2016). For some state owned enterprises, data was sourced from the ‘Oil & Gas Journal’ (1986-2016) or is estimated from national statistics (EIA 2017, BP 2016, and OPEC 2016): All cause 1+3 cumulative emissions The Guardian newspaper (England, Britain) and Acciona (bracketed); both citing CDP: Scope 3 Scope 3 emissions are thought to be approximately 90% of the total from any company (Scope 1) and result from fuel combustion. Vehicle emissions Pickup trucks were found to produce the most emissions in a group of vehicles including SUVs and cars, in a survey reported January 2022. Excluding pickup trucks, the most polluting car type surveyed 2017 is the 2011 - 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee which creates 372 grams per kilometre from the exhaust pipe, the 2007 - 2014 Audi R8 creates 346, thirdly the Chevrolet Camaro 335, the tenth most polluting, the Porsche Macan creates 291. Home: cooking fuels and technologies The World Health Organization considers that during 2018 approximately 3 billion people, which was more than 40% of the 2018 estimated global population, used polluting fuel sources in their residences. Largest sources Carbon Dioxide (Scope 1) This part details most CO2 emissions for the year 2021 using Climate TRACE: Largest point source (Scope 1) This section details production sites at single locations where the most pollution exists or existed in the recent past. During March 2020, Secunda CTL, owned by Sasol, a synthetic fuel and chemicals from coal plant in Secunda, South Africa, was the producer of the single most emissions, at 56.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE) of the Government of South Africa determined Sasol has until 1 April 2025 to comply with the legal limits for emissions, as described by the Air Quality Act 2004:Part 3; 12; Category 3. Sasol's pledge to reduce it's emissions from the plant by 10% by 2030 was reported during November 2020, during 2023 it was reported that this was amended to 30%.As of 2021 the gas-fired power plant which emits the most is the Taichung Power Station in Taiwan, with 34.19 million tonnes CO2. Methane Sources of anthropogenic production are in the majority: natural gas, petroleum, and coal mining: the United States produced the most recent emissions from oil and gas sources at least prior to April 2023. livestock production systems; manure and enteric fermentation, waste deposit sites: landfills waste water See also Afşin-Elbistan C power station Attribution of recent climate change Further reading Arkush, David; Braman, Donald (23 January 2023). "Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths". Harvard Environmental Law Review. papers.ssrn.com. 48 (1). SSRN 4335779. Çınar Engineering Consultancy (March 2020). Afşi̇n C Termi̇k Santrali, açık Kömür İşletmesi̇ Ve Düzenli̇ Depolama Alanı Projesi̇ Nihai ÇED Raporu [Afşin C power station, open coal workings and regular storage area final environmental impact report] (Report) (in Turkish). Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation (Turkey). Derwent, Richard G. (9 May 2020) Global Warming Potential (GWP) for Methane: Monte Carlo Analysis of the Uncertainties in Global Tropospheric Model Predictions Atmosphere 2020, 11(5), 486; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11050486 "FAQ" (PDF). ghgprotocol.org. Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Retrieved June 16, 2023. Reay, David S (2007). Greenhouse Gas Sinks. Wallingford, Oxfordshire: CABI. p. xii. ISBN 9781845931896. Sauvage, Grégoire (18 June 2023). "'Gateway to Hell': Turkmenistan urged to plug gas leaks driving climate change". www.france24.com. France24. Supran, Geoffrey; Oreskes, Naomi (23 August 2017). "Assessing ExxonMobil's climate change communications (1977–2014)". Environmental Research Letters. IOP Publishing Ltd. 12 (8): 084019. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f. "The Causes of Climate Change Human activities are driving the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century". climate.nasa.gov. NASA. "World Population Prospects 2022". www.un.org/development/. United Nations. References External links Stephen Conmy Apr 4, 2023 News Analysis The 20 most polluting companies in the world https://www.thecorporategovernanceinstitute.com/ Leakey, Andrew D.B.; Ainsworth, Elizabeth A.; Bernacchi, Carl J.; Rogers, Alistair; Long, Stephen P.; Ort, Donald R. (2009). "Elevated CO2 effects on plant carbon, nitrogen, and water relations: Six important lessons from FACE". Journal of Experimental Botany. Journal of experimental botany, Oxford University Press & University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 60 (10): 2859–2876. doi:10.1093/jxb/erp096. PMID 19401412. Retrieved Jun 14, 2023. Glossary: Well tank wtt emissions, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, https://www.unescwa.org/ C. Wulf, M. Kaltschmitt Environmental impacts of hydrogen use in vehicles 15.2.2 Well-to-wheel analysis, Elsevier, https://www.sciencedirect.com/ Most car Models sold Worldwide 2022, Statista, https://www.statista.com/ Kennedy, Charles (16 Sep 2021). "Home Latest Energy News". oilprice.com.

paris agreement

The Paris Agreement (French: Accord de Paris), often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change. Adopted in 2015, the agreement covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The Paris Agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France. As of February 2023, 195 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are parties to the agreement. Of the three UNFCCC member states which have not ratified the agreement, the only major emitter is Iran. The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2020, but rejoined in 2021. The Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goal is to keep the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels, and preferably limit the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), recognizing that this would substantially reduce the effects of climate change. Emissions should be reduced as soon as possible and reach net zero by the middle of the 21st century. To stay below 1.5 °C of global warming, emissions need to be cut by roughly 50% by 2030. This is an aggregate of each country's nationally determined contributions.It aims to help countries adapt to climate change effects, and mobilize enough finance. Under the agreement, each country must determine, plan, and regularly report on its contributions. No mechanism forces a country to set specific emissions targets, but each target should go beyond previous targets. In contrast to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the distinction between developed and developing countries is blurred, so that the latter also have to submit plans for emission reductions. The Paris Agreement was opened for signature on 22 April 2016 (Earth Day) at a ceremony inside the UN Headquarters in New York. After the European Union ratified the agreement, sufficient countries had ratified the agreement responsible for enough of the world's greenhouse gases for the agreement to enter into force on 4 November 2016. The agreement was lauded by world leaders, but criticized as insufficiently binding by some environmentalists and analysts. There is debate about the effectiveness of the agreement. While current pledges under the Paris Agreement are insufficient for reaching the set temperature goals, there is a mechanism of increased ambition. The Paris Agreement has been successfully used in climate litigation forcing countries and an oil company to strengthen climate action. Aims The aim of the agreement, as described in Article 2, is to have a stronger response to the danger of climate change; it seeks to enhance the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change through: (a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change; (b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production; (c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development. Countries furthermore aim to reach "global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible." Development Lead-up The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit is one of the first international treaties on the topic. It stipulates that parties should meet regularly to address climate change, at the Conference of Parties or COP. It forms the foundation to future climate agreements.The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, regulated greenhouse gas reductions for a limited set of countries from 2008 to 2012. The protocol was extended until 2020 with the Doha Amendment in 2012. The United States decided not to ratify the Protocol, mainly because of its legally-binding nature. This, and distributional conflict, led to failures of subsequent international climate negotiations. The 2009 negotiations were intended to produce a successor treaty of Kyoto, but the negotiations collapsed and the resulting Copenhagen Accord was not legally binding and did not get adopted universally.The Accord did lay the framework for bottom-up approach of the Paris Agreement. Under the leadership of UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres, negotiation regained momentum after Copenhagen's failure. During the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the Durban Platform was established to negotiate a legal instrument governing climate change mitigation measures from 2020. The platform had a mandate to be informed by the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC and the work of the subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC. The resulting agreement was to be adopted in 2015. Negotiations and adoption Negotiations in Paris took place over a two-week span, and continued throughout the three final nights. Various drafts and proposals had been debated and streamlined in the preceding year. According to one commentator two ways in which the French increased the likelihood of success were: firstly to ensure that INDCs were completed before the start of the negotiations, and secondly to invite leaders just for the beginning of the conference.The negotiations almost failed because of a single word when the US legal team realized at the last minute that "shall" had been approved, rather than "should", meaning that developed countries would have been legally obliged to cut emissions: the French solved the problem by changing it as a "typographical error". At the conclusion of COP21 (the 21st meeting of the Conference of the Parties), on 12 December 2015, the final wording of the Paris Agreement was adopted by consensus by the 195 UNFCCC participating member states and the European Union. Nicaragua indicated they had wanted to object to the adoption as they denounced the weakness of the agreement, but were not given a chance. In the agreement the members promised to reduce their carbon output "as soon as possible" and to do their best to keep global warming "to well below 2 degrees C" (3.6 °F). Signing and entry into force The Paris Agreement was open for signature by states and regional economic integration organizations that are parties to the UNFCCC (the convention) from 22 April 2016 to 21 April 2017 at the UN Headquarters in New York. Signing of the agreement is the first step towards ratification, but it is possible to accede to the agreement without signing. It binds parties to not act in contravention of the goal of the treaty. On 1 April 2016, the United States and China, which represent almost 40% of global emissions confirmed they would sign the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement was signed by 175 parties (174 states and the European Union) on the first day it was opened for signature. As of March 2021, 194 states and the European Union have signed the agreement. The agreement would enter into force (and thus become fully effective) if 55 countries that produce at least 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (according to a list produced in 2015) ratify or otherwise join the treaty. Alternative ways to join the treaty are acceptance, approval or accession. The first two are typically used when a head of state is not necessary to bind a country to a treaty, whereas the latter typically happens when a country joins a treaty already in force. After ratification by the European Union, the agreement obtained enough parties to enter into effect on 4 November 2016.Both the EU and its member states are individually responsible for ratifying the Paris Agreement. A strong preference was reported that the EU and its 28 member states ratify at the same time to ensure that they do not engage themselves to fulfilling obligations that strictly belong to the other, and there were fears by observers that disagreement over each member state's share of the EU-wide reduction target, as well as Britain's vote to leave the EU might delay the Paris pact. However, the EU deposited its instruments of ratification on 5 October 2016, along with seven EU member states. Parties The EU and 194 states, totalling over 98% of anthropogenic emissions, have ratified or acceded to the agreement. The only countries which have not ratified are some greenhouse gas emitters in the Middle East: Iran with 2% of the world total being the largest. Libya and Yemen have also not ratified the agreement. Eritrea is the latest country to ratify the agreement, on 7 February 2023. Article 28 enables parties to withdraw from the agreement after sending a withdrawal notification to the depositary. Notice can be given no earlier than three years after the agreement goes into force for the country. Withdrawal is effective one year after the depositary is notified. United States withdrawal and readmittance On 4 August 2017, the Trump administration delivered an official notice to the United Nations that the United States, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as soon as it was eligible to do so. The notice of withdrawal could not be submitted until the agreement was in force for three years for the US, on 4 November 2019. The U.S. government deposited the notification with the Secretary General of the United Nations and officially withdrew one year later on 4 November 2020. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office, 20 January 2021, to re-admit the United States into the Paris Agreement. Following the 30-day period set by Article 21.3, the U.S. was readmitted to the agreement. United States Climate Envoy John Kerry took part in virtual events, saying that the US would "earn its way back" into legitimacy in the Paris process. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the return of the United States as restoring the "missing link that weakened the whole". Content The Paris Agreement is a short agreement with 16 introductory paragraphs and 29 articles. It contains procedural articles (covering, for example, the criteria for its entry into force) and operational articles (covering, for example, mitigation, adaptation and finance). It is a binding agreement, but many of its articles do not imply obligations or are there to facilitate international collaboration. It covers most greenhouse gas emissions, but does not apply to international aviation and shipping, which fall under the responsibility of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization, respectively. Structure The Paris Agreement has been described as having a bottom-up structure, as its core pledge and review mechanism allows nations to set their own NDCs, rather than having targets imposed top down. Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, which sets commitment targets that have legal force, the Paris Agreement, with its emphasis on consensus building, allows for voluntary and nationally determined targets. The specific climate goals are thus politically encouraged, rather than legally bound. Only the processes governing the reporting and review of these goals are mandated under international law. This structure is especially notable for the United States—because there are no legal mitigation or finance targets, the agreement is considered an "executive agreement rather than a treaty". Because the UNFCCC treaty of 1992 received the consent of the US Senate, this new agreement does not require further legislation.Another key difference between the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol is their scope. The Kyoto Protocol differentiated between Annex-I, richer countries with a historical responsibility for climate change, and non-Annex-I countries, but this division is blurred in the Paris Agreement as all parties are required to submit emissions reduction plans. The Paris Agreement still emphasizes the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capabilities—the acknowledgement that different nations have different capacities and duties to climate action—but it does not provide a specific division between developed and developing nations. Nationally determined contributions Countries determine themselves what contributions they should make to achieve the aims of the treaty. As such, these plans are called nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Article 3 requires NDCs to be "ambitious efforts" towards "achieving the purpose of this Agreement" and to "represent a progression over time". The contributions should be set every five years and are to be registered by the UNFCCC Secretariat. Each further ambition should be more ambitious than the previous one, known as the principle of 'progression'. Countries can cooperate and pool their nationally determined contributions. The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions pledged during the 2015 Climate Change Conference are converted to NDCs when a country ratifies the Paris Agreement, unless they submit an update.The Paris Agreement does not prescribe the exact nature of the NDCs. At a minimum, they should contain mitigation provisions, but they may also contain pledges on adaptation, finance, technology transfer, capacity building and transparency. Some of the pledges in the NDCs are unconditional, but others are conditional on outside factors such as getting finance and technical support, the ambition from other parties or the details of rules of the Paris Agreement that are yet to be set. Most NDCs have a conditional component.While the NDCs themselves are not binding, the procedures surrounding them are. These procedures include the obligation to prepare, communicate and maintain successive NDCs, set a new one every five years, and provide information about the implementation. There is no mechanism to force a country to set a NDC target by a specific date, nor to meet their targets. There will be only a name and shame system or as János Pásztor, the former U.N. assistant secretary-general on climate change, stated, a "name and encourage" plan. Global stocktake Under the Paris Agreement, countries must increase their ambition every five years. To facilitate this, the agreement established the Global Stocktake, which assesses progress, with the first evaluation in 2023. The outcome is to be used as input for new nationally determined contributions of parties. The Talanoa Dialogue in 2018 was seen as an example for the global stocktake. After a year of discussion, a report was published and there was a call for action, but countries did not increase ambition afterwards.The stocktake works as part of the Paris Agreement's effort to create a "ratcheting up" of ambition in emissions cuts. Because analysts agreed in 2014 that the NDCs would not limit rising temperatures below 2 °C, the global stocktake reconvenes parties to assess how their new NDCs must evolve so that they continually reflect a country's "highest possible ambition". While ratcheting up the ambition of NDCs is a major aim of the global stocktake, it assesses efforts beyond mitigation. The 5-year reviews will also evaluate adaptation, climate finance provisions, and technology development and transfer. Mitigation provisions and carbon markets Article 6 has been flagged as containing some of the key provisions of the Paris Agreement. Broadly, it outlines the cooperative approaches that parties can take in achieving their nationally determined carbon emissions reductions. In doing so, it helps establish the Paris Agreement as a framework for a global carbon market. Article 6 is the only important part of the agreement yet to be resolved; negotiations in 2019 did not produce a result. The topic was settled during the 2021 COP26 in Glasgow. A mechanism, the "corresponding adjustment", was established to avoid double counting for emission offsets. Linkage of carbon trading systems and ITMOs Paragraphs 6.2 and 6.3 establish a framework to govern the international transfer of mitigation outcomes (ITMOs). The agreement recognizes the rights of parties to use emissions reductions outside of their own borders toward their NDC, in a system of carbon accounting and trading. This provision requires the "linkage" of carbon emissions trading systems—because measured emissions reductions must avoid "double counting", transferred mitigation outcomes must be recorded as a gain of emission units for one party and a reduction of emission units for the other, a so called "corresponding adjustment". Because the NDCs, and domestic carbon trading schemes, are heterogeneous, the ITMOs will provide a format for global linkage under the auspices of the UNFCCC. The provision thus also creates a pressure for countries to adopt emissions management systems—if a country wants to use more cost-effective cooperative approaches to achieve their NDCs, they will have to monitor carbon units for their economies.So far, as the only country who wants to buy ITMOs, Switzerland has signed deals regarding ITMO tradings with Peru, Ghana, Senegal, Georgia, Dominica, Vanuatu, Thailand and Ukraine. Sustainable Development Mechanism Paragraphs 6.4-6.7 establish a mechanism "to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gases and support sustainable development". Though there is no official name for the mechanism as yet, it has been referred to as the Sustainable Development Mechanism or SDM. The SDM is considered to be the successor to the Clean Development Mechanism, a mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol by which parties could collaboratively pursue emissions reductions.The SDM is set to largely resemble the Clean Development Mechanism, with the dual goal of contributing to global GHG emissions reductions and supporting sustainable development. Though the structure and processes governing the SDM are not yet determined, certain similarities and differences from the Clean Development Mechanisms have become clear. A key difference is that the SDM will be available to all parties as opposed to only Annex-I parties, making it much wider in scope.The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol was criticized for failing to produce either meaningful emissions reductions or sustainable development benefits in most instances. and for its complexity. It is possible that the SDM will see difficulties. Climate change adaptation provisions Climate change adaptation received more focus in Paris negotiations than in previous climate treaties. Collective, long-term adaptation goals are included in the agreement, and countries must report on their adaptation actions, making it a parallel component with mitigation. The adaptation goals focus on enhancing adaptive capacity, increasing resilience, and limiting vulnerability. Specific topics of concern Ensuring finance Developed countries reaffirmed the commitment to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, and agreed to continue mobilising finance at this level until 2025. The money is for supporting mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. It includes finance for the Green Climate Fund, which is a part of the UNFCCC, but also for a variety of other public and private pledges. The Paris Agreement states that a new commitment of at least $100 billion per year has to be agreed before 2025.Though both mitigation and adaptation require increased climate financing, adaptation has typically received lower levels of support and has mobilized less action from the private sector. A report by the OECD found that 16% of global climate finance was directed toward climate adaptation in 2013–2014, compared to 77% for mitigation. The Paris Agreement called for a balance of climate finance between adaptation and mitigation, and specifically increasing adaptation support for parties most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including Least developed countries and Small Island Developing States. The agreement also reminds parties of the importance of public grants, because adaptation measures receive less investment from the public sector.In 2015, twenty Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and members of the International Development Finance Club introduced five principles to maintain widespread climate action in their investments: commitment to climate strategies, managing climate risks, promoting climate smart objectives, improving climate performance and accounting for their own actions. As of January 2020, the number of members abiding by these principles grew to 44.Some specific outcomes of the elevated attention to adaptation financing in Paris include the G7 countries' announcement to provide US$420 million for climate risk insurance, and the launching of a Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) Initiative. The largest donors to multilateral climate funds, which includes the Green Climate Fund, are the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France and Sweden. Loss and damage It is not possible to adapt to all effects of climate change: even in the case of optimal adaptation, severe damage may still occur. The Paris Agreement recognizes loss and damage of this kind. Loss and damage can stem from extreme weather events, or from slow-onset events such as the loss of land to sea level rise for low-lying islands. Previous climate agreements classified loss and damage as a subset of adaptation.The push to address loss and damage as a distinct issue in the Paris Agreement came from the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, whose economies and livelihoods are most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change. The Warsaw Mechanism, established two years earlier during COP19 and set to expire in 2016, categorizes loss and damage as a subset of adaptation, which was unpopular with many countries. It is recognized as a separate pillar of the Paris Agreement. The United States argued against this, possibly worried that classifying the issue as separate from adaptation would create yet another climate finance provision. In the end, the agreement calls for "averting, minimizing, and addressing loss and damage" but specifies that it cannot be used as the basis for liability. The agreement adopts the Warsaw Mechanism, an institution that will attempt to address questions about how to classify, address, and share responsibility for loss. Transparency The parties are legally bound to have their progress tracked by technical expert review to assess achievement toward the NDC and to determine ways to strengthen ambition. Article 13 of the Paris Agreement articulates an "enhanced transparency framework for action and support" that establishes harmonized monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirements. Both developed and developing nations must report every two years on their mitigation efforts, and all parties will be subject to technical and peer review.While the enhanced transparency framework is universal, the framework is meant to provide "built-in flexibility" to distinguish between developed and developing countries' capacities. The Paris Agreement has provisions for an enhanced framework for capacity building, recognizes the varying circumstances of countries, and notes that the technical expert review for each country consider that country's specific capacity for reporting. Parties to the agreement send their first Biennial Transparency Report (BTR), and greenhouse gas inventory figures to the UNFCCC by 2024 and every two years after that. Developed countries submit their first BTR in 2022 and inventories annually from that year. The agreement also develops a Capacity-Building Initiative for Transparency to assist developing countries in building the necessary institutions and processes for compliance.Flexibility can be incorporated into the enhanced transparency framework via the scope, level of detail, or frequency of reporting, tiered based on a country's capacity. The requirement for in-country technical reviews could be lifted for some less developed or small island developing countries. Ways to assess capacity include financial and human resources in a country necessary for NDC review. Litigation The Paris Agreement has become a focal point of climate change litigation. One of the first major cases in this area was State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation, which was raised against the Netherlands' government after it had reduced its planned emissions reductions goal for 2030 prior to the Paris Agreement. After an initial ruling against the government in 2015 that required it to maintain its planned reduction, the decision was upheld on appeals through the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in 2019, ruling that the Dutch government failed to uphold human rights under Dutch law and the European Convention on Human Rights by lowering its emission targets. The 2 °C temperature target of the Paris Agreement provided part of the judgement's legal basis. The agreement, whose goals are enshrined in German law, also formed part of the argumentation in Neubauer et al. v. Germany, where the court ordered Germany to reconsider its climate targets.In May 2021, the district court of The Hague ruled against oil company Royal Dutch Shell in Milieudefensie et al v Royal Dutch Shell. The court ruled that it must cut its global emissions by 45% from 2019 levels by 2030, as it was in violation of human rights. This lawsuit was considered the first major application of the Paris Agreement towards a corporation. Human rights On 4 July 2022, the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil recognized the Paris agreement as a "human rights treaty". According to the ruling of the court in Brazil it should "supersede national law". In the same month the United Nations Human Rights Council in a resolution "(A/HRC/50/L.10/Rev.1) on Human rights and climate change, adopted without a vote" called to ratify and implement the agreement and emphasized the link between stopping climate change and the right to food.The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights officially recognized that "Climate change threatens the effective enjoyment of a range of human rights including those to life, water and sanitation, food, health, housing, self-determination, culture and development." Implementation The Paris Agreement is implemented via national policy. It would involve improvements to energy efficiency to decrease the energy intensity of the global economy. Implementation also requires fossil fuel burning to be cut back and the share of sustainable energy to grow rapidly. Emissions are being reduced rapidly in the electricity sector, but not in the building, transport and heating sector. Some industries are difficult to decarbonize, and for those carbon dioxide removal may be necessary to achieve net zero emissions. In a report released in 2022 the IPCC promotes the need for innovation and technological changes in combination with consumption and production behavioral changes to meet Paris Agreement objectives.To stay below 1.5 °C of global warming, emissions need to be cut by roughly 50% by 2030. This is an aggregate of each country's nationally determined contributions. By mid-century, CO2 emissions would need to be cut to zero, and total greenhouse gases would need to be net zero just after mid-century.There are barriers to implementing the agreement. Some countries struggle to attract the finance necessary for investments in decarbonization. Climate finance is fragmented, further complicating investments. Another issue is the lack of capabilities in government and other institutions to implement policy. Clean technology and knowledge is often not transferred to countries or places that need it. In December 2020, the former chair of the COP 21, Laurent Fabius, argued that the implementation of the Paris Agreement could be bolstered by the adoption of a Global Pact for the Environment. The latter would define the environmental rights and duties of states, individuals and businesses. Fulfillment of requirements In September 2021, the Climate Action Tracker estimated that, with current policies, global emissions will double above the 2030 target level. The gap is 20-23 Gt CO2e. Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Thailand are on track to achieve a 4°C warming of the planet if implemented more widely. Other countries are not doing enough. Of the world's countries, only the Gambia is at the level of the Paris Agreement. With measures implemented by autumn 2021, the global average temperature will rise by 2.9°C; even with the Paris Agreement pledges, the average temperature will rise by 2.4°C; and with all the zero emission targets on the table, the average temperature will rise by 2.0°C.The Production Gap 2021 report states that world governments still plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 (including 240% more coal, 57% more oil and 71% more gas) than the 1.5 degree limit.In September 2023 the first global stocktake report about the implementation of the agreement was released. According to the report contrarily to expectations, the agreement has a significant effect: while in 2010 the expected temperature rise by 2100 was 3.7–4.8 °C, at COP 27 it was 2.4–2.6°C and if all countries will fulfill their long-term pledges 1.7–2.1 °C. However, the world is still very far from limiting warming to 1.5 degrees: for this emissions must peak by 2025 and even though emissions really peaked in many countries, global emissions did not. Reception and debates The agreement was lauded by French President François Hollande, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. The president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, called the agreement "balanced and long-lasting", and India's prime minister Narendra Modi commended the agreement's climate justice. When the agreement achieved the required signatures in October 2016, US President Barack Obama said that "Even if we meet every target, we will only get to part of where we need to go." He also stated "this agreement will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change [and] will help other nations ratchet down their emissions over time."Some environmentalists and analysts reacted cautiously, acknowledging the "spirit of Paris" in bringing together countries, but expressing less optimism about the pace of climate mitigation and how much the agreement could do for poorer countries. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist and leading climate change expert, voiced anger that most of the agreement consists of "promises" or aims and not firm commitments and called the Paris talks a fraud with "no action, just promises". Criticism of the agreement from those arguing against climate action has been diffuse, which may be due to the weakness of the agreement. This type of criticism typically focusses on national sovereignty and ineffectiveness of international action. Effectiveness The effectiveness of the Paris Agreement to reach its climate goals is under debate, with most experts saying it is insufficient for its more ambitious goal of keeping global temperature rise under 1.5 °C. Many of the exact provisions of the Paris Agreement have yet to be straightened out, so that it may be too early to judge effectiveness. According to the 2020 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the current climate commitments of the Paris Agreement, global mean temperatures will likely rise by more than 3 °C by the end of the 21st century. Newer net zero commitments were not included in the NDCs, and may bring down temperatures a further 0.5 °C.With initial pledges by countries inadequate, faster and more expensive future mitigation would be needed to still reach the targets. Furthermore, there is a gap between pledges by countries in their NDCs and implementation of these pledges; one third of the emission gap between the lowest-costs and actual reductions in emissions would be closed by implementing existing pledges. A pair of studies in Nature found that as of 2017 none of the major industrialized nations were implementing the policies they had pledged, and none met their pledged emission reduction targets, and even if they had, the sum of all member pledges (as of 2016) would not keep global temperature rise "well below 2 °C".In 2021, a study using a probabilistic model concluded that the rates of emissions reductions would have to increase by 80% beyond NDCs to likely meet the 2 °C upper target of the Paris Agreement, that the probabilities of major emitters meeting their NDCs without such an increase is very low. It estimated that with current trends the probability of staying below 2 °C of warming is 5% – and 26% if NDCs were met and continued post-2030 by all signatories.As of 2020, there is little scientific literature on the topics of the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement on capacity building and adaptation, even though they feature prominently in the Paris Agreement. The literature available is mostly mixed in its conclusions about loss and damage, and adaptation.According to the stocktake report, the agreement has a significant effect: while in 2010 the expected temperature rise by 2100 was 3.7–4.8 °C, at COP 27 it was 2.4–2.6°C and if all countries will fulfill their long-term pledges even 1.7–2.1 °C. Despite it, the world is still very far from reaching the aim of the agreement: limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. For doing this, emissions must peak by 2025. See also References Further reading Jepsen, Henrik; et al. (2021). Negotiating the Paris Agreement: The Insider Stories. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-88624-6. Teske, Sven; et al. (2019). Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-05842-5. External links Quotations related to Paris Agreement at Wikiquote Text of the Paris Agreement