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  • Land-use spillovers from environmental policy interventions

    <p><span>Environmental policy interventions are crucial for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, yet their effectiveness can be compromised by land-use spillovers, where efforts to reduce impacts in one place displace them elsewhere. Despite growing recognition of spillovers, they remain unevenly defined, inconsistently measured, and poorly integrated into policy evaluation and accountability frameworks. This systematic review synthesizes current research on land-use spillovers triggered by environmental policies, including carbon pricing, protected areas, supply chain interventions, and payments for ecosystem services. We identify three dominant pathways: leakage, indirect land use change (iLUC), and positive spillovers, emerging under common conditions such as weak enforcement, market integration, limited livelihood alternatives, and accessible frontier lands. These conditions are shaped by broader institutional, economic, demographic, and biophysical drivers, yet are rarely integrated into policy design and evaluation. While methods to evaluate spillover effects range from global scale ex ante models to local ex post spatial and econometric analyses, few studies bridge scales or connect findings to international policy frameworks such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Cases are concentrated in climate-linked interventions and in South America, leaving important geographic and sectoral blind spots. This limits their relevance for designing policies that minimize displaced impacts and foster more durable outcomes. Advancing spillover research will require common frameworks, more consistent methodologies, and multi-scale tools that can enhance comparability, attribution, and integration into environmental governance.</span></p>

    2025-07-15

    Land-use spillovers from environmental policy interventions

  • Nam Tien Solutionscape Baseline Survey

    <p class="p1">The Nam Tien solutionscape in Xayabury Province, Lao PDR, presents unique opportunities and challenges for integrating biodiversity conservation with sustainable livelihoods. As part of the Wyss Academy&rsquo;s Southeast Asia Regional Stewardship Hub&rsquo;s monitoring and evaluation framework, a baseline survey was conducted in August 2024. The survey aimed to establish a systematic understanding of the socio-economic and environmental conditions in the region, serving as a foundation for targeted interventions and program evaluation. This report summarizes the findings from the survey, which included responses from 538 households across six villages bordering the Nam Tien Provincial Protection Forest (NTPPF), representing 30% of the area&rsquo;s households.</p> <p class="p1">The survey provides critical insights into local livelihoods, migration trends, environmental perceptions, and the adoption of sustainable practices, offering a baseline to guide Wyss Academy&rsquo;s interventions.While some initiatives were already underway at the time of data collection, the results underline the socio-economic and environmental challenges that need to be addressed to promote sustainable system transformation.</p>

    2025-07-10

    Nam Tien Solutionscape Baseline Survey

  • Mineral Extraction on Indigenous Land: Employing a Relational Approach to Navigate the Convergence of Indigenous and Other Ontologies and Practices.

    <p><span>The transition to low-carbon technologies, essential for energy transition, significantly increases the demand for minerals, with projections indicating a sixfold rise by 2040. A substantial portion of these minerals is located on Indigenous lands, placing policymakers in (1) a governance paradox between rapid mineral extraction and the protection of Indigenous rights and (2) a justice paradox between respecting Indigenous self-determination&mdash;including the right to reject mining&mdash;versus accelerating the energy transition to prevent broader climate injustices. This perspective explores how a relational approach can help navigate the convergence of Indigenous and other ontologies and practices to address justice issues in mineral extraction. It contrasts the holistic, relational worldview of Indigenous peoples with the resource-centered, extractive logic embedded in the governance approaches of many mining companies and governments. The environmental, social, and cultural impacts of mineral extraction on Indigenous lands are discussed, revealing that Indigenous communities bear disproportionate negative consequences despite their minimal contribution to carbon emissions. The paper proposes a paradigm shift towards a process-relational framework that acknowledges Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and relating to land. This framework aims to enhance procedural, distributive, recognitional, and epistemic justice in mineral extraction and promote new governance approaches. This perspective aims to support a more just and sustainable energy transition that respects Indigenous ontologies and practices and constitutes a start towards a broader political movement of decolonization.</span></p>

    2025-07-01

    Mineral Extraction on Indigenous Land: Employing a Relational Approach to Navigate the Convergence of Indigenous and Other Ontologies and Practices.

  • Measuring Ecosystem Services and Applying the TESSA Toolkit

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    2025-06-30

    Measuring Ecosystem Services and Applying the TESSA Toolkit

  • Unveiling Pervasive Assumptions: Moving beyond the Poverty-Biodiversity Loss Association in Conservation

    <p>This paper reflects on the continued persistence of the idea in conservation research and practice that poverty drives biodiversity loss (the poverty-biodiversity loss association [PBLA]). We draw on evidence to show how the PBLA has proven resistant to counter-evidence and is particularly visible at local-level implementation, and is often implicit in conservation strategies. We untangle three underlying reasons that help to explain why the PBLA has persisted under a verisimilitude (seeming truth) that can leave it hiding in plain sight. In doing so, we offer conservation science and practice the means to recognise and thereby remedy this thinking where it exists, and in so doing, advance conservation towards its aims of equitable and effective delivery. We outline how the Connected Conservation model may be better equipped to challenge the disproportionate role of wealth in biodiversity decline whilst empowering biodiversity stewards and their plural knowledge, values and governance systems.</p>

    2025-06-01

    Unveiling Pervasive Assumptions: Moving beyond the Poverty-Biodiversity Loss Association in Conservation

  • Land-use spillovers from environmental policy interventions

    <p><strong>Highlights</strong><br />&bull; Spillovers are widely recognized but lack common frameworks and methods.<br />&bull; Most spillovers arise where enforcement is weak and frontier land is accessible.<br />&bull; Spillover research focuses on climate; biodiversity frameworks are overlooked.<br />&bull; Spillovers are rarely assessed across local-to-global scales in policy studies.<br />&bull; Addressing spillovers needs shared tools, cross-scale methods, and integration.</p> <p><strong>Abstract&nbsp;</strong><br />Environmental policy interventions are crucial for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, yet their effectiveness can be compromised by land-use spillovers, where efforts to reduce impacts in one place displace them elsewhere. Despite growing recognition of spillovers, they remain unevenly defined, inconsistently measured, and poorly integrated into policy evaluation and accountability frameworks. This systematic review synthesizes current research on land-use spillovers triggered by environmental policies, including carbon pricing, protected areas, supply chain interventions, and payments for ecosystem services. We identify three dominant pathways: leakage, indirect land use change (iLUC), and positive spillovers, emerging under common conditions such as weak enforcement, market integration, limited livelihood alternatives, and accessible frontier lands. These conditions are shaped by broader institutional, economic, demographic, and biophysical drivers, yet are rarely integrated into policy design and evaluation. While methods to evaluate spillover effects range from global scale ex ante models to local ex post spatial and econometric analyses, few studies bridge scales or connect findings to international policy frameworks such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Cases are concentrated in climate-linked interventions and in South America, leaving important geographic and sectoral blind spots. This limits their relevance for designing policies that minimize displaced impacts and foster more durable outcomes. Advancing spillover research will require common frameworks, more consistent methodologies, and multi-scale tools that can enhance comparability, attribution, and integration into environmental governance.</p>

    2025-05-27

    Land-use spillovers from environmental policy interventions

  • Disasters and Divisions: How Partisanship Shapes Policymaker Responses to Natural Disasters

    <p>This paper investigates the impact of natural disasters on policymakers&rsquo; behavior, focusing on whether such events prompt a pro-environmental policy shift. Analyzing the voting behavior of all members of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 2021, this study finds that exposure to natural disasters does not directly affect the volume of environmental legislation passed post-disaster. Instead, the influence of natural disasters on politicians&rsquo; support for pro- environmental legislation is conditioned by political affiliation. Specifically, Democratic representatives are more likely to endorse green legislation as disaster frequency increases, whereas Republican representatives show decreased support in disaster-affected districts compared to disaster-free districts. These findings highlight significant partisan divides in environmental policymaking and suggest that, even in the face of catastrophic events, certain politicians may resist endorsing climate change mitigation policies. This research has important implications for the capacity of democratic institutions to address climate change effectively amidst polarized political landscapes.</p>

    2025-05-09

    Disasters and Divisions: How Partisanship Shapes Policymaker Responses to Natural Disasters

  • Harnessing eDNA Metabarcoding to Monitor Species Diversity in Restoration Sites: Insights From Laikipia, Kenya

    <p><span>Restoration of degraded arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) dryland ecosystems gained traction globally with the enactment of the Bonn Challenge and UN Decade of Restoration. This has been domesticated in Kenya's context by The Forest and Landscape Restoration Implementation Plan (FOLAREP). However, effectively monitoring restored ecosystems is crucial but challenging because of data gaps and technical hurdles, highlighting the need for innovative approaches to assess and restore biodiversity. This study aimed to pilot soil environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding to detect species compositions rapidly, evaluate population structures and abundances, and characterize taxonomic groups. The results from this study serve as a foundational step toward monitoring the impact of water bunds, a restoration approach on biodiversity conservation, in Lower Naibunga Community Conservancy in Laikipia County, Kenya. This study used 16S rDNA and rbCL metabarcoding to assess prokaryotic and plant diversity. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria species attributed to enhancing nutrient availability and improving plant resilience to abiotic stress were prevalent across all six sites: Lorubai (Site 1), Burtany (Site 2), Nkirashi (Site 3), Losopukia (Site 4), Munushoi (Site 5), and Loika (Site 6). Plant species attributed to drought tolerance and rangeland rehabilitation were also identified. The study demonstrates the potential of eDNA metabarcoding as an effective tool for monitoring nature-based solutions (NbS) interventions to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem restoration in ASALs.</span></p>

    2025-05-05

    Harnessing eDNA Metabarcoding to Monitor Species Diversity in Restoration Sites: Insights From Laikipia, Kenya

  • Potential Tree Cover under Current and Future Climate Scenarios

    <p>Forests play a key role in the global commitments to reach carbon neutrality in the coming decades. Global maps of potential tree cover at high spatial resolution for current and future climate scenarios are needed to assess the risk of future forest carbon loss and carbon storage potential through afforestation/reforestation projects. Here, we present data integrating satellite-based tree cover observations into a machine learning framework to estimate tree cover carrying capacity (percentage of tree coverage), which reflects the maximum potential tree cover, accounting for natural disturbances. Our model improves upon previous estimates by reducing prediction errors, better aligning with tree cover observations in intact areas, and lowering spatial variance in areas without topographical variation. However, uncertainties remain, particularly in regions where human activity has significantly altered landscapes. The tree cover carrying capacity provides an estimate of potential tree cover based on climatic and soil conditions. This serves as an initial step in identifying afforestation/reforestation opportunities but should be further assessed for land-use competition, ecological feasibility, and other limitations.</p>

    2025-04-03

    Potential Tree Cover under Current and Future Climate Scenarios

  • The True Value of Forests, Global Synthesis Report

    <p>Forests are crucial for sustaining ecological stability, supporting biodiversity, and contributing to human well-being. Despite repeated commitments by the international community to slow down, stop and reverse the destruction and degradation of forests across the world, little evidence exists that these commitments are having an impact. Understanding that forests hold different meanings and significance for different people is fundamental to success in the search for a more sustainable and equitable future for environmental management and conservation.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p> <p>Four regional Wyss Academy Dialogues with Purpose (in South America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and East Africa) and two virtual dialogues were conducted to explore the multifaceted values assigned to the forest. This report synthesizes findings from these dialogues.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p>

    2025-03-28

    The True Value of Forests, Global Synthesis Report

  • Shifting Research Paradigms: Indigenized Multimodalities as a Collaborative Engagement Pathway for Bridging Transdisciplinarity,

    <p><span>How can we break academic silos and foster real collaboration between policy, science, and the arts? This paper introduces Indigenized Multimodalities, a method developed through the Bridging Values project and EthnoKino’s Doc Impact Lab. Inspired by Malcolm Ferdinand’s double fractures, it proposes a three-step framework for navigating research beyond colonial dualities—integrating narratives, fostering relational collaborations, and shifting paradigms for systemic change.</span></p> <p><span>Through ethno-fiction films, impact storytelling, and science outreach, we can build bridges between continents and communities. Let’s rethink research as a dialogical, multimodal, and emancipatory practice!</span></p>

    2025-03-06

    Shifting Research Paradigms: Indigenized Multimodalities as a Collaborative Engagement Pathway for Bridging Transdisciplinarity,

  • Stakeholder Network Analysis of the Nam Tien Provincial Protection Forest in Laos

    <p class="font_8 wixui-rich-text__text"><span class="wixui-rich-text__text">The research team on Environmental Governance and Global Development at the Wyss Academy for Nature, in collaboration with the WA's Southeast Asia Hub, led a study on the stakeholders involved in the management to the Nam Tien Provincial Protection Forest (NTPPF) in the Sayaboury province in Laos.</span></p> <p class="font_8 wixui-rich-text__text"><span class="wixui-rich-text__text">The study provides a baseline understanding of the relationships between stakeholders in the NTPPF network and identify potential entry points for governance interventions to improve stakeholder engagement and project outcomes. The findings suggest that some provincial and district government agencies are central to the NTPPF network. Future interventions should consider the structure and power dynamics of the NTPPF network in order to better achieve their goals.</span></p>

    2025-03-05

    Stakeholder Network Analysis of the Nam Tien Provincial Protection Forest in Laos

  • EU Deforestation Regulation: What Can Switzerland Do?

    <p><span>The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) could play a crucial role in stopping global deforestation and promoting sustainable business models. But how can the EUDR be implemented in producer countries in a socially responsible way? And what does it mean for Swiss law?</span></p> <p><span>To address these questions, the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) and the Wyss Academy for Nature initiated a participatory process last year to develop concrete legal proposals.</span></p>

    2025-02-27

    EU Deforestation Regulation: What Can Switzerland Do?

  • Black Rhinoceros: Contrasting Conservation Actions and Outcomes Across the Continent

    <p>The black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) historically roamed across southern and eastern Africa, with an estimated potential population of over one hundred thousand. However, extensive habitat loss and uncontrolled hunting followed by intensive illegal killing for the international trade in rhino horn, notably during the 1970s and 1980s, led to a signifcant decline. By 1995, their numbers plummeted to a nadir of just 2354. Since 1991, the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group has monitored black rhino numbers and shown that sustained coordinated conservation efforts have resulted in a remarkable recovery. Despite remaining Critically endangered, black rhino numbers reached 6487 by the end of 2022, with Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, and Zimbabwe conserving 93% of the population. Regrettably, the western black rhino ecotype was declared extinct in 2011.</p>

    2025-02-21

    Black Rhinoceros: Contrasting Conservation Actions and Outcomes Across the Continent

  • The Minamata Convention’s Financial Mechanism

    <p class="p1">Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the largest source of mercury emissions. The ASGM sector is therefore an important focus area in international efforts to reduce the mining, use, trade and improper disposal of mercury and the associated negative impacts on the environment and human health.</p>

    2025-02-12

    The Minamata Convention’s Financial Mechanism

  • Due Diligence and Supply Chain Regulation for Swiss Gold

    <p class="p1">This report explores current regulatory developments in Switzerland and the EU in the area of gold production and trade. Specifically, the report focuses on supply-chain related due diligence obligations of Swiss-based companies and their potential effect on the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector.</p>

    2025-02-11

    Due Diligence and Supply Chain Regulation for Swiss Gold

  • Are the markets ready for responsible gold from artisanal and small-scale miners?

    <p class="p1">This report explores the readiness of Swiss intermediary market actors &ndash; refineries, watchmakers, jewellers, and banks &ndash; to engage with responsibly sourced artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) gold. The study examines their willingness and capability to accommodate the additional costs and efforts required for ethical sourcing and investigates broader market trends influencing their decisions.</p>

    2025-02-10

    Are the markets ready for responsible gold from artisanal and small-scale miners?

  • Policymaking, Trust, and the Demand for Public Services: Evidence from a Mass Sterilization Campaign

    <p>We study a large-scale family planning intervention in which more than 260,000 Peruvian women were sterilized. Many of these medical procedures are alleged to have been performed without patient consent. The subsequent disclosure of alleged illegal sterilizations caused reductions in the usage of contraceptive methods and prenatal and birth delivery services and, more generally, the demand for medical services in affected areas. As a result, child health worsened. The results persist for at least 17 years after the information disclosure and are driven by disappointed supporters of the implementing government. Learning about the government&rsquo;s malpractices undermined trust in institutions. (JEL I12, I18, I38, J13, J16, J18, O15)</p>

    2025-02-01

    Policymaking, Trust, and the Demand for Public Services: Evidence from a Mass Sterilization Campaign

  • Naturparkstationen – Inkubatoren des Besuchermanagements in Pärken

    <p>Im Jahr 2020 war die Welt mit der COVID-19-Pandemie konfrontiert, die erhebliche Auswirkungen auf die Gesellschaft, die Wirtschaft und die Umwelt hatte. Zu Beginn des Jahres war die Natur in vielen Bereichen unter Druck. Die Pandemie führte kurzfristig zu einem Rückgang der Emissionen, da Lockdowns und Einschränkungen den Verkehr und die Industrie reduzierten. Andererseits war aber ein stark erhöhter Druck auf die Natur zu verzeichnen in der näheren Umgebung. Viele Leute suchten die Natur auf, darunter auch viele Personen, die dies zuvor weniger oder nicht getan hatten.</p>

    2025-01-27

    Naturparkstationen – Inkubatoren des Besuchermanagements in Pärken

  • The Influence of Land Surface Temperature on Ghana’s Climate Variability and Implications for Sustainable Development

    <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c590="" ds-row="" class="row ng-star-inserted" _nghost-dspace-angular-c589=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c589="" class="flex-column w-100 col metadata-cell border-bottom mb-4 mt-4 ng-star-inserted d-flex"><ds-metadata-container _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c589="" class="w-100 ng-star-inserted" _nghost-dspace-angular-c588=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" class="ng-star-inserted"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" class="d-flex"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" class="d-flex col flex-wrap flex-column ng-star-inserted"><ds-metadata-render _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" _nghost-dspace-angular-c587="" class="ng-star-inserted"> <div _nghost-dspace-angular-c621="" ds-longtext="" class="ng-star-inserted"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" class="mb-2"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621=""><ds-truncatable _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" _nghost-dspace-angular-c81=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c81=""><ds-truncatable-part _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" _nghost-dspace-angular-c82=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c82="" class="min-3 clamp-default-none"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c82="" class="content dont-break-out preserve-line-breaks removeFaded"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" data-test="formatted-text">Climate change poses significant global challenges, especially in the West African sub-region, with high temperature and precipitation patterns variability, threatening socio-economic stability and ecosystem health. While global factors such as greenhouse gases and oceanic circulations shape regional climates, this study focuses on the understudied role of local climatic variables in influencing near-surface air temperature (NST) in Ghana from 1981 to 2020. Based on ground observations, our findings reveal significant correlations between land surface temperature (LST) and NST before and after the identified breakpoint year of 2001. Additionally, we observe a reduction in precipitation post-2001. We also identify LST as the primary driver of NST and precipitation changes based on cause-effect analysis of multiple factors. Specifically, higher LST leads to decreased precipitation and increased NST, contributing to the increasing trend of NST over the last two decades. The insights are vital for developing targeted adaptation strategies, including integrated land and water management, sustainable agriculture, and effective interventions, directly supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Moreover, the study provides evidence for promoting climate-smart agriculture to ensure food security (SDG 2). By integrating these findings into climate adaptation frameworks, policymakers and stakeholders can better address the unique challenges posed by climate variability in Ghana, ensuring more resilient and sustainable environmental management.&nbsp;</div> </div> </div> </ds-truncatable-part></div> </ds-truncatable></div> </div> </div> </ds-metadata-render></div> </div> </div> </ds-metadata-container></div> </div>

    2025-01-21

    The Influence of Land Surface Temperature on Ghana’s Climate Variability and Implications for Sustainable Development

  • A time-varying index for agricultural suitability across Europe from 1500–2000

    <p>Throughout the last centuries, European climate changed substantially, which affected the potential to plant and grow crops. These changes happened not just over time but also had a spatial dimension.Yet, despite large climatic fluctuations, quantitative historical studies typically rely on static measures for agricultural suitability due to the non-availability of time-varying indices. Relying on recent advances in paleoclimatology, we bridge this gap by constructing a spatio-temporal measure for agricultural suitability across Europe for a period of 500 years. Our gridded index has a 0.5&deg; resolution and is available at a yearly level. It relies on a simple surface energy and water balance model, focusing only on so-called exogenous geographic and climatic features. Our index captures not just long-term trends, such as the Little Ice Age, but also short-term climatic shocks. It will empower researchers to explore the interplay between climatic fluctuations and Europe&rsquo;s agricultural landscape, analyze human responses at a local and regional scale, and foster a deeper understanding of the region&rsquo;s historical dynamics.</p>

    2025-01-17

    A time-varying index for agricultural suitability across Europe from 1500–2000

  • Nature park stations - incubators for visitor management in parks

    <p data-start="0" data-end="546">In 2020, the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic, which had significant impacts on society, the economy, and the environment. At the beginning of the year, nature was under considerable pressure in many areas. The pandemic led to a temporary decline in emissions as lockdowns and restrictions reduced traffic and industrial activity. However, there was also a noticeable increase in pressure on natural spaces in the immediate surroundings, as many people&mdash;some of whom had rarely or never engaged with nature before&mdash;began seeking out these areas.</p> <p data-start="548" data-end="1230">That same year, the NAPAS (Nature Park Stations) project was launched. It quickly became clear that the project was valuable for all involved and had come at the right time. After initial challenges, primarily organizational, various implementation measures and accompanying research efforts were set in motion. In the three parks&mdash;Parc R&eacute;gional Naturel Chasseral, Regional Nature Park Diemtigtal, and Regional Nature Park Gantrisch&mdash;various awareness-raising and visitor management initiatives were introduced, tested, and piloted. These measures gained local and regional visibility through word of mouth, articles in local and regional media, and a podcast series (NP Gantrisch).</p>

    2025-01-01

    Nature park stations - incubators for visitor management in parks

  • Thinking About Need – A Vignette Experiment on Need-Based Distributive Justice

    <p><span>We examine the role of need satisfaction in non-comparative justice ratings about endowments with goods. As normative approaches, we discuss utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism. Using a vignette experiment, we show that a need context increases the prevalence of prioritarianistic and sufficientarianistic justice ratings, which leads to an ethically problematic sigmoid shape of the justice evaluation function.</span></p>

    2024-12-17

    Thinking About Need – A Vignette Experiment on Need-Based Distributive Justice

  • Great power dynamics and international economic cooperation: Experimental evidence from parallel surveys in China and the United States

    <p><span>Power transitions among major states have shaped the course of cooperation in the history of the international system. We study this relationship from a public opinion angle by examining the effect of a potential power transition on attitudes towards bilateral trade liberalization. Power transitions can spur political and economic conflict because the rising power gains greater influence over the course of world politics, including trade rules, allowing it to assert its national interest and the interests of its citizens. This implies that citizens in the rising power are more supportive of bilateral economic cooperation than citizens in the declining power. Empirical findings from parallel, survey-embedded experiments in China and the United States lend support to this conjecture. Great Power competition, therefore, interferes with current international economic affairs &ndash; an aspect that has received less attention in previous research on trade&nbsp;politics.</span></p>

    2024-12-13

    Great power dynamics and international economic cooperation: Experimental evidence from parallel surveys in China and the United States

  • Mapping heat-related risks in Swiss cities under different urban tree scenarios

    <p>About three quarter of Swiss residents live in urban areas, and this proportion is expected to grow in future decades. An increasing number of people will therefore be exposed to urban heat, which can have adverse effects on human wellbeing, productivity and physical health.<br />We explore the possibility to detect high-risk areas in five Swiss cities with the development of an urban heat-based risk-mapping approach. The included cities are Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich. The analysis is based on a combination of biophysical, including Landsat 8 derived Land Surface Temperature (LST), and socioeconomic data. Additionally, we assess the impact of urban trees on urban heat within the districts of these cities, helping to estimate how risk levels would change under two scenarios: one with increased tree cover (MaxTree) and another with no (NoTree) urban trees.<br />The assessment on the impact of urban trees on heat showed that the areas with urban trees generally experience cooler temperatures compared to those without, both at the city and district levels. This underscores the positive role of urban trees in mitigating the urban heat effect.<br />The risk mapping approach revealed a distinct spatial pattern for each city and high risk areas were identified. Generally, the high-risk areas in the analyzed cities cover the city centers and areas with high vulnerability. The &lsquo;NoTree&rsquo; scenario showed higher risks compared to the baseline situation, illustrating that urban trees currently mitigate heat related risks in Swiss cities. The &lsquo;MaxTree&rsquo; scenario results in lower risks, especially in the cities of Lausanne and Bern. The presented risk mapping approach, including the two idealized scenarios, can be used by policy- and decision-makers (e.g. city planners) can be a tool to determine where urban planning actions are the most urgent and where trees could be most beneficial in terms of adaptation to heat. The approach is easily adaptable and transferable to other cities, since it relies on a clear and simple methodological framework, openly available LST data, and basic socioeconomic variables at district scale that are available for many cities.</p>

    2024-12-01

    Mapping heat-related risks in Swiss cities under different urban tree scenarios

  • Diffusing Risk: Bureaucratic Agency, UN Security Council Horse-Trading, and the Role of Co-Financing

    <p>Political lending is problematic for the operations of multilateral development banks (MDBs) since politically motivated aid has a greater default risk than other aid projects. MDB bureaucrats, therefore, face a dilemma. On the one hand, they want to please major shareholders by engaging in political lending. On the other hand, they want to mitigate their MDB's exposure to excessive risk. One way to solve this dilemma is to share the risk of loans with other lenders through co-financing. I expect that as countries&rsquo; share of politically motivated aid increases, these countries&rsquo; portfolios will receive more co-financed loans. Using newly collected loan-level data from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, I find that UNSC membership increases the number of co-financed loans by 38.5 percent and increases the share of co-financed loans in a country's European Bank for Reconstruction and Development loan portfolio by 19.1 percentage points. I demonstrate that these results are consistent with the argument that MDB bureaucrats want to mitigate risk.</p>

    2024-12-01

    Diffusing Risk: Bureaucratic Agency, UN Security Council Horse-Trading, and the Role of Co-Financing

  • Convergence research as transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction within cases of effective collaborative governance of social-ecological systems

    <div id="abstract_block"> <p>Successful collaborative governance (CG) of social-ecological systems (SES) involves multiple stakeholders convening iteratively over the long term to reach a commonly held vision. This often involves building knowledge for social learning processes induced to come to collective decisions about managing complex systems in flux. Because of the complexity of any SES in the Anthropocene, this coproduced knowledge is frequently transdisciplinary, using a convergence of applied and scientific knowledge from a variety of disciplines and stakeholders outside academia. We find evidence that these cases of effective SES CG involve both knowledge coproduction and convergence research. We evaluated seven case studies of CG across four continents using criteria (principles and methods) developed to facilitate and describe convergence research on SES and found them to be largely present. We also assess these CG cases using indicators of knowledge coproduction, and show that they all involved transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction, which can provide an informative lens for deepening our shared understanding of convergence and its application to complex adaptive systems. All the cases selected for this paper are examples of CG of SES in which research was conducted as part of a collaborative effort to improve the social-ecological conditions in a particular place, and several incorporate various forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. We suggest that these cases demonstrate both convergence research and knowledge coproduction because of the overlap and similarity of these concepts, providing a brief comparison and contrasting of these approaches to addressing sustainability problems collaboratively.</p> </div>

    2024-12-01

    Convergence research as transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction within cases of effective collaborative governance of social-ecological systems

  • Transformative firm-level agency: A case study of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Swiss wood-processing industry

    <p>This paper investigates different enterprise types as potential agents of transformative change in the wood-processing industry. To do so, it combines the concept of transformative enterprise with recent accounts of agency in evolutionary economic geography. We examine small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the wood-processing industry because by using a renewable resource that stores CO2 and has the potential to replace polluting materials, they could become frontrunners in sustainability transformations through a wood-based bioeconomy. Empirically, we draw on a qualitative case study with 24 wood-processing SMEs in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. Based on the concept of transformative enterprise, we identify five enterprise types: silent ecologists, social pioneers, visionary nonconformists, ambitious entrepreneurs, and pragmatist traditionalists. The first four types show many characteristics indicating transformative firm-level agency while only the ambitious entrepreneurs seem capable of inducing changes at the system-level. This is due to several limits of change agency, which we also illuminate. Overall, our study sheds light on the heterogeneity of firms as change agents in the context of sustainability transformation.</p>

    2024-12-01

    Transformative firm-level agency: A case study of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Swiss wood-processing industry

  • Empowering Underprivileged College Students through Leadership Roles in Their Communities: Experimental Evidence from Peru

    <p><span>We study the impacts of an intervention in which underprivileged college students were randomly assigned to leadership roles. In these positions, students led information and training sessions on a new financial technology in their communities. Our results indicate that participant female students improved their academic performance, measured by grade point average and credits completed, in the short and long term. These effects persisted even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, their attitudes toward social responsibility and community engagement improved. Removing leadership opportunity constraints for underprivileged female college students can enhance their academic effort, performance, and social responsibility.</span></p>

    2024-12-01

    Empowering Underprivileged College Students through Leadership Roles in Their Communities: Experimental Evidence from Peru

  • Reaping what we sow: Centering values in food systems transformations research

    <p>In many transdisciplinary research settings, a lack of attention to the values underpinning project aims can inhibit stakeholder engagement and ultimately slow or undermine project outcomes. As a research collective (The Careoperative), we have developed a set of four shared values through a facilitated visioning process, as central to the way we work together: care, reflexivity, inclusivity, and collectivity. In this paper, we explore the implications of a values-centered approach to collaboration in food system transformation research. The paper presents two cases that illustrate how researchers might approach centering values in practice. Where much research on food system transformation focuses on values of food system stakeholders, we contribute insights into the values of researchers in such transdisciplinary endeavors. Specifically, we argue that researchers working on sustainability transformations need to be better prepared to engage in such reflections and aspire to embody values aligned with the transformations they seek to research.</p>

    2024-11-16

    Reaping what we sow: Centering values in food systems transformations research

  • Spatiotemporal assessment of deforestation and forest degradation indicates spillover effects from mining activities and related biodiversity offsets in Madagascar

    <p>Mining has severe environmental and social impacts. To compensate for the environmental damage caused at mining sites, mining companies are required to engage in biodiversity offsetting activities elsewhere. In forest landscapes, most offsetting policies focus on compensating for biodiversity loss from deforestation, while forest degradation is largely ignored &ndash; even though it contributes substantially to biodiversity loss. One reason for this is that forest degradation is challenging to assess and monitor. This study focuses on a large nickel and cobalt mine in Madagascar. By analysing remote sensing time series, we assess detailed annual forest change dynamics and distinguish different types of forest disturbance within and around the mining lease area and the two main associated biodiversity offset areas between 2006 and 2020. Our results show that deforestation rates within the two biodiversity offset areas are low (18 ha, or 0.4%; 164 ha, or 2.4%), suggesting that conservation measures are effective. However, this is not the case when looking at forest degradation. We found that substantial shares of forest within the two biodiversity offset areas are affected by degradation (545 ha, or 11.4%; 662 ha, or 9.7%). In the surrounding unprotected landscape, the rates of deforestation (451 ha, or 6.7%; 553 ha, or 4.9%) and forest degradation (2360 ha, or 34.8%; 5794 ha, or 51.1%) are much higher. The spatiotemporal pattern indicates spillover effects for both deforestation and forest degradation. Taken together, our findings show that restrictions on local communities&rsquo; access to forest resources within biodiversity offset areas affect the surrounding landscape and can cause substantial additional adverse environmental impacts there. We also demonstrate that forest degradation monitoring is feasible, and that forest degradation is widespread even though it is still largely ignored. These findings should be considered in future biodiversity offsetting policies and best practices.</p>

    2024-11-01

    Spatiotemporal assessment of deforestation and forest degradation indicates spillover effects from mining activities and related biodiversity offsets in Madagascar

  • Partizipativer Transitionsprozess hin zu einer klimaneutralen Region

    <p>[...]</p>

    2024-11-01

    Partizipativer Transitionsprozess hin zu einer klimaneutralen Region

  • How R4D projects interact with the SDGs: an analysis of the links between sustainable land use projects across the Global South and the SDG targets

    <p>Research for development (R4D) projects are designed to enhance the research community's contribution to implementation of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations. We studied seven R4D projects that specifically addressed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 (life on land) in 14 contexts across Asia, Africa, and South America. We then analyzed how these projects interacted with other SDGs. Our findings reveal that the positive and negative interactions between project objectives and SDG targets vary significantly across contexts, highlighting the importance of considering local conditions when designing and implementing R4D initiatives.Technical summaryWe analyze how the objectives of research for development (R4D) projects that focus on a particular Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) &ndash; SDG 15 (life on land) &ndash; interact with the targets of other SDGs. We studied seven R4D projects in 14 contexts across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, comparing expert judgement of interactions between project objectives and SDG targets. Our findings indicate that the success of these projects depends largely on whether they are also working toward SDG targets other than those contained in SDG 15. In particular, working toward targets contained within SDGs on poverty, hunger, water, energy, production and consumption, and global partnerships &ndash; was often considered indivisible from the project objectives. Further, while all of the projects focused on SDG 15, our findings suggest that addressing only this goal is not sufficient. A range of other targets that were a priori not the immediate focus of the projects were revealed as &lsquo;crucial&rsquo; to the project objectives across contexts. Finally, we list several implications, such as the need for policies to integrate local realities and the need for environmental R4D projects to adopt a holistic scope, particularly in terms of (a) securing social foundations, (b) building enabling institutions, and (c) negotiating competing claims on land.Social media summaryWhat can we learn from land-related research for development projects and their links to the SDGs in concrete contexts?</p>

    2024-10-28

    How R4D projects interact with the SDGs: an analysis of the links between sustainable land use projects across the Global South and the SDG targets

  • Dynamical downscaling and data assimilation for a cold-air outbreak in the European Alps during the Year Without a Summer of 1816

    <p>The &ldquo;Year Without a Summer&rdquo; in 1816 was characterized by extraordinarily cold and wet periods in central Europe, and it was associated with severe crop failures, famine, and socio-economic disruptions. From a modern perspective, and beyond its tragic consequences, the summer of 1816 represents a rare opportunity to analyze the adverse weather (and its impacts) after a major volcanic eruption. However, given the distant past, obtaining the high-resolution data needed for such studies is a challenge. In our approach, we use dynamical downscaling, in combination with 3D variational data assimilation of early instrumental observations, for assessing a cold-air outbreak in early June 1816. We find that the cold spell is well represented in the coarse-resolution 20th Century Reanalysis product which is used for initializing the regional Weather Research and Forecasting Model. Our downscaling simulations (including a 19th century land use scheme) reproduce and explain meteorological processes well at regional to local scales, such as a foehn wind situation over the Alps with much lower temperatures on its northern side. Simulated weather variables, such as cloud cover or rainy days, are simulated in good agreement with (eye) observations and (independent) measurements, with small differences between the simulations with and without data assimilation. However, validations with partly independent station data show that simulations with assimilated pressure and temperature measurements are closer to the observations, e.g., regarding temperatures during the coldest night, for which snowfall as low as the Swiss Plateau was reported, followed by a rapid pressure increase thereafter. General improvements from data assimilation are also evident in simple quantitative analyses of temperature and pressure. In turn, data assimilation requires careful selection, preprocessing, and bias-adjustment of the underlying observations. Our findings underline the great value of digitizing efforts of early instrumental data and provide novel opportunities to learn from extreme weather and climate events as far back as 200 years or more.</p>

    2024-10-22

    Dynamical downscaling and data assimilation for a cold-air outbreak in the European Alps during the Year Without a Summer of 1816

  • Deconstructing the geography of human impacts on species’ natural distribution

    <p>It remains unknown how species&rsquo; populations across their geographic range are constrained by multiple coincident natural and anthropogenic environmental gradients. Conservation actions are likely undermined without this knowledge because the relative importance of the multiple anthropogenic threats is not set within the context of the natural determinants of species&rsquo; distributions. We introduce the concept of a species &lsquo; shadow distribution to address this knowledge gap, using explainable artificial intelligence to deconstruct the environmental building blocks of current species distributions. We assess shadow distributions for multiple threatened freshwater fishes in Switzerland which indicated how and where species respond negatively to threats &mdash; with negative threat impacts covering 88% of locations inside species&rsquo; environmental niches leading to a 25% reduction in environmental suitability. Our findings highlight that conservation of species&rsquo; geographic distributions is likely insufficient when biodiversity mapping is based on species distribution models, or threat mapping, without also quantifying species&rsquo; expected or shadow distributions. Overall, we show how priority actions for nature&rsquo;s recovery can be identified and contextualised within the multiple natural constraints on biodiversity to better meet national and international biodiversity targets.</p>

    2024-10-14

    Deconstructing the geography of human impacts on species’ natural distribution

  • Natural forest regeneration is projected to reduce local temperatures

    <p>Forest regeneration is a crucial strategy for mitigating and adapting to global warming. Yet its precise impact on local climate remains uncertain, a factor that complicates decision-making when it comes to prioritizing investments. Here, we developed global maps illustrating how natural forest regeneration influences key local climate drivers&mdash;land surface temperature (LST), albedo, and evapotranspiration &mdash;using models fitted at a 1-km spatial resolution with a random forest classifier. We found that natural forest regeneration can alter annual mean LST by 0.01 &deg;C, &minus;0.59 &deg;C, &minus;0.50 &deg;C, and &minus;2.03 &deg;C in Boreal, Mediterranean, Temperate, and Tropical regions, respectively. These variations underscore the region-specific effects of forest regeneration. Importantly, natural forest regeneration reduces LST across 64% of 1 billion hectares and 75% of 148 million hectares of potentially restorable land under different scenarios. These findings improve understanding of how forest regeneration can help regulate local climate, supporting climate adaptation efforts</p>

    2024-10-10

    Natural forest regeneration is projected to reduce local temperatures

  • Semi-Circular Bunds and Community-based Conservation at the Naibunga Community Conservancy, Laikipia County, Northern Kenya: Final technical report for phases I & II July, 2024.

    <p>A team of experts from The University of Nairobi, National Museums of Kenya, Technical University of Kenya and Directorate of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing&mdash;in conjunction with the Wyss Academy for Nature&mdash;undertook dry and wet season biodiversity and socioecological assessments of local livelihoods at the Naibunga Community Conservancy, Laikipia County, northern Kenya in July/August 2023 and April 2024 respectively. Training was given to members of local women groups that include but not limited to Twiga mamas, Chui mamas, Wazee (elders) group, Balozi, Naisulu and Green Earth Warriors youth groups on various social and ecological aspects including but not limited to: governance, adopting sustainable livelihood strategies whilst monitoring key local natural resources including habitat restoration through the use of semi-circular bunds. In addition, a baseline dry and wet season biodiversity inventory for the area was undertaken by various taxon experts (plants, mushrooms, birds, mammals, invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians). Feedback at various tiers will be organized at a later date. Key highlights from our varied fieldwork components in the dry and wet seasons thus far include: (1) The Naibunga Community Conservancy merits periodic biodiversity monitoring in areas with and without semi-circular bunds during the dry and wet seasons annually to document the changes in vegetation structure and composition, water distribution, and dynamics in the key vertebrate and invertebrate species occurrence and distribution; (2) Human-wildlife conflict was a cross-cutting issue within the separate focus group discussions held with wazee (elders), women and local youth groups with a main focus on the Green Earth Warriors youth group. Even though community goodwill to coexist with wildlife in Naibunga Community Conservancy is evident, extensive community wildlife education and outreach is still vital to build a solid foundation for various increased participatory community approaches to mitigate human-wildlife conflict and foster human- wildlife coexistence in the conservancy; (3) Locals were trained on best practices of how and where to construct the semi-circular bunds for maximum efficiency in utilizing rain water flow. The semi-circular bunds create a conducive microclimate by harnessing runoff and increasing soil moisture giving an opportunity to increase plant diversity; (4) A total of 47 mushroom species were collected in the Naibunga conservancy landscape with some species being potentially new to science. A hands-on training workshop on mushroom farming was done in November 2023 where selected locals at Ilmotiok group ranch were engaged in activities that included but not limited to: construction of a mushroom house, collection and preparation of locally available elephant dung, pasteurization; inoculation, incubation, harvesting, cooking and post-harvest handling. Mushroom farming provides an incentive for the conservation of the environment thereby contributing towards mitigation of human-elephant conflict, while providing a reliable alternative source of livelihood; (5) Six hundred and forty-six invertebrate species were recorded. The invertebrate species of Isoptera (termites), Hymenoptera (ants, bees &amp;amp; wasps), and Coleoptera (beetles) are highly sensitive to changes in their environment. Their abundance in an ecosystem reflects the availability of their food sources, making them good indicators of ecosystem health. Their diversity and abundance can show how well sites have recovered within a region. Beekeeping was identified as a viable alternative livelihood strategy; (6) One hundred and ninety-two bird species were recorded. Raptors (birds of prey) recorded included: Critically Endangered species such as; Hooded Vulture, R&uuml;ppell&rsquo;s Vulture and the White-backed Vulture. Endangered species included; Lappet-faced Vulture, Martial Eagle and Secretarybird; (7) A number of herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians) species were observed to utilize the shade and/or refuge offered by semi-circular bunds. Amphibians and reptiles are sensitive bio-indicators of the impact of human activities such as overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation and degradation of rangelands; (8) Seventy-two mammal species were recorded. Despite being identified as the animal taxon most prone to conflict with humans during focus group discussions, mammals play vital roles such as shaping regional and global ecosystems.</p>

    2024-10-01

    Semi-Circular Bunds and Community-based Conservation at the Naibunga Community Conservancy, Laikipia County, Northern Kenya: Final technical report for phases I & II July, 2024.

  • Auslegeordnung zur Treibhausgasemissionsbilanzierung und Klimaschutz auf Destinationsebene

    <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c590="" ds-row="" class="row ng-star-inserted" _nghost-dspace-angular-c589=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c589="" class="flex-column w-100 col metadata-cell border-bottom mb-4 mt-4 ng-star-inserted d-flex"><ds-metadata-container _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c589="" class="w-100 ng-star-inserted" _nghost-dspace-angular-c588=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" class="ng-star-inserted"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" class="d-flex"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" class="d-flex col flex-wrap flex-column ng-star-inserted"><ds-metadata-render _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c588="" _nghost-dspace-angular-c587="" class="ng-star-inserted"> <div _nghost-dspace-angular-c621="" ds-longtext="" class="ng-star-inserted"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" class="mb-2"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621=""><ds-truncatable _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" _nghost-dspace-angular-c81=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c81=""><ds-truncatable-part _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" _nghost-dspace-angular-c82=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c82="" class="min-3 clamp-default-none"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c82="" class="content dont-break-out preserve-line-breaks removeFaded"> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c621="" data-test="formatted-text">Der vorliegende Bericht untersucht die Treibhausgasemissionsbilanzierung und Klimaschutz auf Destinationsebene. Ziel ist es, bestehende Ans&auml;tze von Akteuren innerhalb und ausserhalb des Tourismus zu analysieren und einzuordnen. Der Bericht richtet sich an touristische Destinationen, Betriebe und G&auml;ste und andere Anspruchsgruppen, die sich mit Klimaschutz besch&auml;ftigen. Er bietet keine direkten Handlungsempfehlungen f&uuml;r Verwaltung und Politik, hebt jedoch die Bedeutung einer sp&auml;teren politischen Einbindung hervor. Der Bericht orientiert sich am Schweizer Netto-Null-Ziel bis 2050 und betont die Bedeutung des Tourismussektors, der einen erheblichen Anteil an globalen Emissionen hat. Zudem werden Anforderungen an zuk&uuml;nftige Treibhausgasemissionsbilanzierungen von Destinationen genannt, welche Scopes, die Art der Emissionen und Daten, die Transparenz und mehr beinhalten. F&uuml;r den Tourismussektor werden spezifische Stossrichtungen auf Destinationsebene vorgeschlagen, darunter die Fokussierung auf lokale Massnahmen, die Einf&uuml;hrung von Standards und die Zusammenarbeit. Auf betrieblicher Ebene wird empfohlen, das Netto-Null-Ziel in die Unternehmensstrategien zu integrieren, Mitarbeitende und G&auml;ste zu sensibilisieren und neue, nachhaltige Gesch&auml;ftsmodelle zu entwickeln. Auf Verbandsebene wird die Nutzung bestehender Programme wie Swisstainable vorgeschlagen. Der Bericht w&uuml;rdigt den Beitrag des Schweizer Tourismus zum Klimaschutz, unterstreicht aber dennoch die Dringlichkeit einer klaren Vision sowie abgestimmte Massnahmen aller beteiligten Akteure, um den Beitrag des Tourismussektors zum Klimaschutz zu erh&ouml;hen.</div> </div> </div> </ds-truncatable-part></div> </ds-truncatable></div> </div> </div> </ds-metadata-render></div> </div> </div> </ds-metadata-container></div> </div> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c590="" ds-row="" class="row ng-star-inserted" _nghost-dspace-angular-c589=""> <div _ngcontent-dspace-angular-c589="" class="flex-column w-100 col metadata-cell border-bottom mb-4 mt-4 ng-star-inserted d-flex"></div> </div>

    2024-10-01

    Auslegeordnung zur Treibhausgasemissionsbilanzierung und Klimaschutz auf Destinationsebene

  • Understanding the diversity of private conservation in the Peruvian Amazon

    <p>Global awareness about the threats of ecosystem degradation in the Amazon is growing. While state‐managed protected areas remain key instruments for forest conservation, private actors are increasingly funding and implementing a broad range of conservation initiatives. Private actors are transforming the Amazonian conservation landscape and its governance, however, many aspects of private conservation, especially the diversity of local practitioners and the challenges they face, remain understudied. Drawing on a case study of Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon, we aim to generate a better understanding of private conservation practitioners and their various approaches to conservation on private and public land. We used an extensive review of literature and databases, in addition to 13 semi‐structured interviews with various private conservation practitioners, to map privately conserved areas, and to gather perceptions about challenges, opportunities, and future pathways for private conservation. A total of 590 privately conserved areas, covering over one million hectares, were identified and mapped in Madre de Dios. We find that, while most initiatives are managed by individuals and families, for‐profit companies manage half of the total area privately protected. Furthermore, we find that private conservation initiatives face significant barriers and pressures. These barriers include complex bureaucratic processes, legal contradictions and incoherencies, corruption, weak law enforcement, and financial insecurity. Conservation policies largely favor national and international actors and less so local, grassroots initiatives run by individuals and communities. Finally, we highlight the need for more accessible and inclusive policies that recognize the contribution of less powerful actors, to foster more effective conservation efforts for the future of the Amazon.</p>

    2024-09-19

    Understanding the diversity of private conservation in the Peruvian Amazon

  • Berner Oberland-Ost: Auf dem Weg zur Klimaneutralität

    <p>Heizungen, Verkehr und Landwirtschaft: Diese drei Bereiche sind f&uuml;r 95% der CO2-Emissionen im &ouml;stlichen Berner Oberland verantwortlich. Was braucht es, dass die Region klimaneutral wird? Gemeinden in der Region haben zusammen mit Vertretenden aus Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Verwaltung und Wissenschaft eine Vision entwickelt und erste Projekte angestossen, die zu einer klimaneutralen Region f&uuml;hren sollen. Das Projekt wurde vom Bundesamt f&uuml;r Energie (BFE) im Rahmen des Forschungsprogramms Energie-Wirtschaft-Gesellschaft unterst&uuml;tzt. Der Schlussbericht zum Projekt &laquo;Klimaneutrale Region Berner Oberland-Ost &ndash; Von der Vision zum Handeln&raquo; zeigt eines klar auf: Der Weg zur Klimaneutralit&auml;t ist gepflastert mit vielen Herausforderungen.</p>

    2024-09-02

    Berner Oberland-Ost: Auf dem Weg zur Klimaneutralität

  • How the circular economy can revive the Sustainable Development Goals

    <p class="p1">As concerns rise about the achievability of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an opportunity is emerging to promote the circular economy as the solution of the future&ndash; and to put the concept at the heart of action on everything from tackling climate change to reducing poverty.</p>

    2024-09-01

    How the circular economy can revive the Sustainable Development Goals

  • Neglecting biodiversity baselines in longitudinal river connectivity restoration impacts priority setting.

    <p>River habitats are fragmented by barriers which impede the movement and dispersal of aquatic organisms. Restoring habitat connectivity is a primary objective of nature conservation plans with multiple efforts to strategically restore connectivity at local, regional, and global scales. However, current approaches to prioritize connectivity restoration do not typically consider how barriers spatially fragment species' populations. Additionally, we lack knowledge on biodiversity baselines to predict which species would find suitable habitat after restoring connectivity. In this paper, we asked how neglecting these biodiversity baselines in river barrier removals impacts priority setting for conservation planning. We applied a novel modelling approach combining predictions of species distributions with network connectivity models to prioritize conservation actions in rivers of the Rhine-Aare system in Switzerland. Our results show that the high number and density of barriers has reduced structural and functional connectivity across representative catchments within the system. We show that fragmentation decreases habitat suitability for species and that using expected distributions as biodiversity baselines significantly affects priority settings for connectivity restorations compared to species-agnostic metrics based on river length. This indicates that priorities for barrier removals are ranked higher within the expected distributions of species to maximize functional connectivity while barriers in unsuitable regions are given lower importance scores. Our work highlights that the joint consideration of existing barriers and species past and current distributions are critical for restoration plans to ensure the recovery and persistence of riverine fish diversity.</p>

    2024-08-12

    Neglecting biodiversity baselines in longitudinal river connectivity restoration impacts priority setting.

  • Shifting Cultivation

    <p><span>Shifting cultivation is a traditional land system in which farmers clear a plot of land, burn the resulting debris, cultivate rice or other crops on the cleared plot for one or more years, and then leave it fallow and move on to a new plot&mdash;eventually returning to the same plot again after it has recovered (Nair et al.,&nbsp;</span><a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor" data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref" aria-label="Reference 2021" title="Nair, P. K. R., Kumar, B. M., &amp; Nair, V. D. (2021). An introduction to agroforestry four decades of scientific developments shifting cultivation and taungya Springer International Publishing Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75358-0_5 " href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_97-1#ref-CR31" id="ref-link-section-d2656310e340">2021</a><span>; Van Mai &amp; To,&nbsp;</span><a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor" data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref" aria-label="Reference 2015" title="Van Mai, T., &amp; To, P. X. (2015). A Systems Thinking Approach for Achieving a Better Understanding of Swidden Cultivation in Vietnam. Human Ecology 43, 169&ndash;178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-015-9730-8 " href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_97-1#ref-CR28" id="ref-link-section-d2656310e343">2015</a><span>; van Vliet et al.,&nbsp;</span><a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor" data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref" aria-label="Reference 2012" title="van Vliet, N., Mertz, O., Heinimann, A., Langanke, T., Pascual, U., Schmook, B., Adams, C., Schmidt-Vogt, D., Messerli, P., Leisz, S., Castella, J.-C., J&oslash;rgensen, L., Birch-Thomsen, T., Hett, C., Bech-Bruun, T., Ickowitz, A., Vu, K. C., Yasuyuki, K., Fox, J., &hellip; Ziegler, A. D. (2012). Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment. Global Environmental Change, 22(2), 418&ndash;429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.10.009 " href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_97-1#ref-CR23" id="ref-link-section-d2656310e346">2012</a><span>). The terms swidden agriculture, swidden cultivation, and slash-and-burn agriculture are used synonymously to refer to shifting cultivation (Nair et al.,&nbsp;</span><a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor" data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref" aria-label="Reference 2021" title="Nair, P. K. R., Kumar, B. M., &amp; Nair, V. D. (2021). An introduction to agroforestry four decades of scientific developments shifting cultivation and taungya Springer International Publishing Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75358-0_5 " href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_97-1#ref-CR31" id="ref-link-section-d2656310e349">2021</a><span>; van Vliet et al.,&nbsp;</span><a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor" data-track-label="link" data-test="citation-ref" aria-label="Reference 2012" title="van Vliet, N., Mertz, O., Heinimann, A., Langanke, T., Pascual, U., Schmook, B., Adams, C., Schmidt-Vogt, D., Messerli, P., Leisz, S., Castella, J.-C., J&oslash;rgensen, L., Birch-Thomsen, T., Hett, C., Bech-Bruun, T., Ickowitz, A., Vu, K. C., Yasuyuki, K., Fox, J., &hellip; Ziegler, A. D. (2012). Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment. Global Environmental Change, 22(2), 418&ndash;429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.10.009 " href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_97-1#ref-CR23" id="ref-link-section-d2656310e352">2012</a><span>).</span></p>

    2024-08-06

    Shifting Cultivation

  • Polycentric Climate Governance: The State, Local Action, Democratic Preferences, and Power—Emerging Insights and a Research Agenda

    <p>In recent years, climate governance has shifted from the global, multilateral regime to voluntary initiatives from multiple directions. Scholars frequently use a polycentric governance lens to study the complex and multijurisdictional reality. The polycentric perspective helps to grasp the new reality at a general level, but it is lacking in specificity. To fill this research gap, this article attempts to enhance the analytical power of the polycentric governance perspective by exploring four issues: the role of the state, diffusion of local action, integration of local democratic preferences, and the role of power. These issues are discussed by doing a systematic literature review of empirical polycentric governance literature regarding climate change mitigation. The results show the importance of states at the national level and provide insights into how local initiatives share and transfer knowledge, get supported by transnational networks, and secure compliance with local democratic preferences. The literature provides less insight into the role of power. The article concludes by developing research agendas for further cumulation of knowledge and to strengthen climate action at all levels.</p>

    2024-08-01

    Polycentric Climate Governance: The State, Local Action, Democratic Preferences, and Power—Emerging Insights and a Research Agenda

  • The Empirical Realities of Polycentric Climate Governance: Introduction to the Special Issue

    <p>Scholars have undertaken much conceptual development of &ldquo;polycentric&rdquo; climate governance (PCG). Yet, there has been limited empirical examination of whether this descriptive, analytical, and normative concept can aid climate change mitigation; it may even undermine our efforts in certain contexts. Thus this special issue examines the empirical realities of PCG. Building from a shared definition of the concept, the constitutive articles analyze an exploratory range of systems, across policy styles, governance levels, and types of actors. Here we consolidate the findings of the articles by identifying five key themes that are drawn from across the special issue, for consideration in future research. These themes are operationalization of PCG systems; voluntary action; temporality; power; and, crucially, effectiveness in mitigating climate change. Our findings provide evidence from a wide range of contexts, from which we build to propose new research streams on this topic.</p>

    2024-08-01

    The Empirical Realities of Polycentric Climate Governance: Introduction to the Special Issue

  • From Global Commitments to Local Actions: Strenghtening IPs & LCs and CSO Leadership n Climate and Biodiversity Governance in Southeast Asia

    <div class="csl-bib-body"> <div class="csl-entry"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">As the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 16.2) resumes this week in Rome, Italy, one critical question takes center stage: Who needs the skills to connect, facilitate, and implement solutions for climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality &mdash; and how can these solutions be scaled across sectors and societies?&nbsp;</span></div> </div> <p class="font_8 wixui-rich-text__text"><span class="wixui-rich-text__text">Recently, the Wyss Academy for Nature explored this question through the lens of "telecoupling brokers" in Southeast Asia &mdash; individuals who bridge science, policy, and society. They tackle not only ecological challenges but also navigate social fragmentation and inequality, offering practical insights for building inclusive, evidence-based solutions that empower Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.&nbsp;</span><span class="wixui-rich-text__text">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="font_8 wixui-rich-text__text"><span class="wixui-rich-text__text">Led by Dr. Van Thi Hai Nguyen and Prof. Dr. Margaret Owuor from the Transformative Integrative Biodiversity Conservation research team, the report is the result of a collaboration with NTFP-EP Asia and 44 representatives from eight ASEAN countries at the ASEAN CSO Forum.&nbsp;</span></p>

    2024-06-25

    From Global Commitments to Local Actions: Strenghtening IPs & LCs and CSO Leadership n Climate and Biodiversity Governance in Southeast Asia

  • Censorship in democracy

    <p><span>The spread of propaganda, misinformation, and biased narratives from autocratic regimes, especially on social media, is a growing concern in many democracies. Can censorship be an effective tool to curb the spread of such slanted narratives? In this paper, we study the European Union&rsquo;s ban on Russian state-led news outlets after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We analyze 775,616 tweets from 133,276 users on Twitter/X, employing a difference-in-differences strategy. We show that the ban reduced pro-Russian slant among users who had previously directly interacted with banned outlets. The impact is most pronounced among users with the highest pre-ban slant levels. However, this effect was short-lived, with slant returning to its pre-ban levels within two weeks post-enforcement. Additionally, we find a detectable albeit less pronounced indirect effect on users who had not directly interacted with the outlets before the ban. We provide evidence that other suppliers of propaganda may have actively sought to mitigate the ban&rsquo;s influence by intensifying their activity, effectively counteracting the persistence and reach of the ban.</span></p>

    2024-06-06

    Censorship in democracy

  • A Flexible Framework for Simulating the Water Balance of Lakes and Reservoirs From Local to Global Scales: mizuRoute‐Lake

    <p>Lakes and reservoirs are an integral part of the terrestrial water cycle. In this work, we present the implementation of different water balance models of lakes and reservoirs into mizuRoute, a vector‐based routing model, termed mizuRoute‐Lake. As the main advantage of mizuRoute‐Lake, users can choose between various parametric models implemented in mizuRoute‐Lake. So far, three parametric models of lake and reservoir water balance, namely Hanasaki, HYPE, and D&ouml;ll are implemented in mizuRoute‐Lake. In general, the parametric models relate the outflow from lakes or reservoirs to the storage and various parameters including inflow, demand, volume of storage, etc. Additionally, this flexibility allows users to easily evaluate and compare the effect of various water balance models for a lake without needing to reconfigure the routing model or change the parameters of other lakes or reservoirs in the modeling domain. Users can also use existing data such as historical observations or water management models to specify the behavior of a selected number of lakes and reservoirs within the modeling domain using the data‐driven capability of mizuRoute‐Lake. We demonstrate the flexibility of mizuRoute‐Lake by presenting global, regional, and local scale applications. The development of mizuRoute‐Lake paves the way for better integration of water management models, locally measured, and remotely sensed data sets in the context of Earth system modeling.&nbsp;</p>

    2024-05-06

    A Flexible Framework for Simulating the Water Balance of Lakes and Reservoirs From Local to Global Scales: mizuRoute‐Lake

  • Sustainable and Efficient Biomass Use in the Canton of Bern

    <p>Eines von mehreren Projekten, die das Amt f&uuml;r Umwelt und Energie des Kantons Bern (AUE) im Auftrag der Wyss Academy for Nature (WA) umsetzt, ist das Projekt: &laquo;<i>Effiziente Nutzung der Biomasse f&uuml;r die Energieproduktion&raquo;</i>. Das <b>Ziel dieses Projekts </b>ist:<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><b>Regional </b>anfallende <b>Biomasse </b>soll <b>effizienter </b>genutzt und <b>wiederverwertet </b>werden. Damit soll die <b>Kreislaufwirtschaft </b>gef&ouml;rdert und ein Beitrag zur <b>regionalen Wertsch&ouml;pfung </b>und zum Transformationsprozess f&uuml;r eine <b>CO</b><span><b>2</b></span><b>-neutrale Gesellschaft </b>geleistet werden.</p>

    2024-05-03

    Sustainable and Efficient Biomass Use in the Canton of Bern

  • Climate policies for carbon neutrality should not rely on the uncertain increase of carbon stocks in existing forests

    <p>The international community, through treaties such as the Paris agreement, aims to limit climate change to well below 2 &deg;C, which implies reaching carbon neutrality around the second half of the century. In the current calculations underpinning the various roadmaps toward carbon neutrality, a major component is a steady or even expanding terrestrial carbon sink, supported by an increase of global forest biomass. However, recent research has challenged this view. Here we developed a framework that assesses the potential global equilibrium of forest biomass under different climate change scenarios. Results show that under global warming carbon storage potential in forest aboveground biomass gradually shifts to higher latitudes and the intensity of the disturbance regimes increases significantly almost everywhere. CO2 fertilization stands out as the most uncertain process, with different methods of estimation leading to diverging results by almost 155 PgC of above ground biomass at equilibrium. Overall, assuming that the sum of human pressures (e.g. wood extraction) does not change over time, that total forest cover does not change significantly and that the trend in CO2 fertilisation as it is currently estimated from satellite proxy observations remains, results show that we have reached (or are very close to reaching) the peak of global forest carbon storage. In the short term, where increased disturbance regimes are assumed to act quicker than increased forest growth potential, global forests might instead act as a carbon source, that will require even more effort in decarbonization than previously estimated. Therefore, the potential of forests as a nature-based solution to mitigate climate change brings higher uncertainties and risks than previously thought.</p>

    2024-04-28

    Climate policies for carbon neutrality should not rely on the uncertain increase of carbon stocks in existing forests

  • Interactive visual syntheses for social-ecological systems understanding

    <p>Many social-ecological systems are in an unsustainable state. Bringing together disjunct published findings on complex interactions in social-ecological systems may enable the identification of leverage points for transformations towards sustainability. However, such interdisciplinary synthesis studies on specific regional social-ecological systems remain rare. Here, we pair a review of systematically identified studies with a cross-impact analysis to create an interactive visual social-ecological systems synthesis on conflicts and synergies between land use, biodiversity conservation, and human wellbeing in north-eastern Madagascar. The interactive visual synthesis (https://visualsynthesis.wyssacademy.org) depicts an archetypical regional landscape with 22 factors comprising physical landscape elements, ecosystem services, wellbeing, human activities, and telecouplings. To understand the connections between these factors, we assess directional causal links based on literature sources. The visual synthesis shows that research has so far focused on links between land use and biodiversity while links to human wellbeing were studied more seldomly. We then identify chains and cycles that emerge from the links between factors and rate them based on their plausibility and relevance. All eight top-rated chains and cycles relate to subsistence and commercial agriculture, revealing promising leverage points at which interventions could improve outcomes for biodiversity and wellbeing. In sum, we show how interactive visual syntheses can be a useful way to make disjunct published findings on regional social-ecological systems more accessible, to find research gaps, and to identify leverage points for sustainability transformations.</p>

    2024-04-27

    Interactive visual syntheses for social-ecological systems understanding

  • Lokale Energie-Transitions-Experimente als Beitrag zur Transformation hin zu einer klimaneutralen Gesellschaft. Pilotierung eines «Transition Management Prozesses» im Berner Oberland

    <p>Die Schweiz hat sich mit der Ratifikation des Pariser Klimaabkommens und der Annahme des Klimagesetzes verpflichtet, klimaneutral zu werden. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, braucht es umfassende und weitreichende Ver&auml;nderungen der vorherrschenden Systeme der Energieproduktion und des Energiekonsums. Diese lassen sich nicht allein mit den bisher ergriffenen Massnahmen und Instrumenten erreichen. Zudem m&uuml;ssen sie von der betroffenen Bev&ouml;lkerung mitgetragen werden. Partizipative Gouvernanz-Ans&auml;tze, wie das in der Forschung zu Nachhaltigkeitstransformationen entstandene &laquo;Transition Management&raquo;, stellen einen innovativen und vielversprechenden Ansatz dar, um alle relevanten Akteur:innen einzubeziehen und lokal angepasste, systemische Ver&auml;nderungen Richtung Klimaneutralit&auml;t anzustossen. &nbsp;Der vorliegende Bericht dokumentiert die Umsetzung eines Transition Management Prozesses im &ouml;stlichen Teil des Berner Oberlands in den Jahren 2020 bis 2024. Das Oberland-Ost ist als rurale und alpine Studienregion von besonderem Interesse. Einerseits ist die Region mit ihrer Abh&auml;ngigkeit von (Winter)-Tourismus, Land- und Alpwirtschaft, besonders stark von den Folgen des Klimawandels betroffen. Gleichzeitig hatte die Region 2019 das strategische Entwicklungsziel gefasst, eine CO2-neutrale Tourismusregion zu werden, was dem Prozess politische Legitimit&auml;t verlieh. Zudem bestand eine bereits etablierte Partnerschaft zwischen der Regionalkonferenz Oberland-Ost, der Wyss Academy for Nature und dem Amt f&uuml;r Umwelt und Energie (AUE) des Kantons Bern im Rahmen des Projekts &laquo;Klimaneutrale Region Oberland-Ost&raquo;. Dies mit dem Ziel, die Region auf ihrem Weg Richtung Klimaneutralit&auml;t zu unterst&uuml;tzen. Das in diesem Bericht dokumentierte Projekt erm&ouml;glichte den Einstieg in einen partizipativen regionalen Planungs- und Experimentierprozess, um gesellschaftlich getragene Schritte Richtung Klimaneutralit&auml;t in die Wege zu leiten. Das Projekt wurde unter der Federf&uuml;hrung des Zentrums f&uuml;r Nachhaltige Entwicklung und Umwelt (CDE) der Universit&auml;t Bern, in Zusammenarbeit mit dem &laquo;Hub Bern&raquo; der Wyss Academy for Nature und dem Amt f&uuml;r Umwelt und Energie (AUE) des Kantons Bern ausgef&uuml;hrt, dies in enger Partnerschaft mit dem Pr&auml;sidium und der Gesch&auml;ftsstelle der Regionalkonferenz Oberland-Ost.</p>

    2024-04-14

    Lokale Energie-Transitions-Experimente als Beitrag zur Transformation hin zu einer klimaneutralen Gesellschaft. Pilotierung eines «Transition Management Prozesses» im Berner Oberland

  • Potential of different governance mechanisms for achieving Global Biodiversity Framework goals

    <p>The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework includes a target of 30% of land protected by 2030 and refers to other effective area based conservation measures (OECMs) as complementary to PAs, but robust evaluations of the effectiveness of governance mechanisms that could act as OECMs in preventing forest loss and carbon emissions remain sparse. Here we assessed the impact of PAs and two potential OECMS: Indigenous Lands (ILs), and Non-Timber Forest products Concessions (NTCs) on forest loss and its associated carbon emissions in the Peruvian Amazon from 2000 to 2021. We also assessed two governance mechanisms with a commercial extractive use, Logging (LCs) and Mining Concessions (MCs). We used a robust before&ndash;after control intervention study design, with statistical matching, to account for the non-random spatial distribution of deforestation pressure and the governance mechanisms analysed. PAs were the most effective, having avoided 88% of the expected forest loss, followed by NTCs (64%) and ILs (44%). LCs also reduced expected forest loss by 29%, while MCs increased expected forest loss by 24%, showing that extractive governance mechanisms can have marked differences in their impact to forest cover. Our study provides evidence of long-term positive impacts of potential OECMs and other mechanisms at preventing forest loss and reducing carbon emission. This information is key to more effectively achieve targets from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.</p>

    2024-04-04

    Potential of different governance mechanisms for achieving Global Biodiversity Framework goals

  • A Protocol for the Review of Examples of Transformational Change in the Energy and Public Health Sectors to Inform Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Interventions.

    <p>This article describes the approach for an evidence review that combines two different evidence gap maps into one learning exercise on transformational change. The review assesses the evidence in two sectors where there has been demonstrable progress in terms of scale, depth and permanence of change: in energy and in behavioural change in public health. The review uses causal evidence to assess how lessons about transformational change in these two sectors may inform climate change mitigation and adaptation investments in low- and middle-income countries. The evidence gap maps will inform the scope of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.&nbsp;</p>

    2024-04-02

    A Protocol for the Review of Examples of Transformational Change in the Energy and Public Health Sectors to Inform Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Interventions.

  • Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien biodiversitäts- und landschaftsverträglich planen

    <p>Die politischen Aktivit&auml;ten zur F&ouml;rderung der erneuerbaren Energien haben in letzter Zeit stark zugenommen. Auch wenn der Ausbau von Solaranlagen auf Geb&auml;uden und Infrastrukturen das geringste Konfliktpotenzial aufweist und priorit&auml;r forciert werden soll, k&ouml;nnen Anlagen ausserhalb von Bauzonen eine wichtige Erg&auml;nzung zur sicheren Energieversorgung sein. Dabei existieren jedoch verschiedene Zielkonflikte, so auch mit der Erhaltung und F&ouml;rderung von Biodiversit&auml;t und Landschaftsqualit&auml;t. Um diese Zielkonflikte zu vermeiden und/oder zu entsch&auml;rfen, wollen die Akademien der Wissenschaften Schweiz mit dem vorliegenden Projekt zu einer r&auml;umlichen Planung von erneuerbaren Energieanlagen ausserhalb von Bauzonen unter Einbezug der Ziele zu Biodiversit&auml;t und Landschaft beitragen. Ziel des Projektes ist, die Planung von Gebieten f&uuml;r erneuerbare Energieanlagen zu unterst&uuml;tzen, damit unter Einbezug der vorhandenen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen Gebiete identifiziert werden k&ouml;nnen, die m&ouml;glichst wenig Konflikte mit Biodiversit&auml;t und Landschaftsqualit&auml;t aufweisen. Damit wird den Kantonen, die den gesetzlichen Auftrag haben, geeignete Gebiete f&uuml;r solche Anlagen in ihren Richtpl&auml;nen auszuscheiden, den Energieproduzenten sowie weiteren Interessierten eine entsprechende Planungshilfe zur Verf&uuml;gung gestellt. Unter Beizug von wissenschaftlichen Fachpersonen sowie von interessierten Stakeholdern wurden Kriterien definiert, anhand derer geeignete, m&ouml;glichst konfliktarme Gebiete f&uuml;r die Nutzung von Wasser-, Solar- und Windkraft identifiziert werden k&ouml;nnen. Die vorliegenden Kriterien k&ouml;nnen jedoch weder den Richtplanungsprozess noch die Beurteilung von Einzelanlagen ersetzen.</p> <p>Im Bericht werden weitere Pr&auml;missen und Limiten, die den Kriterien zugrunde liegen, erkl&auml;rt sowie die Entstehungsgeschichte der Resultate zusammengefasst, erg&auml;nzt durch allgemeine Hinweise f&uuml;r die Anwendung der Kriterien. Das Resultat umfasst die Liste der definierten Kriterien mit jeweils einer kurzen Beschreibung des Kriteriums sowie spezifischen Hinweisen zu dessen Anwendung. Weil die unterschiedlichen Energieproduktionsarten eine unterschiedliche r&auml;umliche Wirkung haben, m&uuml;ssen sie bei der Umsetzung der Kriterien in konkrete Parameter (Daten, Schwellenwerte etc.) differenziert betrachtet werden. Bez&uuml;glich dieser Umsetzung wurde seitens m&ouml;glicher Anwender bei Photovoltaik (PV)-Freifl&auml;chenanlagen der dringlichste Bedarf identifiziert. Aus diesem Grund beinhaltet die Liste f&uuml;r jedes Kriterium zus&auml;tzlich einen Vorschlag f&uuml;r die Umsetzung bez&uuml;glich PV-Freifl&auml;chenanlagen sowie Bemerkungen zu den Umsetzungsvorschl&auml;gen und m&ouml;gliche Datengrundlagen. Mit dem vorliegenden Bericht bezwecken die Akademien, einen Beitrag zur nachhaltigen Raumnutzung im Sinne einer integralen Planung zu leisten, damit die Biodiversit&auml;tsund Klimakrise nicht gegeneinander ausgespielt werden.</p> <p>Mit dieser Publikation leisten die Akademien der Wissenschaften Schweiz einen Beitrag zu &nbsp;den SDG 7, 13 und 15: &laquo;Zugang zu bezahlbarer, verl&auml;sslicher, nachhaltiger und moderner Energie f&uuml;r alle sichern&raquo;, &laquo;Umgehend Massnahmen zur Bek&auml;mpfung des Klimawandels und seiner Auswirkungen ergreifen&raquo; und &laquo;Land&ouml;kosysteme sch&uuml;tzen, wiederherstellen und ihre nachhaltige Nutzung f&ouml;rdern&raquo;</p>

    2024-04-01

    Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien biodiversitäts- und landschaftsverträglich planen

  • Possible role of anthropogenic climate change in the record-breaking 2020 Lake Victoria levels and floods

    <p>Heavy rainfall in eastern Africa between late 2019 and mid 2020 caused devastating floods and landslides throughout the region. These rains drove the levels of Lake Victoria to a record-breaking maximum in the second half of May 2020. The combination of high lake levels, consequent shoreline flooding, and flooding of tributary rivers caused hundreds of casualties and damage to housing, agriculture, and infrastructure in the riparian countries of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Media and government reports linked the heavy precipitation and floods to anthropogenic climate change, but a formal scientific attribution study has not been carried out so far. In this study, we characterize the spatial extent and impacts of the floods in the Lake Victoria basin and then investigate to what extent human-induced climate change influenced the probability and magnitude of the record-breaking lake levels and associated flooding by applying a multi-model extreme event attribution methodology. Using remote-sensing-based flood mapping tools, we find that more than 29&thinsp;000 people living within a 50&thinsp;km radius of the lake shorelines were affected by floods between April and July 2020. Precipitation in the basin was the highest recorded in at least 3 decades, causing lake levels to rise by 1.21&thinsp;m between late 2019 and mid 2020. The flood, defined as a 6-month rise in lake levels as extreme as that observed in the lead-up to May 2020, is estimated to be a 63-year event in the current climate. Based on observations and climate model simulations, the best estimate is that the event has become more likely by a factor of 1.8 in the current climate compared to a pre-industrial climate and that in the absence of anthropogenic climate change an event with the same return period would have led lake levels to rise by 7&thinsp;cm less than observed. Nonetheless, uncertainties in the attribution statement are relatively large due to large natural variability and include the possibility of no observed attributable change in the probability of the event (probability ratio, 95&thinsp;% confidence interval 0.8&ndash;15.8) or in the magnitude of lake level rise during an event with the same return period (magnitude change, 95&thinsp;% confidence interval 0&ndash;14&thinsp;cm). In addition to anthropogenic climate change, other possible drivers of the floods and their impacts include human land and water management, the exposure and vulnerability of settlements and economic activities located in flood-prone areas, and modes of climate variability that modulate seasonal precipitation. The attribution statement could be strengthened by using a larger number of climate model simulations, as well as by quantitatively accounting for non-meteorological drivers of the flood and potential unforced modes of climate variability. By disentangling the role of anthropogenic climate change and natural variability in the high-impact 2020 floods in the Lake Victoria basin, this paper contributes to a better understanding of changing hydrometeorological extremes in eastern Africa and the African Great Lakes region.</p>

    2024-03-28

    Possible role of anthropogenic climate change in the record-breaking 2020 Lake Victoria levels and floods

  • Northwestern Mediterranean Heavy Precipitation Events in a Warmer Climate: Robust Versus Uncertain Changes With a Large Convection‐Permitting Model Ensemble

    <p>Taking advantage of a large ensemble of Convection Permitting‐Regional Climate Models on a pan‐Alpine domain and of an object‐oriented dedicated analysis, this study aims to investigate future changes in high‐impact fall Mediterranean Heavy Precipitation Events at high warming levels. We identify a robust multi‐model agreement for an increased frequency from central Italy to the northern Balkans combined with a substantial extension of the affected areas, for a dominant influence of the driving Global Climate Models for projecting changes in the frequency, and for an increase in intensity, area, volume and severity over the French Mediterranean. However, large quantitative uncertainties persist despite the use of convection‐permitting models, with no clear agreement in frequency changes over southeastern France and a large range of plausible changes in events' properties, including for the most intense events. Model diversity and international coordination are still needed to provide policy‐relevant climate information regarding precipitation extremes.</p>

    2024-03-28

    Northwestern Mediterranean Heavy Precipitation Events in a Warmer Climate: Robust Versus Uncertain Changes With a Large Convection‐Permitting Model Ensemble

  • A meta-analysis of SES framework case studies: Identifying dyad and triad archetypes

    <ol start="1" class=""> <li>There is a need to synthesize the vast amount of empirical case study research on social-ecological systems (SES) to advance theory. Innovative methods are needed to identify patterns of system interactions and outcomes at different levels of abstraction. Many identifiable patterns may only be relevant to small sets of cases, a sector or regional context, and some more broadly. Theory needs to match these levels while still retaining enough details to inform context-specific governance. Archetype analysis offers concepts and methods for synthesizing and explaining patterns of interactions across cases. At the most basic level, there is a need to identify two and three independent variable groupings (i.e. dyads and triads) as a starting point for archetype identification (i.e. as theoretical building blocks). The causal explanations of dyads and triads are easier to understand than larger models, and once identified, can be used as building blocks to construct or explain larger theoretical models.</li> <li>We analyse the recurrence of independent variable interactions across 71 quantitative SES models generated from qualitative case study research applying Ostrom's SES framework and examine their relationships to specific outcomes (positive or negative, social or ecological). We use hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis and network analysis tools to identify the frequency and recurrence of dyads and triads across models of different sizes and outcome groups. We also measure the novelty of model composition as models get larger. We support our quantitative model findings with illustrative visual and narrative examples in four case study boxes covering deforestation in Indonesia, pollution in the Rhine River, fisheries management in Chile and renewable wind energy management in Belgium.</li> <li>Findings indicate which pairs of two (dyads) and three (triads) variables are most frequently linked to either positive or negative, social or ecological outcomes. We show which pairs account for most of the variation of interactions across all the models (i.e. the optimal suite). Both the most frequent and optimal suite sets are good starting points for assessing how dyads and triads can fulfil the role of explanatory archetype candidates. We further discuss challenges and opportunities for future SES modelling and synthesis research using archetype analysis.</li> </ol>

    2024-03-28

    A meta-analysis of SES framework case studies: Identifying dyad and triad archetypes

  • The inclusion of Amazon mangroves in Brazil’s REDD+ program

    <p><span>The Legal Amazon of Brazil holds vast mangrove forests, but a lack of awareness of their value has prevented their inclusion into results-based payments established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Based on an inventory from over 190 forest plots in Amazon mangroves, we estimate total ecosystem carbon stocks of 468&thinsp;&plusmn;&thinsp;67 Megagrams (Mg) ha</span><sup>&minus;1</sup><span>; which are significantly higher than Brazilian upland biomes currently included into national carbon offset financing. Conversion of mangroves results in potential emissions of 1228 Mg CO</span><sub>2</sub><span>e ha</span><sup>&minus;1</sup><span>, which are 3-fold higher than land use emissions from conversion of the Amazon rainforest. Our work provides the foundation for the inclusion of mangroves in Brazil&rsquo;s intended Nationally Determined Contribution, and here we show that halting mangrove deforestation in the Legal Amazon would generate avoided emissions of 0.9 &plusmn; 0.3 Teragrams (Tg) CO</span><sub>2</sub><span>e yr</span><sup>&minus;1</sup><span>; which is equivalent to the annual carbon accumulation in 82,400&thinsp;ha of secondary forests.</span></p>

    2024-03-24

    The inclusion of Amazon mangroves in Brazil’s REDD+ program

  • Convection-permitting climate models offer more certain extreme rainfall projections

    <p>Extreme precipitation events lead to dramatic impacts on society and the situation will worsen under climate change. Decision-makers need reliable estimates of future changes as a basis for effective adaptation strategies, but projections at local scale from regional climate models (RCMs) are highly uncertain. Here we exploit the km-scale convection-permitting multi-model (CPM) ensemble, generated within the FPS Convection project, to provide new understanding of the changes in local precipitation extremes and related uncertainties over the greater Alpine region. The CPM ensemble shows a stronger increase in the fractional contribution from extreme events than the driving RCM ensemble during the summer, when convection dominates. We find that the CPM ensemble substantially reduces the model uncertainties and their contribution to the total uncertainties by more than 50%. We conclude that the more realistic representation of local dynamical processes in the CPMs provides more reliable local estimates of change, which are essential for policymakers to plan adaptation measures.</p>

    2024-02-28

    Convection-permitting climate models offer more certain extreme rainfall projections

  • Km-scale climate simulations over Madeira and Canary Islands under present and future conditions: a model intercomparison study

    <p>This study seeks to explore two new km-scale regional climate simulations prepared through the European Climate Prediction project over the Madeira and Canary islands, which are Portuguese and Spanish archipelagos located in the North Atlantic, of the African coast. The simulations are based on two models using diferent modelling approaches: COSMO-CLM with a three-step nesting at 50, 25 and 3&nbsp;km grid spacing using a time-slice approach driven by a global climate model, and COSMO-crCLIM with a two-step nesting at 12 and 1&nbsp;km grid spacing using the pseudo-global warming approach, where the current-day simulations are driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis. Although the modelling approaches are diferent, several fndings are highlighted: (1) the use of km-scale simulation is essential to properly represent temperature and precipitation mean and extremes over small islands that are characterized by complex topography; (2) the projected changes in temperature and precipitation mean and extremes are qualitatively similar in all seasons except autumn; (3) the diferences in the autumn projections are shown to be due to the large-scale driving conditions. Small islands, such as the Canary and Madeira ones, are often neglected by large modelling initiatives, so the presented simulations contribute to flling this gap for local policy makers, stakeholders and climate services. The encouraging results highlight the need for further coordinated km-scale projections.</p>

    2024-02-28

    Km-scale climate simulations over Madeira and Canary Islands under present and future conditions: a model intercomparison study

  • Flow of mangrove ecosystem services to coastal communities in the Brazilian Amazon

    <p>Mangrove forests are broadly recognized to support a variety of ecosystem services on coastal margins worldwide. These services may significantly contribute to the wellbeing of millions of people, but there is limited information about their importance in the Global South. This study mapped for the first time the flow of ecosystem services in Brazilian Amazon mangroves, which represent over 700,000&Acirc; ha of mangroves in the country. We also identified the spatial changes in the flow of services across coastal landscapes, including urban, agricultural upland areas and coastal natural protected areas. Our matrix model indicated that mangroves, waterbodies, sandflats and mudflats are critical to the flow of multiple ecosystem services, including provisioning (fish, mariculture), cultural (historical and intrinsic value, research, and education), and regulation (climate, flood control, nursery, and breeding grounds). Social economic context, occupation, education, and residence time are important factors influencing villagers to identify the flow of ecosystem services, which could be compared across other coastal marine reserves in South America that have similar management of natural resources. Adjacent coastal upland habitats such as forests and croplands are important to support many provisioning ecosystem services to coastal villagers that would otherwise be obtained from mangroves, suggesting that protecting these connected habitats and supporting small-scale agriculture may help to avoid deforestation of mangrove forests. As over 80 of the mangroves in the country are managed as extractive reserves and may support communities with comparable socio-economic characteristics, we provide a foundation for the development and replication of ecosystem services assessments in Brazilian mangroves, which cover an area of over 1 million hectares. Our work highlights the importance of mangrove forests in providing food, and cultural services and to increase local climate resilience of coastal villages in the Amazon coast.</p>

    2024-02-07

    Flow of mangrove ecosystem services to coastal communities in the Brazilian Amazon

  • How Sudden- Versus Slow-Onset Environmental Events Affect Self-Identification as an Environmental Migrant: Evidence from Vietnamese and Kenyan Survey Data

    <p>In response to changing climatic conditions, people are increasingly likely to migrate. However, individual-level survey data reveal that people mainly state economic, social, or political reasons as the main drivers for their relocation decision&ndash;not environmental motives or climate change specifically. To shed light on this discrepancy, we distinguish between sudden-onset (e.g., floods and storms) and slow-onset (e.g., droughts and salinity) climatic changes and argue that the salience of environmental conditions in individuals&rsquo; migration decisions is shaped by the type of climate event experienced. Empirically, we combine individual-level surveys with geographic information on objective climatic changes in Vietnam and Kenya. The empirical evidence suggests that sudden-onset climate events make individuals more likely to link environmental conditions to their migration decision and, hence, to identify themselves as &ldquo;environmental migrants.&rdquo; Regression analyses support these results and are consistent with the view that slow-onset events tend to be linked with migration decisions that are more economically motivated.</p>

    2024-01-25

    How Sudden- Versus Slow-Onset Environmental Events Affect Self-Identification as an Environmental Migrant: Evidence from Vietnamese and Kenyan Survey Data

  • Scenario setup and forcing data for impact model evaluation and impact attribution within the third round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a)

    <p>Abstract. This paper describes the rationale and the protocol of the first component of the third simulation round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a, http://www.isimip.org, last access: 2 November 2023) and the associated set of climate-related and direct human forcing data (CRF and DHF, respectively). The observation-based climate-related forcings for the first time include high-resolution observational climate forcings derived by orographic downscaling, monthly to hourly coastal water levels, and wind fields associated with historical tropical cyclones. The DHFs include land use patterns, population densities, information about water and agricultural management, and fishing intensities. The ISIMIP3a impact model simulations driven by these observation-based climate-related and direct human forcings are designed to test to what degree the impact models can explain observed changes in natural and human systems. In a second set of ISIMIP3a experiments the participating impact models are forced by the same DHFs but a counterfactual set of atmospheric forcings and coastal water levels where observed trends have been removed. These experiments are designed to allow for the attribution of observed changes in natural, human, and managed systems to climate change, rising CH4 and CO2 concentrations, and sea level rise according to the definition of the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC AR6.</p>

    2024-01-04

    Scenario setup and forcing data for impact model evaluation and impact attribution within the third round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a)

  • Projecting future forest microclimate using a land surface model

    <p>The forest understory experiences temperature variations that are dampened compared to adjacent open areas, allowing the development of a forest microclimate and associated ecological conditions. It is however unclear to what extent forests will maintain this buffering effect under increasing global warming. Providing reliable projections of future forest microclimates is therefore crucial to anticipate climate change impacts on forest biodiversity, and to identify corresponding conservation strategies. Recent empirical studies suggest that the buffering of air temperature extremes in forest understory compared to open land could increase with global warming, albeit at a slower rate than macroclimate temperatures. Here, we investigate the trend of this temperature buffering effect in a high-emission global warming scenario, using the process-based Land Surface Model CLM5.1. We find biome-dependant buffering trends with strongest values in tropical forests where buffering increases for every degree of global warming by 0.1∘C for maximum soil temperature, and by 0.2∘C for maximum canopy air temperature. In boreal regions, forest microclimate exhibits a strong seasonality and the effect of global warming is more uncertain. Thus, our results highlight the importance of tropical forest canopies in particular, in maintaining hospitable conditions for understory species while increasing their climate debt under global warming. Our research also illustrates the potential and limitations of Land Surface Models to simulate forest microclimate, and calls for further collaborations between Earth system modelers and ecologists to jointly question climate and biosphere dynamics.</p>

    2024-01-02

    Projecting future forest microclimate using a land surface model

  • Netto-Null-Tourismus im Jahr 2050 – Ein Blick in die Zukunft und Thesen zur Transformation

    <p>Um die globale Erw&auml;rmung auf 1,5&deg;C zu beschr&auml;nken, m&uuml;ssen die weltweiten Treibhausgasemissionen um das Jahr 2050 auf Netto-Null sinken. Dazu ist ein tourismusspezifischer Beitrag zum Klimaschutz notwendig, da der Tourismus ein wesentlicher Treiber des Klimawandels ist, aber auch direkt von dessen Auswirkungen betroffen ist. W&auml;hrend mit dem Netto-Null-Ziel 2050 die Entwicklungsrichtung vorgegeben ist, wird im vorliegenden Artikel ein m&ouml;gliches touristisches Zukunftsbild in den Bereichen Politik, Angebot und Nachfrage skizziert. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass im Jahr 2050 ver&auml;nderte politische Rahmenbedingungen ausschlie&szlig;lich Netto-Null-Tourismusangebote erm&ouml;glichen. Dadurch pendelt sich ein neues Marktgleichgewicht ein, wodurch bei der Nachfrageseite ein ver&auml;ndertes Reiseverhalten festzustellen ist. Aus dem skizzierten Zukunftsbild k&ouml;nnen sechs Thesen abgeleitet werden, welche f&uuml;r die Transformation des aktuellen Tourismus hin zum beschriebenen Zukunftsbild grundlegend erscheinen: Die f&uuml;nf UNWTO-Sto&szlig;richtungen (Messen, Dekarbonisierung, Regenerieren, Zusammenarbeiten und Finanzieren) bilden einen Rahmen zur Abstimmung der Klimaschutzma&szlig;nahmen auf der strategischen und operativen Ebene. Zudem soll die Politik Rahmenbedingungen und finanzielle Anreize schaffen. Eine Bilanzierung von Treibhausgasemissionen ist f&uuml;r Unternehmen und Destinationen ebenso grundlegend, damit der Fortschritt zur Zielerreichung &uuml;berpr&uuml;ft werden kann. Dazu ist ein einheitlicher Bilanzierungsrahmennotwendig. Des Weiteren soll die Kompensation von Treibhausgasemissionen kurzfristig Verminderungsma&szlig;nahmen finanzieren, langfristig soll jedoch davon abgekommen werden. Schlussendlich sollte auch die Abh&auml;ngigkeit des Schweizer Tourismus von Fernm&auml;rkten verringert werden.</p>

    2024-01-01

    Netto-Null-Tourismus im Jahr 2050 – Ein Blick in die Zukunft und Thesen zur Transformation

  • How are large-scale extractive industries affecting progress toward the sustainable development goals in Madagascar? Perceived social-ecological impacts of mining investments

    <p>The rapid worldwide increase in resource extraction is evident in Madagascar&mdash;a global biodiversity hotspot. This study examines the localized effects of operational and planned large-scale extractive investments on social-ecological systems in Madagascar and links them to the Sustainable Development Goals. The focus is on sites owned or explored by foreign investors, specifically Ambatovy Moramanga, Ambatovy Tamatave, QIT Madagascar Minerals/Rio Tinto, Ranobe, and Tantalum Rare Earth Malagasy. Employing a counterfactual approach, we gathered survey responses from 459 small-scale farming, agro-pastoral, and artisanal-fisheries-based households. The survey provided information on general household characteristics, land use, land management, livelihoods, well-being, and any perceived changes to these variables, as well as any perceived mining impacts related to the changes. Overall, respondents reported predominantly negative effects on land (and sea) use, livelihoods, well-being, and security. Mining pollution, primarily from operational sites, had reduced access to water and fisheries resources, and natural forest areas had diminished. Reduced productivity due to pollution of soils, water, and air had a negative impact on various land uses and affected people's health, particularly in the surroundings of QIT Madagascar Minerals/Rio Tinto. Although some projects, such as Ambatovy, had eventually improved healthcare and infrastructure, most negative mining impacts had occurred during both the exploratory and the operational phases of the projects. Overall, this study offers a comprehensive view of how large-scale extractive investments affect land (and sea) use and human well-being. In addition, we highlight policy implications that must be considered if large-scale extractive investments are to support progress on the 2030 Agenda.</p>

    2024-01-01

    How are large-scale extractive industries affecting progress toward the sustainable development goals in Madagascar? Perceived social-ecological impacts of mining investments

  • Unorthodox Coalitions: Co-Creative Media Initiatives for Transformative Critical Sustainability Studies

    <p><span>In sustainability-related studies, there is a growing agreement on the need to work across different fields of knowledge and expertise &ndash; not only within the relatively narrow circle of academic scholars but far beyond it. In addition, we understand that we have the possibility to shape not only the content of our research but also its context (e.g., van der Leeuw 2018). We can actively contribute to collectively seeking and creating the forms of sustainability through which we research and teach (see Greenberg 2013: 58). Therefore, we need to better understand the alliances and coalitions taking place around the practices of sustainability (Scoones 2016: 307), and how they respond to the need to acquire certain skills, namely understanding complexity, emphasizing relationships, and thinking relationally (van der Leeuw 2018).</span></p>

    2024-01-01

    Unorthodox Coalitions: Co-Creative Media Initiatives for Transformative Critical Sustainability Studies

  • Chapter 20 - Advancing transformative knowledge for sustainable mountain development: how can a scientific journal bring knowledge into policy and practice?

    <p>Scientific knowledge is needed to shape transformative pathways toward sustainable development in mountains. During the past four decades, the journal Mountain Research and Development (MRD) has contributed significantly to increasing the global knowledge base on mountain social&ndash;ecological systems, publishing evidence-informed agendas for research and policy, and sharing validated sustainable development approaches and experiences from different mountain regions worldwide. In this chapter, we present &ldquo;MRD+,&rdquo; MRD&rsquo;s new strategy that aims at further increasing the journal&rsquo;s societal impact. MRD+ focuses on three areas of activity: (1) strengthening the journal&rsquo;s knowledge base by including formats more relevant and accessible to practitioners; (2) expanding its outreach and communication activities to enable dialogue and learning among stakeholders in mountains; and (3) setting up a program for development of scientific communication capacities targeting researchers and professionals from countries with less access to such skills. MRD plans to implement this strategy through strong engagement with individuals, organizations, and networks within and beyond the mountain research and development community.</p>

    2024-01-01

    Chapter 20 - Advancing transformative knowledge for sustainable mountain development: how can a scientific journal bring knowledge into policy and practice?

  • Chapter 22 - Making connections for our changing mountains: the Mountain Research Initiative

    <p>The Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) is a research coordination network promoting global change research in mountains and connecting a diverse and globally distributed community of scientists and practitioners. Since the 1990s, and with the establishment of its Coordination Office in July 2001 at the Swiss Academy of Sciences as a joint initiative of the then International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP), and the Global Terrestrial Observation System (GTOS), the MRI has sought to &ldquo;achieve an integrated approach for observing, modelling and investigating Global Change phenomena and processes in mountain regions, including the impacts of these changes and of human activities on mountain ecosystems&rdquo;. For the past 20 years, the MRI Coordination Office has fulfilled a nodal coordinating role that connects the MRI community as a network and supports this community in initiating numerous collaborations and activities in pursuit of this overarching objective. In this contribution, we present a historical overview and context that not only grounds the foundations of the MRI, its achievements, and its role in continuing to promote integrated global change research in mountains, but also highlights that there is an enduring and critical need to address system complexity in responding to relevant policy and societal knowledge needs.</p>

    2024-01-01

    Chapter 22 - Making connections for our changing mountains: the Mountain Research Initiative

  • Reflexive use of methods: a framework for navigating different types of knowledge and power in transformative research

    <p>In transformative sustainability science, reflexivity is considered critical for ethically sound and socially relevant research. In practice, many transdisciplinary knowledge co-production processes have faced problems in mitigating power hierarchies among the participating actors and the different types of knowledge. In this paper, we develop and test a reflexive framework that enables transdisciplinary researchers to convey more explicitly how their methodological choices play a role in im/balancing power relations in knowledge co-production. The reflexive framework allows researchers to distinguish the different types of knowledge co-produced by the methods, as well as tracking the movements between them. We utilize the framework to reflect upon the methodological choices made through the application of three different transformative methods, namely the Transition Arena, Theory of Change, and Participatory Food Sustainability Assessment and Transformation Framework in different contexts. The results illuminate how the agility between the knowledge types is critical for navigating tensions in power imbalances, as well as producing transformative knowledge. Moreover, the results call further attention to the co-production of critical knowledge in sustainability science.</p>

    2023-12-20

    Reflexive use of methods: a framework for navigating different types of knowledge and power in transformative research

  • Physiological stress in eastern black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis michaeli) as influenced by their density, climatological variables and sexes

    <p>It is important to understand the physiological stressors in animals especially for threatened species or intensively managed to improve their conservation and optimise their reproduction. We sought to understand changes in stress hormones (faecal glucocorticoid metabolites) in black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis michaeli) in relation to population density and sex (intrinsic factors) and plant minerals, rainfall and land surface temperature (extrinsic factors). We used non‐invasive faecal sampling techniques on animals of known sex, age and dominance in seven populations of contrasting population densities over 1&thinsp;year. We measured variability in faecal corticosterone metabolites through radioimmunoassay and related them to population density, sex and faecal calcium, phosphorus, copper, zinc and potassium as characteristic of plant minerals, rainfall and temperature. We used linear mixed models (LMM) to analyse the data. We did not detect a significant relationship between physiological stress parameters and population density. However, we have indications that stress levels increased as rainfall and temperature increased and were correlated negatively and positively with concentration of faecal phosphorus and copper respectively; we found higher stress levels in females than in males. These results suggest that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors explain the variation in physiological stress observed in black rhinoceros.</p>

    2023-12-20

    Physiological stress in eastern black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis michaeli) as influenced by their density, climatological variables and sexes

  • ID Water Scarcity Synthesis Report: Participatory workshop for the interdisciplinary research on water scarcity and climate change in the Ewaso Ng’iro North River Basin.

    <p>The workshop, held at the Kisimani Eco Resort, Isiolo, Kenya, was organised by the Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Bern (WA). It was attended by 52 participants with diverse backgrounds (Fig. 1), including eight members from the WA headquarters in Bern and four members of the WA East African Hub. The Centre for Training and Integrated Research in ASAL Development (CETRAD) co-organized the workshop, with four key staff members attending, including Dr Boniface Kiteme, the Director of CETRAD. Among the local stakeholders, seven Community Conservancy Managers were in attendance, alongside fellow Conservancies and the Northern Rangelands Trust representatives. Mr Ali Sarite, Isiolo County Executive Committee (CEC) Environment, opened proceedings. Mr. Jackson Muturo, Laikipia County Director of the National Environment Management Authority also attended the event. Seven representatives of the Financing Locally-Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) from the surrounding counties (Baringo, Isiolo, Laikipia, Marsabit, Samburu) attended, and four gave presentations on their work. Various researchers from Kenyan universities presented their work, as did representatives of various conservation NGOs.</p>

    2023-11-29

    ID Water Scarcity Synthesis Report: Participatory workshop for the interdisciplinary research on water scarcity and climate change in the Ewaso Ng’iro North River Basin.

  • Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

    <p>Globally, land and seascapes across the bioculturally diverse tropics are in transition. Impacted by the demands of distant consumers, the processes of global environmental change and numerous interventions seeking climate, conservation and development goals, these transitions have the potential to impact the relationships and plurality of values held between people and place. This paper is a Synthesis of seven empirical studies within the Special Feature (SF): &lsquo;What is lost in transition? Capturing the impacts of conservation and development interventions on relational values and human wellbeing in the tropics&rsquo;. Through two Open Forum workshops, and critical review, contributing authors explored emergent properties across the papers of the SF. Six core themes were identified and are subsumed within broad categories of: (i) the problem of reconciling scale and complexity, (ii) key challenges to be overcome for more plural understanding of social dimensions of landscape change and (iii) ways forward: the potential of an environmental justice framework, and a practical overview of methods available to do so. The Synthesis interprets disparate fields and complex academic work on relational values, human well‐being and de‐colonial approaches in impact appraisal. It offers a practical and actionable catalogue of methods for plural valuation in the field, and reflects on their combinations, strengths and weaknesses. The research contribution is policy relevant because it builds the case for why a more plural approach in intervention design and evaluation is essential for achieving more just and sustainable futures, and highlights some of the key actions points deemed necessary to achieve such a transition to conventional practice.</p>

    2023-11-23

    Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

  • New Forests and New Forest People in Central Vietnam: The Acacia Boom

    <p><span>Vietnam is the country with the largest area of plantations of Australasian&nbsp;</span><i>Acacia</i><span>&nbsp;species (&lsquo;wattles&rsquo;) in South-East Asia. Between 6 and 9% of the national land area is cultivated with tropical wattles (</span><i>A. auriculiformis</i><span>,&nbsp;</span><i>A. mangium</i><span>&nbsp;and its hybrid). From the perspective of its promoters, the wattle plantation industry in Vietnam may be seen as a success beyond expectations. We review the origins of this boom and ask what it has done to and for the country&rsquo;s landscape and people. The chapter combines findings and insights from an interdisciplinary research project in Thừa Thi&ecirc;n Huế province, north-central Vietnam. Research took place across upland and lowland wattle-growing regions, with ethnic minorities as well as the Kinh majority, and with long-term wattle growers as well as new entrants. It drew on questionnaires, interviews and observations, as well as information from remote sensing, ecological surveys and hydrological assessments. We first describe how substantial areas of &lsquo;new forest&rsquo; (short-rotation wattle plantations) were created, initially in degraded bushland, but now sometimes through clearing of highly biodiverse natural forest stands. These wattle plantations alter local hydrology, soils and biodiversity, and are exposed to risks including soil erosion and plant pathogens. The plantations provide wood chips and timber, supporting revenue, employment and a strong forestry industry. Incomes have risen appreciably for many, although unequally, and a class of successful entrepreneurs has emerged. These plantations alter the livelihoods and identities of upland &lsquo;forest people&rsquo;, historically shifting cultivators, contributing to what might be called &lsquo;new forest people&rsquo;. Ethnic minority villagers are building new identities around the wattle economy and around their contracts with state forest agencies, seeing themselves increasingly as forest growers and protectors. We conclude by raising some questions regarding the social changes and issues of environmental sustainability linked to this wattle boom.</span></p>

    2023-11-21

    New Forests and New Forest People in Central Vietnam: The Acacia Boom

  • Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

    <p>Increased conservation action to protect more habitat and species is fueling a vigorous debate about the relative effectiveness of different sorts of protected areas. Here we review the literature that compares the effectiveness of protected areas managed by states and areas managed by Indigenous peoples and/or local communities. We argue that these can be hard comparisons to make. Robust comparative case studies are rare, and the epistemic communities producing them are fractured by language, discipline, and geography. Furthermore the distinction between these different forms of protection on the ground can be blurred. We also have to be careful about the value of this sort of comparison as the consequences of different forms of conservation for people and nonhuman nature are messy and diverse. Measures of effectiveness, moreover, focus on specific dimensions of conservation performance, which can omit other important dimensions. With these caveats, we report on findings observed by multiple study groups focusing on different regions and issues whose reports have been compiled into this article. There is a tendency in the data for community-based or co-managed governance arrangements to produce beneficial outcomes for people and nature. These arrangements are often accompanied by struggles between rural groups and powerful states. Findings are highly context specific and global generalizations have limited value.</p>

    2023-11-13

    Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

  • Exploring hail and lightning diagnostics over the Alpine-Adriatic region in a km-scale climate model

    <p>The north and south of the Alps, as well as the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, are hot spots of severe convective storms, including hail and lightning associated with deep convection. With advancements in computing power, it has become feasible to simulate deep convection explicitly in climate models by decreasing the horizontal grid spacing to less than 4&thinsp;km. These kilometer-scale models improve the representation of orography and reduce uncertainties associated with the use of deep convection parameterizations. In this study, we perform km-scale simulations for eight observed cases of severe convective storms (seven with and one without observed hail) over the Alpine-Adriatic region. The simulations are performed with the climate version of the regional model Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO) that runs on graphics processing units (GPUs) at a horizontal grid spacing of 2.2&thinsp;km. To analyze hail and lightning we have explored the hail growth model (HAILCAST) and lightning potential index (LPI) diagnostics integrated with the COSMO-crCLIM model. Comparison with available high-resolution observations reveals good performance of the model in simulating total precipitation, hail, and lightning. By performing a detailed analysis of three of the case studies, we identified the importance of significant meteorological factors for heavy thunderstorms that were reproduced by the model. Among these are the moist unstable boundary layer and dry mid-level air, the topographic barrier, as well as an approaching upper-level trough and cold front. Although COSMO HAILCAST tends to underestimate the hail size on the ground, the results indicate that both HAILCAST and LPI are promising candidates for future climate research.</p>

    2023-11-03

    Exploring hail and lightning diagnostics over the Alpine-Adriatic region in a km-scale climate model

  • Mountain social-ecological resilience requires transdisciplinarity with Indigenous and local worldviews

    <p><span>Addressing the shocks of global crises requires that scientists, policymakers, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities work together to enable communities to withstand and adapt to disturbances. On the basis of our experiences in the&nbsp;</span>Andes<span>, we propose the &lsquo;10-step cycle of transdisciplinarity&rsquo; for designing projects to build social-ecological resilience in mountains.</span></p>

    2023-11-01

    Mountain social-ecological resilience requires transdisciplinarity with Indigenous and local worldviews

  • Transformative Companies: Case Study of the Wood Processing Industry in the Canton of Bern

    <p><span>On the way to a sustainable economy, companies are key players. This research project analyzes the role that so-called "transformative companies" can play in the sustainability transformation. The case study focuses on the wood processing industry in the canton of Bern, which faces both economic and ecological challenges, but also holds significant potential in terms of sustainability.</span></p>

    2023-11-01

    Transformative Companies: Case Study of the Wood Processing Industry in the Canton of Bern

  • Stimulant or Depressant? Resource-Related Income Shocks and Conflict

    <p>We provide evidence on the mechanisms linking resource-related income shocks to conflict, focusing on illegal crops. We hypothesize that the degree of group competition over resources and the extent of law enforcement explain whether opportunity cost or contest effects dominate. Combining temporal variation in international drug prices with spatial variation in the suitability to produce opium, we show that higher prices increase household living standards and reduce conflict in Afghanistan. Analyzing shifts in conflict tactics and using geo-referenced data on drug production networks and territorial control highlight the importance of opportunity costs, and reveal heterogeneous effects consistent with our theory.</p>

    2023-10-23

    Stimulant or Depressant? Resource-Related Income Shocks and Conflict

  • A Large-Scale Field Experiment to Reduce Non-Payments for Water: From Diagnosis to Treatment

    <p>In a field experiment among 9,823 customers of the Namibian water utility, we implement interventions to reduce non-payments. The interventions are based on diagnostic surveys to identify key obstacles to payments. They address informational frictions and apply psychological commitment techniques to narrow the gap between customers' willingness to pay and actual payments. Initially, payments increase by 29% to 55%, making the interventions highly cost-effective. While removing informational frictions has a lasting impact, the commitment techniques produce only short-term effects. We demonstrate the effectiveness and limitations of behavioral interventions in settings where heavy-handed tools, e.g., disconnecting non-payers, are difficult to implement.</p>

    2023-09-27

    A Large-Scale Field Experiment to Reduce Non-Payments for Water: From Diagnosis to Treatment

  • Testing the Drivers of Corporate Environmentalism in Vietnam

    <p>What motivates private firms&rsquo; willingness to invest in green technologies and environmentally friendly operations? Some emphasize enhanced government regulation and enforcement, while others point to the greater potential of societal pressure. In this study, we use a survey experiment with more than 10,000 firms in Vietnam to test which type of stakeholder pressure has the strongest impact on domestic and foreign business leaders&rsquo; intention to invest in green operations. We find that the effectiveness of stakeholder pressure is conditioned by the firms&rsquo; target markets. Foreign investors are more susceptible than domestic firms to intensive regulatory pressure. Accounting for export orientation, however, we find that the most amenable policy targets for regulatory pressure are foreign firms aiming to sell in the Vietnamese domestic market.</p>

    2023-09-19

    Testing the Drivers of Corporate Environmentalism in Vietnam

  • Mapping suitable habitats for globally endangered raptors in Kenya: Integrating climate factors and conservation planning

    <p>Raptors face global threats like electrocution, collisions, and habitat fragmentation. Many species remain understudied, and their distribution patterns are unknown. Understanding their current and future distribution is crucial for conservation. Protecting these top predators requires knowledge of their spatial distribution and environmental influences. This study addresses knowledge gaps in raptor habitats and distributions in Kenya, considering current and future climate changes. Using species distribution models and occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, we evaluated suitable habitats for four endangered Kenyan raptor species: Martial eagle, Secretarybird, Bateleur, and Steppe Eagle. We assessed the impact of climatic predictors on their distribution, considering two climate change scenarios for 2020&ndash;2040. Our findings reveal that raptor distribution in Kenya is predominantly concentrated in the southwestern region, extending into the central region of the country. The most significant predictors of raptor species distribution varied for each species, with Steppe eagle and Secretarybird being highly influenced by precipitation during the warmest quarter, Martial eagle being influenced by mean temperature during the driest quarter, and Bateleur being primarily influenced by precipitation during the coldest quarter. When projecting our model into the climate change scenarios for 2020&ndash;2040, all species except the Bateleur exhibited a negative range shift. The results of our study suggest that climate change may have adverse impacts on the raptor species examined. In light of these findings, we recommend implementing targeted monitoring and conducting surveys in accordance with our current model predictions. Specifically, our focus should be on monitoring areas that exhibit the highest climate suitability, as these areas are likely to undergo significant shifts in the near future. By conducting regular monitoring and engaging in further research, we can enhance our understanding of these raptor species and gather valuable data to improve the accuracy and reliability of our model predictions.</p>

    2023-08-31

    Mapping suitable habitats for globally endangered raptors in Kenya: Integrating climate factors and conservation planning

  • High-resolution land use and land cover dataset for regional climate modelling: historical and future changes in Europe

    <p>Anthropogenic land use and land cover change (LULCC) is a major driver of environmental changes. The biophysical impacts of these changes on the regional climate in Europe are currently being extensively investigated within the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) Coordinated Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Flagship Pilot Study (FPS) Land Use and Climate Across Scales (LUCAS) using an ensemble of different regional climate models (RCMs) coupled with diverse land surface models (LSMs). In order to investigate the impact of realistic LULCC on past and future climates, high-resolution datasets with observed LULCC and projected future LULCC scenarios are required as input for the RCM&ndash;LSM simulations. To account for these needs, we generated the LUCAS Land Use and land Cover change (LUC) dataset version 1.1 at 0.1∘ resolution for Europe with annual LULC maps from 1950 to 2100 (https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/LUC_hist_EU_v1.1, Hoffmann et al., 2022b, https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/LUC_future_EU_v1.1, Hoffmann et al., 2022a), which is tailored to use in state-of-the-art RCMs. The plant functional type (PFT) distribution for the year 2015 (i.e. the Modelling human LAND surface Modifications and its feedbacks on local and regional cliMATE &ndash; LANDMATE &ndash; PFT dataset) is derived from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Land Cover (ESA-CCI LC) dataset. Details on the conversion method, cross-walking procedure, and evaluation of the LANDMATE PFT dataset are given in the companion paper by Reinhart et al. (2022b). Subsequently, we applied the land use change information from the Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) dataset, provided at 0.25∘ resolution as input for Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experiments, to derive LULC distributions at high spatial resolution and at annual time steps from 1950 to 2100. In order to convert land use and land management change information from LUH2 into changes in the PFT distribution, we developed a land use translator (LUT) specific to the needs of RCMs. The annual PFT maps for Europe for the period 1950 to 2015 are derived from the historical LUH2 dataset by applying the LUT backward from 2015 to 1950. Historical changes in the forest type changes are considered using an additional European forest species dataset. The historical changes in the PFT distribution of LUCAS LUC follow closely the land use changes given by LUH2 but differ in some regions compared to other annual LULCC datasets. From 2016 onward, annual PFT maps for future land use change scenarios based on LUH2 are derived for different shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) and representative concentration pathway (RCP) combinations used in the framework of CMIP6. The resulting LULCC maps can be applied as land use forcing to the new generation of RCM simulations for downscaling of CMIP6 results. The newly developed LUT is transferable to other CORDEX regions worldwide.</p>

    2023-08-25

    High-resolution land use and land cover dataset for regional climate modelling: historical and future changes in Europe

  • Drought Experience and Altruism

    <p>Natural disasters can trigger conflictive behaviour among affected individuals. Now, research based on survey experiments with Syrian and Iraqi refugees shows how people behave altruistically after experiencing drought, but only towards ingroup members.</p>

    2023-07-24

    Drought Experience and Altruism

  • Simulating Hail and Lightning Over the Alpine Adriatic Region—A Model Intercomparison Study

    <p>Hail is a significant convective weather hazard, often causing considerable crop and property damage across the world. Although extremely damaging, hail still remains a challenging phenomenon to model and forecast, given the limited computational resolution and the gaps in understanding the processes involved in hail formation. Here, eight hailstorms occurring over the Alpine‐Adriatic region are analyzed using simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and the Consortium for Small Scale Modeling (COSMO) models, with embedded HAILCAST and Lightning Potential Index (LPI) diagnostics at kilometer‐scale grid spacing (&sim;2.2 km). In addition, a systematic model intercomparison study is performed to investigate the ability of the different modeling systems in reproducing such convective extremes, and to further assess the uncertainties associated with simulations of such localized phenomena. The results are verified by hailpad observations over Croatia, radar estimates of hail over Switzerland, and lightning measurements from the LINET network. The analysis reveals that both HAILCAST and LPI are able to reproduce the affected area and intensities of hail and lightning. Moreover, hail and lightning fields produced by both models are similar, although a slight tendency of WRF to produce smaller hail swaths with larger hailstones and higher LPI compared to COSMO is visible. It is found that these differences can be explained by systematic differences in vertical profiles of microphysical properties and updraft strength between the models. Overall, results are promising and indicate that both HAILCAST and LPI could be valuable tools for real‐time forecasting and climatological assessment of hail and lightning in current and changing climate.</p>

    2023-07-16

    Simulating Hail and Lightning Over the Alpine Adriatic Region—A Model Intercomparison Study

  • Describing complex interactions of social-ecological systems for tipping point assessments: an analytical framework

    <p>Humans play an interconnecting role in social-ecological systems (SES), they are part of these systems and act as agents of their destruction and regulation. This study aims to provide an analytical framework, which combines the concept of SES with the concept of tipping dynamics. As a result, we propose an analytical framework describing relevant dynamics and feedbacks within SES based on two matrixes: the &ldquo;tipping matrix&rdquo; and the &ldquo;cross-impact matrix.&rdquo; We take the Southwestern Amazon as an example for tropical regions at large and apply the proposed analytical framework to identify key underlying sub-systems within the study region: the soil ecosystem, the household livelihood system, the regional social system, and the regional climate system, which are interconnected through a network of feedbacks. We consider these sub-systems as tipping elements (TE), which when put under stress, can cross a tipping point (TP), resulting in a qualitative and potentially irreversible change of the respective TE. By systematically assessing linkages and feedbacks within and between TEs, our proposed analytical framework can provide an entry point for empirically assessing tipping point dynamics such as &ldquo;tipping cascades,&rdquo; which means that the crossing of a TP in one TE may force the tipping of another TE. Policy implications: The proposed joint description of the structure and dynamics within and across SES in respect to characteristics of tipping point dynamics promotes a better understanding of human-nature interactions and critical linkages within regional SES that may be used for effectively informing and directing empirical tipping point assessments, monitoring or intervention purposes. Thereby, the framework can inform policy-making for enhancing the resilience of regional SES.</p>

    2023-07-06

    Describing complex interactions of social-ecological systems for tipping point assessments: an analytical framework

  • Response letter to correspondence letter: “Tropical deforestation: elections vs. bad governance”

    <p>We welcome the thoughtful correspondence by Troumbis (2023) on our recent analysis on the effect of elections on tropical deforestation. The correspondence raised three comments on the study: 1) whether bad governance or social bargain for votes during elections is the driving force of deforestation; 2) the homogeneity of the included countries in our analysis; and 3) hypotheses about an alternative model including the Environmental Kuznet Curve (EKC) where deviations in deforestation are explained through governance instead of elections. Below we summarize methods from our article and then address each comment in turn.</p>

    2023-07-01

    Response letter to correspondence letter: “Tropical deforestation: elections vs. bad governance”

  • Future-proofing the emergency recovery plan for freshwater biodiversity

    <p>Freshwater biodiversity loss is accelerating globally, but humanity can change this trajectory through actions that enable recovery. To be successful, these actions require coordination and planning at a global scale. The Emergency Recovery Plan for global freshwater biodiversity aims to reduce the risk for freshwater biodiversity loss through six priority actions: (1) accelerate implementation of environmental flows; (2) improve water quality to sustain aquatic life; (3) protect and restore critical habitats; (4) manage exploitation of freshwater species and riverine aggregates; (5) prevent and control nonnative species invasions in freshwater habitats; and (6) safeguard and restore freshwater connectivity. These actions can be implemented using future-proofing approaches that anticipate future risks (e.g., emerging pollutants, new invaders, and synergistic effects) and minimize likely stressors to make conservation of freshwater biodiversity more resilient to climate change and other global environmental challenges. While uncertainty with respect to past observations is not a new concern for freshwater biodiversity, future-proofing has the distinction of accounting for the uncertainty of future conditions that have no historical baseline. The level of uncertainty with respect to future conditions is unprecedented. Future-proofing of the Emergency Recovery Plan for freshwater biodiversity will require anticipating future changes and developing and implementing actions to address those future changes. Here, we showcase future-proofing approaches likely to be successful using local case studies and examples. Ensuring that response options within the Emergency Recovery Plan are future-proofed will provide decision makers with science-informed choices, even in the face of uncertain and potentially new future conditions. We are at an inflection point for global freshwater biodiversity loss; learning from defeats and successes can support improved actions toward a sustainable future.</p>

    2023-06-19

    Future-proofing the emergency recovery plan for freshwater biodiversity

  • CHELSA-W5E5: daily 1 km meteorological forcing data for climate impact studies

    <p>Current changes in the world's climate increasingly impact a wide variety of sectors globally, from agriculture and ecosystems to water and energy supply or human health. Many impacts of climate on these sectors happen at high spatio-temporal resolutions that are not covered by current global climate datasets. Here we present CHELSA-W5E5 (https://doi.org/10.48364/ISIMIP.836809.3, Karger et al., 2022): a climate forcing dataset at daily temporal resolution and 30 arcsec spatial resolution for air temperatures, precipitation rates, and downwelling shortwave solar radiation. This dataset is a spatially downscaled version of the 0.5∘ W5E5 dataset using the CHELSA V2 topographic downscaling algorithm. We show that the downscaling generally increases the accuracy of climate data by decreasing the bias and increasing the correlation with measurements from meteorological stations. Bias reductions are largest in topographically complex terrain. Limitations arise for minimum near-surface air temperatures in regions that are prone to cold-air pooling or at the upper extreme end of surface downwelling shortwave radiation. We further show that our topographically downscaled climate data compare well with the results of dynamical downscaling using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model, as time series from both sources are similarly well correlated to station observations. This is remarkable given the lower computational cost of the CHELSA V2 algorithm compared to WRF and similar models. Overall, we conclude that the downscaling can provide higher-resolution climate data with increased accuracy. Hence, the dataset will be of value for a wide range of climate change impact studies both at global level and for applications that cover more than one region and benefit from using a consistent dataset across these regions.</p>

    2023-06-12

    CHELSA-W5E5: daily 1 km meteorological forcing data for climate impact studies

  • Perceptions, trends and adaptation to climate change in Yala wetland, Kenya

    <p>Purpose<br />Tropical wetland ecosystems are threatened by climate change but also play a key role in its mitigation and adaptation through management of land use and other drivers. Local-level assessments are needed to support evidence-based wetland management in the face of climate change. This study aims to examine the local communities&rsquo; knowledge and perception of climate change in Yala wetland, Kenya, and compare them with observed data on climate trends. Such comparisons are useful to inform context-specific climate change adaptation actions. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Design/methodology/approach <br />The study used a mixed methods approach that combined analysis of climate data with perceptions from the local community. Gridded data on temperature and rainfall for the period from 1981 to 2018 were compared with data on climate change perceptions from semi-structured questionnaires with 286 key informants and community members. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Findings &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />Majority of the respondents had observed changes in climate parameters &ndash; severe drought (88.5%), increased frequency of floods (86.0%) and irregular onset and termination of rains (90.9%) in the past 20 years. The perceptions corresponded with climate trends that showed a significant increasing trend in the short rains and the average maximum temperature, high incidence of very wet years and variability in onset and termination of rainfall between 1981 and 2018. Gender, age and education had little influence on knowledge and awareness of climate change, except for frequency of floods and self-reported understanding of climate change. The community perceived the wetland to be important for climate change adaptation, particularly the provision of resources such as grazing grounds during drought. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Research limitations/implications &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />The study faced challenges of low sample size, use of gridded climate data and reproducibility in other contexts. The results of this study apply to local communities in a tropical wetland in Western Kenya, which has a bi-modal pattern of rainfall. The sample of the study was regional and may therefore not be representative of the whole of Kenya, which has diverse socioeconomic and ecological contexts. Potential problems have been identified with the use of gridded data (for example, regional biases in models), although their usefulness in data scarce contexts is well established. Moreover, the sample size has been found to be a less important factor in research of highly complex socio-ecological systems where there is an attempt to bridge natural and social sciences. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Practical implications &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />This study addresses the paucity of studies on climate change trends in papyrus wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa and the role of local knowledge and perceptions in influencing the management of such wetlands. Perceptions largely influence local stakeholders&rsquo; decisions, and a study that compares perceptions vs &ldquo;reality&rdquo; provides evidence for engagement with the stakeholders in managing these highly vulnerable ecosystems. The study showed that the local community&rsquo;s perceptions corresponded with the climate record and that adaptation measures are already ongoing in the area.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Originality/value &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />This study presents a case for the understanding of community perceptions and knowledge of climate change in a tropical wetland under threat from climate change and land use change, to inform management under a changing climate.</p>

    2023-06-11

    Perceptions, trends and adaptation to climate change in Yala wetland, Kenya

  • The biogeophysical effects of idealized land cover and land management changes in Earth system models

    <p>Abstract. Land cover and land management change (LCLMC) has been highlighted for its critical role in mitigation scenarios, both in terms of global mitigation and local adaptation. Yet, the climate effect of individual LCLMC options, their dependence on the background climate and the local vs. non-local responses are still poorly understood across different Earth system models (ESMs). Here we simulate the climatic effects of LCLMC using three state-of-the-art ESMs, including the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model (MPI-ESM) and the European Consortium Earth System Model (EC-EARTH). We assess the LCLMC effects using the following four idealized experiments: (i) a fully afforested world, (ii) a world fully covered by cropland, (ii) a fully afforested world with extensive wood harvesting and (iv) a full-cropland world with extensive irrigation. In these idealized sensitivity experiments, performed under present-day climate conditions, the effects of the different LCLMC strategies represent an upper bound for the potential of global mitigation and local adaptation. To disentangle the local and non-local effects from the LCLMC, a checkerboard-like LCLMC perturbation, i.e. alternating grid boxes with and without LCLMC, is applied. The local effects of deforestation on surface temperature are largely consistent across the ESMs and the observations, with a cooling in boreal latitudes and a warming in the tropics. However, the energy balance components driving the change in surface temperature show less consistency across the ESMs and the observations. Additionally, some biases exist in specific ESMs, such as a strong albedo response in CESM mid-latitudes and a soil-thawing-driven warming in boreal latitudes in EC-EARTH. The non-local effects on surface temperature are broadly consistent across ESMs for afforestation, though larger model uncertainty exists for cropland expansion. Irrigation clearly induces a cooling effect; however, the ESMs disagree whether these are mainly local or non-local effects. Wood harvesting is found to have no discernible biogeophysical effects on climate. Overall, our results underline the potential of ensemble simulations to inform decision making regarding future climate consequences of land-based mitigation and adaptation strategies.</p>

    2023-06-06

    The biogeophysical effects of idealized land cover and land management changes in Earth system models

  • Toward spatial fit in the governance of global commodity flows

    <p>Global commodity flows between distally connected social-ecological systems pose important challenges to sustainability governance. These challenges are partly due to difficulties in designing and implementing governance institutions that fit or match the scale of the environmental and social problems generated in such telecoupled systems. We focus on the spatial dimension of governance fit in relation to global commodity flows and telecoupled systems. Specifically, we draw on examples from land use and global agricultural commodity governance to examine two overarching types of governance mismatches: boundary mismatches and resolution mismatches. We argue that one way to address mismatches is through governance rescaling and illustrate this approach with reference to examples of three broad types of governance approaches: trade agreements, due diligence laws, and landscape approaches to supply chain governance. No single governance approach is likely to address all mismatches, highlighting the need to align multiple governance approaches to govern telecoupled systems effectively.</p>

    2023-06-01

    Toward spatial fit in the governance of global commodity flows

  • Connected Conservation: Rethinking conservation for a telecoupled world

    <p>The convergence of the biodiversity and climate crises, widening of wealth inequality, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the urgent need to mobilize change to secure sustainable futures. Centres of tropical biodiversity are a major focus of conservation efforts, delivered in predominantly site-level interventions often incorporating alternative-livelihood provision or poverty-alleviation components. Yet, a focus on site-level intervention is ill-equipped to address the disproportionate role of (often distant) wealth in biodiversity collapse. Further these approaches often attempt to &lsquo;resolve&rsquo; local economic poverty in order to safeguard biodiversity in a seemingly virtuous act, potentially overlooking local communities as the living locus of solutions to the biodiversity crisis. We offer Connected Conservation: a dual-branched conservation model that commands novel actions to tackle distant wealth-related drivers of biodiversity decline, while enhancing site-level conservation to empower biodiversity stewards. We synthesize diverse literatures to outline the need for this shift in conservation practice. We identify three dominant negative flows arising in centres of wealth that disproportionately undermine biodiversity, and highlight the three key positive, though marginalized, flows that enhance biodiversity and exist within biocultural centres. Connected Conservation works to amplify the positive flows, and diminish the negative flows, and thereby orientates towards desired states with justice at the centre. We identify connected conservation actions that can be applied and replicated to address the telecoupled, wealth-related reality of biodiversity collapse while empowering contemporary biodiversity stewards. The approach calls for conservation to extend its collaborations across sectors in order to deliver to transformative change.</p>

    2023-06-01

    Connected Conservation: Rethinking conservation for a telecoupled world

  • The youth transformative participatory evaluator education and training approach: The EvalYouth experience

    <p>In the face of unprecedented and ever-changing challenges at the local, national, and global levels, evaluation must change too. Our old ways no longer serve us or the field's social, economic, political, and humanitarian betterment aims. Taking these aims seriously means much must change, including how we educate and train. In this article, we lay out a vision for what must happen within evaluator education and training and examples of how a transformative frame can be successfully integrated. With the great challenges our countries and societies face, we revisit three fundamental questions: what do evaluator education and training &lsquo;done well&rsquo; mean? What should such education and training look like? Who should lead it?</p>

    2023-05-25

    The youth transformative participatory evaluator education and training approach: The EvalYouth experience

  • Analyzing Climate Change Policy Narratives with the Character-Role Narrative Framework

    <p><span>Understanding behavioral aspects of collective decision-making is an important challenge for eco-nomics, and narratives are a crucial group-based mechanism that influences human decision-making. This paper introduces the Character-Role Narrative Framework as a tool to systematically analyze narratives, and applies it to study US climate change policy on Twitter over the 2010-2021 period. We build on the idea of the so-called drama triangle that suggests, within the context of a topic, the essence of a narrative is captured by its characters in one of three essential roles: hero, villain, and victim. We show how this intuitive framework can be easily integrated into an empirical pipeline and scaled up to large text corpora using supervised machine learning. In our application to US climate change policy narratives, we find strong changes in the frequency of simple and complex character-role narratives over time. Using contagiousness, popularity, and sparking conversation as three distinct dimensions of virality, we show that narratives that are simple, feature human characters and emphasize villains tend to be more viral. Focusing on Donald Trump as an example of a populist leader, we demonstrate that populism is linked to a higher share of such simple, human, and villain-focused narratives.</span></p>

    2023-05-23

    Analyzing Climate Change Policy Narratives with the Character-Role Narrative Framework

  • Insuring Peace: Index-Based Livestock Insurance, Droughts, and Conflict

    <p>We provide novel evidence of how an innovative market-based solution using remote-sensing technology can mitigate conflict. Droughts are a major driver of conflict in Africa, particularly between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary farmers, and climate change is predicted to intensify this problem. The Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) scheme piloted in Kenya provides automated, preemptive payouts to pastoralists affected by droughts.</p>

    2023-05-23

    Insuring Peace: Index-Based Livestock Insurance, Droughts, and Conflict

  • Releasing global forests from human management: How much more carbon could be stored?

    <p>Carbon storage in forests is a cornerstone of policy-making to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5&deg;C. However, the global impact of management (for example, harvesting) on the carbon budget of forests remains poorly quantified. We integrated global maps of forest biomass and management with machine learning to show that by removing human intervention, under current climatic conditions and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, existing global forests could increase their aboveground biomass by up to 44.1 (error range: 21.0 to 63.0) petagrams of carbon. This is an increase of 15 to 16% over current levels, equating to about 4 years of current anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Therefore, without strong reductions in emissions, this strategy holds low mitigation potential, and the forest sink should be preserved to offset residual carbon emissions rather than to compensate for present emissions levels.</p>

    2023-05-19

    Releasing global forests from human management: How much more carbon could be stored?

  • Neotropical understory birds and mammals show divergent behaviour responses to human pressure

    <p>Human pressures such as hunting and habitat destruction can generate a deep fear in animals and this fear can influence their diel activity patterns and use of space. However, whether these behavioural responses to human pressure are consistent among key functional groups has been poorly studied. For example, while mammal species tend to become more nocturnal in areas with high human pressure, it is unclear if co-occurring birds display similar or opposite patterns. Here we used information from camera trapping (367 camera stations and 16,939 camera/days) along a gradient of human pressure in the Colombian Llanos to assess diel activity changes in understory birds and mammals. We found that diel activity significantly changed with higher human pressure for 45% of the birds (five species) and 36% of the mammals (five species) assessed, with four of five birds becoming more diurnal and all five mammals becoming more nocturnal. The average increase in nocturnality for the mammals was 11.3% while the average increase in diurnality for the birds was 7%. There was high variation in body size and dietary guild within impacted species, and only some were directly persecuted or hunted, suggesting that there are different pathways through which human pressure can affect vertebrates&rsquo; activity patterns. The contrasting behavioural responses to humans among vertebrate functional groups has significant repercussions for the fields of community ecology, including intraguild predation and competition, and should be a significant ecosystem-level conservation consideration.</p>

    2023-04-22

    Neotropical understory birds and mammals show divergent behaviour responses to human pressure

  • Heat stored in the Earth system 1960–2020: where does the energy go?

    <p>The Earth climate system is out of energy balance, and heat has accumulated continuously over the past decades, warming the ocean, the land, the cryosphere, and the atmosphere. According to the Sixth Assessment Report by Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this planetary warming over multiple decades is human-driven and results in unprecedented and committed changes to the Earth system, with adverse impacts for ecosystems and human systems. The Earth heat inventory provides a measure of the Earth energy imbalance (EEI) and allows for quantifying how much heat has accumulated in the Earth system, as well as where the heat is stored. Here we show that the Earth system has continued to accumulate heat, with 381&plusmn;61&thinsp;ZJ accumulated from 1971 to 2020. This is equivalent to a heating rate (i.e., the EEI) of 0.48&plusmn;0.1&thinsp;W&thinsp;m&minus;2. The majority, about 89&thinsp;%, of this heat is stored in the ocean, followed by about 6&thinsp;% on land, 1&thinsp;% in the atmosphere, and about 4&thinsp;% available for melting the cryosphere. Over the most recent period (2006&ndash;2020), the EEI amounts to 0.76&plusmn;0.2&thinsp;W&thinsp;m&minus;2. The Earth energy imbalance is the most fundamental global climate indicator that the scientific community and the public can use as the measure of how well the world is doing in the task of bringing anthropogenic climate change under control. Moreover, this indicator is highly complementary to other established ones like global mean surface temperature as it represents a robust measure of the rate of climate change and its future commitment. We call for an implementation of the Earth energy imbalance into the Paris Agreement's Global Stocktake based on best available science. The Earth heat inventory in this study, updated from von Schuckmann et al. (2020), is underpinned by worldwide multidisciplinary collaboration and demonstrates the critical importance of concerted international efforts for climate change monitoring and community-based recommendations and we also call for urgently needed actions for enabling continuity, archiving, rescuing, and calibrating efforts to assure improved and long-term monitoring capacity of the global climate observing system. The data for the Earth heat inventory are publicly available, and more details are provided in Table 4.</p>

    2023-04-17

    Heat stored in the Earth system 1960–2020: where does the energy go?

  • Application of Free Satellite Imagery to Map Ecosystem Services in Ungwana Bay, Kenya

    <p>A major obstacle to mapping Ecosystem Services (ES) and the application of the ES concept has been the inadequacy of data at the landscape level necessary for their quantification. This study takes advantage of free satellite imagery to map and provide relevant information regarding ES and contribute to the sustainable management of natural resources in developing countries. The aim is to assess the flow of ES in mangrove ecosystem of Ungwana Bay, located on the northern coast of Kenya, by adopting the Land Use Land Cover (LULC) matrix approach. This study characterized LULC classes present in the study area, identified the most important ES, and collected data on expert opinions via a survey on ES flow supplied by the mangrove ecosystem. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the expert scoring produced a LULC matrix which, when integrated with the LULC maps, showed the spatial distribution of ES flow. The assessment indicates very high flow (5.0) for the regulating and supporting services, high flow (4.0) for the cultural services, and medium flow (3.0) for the provisioning services as supplied by mangroves. In addition, the analysis indicates there are sixteen major ES supplied by the mangrove ecosystem of Ungwana bay as of the year 2021. This study highlights the importance of mangroves as a coastal ecosystem and how the visualization of the spatial distribution of ES flow using maps can be useful in informing natural resource management. In addition, the study shows the possibilities of using freely accessible satellite imagery and software to bolster the ES assessment studies lacking in developing countries.</p>

    2023-03-28

    Application of Free Satellite Imagery to Map Ecosystem Services in Ungwana Bay, Kenya

  • Biogeophysical Effects of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Not Detectable in Warmest Month

    <p>Land-use and land-cover changes (hereafter simply &ldquo;land use&rdquo;) alter climates biogeophysically by affecting surface fluxes of energy and water. Yet, near-surface temperature responses to land use across observational versus model-based studies and spatial-temporal scales can be inconsistent. Here we assess the prevalence of the historical land use signal of daily maximum temperatures averaged over the warmest month of the year (<em>t</em>LU) using regularized optimal fingerprinting for detection and attribution. We use observations from the Climatic Research Unit and Berkeley Earth alongside historical simulations with and without land use from phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project to reconstruct an experiment representing the effects of land use on climate. To assess the signal of land use at spatially resolved continental and global scales, we aggregate all input data across reference regions and continents, respectively. At both scales, land use does not comprise a significantly detectable set of forcings for two of four Earth system models and their multimodel mean. Furthermore, using a principal component analysis, we find that <em>t</em>LU is mostly composed of the nonlocal effects of land use rather than its local effects. These findings show that, at scales relevant for climate attribution, uncertainties in Earth system model representations of land use are too high relative to the effects of internal variability to confidently assess land use.</p>

    2023-03-15

    Biogeophysical Effects of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Not Detectable in Warmest Month

  • Assessment of community cohesion in Oldonyiro (Isiolo) and Naibunga (Laikipia) community conservancies

    <p class="p1">Our study sites are situated in one of the most environmentally harsh regions of northern Kenya. The two areas under analysis, located in Oldonyiro ward (Isiolo) and Mukogodo East ward (Laikipia), are home to various pastoralists groups, in particular the Samburus and the Laikipia Maasai. These groups share the rangeland with other pastoralist groups including the Somalis, Borana, and Turkana. Falling within the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL), the two study areas display high temperatures, adverse effects of climate change (e.g. frequent drought), as well as conflicts regarding land, boundaries, and natural resources. Seen from the outside as remote, the region exhibits high characteristics associated with least-development indices. These social conditions are arguably the result of policy failures and a restrictive legislative agenda, especially the so-called Sessional Paper no. 10 issued in 1965, which directed the state to support development exclusively in areas perceived as having high potential. Here, thousands of households support themselves by engaging in livestock production, in particular keeping cows, camels, donkey, goats, and sheep.</p>

    2023-03-10

    Assessment of community cohesion in Oldonyiro (Isiolo) and Naibunga (Laikipia) community conservancies

  • Conservation planning for retention, not just protection

    <p>Most protected area (PA) planning aims to improve biota representation within the PA system, but this does not necessarily achieve the best outcomes for biota retention across regions when we also consider habitat loss in areas outside the PA system. Here, we assess the implications that different PA expansion strategies can have on the retention of species habitat across an entire region. Using retention of forest habitat for Colombia's 550 forest‐dependent bird species as our outcome variable, we found that when a minimum of 30% of each species' habitat was included in the PA system, a pattern of PA expansion targeting areas at highest deforestation risk (risk‐prevention) led to the retention, on average, of 7.2% more forest habitat per species by 2050 than did a pattern that targeted areas at lowest risk (risk‐avoidance). The risk‐prevention approach cost more per km2 of land conserved, but it was more cost‐effective in retaining habitat in the landscape (50%&ndash;69% lower cost per km2 of avoided deforestation). To have the same effectiveness preventing habitat loss in Colombia, the risk‐avoidance approach would require more than twice as much protected area, costing three times more in the process. Protected area expansion should focus on the contributions of PAs to outcomes not only within PA systems themselves, but across entire regions.</p>

    2023-03-05

    Conservation planning for retention, not just protection

  • Global shocks, cascading disruptions, and (re-)connections: viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as concurrent natural experiments to understand land system dynamics

    <p>For nearly three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted human well-being and livelihoods, communities, and economies in myriad ways with consequences for social-ecological systems across the planet. The pandemic represents a global shock in multiple dimensions that has already, and is likely to continue to have, far-reaching effects on land systems and on those depending on them for their livelihoods. We focus on the observed effects of the pandemic on landscapes and people composing diverse land systems across the globe. We highlight the interrelated impacts of the pandemic shock on the economic, health, and mobility dimensions of land systems using six vignettes from different land systems on four continents, analyzed through the lens of socio-ecological resilience and the telecoupling framework. We present preliminary comparative insights gathered through interviews, surveys, key informants, and authors&rsquo; observations and propose new research avenues for land system scientists. The pandemic&rsquo;s effects have been unevenly distributed, context-specific, and dependent on the multiple connections that link land systems across the globe. We argue that the pandemic presents concurrent &ldquo;natural experiments&rdquo; that can advance our understanding of the intricate ways in which global shocks produce direct, indirect, and spillover effects on local and regional landscapes and land systems. These propagating shock effects disrupt existing connections, forge new connections, and re-establish former connections between peoples, landscapes, and land systems.</p>

    2023-03-02

    Global shocks, cascading disruptions, and (re-)connections: viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as concurrent natural experiments to understand land system dynamics

  • The role of elections as drivers of tropical deforestation

    <p>Tropical forests support immense biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services for billions of people. Despite this value, tropical deforestation continues at a high rate. Emerging evidence suggests that elections can play an important role in shaping deforestation, for instance by incentivising politicians to allow increased utilisation of forests in return for political support. Nevertheless, the role of elections as driver of deforestation has not yet been comprehensively tested at broad geographic scales. Here, we created an annual database from 2001 to 2018 on political elections and forest loss for 55 tropical nations and modelled the effect of elections on deforestation. In total, 1.5 million km2 of forest was lost during this time period, especially in the Amazon, the Congo Basin and in Southeast Asia. The annual rate of deforestation increased in 37 (67 %) of the analysed countries. Deforestation was significantly lower in years with uncompetitive lower chamber elections compared to competitive election years (i.e. when the opposition can participate in elections and has a legitimate chance to gain governmental power). Our results show a pervasive loss of tropical forests and suggest that competitive elections can be potential drivers of deforestation. Future analyses at higher resolution (intra-annual deforestation and sub-national governance) and simultaneous collection of data on additional mechanisms (legislative changes, financial investments, and binding term limits) will likely provide additional insights into the impacts of elections. We therefore recommend that organisations monitoring election transparency and fairness should also monitor environmental impacts such as forest loss, habitat destruction and resource exploitation.</p>

    2023-03-01

    The role of elections as drivers of tropical deforestation

  • Construcción colectiva del territorio socioecológico continuo de la Reserva Nacional Tambopata y su zona de amortiguamiento en Madre de Dios, Perú

    <p><span>Food systems are in constant change. One of the main sources of change is the urbanization process, which affects household food consumption patterns, leading to possible health effects on its members. The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between urbanization and household food consumption patterns in the different Peruvian territories, the differences between them and the changes they have experienced over time. The mechanisms to obtain food, sales formats and the relative weight of food expenditure compared to total expenditure are also analyzed, all this employing a territorial typology that recognizes the existence of a rurality/urbanity gradient. The effects of these changes on health are studied too. Results show a strong relation between urbanization and food consumption patterns. The more urban the territory, the higher the share of households that consume processed and elaborated food products, but the lower the relative weight of expenditure in those types of products. Following this, results also suggest that the more urban the territory, the greater the probability that at least one household member suffers from a chronic disease. This way, the degree of rurality/urbanity of the territory plays a determinant role in food consumption patterns. Finally, although these results are intuitive, their value lies in the fact that they provide rigorous evidence and allow to quantify the analyzed relationships</span></p>

    2023-02-15

    Construcción colectiva del territorio socioecológico continuo de la Reserva Nacional Tambopata y su zona de amortiguamiento en Madre de Dios, Perú

  • People need freshwater biodiversity

    <p>Freshwater biodiversity, from fish to frogs and microbes to macrophytes, provides a vast array of services to people. Mounting concerns focus on the accelerating pace of biodiversity loss and declining ecological function within freshwater ecosystems that continue to threaten these natural benefits. Here, we catalog nine fundamental ecosystem services that the biotic components of indigenous freshwater biodiversity provide to people, organized into three categories: material (food; health and genetic resources; material goods), non-material (culture; education and science; recreation), and regulating (catchment integrity; climate regulation; water purification and nutrient cycling). If freshwater biodiversity is protected, conserved, and restored in an integrated manner, as well as more broadly appreciated by humanity, it will continue to contribute to human well-being and our sustainable future via this wide range of services and associated nature-based solutions to our sustainable future.</p>

    2023-02-08

    People need freshwater biodiversity

  • Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions

    <p>Shifting cultivation remains an important land system in many tropical landscapes, but transitions away from shifting cultivation are increasingly common. So far, our knowledge on the social&ndash;economic and environmental drivers and consequences of such shifting cultivation transitions is incomplete, focusing on certain transitions, drivers, consequences or regions. Here, we use an archetype approach, validated through systematically identified literature, to describe eight archetypes encompassing the transitions from shifting cultivation to (1) perennial plantation crops, (2) permanent agroforestry, (3) regrown secondary forest, (4) permanent non‐perennial crops, (5) pasture, (6) wood plantation, (7) non‐cultivated non‐forested land and (8) restored secondary forest (ordered in decreasing prevalence). We then discuss social&ndash;economic and environmental factors favouring and disfavouring each archetype. This reveals that higher expected land rents, resulting from increased market access, crop price surges, secure land tenure and state interventions, are the main drivers of archetypical transitions to perennial plantation crops, permanent agroforestry, permanent non‐perennial crops and wood plantation. The prioritisation of other activities, both on‐ and off‐farm, favours transitions to regrown secondary forest and non‐cultivated non‐forested land, depending on plot‐level environmental conditions. Active forest restoration is typically implemented through state or NGO interventions. Turning to the consequences of archetypical transitions for biodiversity, the environment and livelihoods, we find that positive environmental outcomes prevail for transitions to permanent agroforestry, regrown secondary forest and restored secondary forest. Negative environmental outcomes dominate for four typically economically profitable transitions to perennial plantation crops, permanent non‐perennial crops, pasture and wood plantation. Non‐income‐related social&ndash;economic outcomes are heterogeneous within all archetypes and highly context‐dependent. Our archetype analysis shows that shifting cultivation transitions are diverse in themselves, in their drivers and their consequences. This calls for a critical and contextualised appraisal of the continuation of shifting cultivation, as well as the transition away from it, when designing land system policies that work for people and nature.</p>

    2023-01-24

    Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions

  • Agricultural commercialization in borderlands: Capturing the transformation of a tropical forest frontier through participatory mapping

    <p>Forest-frontier landscapes in the humid tropics display distinct land use change dynamics compared to other world regions, providing useful examples of current global environmental and development challenges. In northwestern Laos, part of the former Golden Triangle region, investments in value chains for commercial crops&mdash;mainly to fulfill Chinese market demands&mdash;have triggered various land use changes and put increasing pressure on remaining biodiverse forest areas. Capturing the existing land use change trajectories is a key initial step toward further studies assessing land use change impacts. However, methodological challenges arise when conducting spatially-explicit change assessments in these regions, given the high temporal variability of land use at the plot level, compounded by the paucity of good quality satellite imagery. Thus, we applied a novel approach combining analysis of very high-resolution (VHR) satellite imagery with participatory mapping. This enabled joint collection of annual land use information for the last 17 years together with local land users, shedding light on temporally dense land system dynamics. For decades, the government of Laos has sought to halt shifting cultivation, labeling it environmentally degrading, and to reduce poverty through promotion of permanent commodity-oriented commercial agriculture. Among other things, this gave rise to a boom in banana and rubber investments in Luang Namtha province in order to satisfy growing Chinese demand for these commodities. The present paper investigates the impact of these cash crop booms on land use transitions and whether they reduced pressure on forest-frontier areas, as ostensibly desired by government authorities. Our study is among the first to demonstrate in a spatially-explicit manner that subsistence agriculture&mdash;in less than two decades&mdash;has virtually disappeared in northern Laos due to diverse cash-crop production and agricultural commercialization initiatives linked to Chinese investments. As subsistence-focused cultivation systems are being replaced by land uses solely aimed at commercial production for export, a telecoupled land system is being developed in northwestern Laos with potentially manifold impacts for sustainable development.</p>

    2023-01-12

    Agricultural commercialization in borderlands: Capturing the transformation of a tropical forest frontier through participatory mapping

  • A Critical Examination of Rural Out-Migration Studies in Ethiopia: Considering Impacts on Agriculture in the Sending Communities

    <p>Labor migration is a complex phenomenon, yet while much attention has been paid to understanding the drivers of migration, there is a huge knowledge and policy gap regarding the effects of migration on people and communities left behind. We sought to explore the impacts of rural outmigration on migrant-sending communities in Ethiopia. This remains an understudied topic when it comes to research on migration in Ethiopia. Our investigation is based on a critical review of the migration literature pertaining to Ethiopia and, more broadly. We pursued a holistic analysis of the multidimensional aspects of migration. There are indications that rural outmigration impacts involve issues related to remittances, household food security, agricultural labor use, farmland management, and rural infrastructure development. Our analysis revealed that there had been few systematic studies and limited analyses regarding the impacts of outmigration on agriculture and the livelihoods of rural people and households left behind. Instead, Ethiopia&rsquo;s migration literature largely deals with migration&rsquo;s causes, including environmental factors, climate variability, agricultural pressures, livelihood stresses, and changing aspirations.</p>

    2023-01-05

    A Critical Examination of Rural Out-Migration Studies in Ethiopia: Considering Impacts on Agriculture in the Sending Communities

  • Navigating power in conservation

    <p>Conservation research and practice are increasingly engaging with people and drawing on social sciences to improve environmental governance. In doing so, conservation engages with power in many ways, often implicitly. Conservation scientists and practitioners exercise power when dealing with species, people and the environment, and increasingly they are trying to address power relations to ensure effective conservation outcomes (guiding decision-making, understanding conflict, ensuring just policy and management outcomes). However, engagement with power in conservation is often limited or misguided. To address challenges associated with power in conservation, we introduce the four dominant approaches to analyzing power to conservation scientists and practitioners who are less familiar with social theories of power. These include actor-centered, institutional, structural, and, discursive/governmental power. To complement these more common framings of power, we also discuss further approaches, notably non-human and Indigenous perspectives. We illustrate how power operates at different scales and in different contexts, and provide six guiding principles for better consideration of power in conservation research and practice. These include: (1) considering scales and spaces in decision-making, (2) clarifying underlying values and assumptions of actions, (3) recognizing conflicts as manifestations of power dynamics, (4) analyzing who wins and loses in conservation, (5) accounting for power relations in participatory schemes, and, (6) assessing the right to intervene and the consequences of interventions. We hope that a deeper engagement with social theories of power can make conservation and environmental management more effective and just while also improving transdisciplinary research and practice.</p>

    2023-01-01

    Navigating power in conservation

  • Habitat protection and restoration: Win–win opportunities for migratory birds in the Northern Andes

    <p>Identifying strategies that offer co-benefits for biodiversity protection, forest restoration and human well-being are important for successful conservation outcomes. In this study, we identified opportunities where forest restoration and rehabilitation programs in Colombia also align with priority areas for the conservation of Neotropical migratory birds. We used citizen science eBird-based abundance estimates to define regions with the highest richness of Neotropical migratory birds of conservation concern at montane elevations in Colombia and aligned these high richness areas with domestic initiatives for forest protection (Forest Areas), restoration (Restoration Areas) and rehabilitation (Rehabilitation Areas). We quantified the location and amounts of these three areas as well as the type of land protection and designation within them, specifically, National Protected Areas, Indigenous Reserves, Afro-descendent territories, and regions affected by poverty and violence that are prioritized for rural development by the Colombian government in Post-conflict Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDET). Almost half of Forest Areas overlapped with PDETs where goals for economic development present a risk of forest loss if not done sustainably. There was a 20% overlap between Forest Areas and Afro-descendant territories and indigenous reserves; most of this overlap was outside of established protected areas thus presenting an opportunity for community forest conservation that benefits migratory birds. We found an alignment of less than 6% between migrant bird focal areas and the priority Restoration and Rehabilitation Areas identified by the Colombian National Restoration Plan indicating less opportunity for these programs to simultaneously benefit Neotropical migrant species. Our approach highlights that timely and efficient conservation of declining migrants depends on identifying the regions and strategies that incorporate local communities as part of the solution to forest loss and degradation in Colombia.</p>

    2023-01-01

    Habitat protection and restoration: Win–win opportunities for migratory birds in the Northern Andes

  • Governing Land Concessions in Laos

    <p><span>This chapter examines processes of land grabbing in Laos, where the government has granted 4 percent of the national territory to foreign and domestic plantation, mining, and hydropower investors. A major portion of this land has been developed through the coercive dispossession of peasant land. However, the development of land concessions has not been a frictionless process as peasants have become increasingly frustrated with the expropriation of their land and have found various ways to voice their concerns within the country&rsquo;s constrained political environment. The analysis focuses on how land concessions in Laos are governed in ways that produce uneven geographies. Typically, scholarship on governance is concerned with formal rules, regulations, and mechanisms. However, we take a critical and relational approach that views land governance as a process driven by the relationships amongst heterogeneous actors that shape the decisions made and actions taken towards the use, management, ownership, and transformation of land. While the Lao government has made significant reforms to land-related policies in recent years, we show how these changes are driven by dynamic social and political relationships amongst state agencies, foreign investors, and peasant communities.</span></p>

    2023-01-01

    Governing Land Concessions in Laos

  • Global climate-related predictors at kilometer resolution for the past and future

    <p>Abstract. A multitude of physical and biological processes on which ecosystems and human societies depend are governed by the climate, and understanding how these processes are altered by climate change is central to mitigation efforts. We developed a set of climate-related variables at as yet unprecedented spatiotemporal detail as a basis for environmental and ecological analyses. We downscaled time series of near-surface relative humidity (hurs) and cloud area fraction (clt) under the consideration of orography and wind as well as near-surface wind speed (sfcWind) using the delta-change method. Combining these grids with mechanistically downscaled information on temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation, we then calculated vapor pressure deficit (vpd), surface downwelling shortwave radiation (rsds), potential evapotranspiration (pet), the climate moisture index (cmi), and site water balance (swb) at a monthly temporal and 30&thinsp;arcsec spatial resolution globally from 1980 until 2018 (time-series variables). At the same spatial resolution, we further estimated climatological normals of frost change frequency (fcf), snow cover days (scd), potential net primary productivity (npp), growing degree days (gdd), and growing season characteristics for the periods 1981&ndash;2010, 2011&ndash;2040, 2041&ndash;2070, and 2071&ndash;2100, considering three shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP126, SSP370, SSP585) and five Earth system models (projected variables). Time-series variables showed high accuracy when validated against observations from meteorological stations and when compared to alternative products. Projected variables were also highly correlated with observations, although some variables showed notable biases, e.g., snow cover days. Together, the CHELSA-BIOCLIM+ dataset presented here (https://doi.org/10.16904/envidat.332, Brun et al., 2022) allows improvement to our understanding of patterns and processes that are governed by climate, including the impact of recent and future climate changes on the world's ecosystems and the associated services on societies.</p>

    2022-12-16

    Global climate-related predictors at kilometer resolution for the past and future

  • How social considerations improve the equity and effectiveness of ecosystem restoration

    <p>Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studies, we show how projects that align with local people's preferences and are implemented through inclusive governance are more likely to lead to improved social, ecological, and environmental outcomes. To underscore the importance of social considerations in restoration, we overlay existing global restoration priority maps, population, and the Human Development Index (HDI) to show that approximately 1.4 billion people, disproportionately belonging to groups with low HDI, live in areas identified by previous studies as being of high restoration priority. We conclude with five action points for science and policy to promote equity-centered restoration.</p>

    2022-12-14

    How social considerations improve the equity and effectiveness of ecosystem restoration

  • Governing spillovers of agricultural land use through voluntary sustainability standards: A coverage analysis of sustainability requirements

    <p>Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are prominent governance instruments that define and verify sustainable agricultural land use at farm and supply chain levels. However, agricultural production can prompt spillover dynamics with implications for sustainability that go beyond these scales, e.g., through runoff of chemical inputs or long-distance migrant worker flows. Scientific evidence on the governance of spillovers through VSS is, however, limited. This study investigates the extent to which VSS regulate a set of 21 environmental and socio-economic spillovers of agricultural land use. To this end, we assessed the spillover coverage in 100 sustainability standards. We find that VSS have a clear tendency to cover environmental spillovers more extensively than socio-economic spillovers. Further, we show how spillover coverage differs across varying types of standard-setting organizations and VSS verification mechanisms. Finally, we discuss the role and limitations that VSS can have in addressing the revealed gaps.</p>

    2022-12-14

    Governing spillovers of agricultural land use through voluntary sustainability standards: A coverage analysis of sustainability requirements

  • Are our data ready for the next global challenges? Resilient data for resilient societies and economies

    <p><span>The waves of the COVID-19 pandemic have visibly shaken a wide range of national systems and infrastructures: from health to welfare, from environment to security. This shaking has exacerbated dangerous fragilities which were already exposed by the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis and climate change, including nature loss, shrinking habits and growing toxicity and pollution. While a relative newcomer in the &lsquo;crises club&rsquo;, by grinding the world to a halt for months, COVID-19 has highlighted that our ability to build resilience into our systems still has considerable ways to go. So how do we respond? We have been hearing a lot about &lsquo;bouncing back&rsquo; &ndash; that is, returning to pre-COVID conditions &ndash; as the core objective. However, in a number of contexts, and particularly for the global South,&nbsp;</span><em>returning</em><span>&nbsp;appears less desirable than using this crisis for&nbsp;</span><em>advancing</em><span>&nbsp;sustainability agendas. In both cases, a key question is: how do we make sure that inattention to the triple planetary crisis of climate, nature and pollution (with dimensions ranging from land cover change to hostile species invasions) do not lead us to the next round of shocks? How do we move from'esponse mode' to 'pre-emptive mode'? In other words: how do we increase the resilience of our societies?</span></p>

    2022-12-01

    Are our data ready for the next global challenges? Resilient data for resilient societies and economies

  • Decolonising global health evaluation: Synthesis from a scoping review

    <p>As decolonisation awareness and activism amplifies in the mainstream masses and within academic realms across a variety of fields, the time is right to converge parallel movements to decolonise the fields of global health and evaluation by restructuring relations of dependency and domination reified through the &ldquo;foreign gaze&rdquo; or &ldquo;white gaze.&rdquo; We conducted a review of relevant records with the following inclusion criteria&ndash;they define or advocate for the decolonisation of global health evaluation or explicate methods, policies or interventions to decolonise global health evaluation published by advocates of the decolonisation movement from both fields. These records were derived following a systematic article search by the lead autthor on Google, Google Scholar, NewsBank, and PubMed using the following keywords: &ldquo;decolonising&rdquo; and &ldquo;global health,&rdquo; &ldquo;evaluation,&rdquo; or &ldquo;global health evaluation&rdquo; replicating a digital search strategy utilized by scoping reviews across a variety of topics. Because the topic of interest is nascent and still emerging, the date range was not restricted. The lead author screened abstracts retrieved from the search. In total, 57 records, ranging in publication date from 1994 to 2020, were selected and charted for this review. We reviewed these records to identify socio-ecological factors that influence the decolonisation of global health evaluation, such as decolonising minds; reorienting funders and reforming funding mechanisms; and investing in sustainable capacity exchange. In doing so, we reflected on our positionality as well as our internalisation and potential reinforcement of colonial relations in the process of reporting our results. In the context of turmoil and transition due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our scoping review offers a starting point to embark on a journey first to transform and decolonise global health evaluation and then to achieve the greater goal of equity and justice.</p>

    2022-11-16

    Decolonising global health evaluation: Synthesis from a scoping review

  • Emerging Themes and Future Directions of Multi-Sector Nexus Research and Implementation

    <p>Water, energy, and food are all essential components of human societies. Collectively, their respective resource systems are interconnected in what is called the &ldquo;nexus&rdquo;. There is growing consensus that a holistic understanding of the interdependencies and trade-offs between these sectors and other related systems is critical to solving many of the global challenges they present. While nexus research has grown exponentially since 2011, there is no unified, overarching approach, and the implementation of concepts remains hampered by the lack of clear case studies. Here, we present the results of a collaborative thought exercise involving 75 scientists and summarize them into 10 key recommendations covering: the most critical nexus issues of today, emerging themes, and where future efforts should be directed. We conclude that a nexus community of practice to promote open communication among researchers, to maintain and share standardized datasets, and to develop applied case studies will facilitate transparent comparisons of models and encourage the adoption of nexus approaches in practice.</p>

    2022-11-08

    Emerging Themes and Future Directions of Multi-Sector Nexus Research and Implementation

  • Variations in community perceptions of ecosystem services within the Tana River estuary, Kenya: Implications for ocean governance

    <p>Coastal communities in the Tana estuary, Kenya, rely on a variety of economic sectors linked to ecosystem services, including small-scale fisheries (SSF), commercial prawn fisheries, and tourism. Despite its environmental and social importance, the estuary has been negatively impacted by overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. As a result, developing integrated management approaches for this area is a priority. The integrated approach to ecosystem services (ES) evaluation has widespread support because it emphasizes people&rsquo;s views of ecological value to human well-being and aims to provide a solution to the rapid depletion of our planet&rsquo;s natural resources. This study applied mixed methods to understand the perspectives of the communities on ES. It was hypothesized that perceptions of ES differ across communities with different socioeconomic characteristics, and this hypothesis was tested in two communities (Ozi and Kipini) that share the same ecosystem but have different socioeconomic characteristics. Kipini is an area near the ocean, whereas Ozi is a rural area further upstream. Differences were noted in the valuation of cultural services, while there were similarities in provisioning and regulating services. Mangroves, other trees, and river systems were considered to have higher ES provision than the ocean, floodplains, and settlement areas. The Ozi community ranked the ocean higher than the Kipini community, even though Ozi was located further upstream from the ocean; consequently, the perception that communities benefit more from resources that they are close to could be false. The relevance of using social ES identification to determine the distribution of benefits from coastal ES is highlighted in this study and will be beneficial for informing decision-making and developing all-inclusive governance structures.</p>

    2022-11-01

    Variations in community perceptions of ecosystem services within the Tana River estuary, Kenya: Implications for ocean governance

  • Understanding of Sustainable Development Goals among communities living adjacent to mangroves in Kenya

    <p>Mangroves are among the most productive ecosystems, known for their diverse provisioning, regulating, supporting and aesthetic services. The ecosystem directly supports livelihoods and ensures food security and nutrition of people through its ecosystem services (ES) such as wood, fish and medicines while protecting them by stabilizing shorelines, reducing flooding, and mitigating climate change and natural disasters such as tsunamis. In so doing, the ecosystem promotes several sustainable development goals (SDGs) and co-benefits several others. This relationship however remains under explored with limited studies on the co-benefit scenarios and the cognitive views of mangrove resource users. This paper highlights gaps in knowledge of the role of mangroves in development and the implications on ecosystem governance. The study analysed the &lsquo;ideal&rsquo; scenario presented in secondary data in comparison to community perspectives on mangrove-related development. Bearing in mind the complexity of the concept of sustainability, development was categorised at local, national and international levels, and community members were asked to mention any known links to mangrove ES at any of the three levels. Results indicate that 45.4 % (n=166) of the community understood the roles of mangroves in development. The majority (79.5 %) were able to link the ecosystem to local (village level) development, 43.1 % to both local and national development while only 13.5 % could link the ecosystem to local, national, and international development. Forty-three per cent (n=157) of the community did not know of the relationship between mangroves and development while 11.6 % (n=43) felt that mangroves do not contribute to development. The study further disaggregated this knowledge socio-demographically, highlighting opportunities for enhancing governance, conservation and the use of mangrove ecosystems in Kenya.</p>

    2022-11-01

    Understanding of Sustainable Development Goals among communities living adjacent to mangroves in Kenya

  • Immigrant Narratives

    <p><span>Immigration is one of the most divisive political issues in many countries today. Competing narratives, circulated via the media, are crucial in shaping how immigrants&rsquo; role in society is perceived. We propose a new method combining advanced natural language processing tools with dictionaries to identify sentences containing one or more of seven immigrant narrative themes and assign a sentiment to each of these. Our narrative dataset covers 107,428 newspaper articles from 70 German newspapers over the 2000 to 2019 period. Using 16 human coders to evaluate our method, we find that it clearly outperforms simple word-matching methods and sentiment dictionaries. Empirically, culture narratives are more common than economy-related narratives. Narratives related to work and entrepreneurship are particularly positive, while foreign religion and welfare narratives tend to be negative. We use three distinct events to show how different types of shocks influence narratives, decomposing sentiment shifts into theme-composition and within-theme changes.</span></p>

    2022-10-28

    Immigrant Narratives

  • Pre-industrial temperature variability on the Swiss Plateau derived from the instrumental daily series of Bern and Zurich

    <p>Abstract. We describe the compilation of two early instrumental daily temperature series from Bern and Zurich, Switzerland, starting from 1760 and 1756, respectively. The series are a combination of numerous small segments from different observers at different locations within and outside the two cities that are converted to modern units and homogenized. In addition, we introduce a methodology to estimate the errors affecting daily and monthly mean values derived from early instrumental observations. Given the frequent small data gaps, we merge the two daily series into a more complete series representing the central Swiss Plateau. We finally compare the homogenized monthly series with other temperature reconstructions for Switzerland. We find significant differences before 1860, pointing to biases that might affect some of the most widely used instrumental data sets. In general, the homogenization of temperature measurements at the transition between the early instrumental and national weather service eras remains a problematic issue in historical climatology and has significant implications for other fields of climate research.</p>

    2022-10-25

    Pre-industrial temperature variability on the Swiss Plateau derived from the instrumental daily series of Bern and Zurich

  • Global forestation and deforestation affect remote climate via adjusted atmosphere and ocean circulation

    <p>Forests can store large amounts of carbon and provide essential ecosystem services. Massive tree planting is thus sometimes portrayed as a panacea to mitigate climate change and related impacts. Recent controversies about the potential benefits and drawbacks of forestation have centered on the carbon storage potential of forests and the local or global thermodynamic impacts. Here we discuss how global-scale forestation and deforestation change the Earth&rsquo;s energy balance, thereby affect the global atmospheric circulation and even have profound effects on the ocean circulation. We perform multicentury coupled climate model simulations in which preindustrial vegetation cover is either completely forested or deforested and carbon dioxide mixing ratio is kept constant. We show that global-scale forestation leads to a weakening and poleward shift of the Northern mid-latitude circulation, slows-down the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, and affects the strength of the Hadley cell, whereas deforestation leads to reversed changes. Consequently, both land surface changes substantially affect regional precipitation, temperature, clouds, and surface wind patterns across the globe. The design process of large-scale forestation projects thus needs to take into account global circulation adjustments and their influence on remote climate.</p>

    2022-10-04

    Global forestation and deforestation affect remote climate via adjusted atmosphere and ocean circulation

  • The role of environmental, structural and anthropogenic variables on underpass use by African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Tsavo Conservation Area

    <p>Wildlife crossing structures are effective interventions for mitigating fragmentation of habitats by linear infrastructure. The 2017 construction of a new railway cutting through the Tsavo Conservation Area (TCA), home to the largest elephant population in Kenya, affected wildlife movement and habitat connectivity. Although numerous studies have investigated the use of wildlife crossing structures by a wide range of species, few have focused on their use by megaherbivores. In this study, we examined use of 41 wildlife crossing structures by African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) along a 133 km section of new railway in Tsavo, Kenya. We used a generalized linear mixed modeling approach to assess the relationship between elephant crossing rate over 28 months between July 2017 to April 2021 and explanatory factors including crossing structure attributes, livestock presence and proximity to highways, water points and human settlement. We found that structural attributes of crossing structures were most strongly associated with the elephant crossing rate, particularly height and its interaction with type of crossing structure (bridges, wildlife underpasses and culverts). Higher crossing structures were associated with higher crossing rate, with the largest influence of height at culverts and wildlife underpasses. Although bridges comprised only 19.5 % of the 41 available crossing structures, they accounted for a disproportionately high number of elephants crossing events (56 %). The results demonstrated the importance of bridges over designated crossing structures for elephants, with predicted seasonal counts of elephant crossings being 0.31 for average sized culverts, 2.88 for wildlife underpasses and 5.86 for bridges. The environmental and anthropogenic variables were not strongly associated with elephant crossing rate. Our findings have direct application for future siting and design of crossing structures across elephant ranges.</p>

    2022-10-01

    The role of environmental, structural and anthropogenic variables on underpass use by African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Tsavo Conservation Area

  • Impact of climate change on site characteristics of eight major astronomical observatories using high-resolution global climate projections until 2050: Projected increase in temperature and humidity leads to poorer astronomical observing conditions

    <p>Context. Sites for next-generation telescopes are chosen decades before the first light of a telescope. Site selection is usually based on recent measurements over a period that is too short to account for long-term changes in observing conditions such as those arising from anthropogenic climate change. For astronomical facilities with a typical lifetime of 30 yr, it is therefore essential to be aware of climate evolution to optimise observing time.</p> <p>Aims. In this study, we analyse trends in astronomical observing conditions for eight sites. Most sites either already host telescopes that provide in situ measurements of weather parameters or are candidates for hosting next-generation telescopes. For a fine representation of orography, we use the highest resolution global climate model (GCM) ensemble available provided by the high-resolution model intercomparison project and developed as part of the European Union Horizon 2020 PRIMAVERA project.</p> <p>Methods. We evaluate atmosphere-only and coupled PRIMAVERA GCM historical simulations against in situ measurements and the fifth generation atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5) of the European centre for medium-range weather forecasts for the period 1979&ndash;2014. The projections of changes in current site conditions are then analysed for the period 2015&ndash;2050 using PRIMAVERA future climate simulations.</p> <p>Results. Over most sites, we find that PRIMAVERA GCMs show a good agreement in temperature, specific humidity, and precipitable water vapour compared to in situ observations and ERA5. The ability of PRIMAVERA to simulate those variables increases confidence in their projections. For those variables, the model ensemble projects an increasing trend for all sites, which will result in progressively poorer astronomical observing conditions compared to current conditions. On the other hand, no significant trends are projected for relative humidity, cloud cover, or astronomical seeing and PRIMAVERA does not simulate these variables well compared to observations and reanalyses. Therefore, there is little confidence in these projections.</p> <p>Conclusions. Our results show that climate change will negatively impact the quality of astronomical observations and is likely to increase time lost due to bad site conditions. We stress that it is essential for astronomers to include long-term climate projections in their process for site selection and monitoring. We show that high-resolution GCMs can be used to analyse the effect of climate change on site characteristics of next-generation telescopes.</p>

    2022-09-23

    Impact of climate change on site characteristics of eight major astronomical observatories using high-resolution global climate projections until 2050: Projected increase in temperature and humidity leads to poorer astronomical observing conditions

  • China and the World Bank—How contrasting development approaches affect the stability of African states

    <p>China&rsquo;s development model challenges the approaches of traditional donors like the World Bank (WB). While some see this mostly as a chance, Chinese aid specifically and aid in general are also suspected of undermining developing countries&rsquo; stability for various reasons. To examine the effect of aid on stability thoroughly, we define stability as a continuum ranging from outright over social conflict to attitudes about democracy. We find no evidence that either WB or Chinese aid increases conflict in Africa using a comprehensive set of georeferenced aid projects and sub-national stability measures. Those results are robust and hold across different types of outright conflict, but also for social conflict. Overall, WB aid correlates more strongly with a reduction of conflict than Chinese aid. Moreover, WB aid is associated with a more positive attitude about democracy, while Chinese aid is related to an increased acceptance of authoritarian models.</p>

    2022-09-01

    China and the World Bank—How contrasting development approaches affect the stability of African states

  • How context affects transdisciplinary research: insights from Asia, Africa and Latin America

    <p>Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has been developed to generate knowledge that effectively fosters the capabilities of various societal actors to realize sustainability transformations. The development of TDR theories, principles, and methods has been largely governed by researchers from the global North and has reflected their contextual conditions. To enable more context-sensitive TDR framing, we sought to identify which contextual characteristics affect the design and implementation of TDR in six case studies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and what this means for TDR as a scientific approach. To this end, we distinguished four TDR process elements and identified several associated context dimensions that appeared to influence them. Our analysis showed that contextual characteristics prevalent in many Southern research sites&mdash;such as highly volatile socio-political situations and relatively weak support infrastructure&mdash;can make TDR a challenging endeavour. However, we also observed a high degree of variation in the contextual characteristics of our sites in the global South, including regarding group deliberation, research freedom, and dominant perceptions of the appropriate relationship between science, society, and policy. We argue that TDR in these contexts requires pragmatic adaptations as well as more fundamental reflection on underlying epistemological concepts around what it means to conduct &ldquo;good science&rdquo;, as certain contextual characteristics may influence core epistemological values of TDR.</p>

    2022-08-23

    How context affects transdisciplinary research: insights from Asia, Africa and Latin America

  • Climate Change and Land: IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems

    <p>The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for assessing the science related to climate change. It provides policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of human-induced climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. This IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) is the most comprehensive and up-to-date scientific assessment of the multiple interactions between climate change and land, assessing climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. It assesses the options for governance and decision-making across multiple scales. It serves policymakers, decision makers, stakeholders, and all interested parties with unbiased, up-to-date, policy-relevant information. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.</p>

    2022-08-12

    Climate Change and Land: IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems

  • Phenotypic plasticity promotes species coexistence

    <p>Ecological explanations for species coexistence assume that species' traits, and therefore the differences between species, are fixed on short timescales. However, species' traits are not fixed, but can instead change rapidly as a consequence of phenotypic plasticity. Here we use a combined experimental-theoretical approach to demonstrate that plasticity in response to interspecific competition between two aquatic plants allows for species coexistence where competitive exclusion is otherwise predicted to occur. Our results show that rapid trait changes in response to a shift in the competitive environment can promote coexistence in a way that is not captured by common measures of niche differentiation.</p>

    2022-08-04

    Phenotypic plasticity promotes species coexistence

  • Mixed impacts of protected areas and a cash crop boom on human well‐being in North‐Eastern Madagascar

    <ol start="1" class=""> <li>Tropical forest frontier areas support the well-being of local populations in myriad ways. Not only do they provide the material basis for people's livelihoods, they also sustain socio-cultural foundations through relational values. They host some of the most biodiverse ecosystems and largest carbon stocks on the planet, and are thus a focus of global conservation efforts. They are also a prime location for the production of many global agricultural commodities. These dynamics&mdash;often intertwined&mdash;may trap local populations between powerful interests, with the potential to affect their well-being.</li> <li>We conducted 100 structured interviews in four biodiversity-rich landscapes of north-eastern Madagascar to investigate how multi-dimensional human well-being is affected by the recent establishment of protected areas and surge in cash crop prices. We asked households about their satisfaction&mdash;and changes in satisfaction&mdash;with locally relevant well-being components, mapping their answers through Nussbaum's Central Capabilities approach. We also investigated the cultural significance of key natural resources beyond the material benefits they provide. All issues were explored along four variables: site, main source of rice, gender and household land use portfolio.</li> <li>Our findings are as follows: first, human capabilities are interconnected and mutually interdependent, with relational values linking many of them. Second, subjective accounts of well-being are influenced by cognitive biases, such as treadmill effects, adaptive preferences and recency bias. Third, while households perceived a positive influence of protected areas, those most reliant on forest land and products held a more negative view of conservation interventions. And fourth, while households more engaged in commercial agriculture may be benefitting economically from the recent increase in cash crop prices, these very dynamics might be leading to trade-offs between capabilities. This is most notably so for the<span>&nbsp;</span><i>Bodily Health</i><span>&nbsp;</span>capability (e.g. greater spending on housing) and<span>&nbsp;</span><i>Affiliation</i><span>&nbsp;</span>and<span>&nbsp;</span><i>Bodily Integrity</i><span>&nbsp;</span>(i.e. worsening social relations and security).</li> <li>These insights highlight the importance of addressing the multiple dimensions of well-being when assessing the impacts of conservation and economic dynamics in forest frontier populations. Particular attention should be paid to the relational values ascribed to the natural resources the communities rely on.</li> </ol>

    2022-07-17

    Mixed impacts of protected areas and a cash crop boom on human well‐being in North‐Eastern Madagascar

  • Patterning Conservation Flows: How Formal and Informal Networks Shape Transnational Conservation Practice

    <p>Conservation Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are crucial actors in global conservation governance. They shape resource flows, establish cross-sector and cross-scale networks, and influence conservation discourses and practices. While research on conservation NGOs is growing, less attention has been paid to how conservation NGOs structure their networks. In this article, we interrogate the interpersonal social relationships that underpin the organisational dynamics of conservation NGOs engaged in transnational activities. Drawing on 45 semi-structured interviews with conservation professionals at NGOs based in Cambridge (UK), Bangkok (Thailand), and Vientiane (Lao PDR), we sketch two parallel and interacting dimensions: (a) the bureaucratic and institutional infrastructures that condition conservation flows and actor interactions; and (b) the interpersonal social relationships that pattern conservation flows between distant places and actors. We illustrate how such relationships are important for managing activities, responding to unexpected and unforeseen events, capitalising on funding opportunities by quickly mobilising an existing network, integrating new actors into project activities, enhancing cross-sector dialogues to mainstream biodiversity conservation, and accessing and influencing funders. Social relationships serve a crucial function due to the uncertain conditions in which conservation NGOs operate. Our results point to an important dimension of exclusion in transnational conservation networks.&lt;br&gt;</p>

    2022-07-01

    Patterning Conservation Flows: How Formal and Informal Networks Shape Transnational Conservation Practice

  • The behaviour and fate of translocated bull African savanna elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) into a novel environment

    <p><span>Translocation of elephants is used to mitigate human-elephant conflict in Asia and Africa. However, few studies investigate how translocations affect the movements and social behaviour of individuals following their release, which may have important implications for whether translocated animals survive and succeed. Using GPS-tracking data, we explored movements of five translocated bull elephants (</span><i>Loxodonta africana</i><span>) moved to Tsavo, Kenya, and compared them with five resident bull elephants. Position data was collected hourly for 1&thinsp;year (March 2018&ndash;March 2019), and analysed to investigate home range, displacement rates, problematic behaviour and group size. Of the five translocated elephants, three were illegally killed and one continued to break fences and raid crops. Only one elephant stayed away from human settlement. We found group size and composition to be significantly different, with translocated elephants observed in smaller groups with no female elephant interactions. All elephants showed variation in home ranges and displacement rates, but differences were not significant between resident and translocated elephant groups. For future translocations, we recommend careful consideration of elephant social systems, elephant age, timing, release site and proximity to human settlements that might create human-elephant conflict. This will improve chance for success of such high-stake and expensive translocations.</span></p>

    2022-06-30

    The behaviour and fate of translocated bull African savanna elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) into a novel environment

  • Land–atmosphere interactions in sub-polar and alpine climates in the CORDEX flagship pilot study Land Use and Climate Across Scales (LUCAS) models – Part 1: Evaluation of the snow-albedo effect

    <p>Seasonal snow cover plays a major role in the climate system of the Northern Hemisphere via its effect on land surface albedo and fluxes. In climate models the parameterization of interactions between snow and atmosphere remains a source of uncertainty and biases in the representation of local and global climate. Here, we evaluate the ability of an ensemble of regional climate models (RCMs) coupled with different land surface models to simulate snow&ndash;atmosphere interactions over Europe in winter and spring. We use a previously defined index, the snow-albedo sensitivity index (SASI), to quantify the radiative forcing associated with snow cover anomalies. By comparing RCM-derived SASI values with SASI calculated from reanalyses and satellite retrievals, we show that an accurate simulation of snow cover is essential for correctly reproducing the observed forcing over middle and high latitudes in Europe. The choice of parameterizations, and primarily the choice of the land surface model, strongly influences the representation of SASI as it affects the ability of climate models to simulate snow cover accurately. The degree of agreement between the datasets differs between the accumulation and ablation periods, with the latter one presenting the greatest challenge for the RCMs. Given the dominant role of land surface processes in the simulation of snow cover during the ablation period, the results suggest that, during this time period, the choice of the land surface model is more critical for the representation of SASI than the atmospheric model.</p>

    2022-06-22

    Land–atmosphere interactions in sub-polar and alpine climates in the CORDEX flagship pilot study Land Use and Climate Across Scales (LUCAS) models – Part 1: Evaluation of the snow-albedo effect

  • Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing

    <p>Global land and resource grabbing has become an increasingly prominent topic in academic circles, among development practitioners, human rights advocates, and in policy arenas. The Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing sustains this intellectual momentum by advancing methodological, theoretical and empirical insights. It presents and discusses resource grabbing research in a holistic manner by addressing how the rush for land and other natural resources, including water, forests and minerals, is intertwined with agriculture, mining, tourism, energy, biodiversity conservation, climate change, carbon markets, and conflict. The handbook is truly global and interdisciplinary, with case studies from the Global South and Global North, and chapter contributions from practitioners, activists and academics, with emerging and Indigenous authors featuring strongly across the chapters.</p>

    2022-06-12

    Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing

  • Mapping and characterizing social-ecological land systems of South America

    <p><span>Humans place strong pressure on land and have modified around 75% of Earth&rsquo;s terrestrial surface. In this context, ecoregions and biomes, merely defined on the basis of their biophysical features, are incomplete characterizations of the territory. Land system science requires classification schemes that incorporate both social and biophysical dimensions. In this study, we generated spatially explicit social-ecological land system (SELS) typologies for South America with a hybrid methodology that combined data-driven spatial analysis with a knowledge-based evaluation by an interdisciplinary group of regional specialists. Our approach embraced a holistic consideration of the social-ecological land systems, gathering a dataset of 26 variables spanning across 7 dimensions: physical, biological, land cover, economic, demographic, political, and cultural. We identified 13 SELS nested in 5 larger social-ecological regions (SER). Each SELS was discussed and described by specific groups of specialists. Although 4 environmental and 1 socioeconomic variable explained most of the distribution of the coarse SER classification, a diversity of 15 other variables were shown to be essential for defining several SELS, highlighting specific features that differentiate them. The SELS spatial classification presented is a systematic and operative characterization of South American social-ecological land systems. We propose its use can contribute as a reference framework for a wide range of applications such as analyzing observations within larger contexts, designing system-specific solutions for sustainable development, and structuring hypothesis testing and comparisons across space. Similar efforts could be done elsewhere in the world.</span></p>

    2022-06-01

    Mapping and characterizing social-ecological land systems of South America

  • Land–atmosphere interactions in sub-polar and alpine climates in the CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study Land Use and Climate Across Scales (LUCAS) models – Part 2: The role of changing vegetation

    <p><span>Land cover in sub-polar and alpine regions of northern and eastern Europe have already begun changing due to natural and anthropogenic changes such as afforestation. This will impact the regional climate and hydrology upon which societies in these regions are highly reliant. This study aims to identify the impacts of afforestation/reforestation (hereafter afforestation) on snow and the snow-albedo effect and highlight potential improvements for future model development. The study uses an ensemble of nine regional climate models for two different idealised experiments covering a 30-year period; one experiment replaces most land cover in Europe with forest, while the other experiment replaces all forested areas with grass. The ensemble consists of nine regional climate models composed of different combinations of five regional atmospheric models and six land surface models. Results show that afforestation reduces the snow-albedo sensitivity index and enhances snowmelt. While the direction of change is robustly modelled, there is still uncertainty in the magnitude of change. The greatest differences between models emerge in the snowmelt season. One regional climate model uses different land surface models which shows consistent changes between the three simulations during the accumulation period but differs in the snowmelt season. Together these results point to the need for further model development in representing both grass&ndash;snow and forest&ndash;snow interactions during the snowmelt season. Pathways to accomplishing this include (1)&nbsp;a more sophisticated representation of forest structure, (2)&nbsp;kilometre-scale simulations, and (3)&nbsp;more observational studies on vegetation&ndash;snow interactions in northern Europe.</span></p>

    2022-04-20

    Land–atmosphere interactions in sub-polar and alpine climates in the CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study Land Use and Climate Across Scales (LUCAS) models – Part 2: The role of changing vegetation

  • Using land‐use history and multiple baselines to determine bird responses to cocoa agroforestry

    <p><span>Agroforests can play an important role in biodiversity conservation in complex landscapes. A key factor distinguishing among agroforests is land-use history &ndash; whether agroforests are established inside forests or on historically forested but currently open lands. The disparity between land-use histories means the appropriate biodiversity baselines may differ, which should be accounted for when assessing the conservation value of agroforests. Specifically, comparisons between multiple baselines in forest and open land could enrich understanding of species&rsquo; responses by contextualizing them. We made such comparisons based on data from a recently published meta-analysis of the effects of cocoa&nbsp;</span><i>(Theobroma cacao)</i><span>&nbsp;agroforestry on bird diversity. We regrouped rustic, mixed shade cocoa, and low shade cocoa agroforests, based on land-use history, into forest-derived and open-land-derived agroforests and compared bird species diversity (species richness, abundance, and Shannon's index values) between forest and open land, which represented the 2 alternative baselines. Bird diversity was similar in forest-derived agroforests and forests (Hedges&rsquo;&nbsp;</span><i>g*</i><span>&nbsp;estimate [SE] = -0.3144 [0.3416],&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span>&nbsp;= 0.36). Open-land-derived agroforests were significantly less diverse than forests (</span><i>g*</i><span>&nbsp;= 1.4312 [0.6308],&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span>&nbsp;= 0.023) and comparable to open lands (</span><i>g*</i><span>&nbsp;= -0.1529 [0.5035],&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span>&nbsp;= 0.76). Our results highlight how land-use history determined the conservation value of cocoa agroforests. Forest-derived cocoa agroforests were comparable to the available &ndash; usually already degraded &ndash; forest baselines, but entail future degradation risks. In contrast, open-land-derived cocoa agroforestry may offer restoration opportunities. Our results showed that comparisons among multiple baselines may inform relative contributions of agroforestry systems to bird conservation on a landscape scale.</span></p>

    2022-04-18

    Using land‐use history and multiple baselines to determine bird responses to cocoa agroforestry

  • Impacts of a revised surface roughness parameterization in the Community Land Model 5.1

    <p>The roughness of the land surface (z0) is a key property, exerting significant influence on the amount of near-surface turbulent activity and consequently the turbulent exchange of energy, water, momentum, and chemical species between the land and the atmosphere. Variations in z0 are substantial across different types of land cover, ranging from typically less than 1&thinsp;mm over fresh snow or sand deserts up to more than 1&thinsp;m over urban areas or forests. In this study, we revise the parameterizations and parameter choices related to z0 in the Community Land Model 5.1 (CLM), the land component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). We propose a number modifications for z0 in CLM, guided by observational data. Most importantly, we find that the observations support an increase in z0 for all types of forests and a decrease in the momentum z0 for bare soil, snow, glaciers, and crops. We then assess the effect of those modifications in land-only and land&ndash;atmosphere coupled simulations. With the revised parameterizations, diurnal variations of the land surface temperature (LST) are dampened in forested regions and are amplified over warm deserts. These changes mitigate model biases compared to MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) remote sensing observations. The changes in LST are generally stronger during the day than at night. For example, the LST increases by 5.1&thinsp;K at 13:30 local solar time but only by 0.6&thinsp;K at 01:30 during boreal summer across the entire Sahara. The induced changes in the diurnal variability of near-surface air temperatures are generally of the opposite sign and of smaller magnitude. Near-surface winds accelerate in areas where the momentum z0 was lowered, such as the Sahara, the Middle East, and Antarctica, and decelerate in regions with forests. Overall, this study finds that the current representation of z0 in CLM is not in agreement with observational constraints for several types of land cover. The proposed model modifications are shown to considerably alter the simulated climate in terms of temperatures and wind speed at the land surface.</p>

    2022-03-21

    Impacts of a revised surface roughness parameterization in the Community Land Model 5.1

  • Agricultural management effects on mean and extreme temperature trends

    <p>Understanding and quantifying land management impacts on local climate is important for distinguishing between the effects of land management and large-scale climate forcings. This study for the first time explicitly considers the radiative forcing resulting from realistic land management and offers new insights into the local land surface response to land management. Regression-based trend analysis is applied to observations and present-day ensemble simulations with the Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 1.2.2 to assess the impact of irrigation and conservation agriculture (CA) on warming trends using an approach that is less sensitive to temperature extremes. At the regional scale, an irrigation- and CA-induced acceleration of the annual mean near-surface air temperature (T2m) warming trends and the annual maximum daytime temperature (TXx) warming trends were evident. Estimation of the impact of irrigation and CA on the spatial average of the warming trends indicated that irrigation and CA have a pulse cooling effect on T2m and TXx, after which the warming trends increase at a greater rate than the control simulations. This differed at the local (subgrid) scale under irrigation where surface temperature cooling and the dampening of warming trends were both evident. As the local surface warming trends, in contrast to regional trends, do not account for atmospheric (water vapour) feedbacks, their dampening confirms the importance of atmospheric feedbacks (water vapour forcing) in explaining the enhanced regional trends. At the land surface, the positive radiative forcing signal arising from enhanced atmospheric water vapour is too weak to offset the local cooling from the irrigation-induced increase in the evaporative fraction. Our results underline that agricultural management has complex and non-negligible impacts on the local climate and highlight the need to evaluate the representation of land management in global climate models using climate models of higher resolution.</p>

    2022-02-23

    Agricultural management effects on mean and extreme temperature trends

  • Do Electric Vehicles Mitigate Urban Heat? The Case of a Tropical City

    <p>On top of their well known positive impact on air quality and CO2 emissions, electric vehicles generate less exhaust heat compared to traditional vehicles thanks to their high engine efficiency. As such, electric vehicles have the potential to mitigate the excessive heat in urban areas&mdash;a problem which has been exacerbated due to urbanisation and climate change. Still, the heat mitigation potential of electric vehicles has not been fully understood. Here, we combine high-resolution traffic heat emission inventories with an urban climate model to simulate the impact of the fleet electrification to the near-surface air temperature in the tropical city of Singapore. We show that a full replacement of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles with electric vehicles reduces the near-surface air temperature by up to 0.6&deg;C. The heat mitigation potential is highest during the morning traffic peak and over areas with the largest traffic density. Interestingly, the reduction in exhaust heat emissions due to the fleet electrification during the evening traffic peak hardly leads to a reduction of near-surface air-temperatures, which is attributed to the different atmospheric conditions during morning and evening. This study presents a new quantification of the city-wide impact of electric vehicles on the air temperature in a tropical urban area. The results may support policy-makers toward designing holistic solutions to address the challenge of climate change adaptation and mitigation in cities.</p>

    2022-02-18

    Do Electric Vehicles Mitigate Urban Heat? The Case of a Tropical City

  • Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

    <p>Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits&mdash;"win&ndash;wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.</p>

    2022-02-15

    Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

  • Afforestation impact on soil temperature in regional climate model simulations over Europe

    <p>In the context of the first phase of the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment in the European domain (EURO-CORDEX) flagship plot study on Land Use and Climate Across Scales (LUCAS), we investigate the biophysical impact of afforestation on the seasonal cycle of soil temperature over the European continent with an ensemble of 10 regional climate models. For this purpose, each ensemble member performed two idealized land cover experiments in which Europe is covered either by forests or grasslands. The multi-model mean exhibits a reduction of the annual amplitude of soil temperature (AAST) due to afforestation over all European regions, although this is not a robust feature among the models. In the Mediterranean, the spread of simulated AAST response to afforestation is between &minus;4 and +2&thinsp;∘C at 1&thinsp;m below the ground, while in Scandinavia the inter-model spread ranges from &minus;7 to +1&thinsp;∘C. We show that the large range in the simulated AAST response is due to the representation of the summertime climate processes and is largely explained by inter-model differences in leaf area index (LAI), surface albedo, cloud fraction and soil moisture, when all combined into a multiple linear regression. The changes in these drivers essentially determine the ratio between the increased radiative energy at surface (due to lower albedo in forests) and the increased sum of turbulent heat fluxes (due to mixing-facilitating characteristics of forests), and consequently decide the changes in soil heating with afforestation in each model. Finally, we pair FLUXNET sites to compare the simulated results with observation-based evidence of the impact of forest on soil temperature. In line with models, observations indicate a summer ground cooling in forested areas compared to open lands. The vast majority of models agree with the sign of the observed reduction in AAST, although with a large variation in the magnitude of changes. Overall, we aspire to emphasize the biophysical effects of afforestation on soil temperature profile with this study, given that changes in the seasonal cycle of soil temperature potentially perturb crucial biochemical processes. Robust knowledge on biophysical impacts of afforestation on soil conditions and its feedbacks on local and regional climate is needed in support of effective land-based climate mitigation and adaption policies.</p>

    2022-01-25

    Afforestation impact on soil temperature in regional climate model simulations over Europe

  • Differential responses of amphibians and reptiles to land‐use change in the biodiversity hotspot of north‐eastern Madagascar

    <p>Large expanses of tropical rainforest have been converted into agricultural landscapes cultivated by smallholder farmers. This is also the case in north‐eastern Madagascar; a region that retains significant proportions of forest cover despite slash‐and‐burn shifting hill rice cultivation and vanilla agroforestry expansion. The region is also a global hotspot for herpetofauna diversity, but how amphibians and reptiles are affected by land‐use change remains largely unknown. Using a space‐for‐time study design, we compared species diversity and community composition across seven prevalent land uses: unburned (old‐growth forest, forest fragment, and forest‐derived vanilla agroforest) and burned (fallow‐derived vanilla agroforest, woody fallow, and herbaceous fallow) land‐use types, and rice paddy. We conducted six comprehensive, time‐standardized searches across at least 10 replicates per land‐use type and applied genetic barcoding to confirm species identification. We documented an exceptional diversity of herpetofauna (119 species; 91% endemic). Observed plot‐level amphibian species richness was significantly higher in old‐growth forest than in all other land‐use types. Plot‐level reptile species richness was significantly higher in unburned land‐use types compared with burned land‐use types. For both amphibians and reptiles, the less‐disturbed land‐use types showed more uneven communities and the species composition in old‐growth forest differed significantly from all other land‐use types. Amphibians had higher forest dependency (38% of species occurred exclusively in old‐growth forest) than reptiles (26%). Our analyses thus revealed that the two groups respond differently to land‐use change: we found less pronounced losses of reptile species richness especially in unburned agricultural habitats, suggesting that reptiles are less susceptible to land‐use change than amphibians, possibly due to their ability to cope with hotter and drier microclimates. In conclusion, our findings emphasize existing conservation opportunities &ndash; especially for reptiles &ndash; in extensive agricultural landscapes while highlighting the precarious situation of amphibians in disappearing old‐growth forests.</p>

    2021-12-13

    Differential responses of amphibians and reptiles to land‐use change in the biodiversity hotspot of north‐eastern Madagascar

  • Why do large-scale agricultural investments induce different socio-economic, food security, and environmental impacts? Evidence from Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique

    <p>Large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) transform land use systems worldwide. There is, however, limited understanding about how the common global drivers of land use change induce different forms of agricultural investment and produce different impacts on the ground. This article provides a cross-country comparative analysis of how differences in business models, land use changes, and governance systems explain differences in socio-economic, food security, and environmental impacts of LAIs in Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique. It brings together results on these aspects generated in the AFGROLAND project that collected data in a multi-method approach via household surveys, business model surveys, semi-structured household interviews, life-cycle assessments of farm production, analysis of remote-sensing data, key informant interviews, and document analysis. For the present project synthesis, we combined a collaborative expert workshop with a comparative analysis of 16 LAIs. The results show that the LAIs follow four distinctive impact patterns, ranging from widespread adverse impacts to moderate impacts. Results demonstrate how the following conditions influence how the global drivers of land use change translate into different LAIs and different impacts on the ground: labor intensity, prior land use, utilization of land, farm size, type of production, experience in local agriculture, land tenure security, accountability of state and local elites, the mobilization capacity of civil society, expansion of resource frontiers, agricultural intensification, and indirect land use change. The results indicate that commercial agriculture can be a component in sustainable development strategies under certain conditions, but that these strategies will fail without substantial, sustained increases in the economic viability and inclusiveness of smallholder agriculture, land tenure security, agro-ecological land management, and support for broader patterns of endogenous agrarian transformation.</p>

    2021-12-01

    Why do large-scale agricultural investments induce different socio-economic, food security, and environmental impacts? Evidence from Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique

  • Regional scale mapping of ecosystem services supply, demand, flow and mismatches in Southern Myanmar

    <p>Mapping ecosystem service (ES) supply, demand, and flow &ndash; and identifying supply/demand mismatches &ndash; has become a focus of ES research and has benefitted from recent advances in modelling techniques and their combination with Geographic Information Systems. But few studies have been done in data-scarce tropical forest frontiers and these were limited in terms of area, land uses, and number and types of ES. Aiming to evolve contemporary approaches, we used Bayesian networks to model and map nine ES across Myanmar&rsquo;s Tanintharyi Region for local stakeholders. Results show that while there is a high supply of multiple ES at regional level, demand for ES in urban and rapidly developing agricultural areas is not fully covered. Further, we identified a clear connection between land tenure and ES outcomes for rural communities. Agricultural concessions and protected areas with restricted access for the local population were related to lower ES flows and more supply/demand mismatches than community forests or untenured land. For future research on local ES outcomes in tropical forest frontiers, we recommend combined mismatch and flow analyses under consideration of tenurial rights.</p>

    2021-12-01

    Regional scale mapping of ecosystem services supply, demand, flow and mismatches in Southern Myanmar

  • The role of urban trees in reducing land surface temperatures in European cities

    <p>Urban trees influence temperatures in cities. However, their effectiveness at mitigating urban heat in different climatic contexts and in comparison to treeless urban green spaces has not yet been sufficiently explored. Here, we use high-resolution satellite land surface temperatures (LSTs) and land-cover data from 293 European cities to infer the potential of urban trees to reduce LSTs. We show that urban trees exhibit lower temperatures than urban fabric across most European cities in summer and during hot extremes. Compared to continuous urban fabric, LSTs observed for urban trees are on average 0-4&thinsp;K lower in Southern European regions and 8-12&thinsp;K lower in Central Europe. Treeless urban green spaces are overall less effective in reducing LSTs, and their cooling effect is approximately 2-4 times lower than the cooling induced by urban trees. By revealing continental-scale patterns in the effect of trees and treeless green spaces on urban LST our results highlight the importance of considering and further investigating the climate-dependent effectiveness of heat mitigation measures in cities.</p>

    2021-11-23

    The role of urban trees in reducing land surface temperatures in European cities

  • Prioritizing forestation based on biogeochemical and local biogeophysical impacts

    <p>Reforestation and afforestation is expected to achieve a quarter of all emission reduction pledged under the Paris Agreement. Trees store carbon in biomass and soil but also alter the surface energy balance, warming or cooling the local climate. Mitigation scenarios and policies often neglect these biogeophysical (BGP) effects. Here we combine observational BGP datasets with carbon uptake or emission data to assess the end-of-century mitigation potential of forestation. Forestation and conservation of tropical forests achieve the highest climate benefit at 732.12 tCO2e ha&ndash;1. Higher-latitude forests warm the local winter climate, affecting 73.7% of temperate forests. Almost a third (29.8%) of forests above 56&deg; N induce net winter warming if only their biomass is considered. Including soil carbon reduces the net warming area to 6.8% but comes with high uncertainty (2.9&ndash;42.0%). Our findings emphasize the necessity to conserve and re-establish tropical forests and consider BGP effects in policy scenarios. Forests take up carbon from the atmosphere but also change Earth&rsquo;s surface energy balance through biophysical effects. Accounting for these shows that tropical forests have the highest mitigation potential; the climate benefit of higher-latitude forests is offset by their warming effects in winter.</p>

    2021-09-27

    Prioritizing forestation based on biogeochemical and local biogeophysical impacts

  • The role of culture in land system science

    <p>Land system science (LSS) has substantially advanced understanding of land dynamics throughout the world. However, studies that explicitly address the causative role of culture in land systems have been fairly limited relative to those examining other structural dimensions (e.g. markets, policies, climate). In this paper, we aim to start a discussion on how to better include culture in LSS. Through four examples, we show how aspects of culture influence land systems in myriad ways. Building on existing causal land system models, we propose a conceptual framework for the role of culture in land use and summarize promising methodological innovations for exploring it further. We conclude with some thoughts on how the study of culture and its integration through reflexive, locally grounded approaches, while challenging, provides new opportunities for the development of LSS.</p>

    2021-09-27

    The role of culture in land system science

  • Modelling the spatial pattern of heatwaves in the city of Bern using a land use regression approach

    <p>Heatwaves have been the deadliest weather extreme events in Europe in the last decades. People living in cities are especially prone to such events due to the urban heat island (UHI) effect which increases the heat stress in urban surroundings especially during calm, steady, and radiation intensive synoptic situations. Since official measurement stations in cities are scarce, studies on spatial patterns of UHIs often rely on satellite data, hobby meteorologists' data, or on model outputs. Additionally, analyses of spatial UHI patterns using point-based measurements need adequate and cost-effective methods for spatial interpolation. In this study, air temperature data retrieved by 60 low cost measurement devices (LCD) are used to model the spatial pattern of the UHI with a land use regression (LUR) approach in Bern, Switzerland. For this purpose, 14 spatial variables with different buffer radii were calculated to evaluate their effect on the UHI and to interpolate the air temperature data. As a result, three models covering three different heatwaves at nighttime were developed. Given good model performance throughout the different scenarios, the here presented study demonstrates the successful interpolation of low cost temperature data by LUR modelling based on publicly accessible spatial information within a city.</p>

    2021-07-01

    Modelling the spatial pattern of heatwaves in the city of Bern using a land use regression approach

  • Ecosystem Service Provision by Secondary Forests in Shifting Cultivation Areas Remains Poorly Understood

    <p><span>It is often asserted that secondary forests (SF) provide inferior forest-based ecosystem services (ES), but there is limited research to generalize this claim. Here, we review comparisons between ES provision in SFs and other land uses in shifting cultivation landscapes. We searched the peer-reviewed literature and selected only studies that compare ES from SF with ES from other land uses. In total, 212 ES and 347 comparisons of different land use systems were recorded. Comparisons were mainly made for carbon storage, biodiversity, and soil variables. Very few provisioning ES were compared in the literature and no cultural services were recorded. SF were in most cases inferior to old-growth forest in terms of carbon storage and biodiversity, whereas soil quality comparisons varied. ES provision in SF was superior to agricultural systems, whereas comparisons with plantation crops varied. We conclude that the narrow focus on specific ES categories strongly limits understanding of SF in shifting cultivation areas and that it is more relevant to compare SFs with other agricultural systems rather than with old-growth forests.</span></p>

    2021-06-09

    Ecosystem Service Provision by Secondary Forests in Shifting Cultivation Areas Remains Poorly Understood

  • Pathways to human well-being in the context of land acquisitions in Lao PDR

    <p>Land acquisitions are transforming land-use systems globally, and their characteristics and impacts on human well-being have been extensively analysed through local case studies and regional or global inventories. However, national-level analysis that is crucial for national policy on sustainable agricultural investments and land use is still lacking. This paper conducts an archetype analysis of a unique dataset on land concessions in Lao PDR to provide a national-scale assessment of the impacts of land acquisitions on human well-being in 294 affected villages. The results show that land acquisitions influence human well-being through 18 distinct pathways. These pathways describe how some land acquisitions enhance or maintain well-being, while others elicit adverse impacts or trade-offs between well-being dimensions, particularly food security, income, and livelihood resilience. They further reveal five archetypical processes that mediate the effects of land acquisitions on well-being through: (i) shifting access to land and natural resources; (ii) commercialization of agriculture; (iii) availability of development opportunities; (iv) environmental impacts; and (v) employment opportunities within and outside land acquisitions. These processes affect well-being by shaping livelihood portfolios and dependence on natural resources. The majority of land acquisitions trigger trade-offs or adverse impacts on well-being. The small number of villages where well-being increased despite the presence of land acquisitions were mainly shaped by narrow and rigid preconditions. The archetypical processes and the explanatory factors suggest that it is imperative to protect smallholders&rsquo; land-use rights and to avoid large-scale deals, as their adverse impacts outweigh opportunities and are more severe than the impacts of small-scale acquisitions. Employment opportunities may provide additional cash income but should not be exclusively relied upon.</p>

    2021-05-01

    Pathways to human well-being in the context of land acquisitions in Lao PDR

  • Year-to-year ecosystem services supply in conservation contexts in north-eastern Madagascar: Trade-offs between global demands and local needs

    <p><span>Tropical mountain forest frontier landscapes are increasingly target of protected areas (PAs) implementation, in many cases to secure the supply of globally demanded ecosystem services (ES). However, whether PAs manage to achieve their objectives is not always clear, nor are the implications of PA establishment for the supply of ES relevant for local populations. To address these knowledge gaps, we assess the year-to-year supply of six stakeholder-relevant ES across ES categories in two forest frontier, mountainous landscapes in the periphery of PAs in north-eastern Madagascar. As ES most relevant to local populations, we assess food crops production, flood control and bequest value. As globally-demanded ES, we evaluate export cash crops production, global climate regulation and existence value. Our results suggest that PA implementation managed to stem on-going losses of global climate regulation and existence value, but at the expense of also driving decreases in food crops production and bequest value supply to local populations. While our findings are encouraging for global conservation objectives, they also highlight the stark costs local populations might incur under PA establishment, and thus the need to assure that local livelihoods and well-being, including cultural dimensions, are not undermined by conservation interventions.</span></p>

    2021-04-01

    Year-to-year ecosystem services supply in conservation contexts in north-eastern Madagascar: Trade-offs between global demands and local needs

  • Identifying agents of change for sustainable land governance

    <p><span>Sustainable land governance in a telecoupled world is currently a challenge. Distant actors, institutions, and interactions shape local land uses and are assumed to affect sustainable development in critical ways as they exert new and often additional claims on land and trigger adverse local impacts like displacement. Action towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is urgently needed, as are agents of change that will initiate&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/environmental-impact-assessment" title="Learn more about sustainability from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">sustainability</a><span>&nbsp;transformations. However, empirical studies on transformation pathways towards sustainable land governance remain scarce. Moreover, very few studies have addressed the identification of actors through whom such transformation might be achieved. To address this gap, we analysed the likelihood of actors becoming agents of change based on their aims, resources, and relational profiles in the land governance network. Our study focused on Madagascar, a country that manifests unsustainable land governance, with distant actors increasingly influencing local land use. We combined an analysis of agency with social network analysis to disentangle attributes and the transformative potential of different actors involved in land governance in northeastern Madagascar. Our results show that actors have different combinations of aims, resources, and relational profiles. Combined analysis of their agency and social networks enabled us to identify potential agents of change and yielded options for transformation actions through which they can become operational agents of change. Our research contributes to promoting pathways to sustainability transformations where actors with various agency levels and social network assets are empowered to establish sustainable land governance. The combination of agency analysis and social network analysis is an innovative method that helps to advance sustainability science.</span></p>

    2021-01-01

    Identifying agents of change for sustainable land governance

  • Patterns of land system change in a Southeast Asian biodiversity hotspot

    <p><span>Growing demand for agricultural commodities like rubber or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/elaeis" title="Learn more about oil palm from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">oil palm</a>&nbsp;is causing rapid change in Southeast Asia's biodiversity-rich forested landscapes. This change is particularly pronounced in Myanmar, whose economy is developing at great speed after the end of decades-long economic and political isolation and armed conflicts. Interventions are needed to ensure that development is sustainable. Designing successful interventions requires spatially explicit knowledge of recent landscape changes. To provide such knowledge, we applied a landscape mosaic approach and analysed land system change in Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar between 2002 and 2016. Our findings show that nearly half of the study region experienced degradation of the vegetation cover, intensification of agricultural use, or a combination of both. Although intact forest was still the prevailing vegetation cover of land systems in Tanintharyi Region in 2016, it had suffered from degradation in wide parts of the region. Land systems without or with only extensive agricultural use in 2002 had become dominated by smallholders' shifting cultivation systems and permanent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/betel-nut" title="Learn more about betel nut from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">betel nut</a>&nbsp;gardens and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/paddies" title="Learn more about paddy from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">paddy</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/paddy-field" title="Learn more about rice fields from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">rice fields</a>&nbsp;by 2016. Elsewhere, smallholder dominated land systems were intensified through the expansion of oil palm and rubber plantations, pointing to potential displacement effects. The land system maps offer a sound basis for planning interventions to slow the degradation of biodiversity-rich forests and support smallholder farmers in coping with the fast-paced expansion of commercial cash crop plantations and its social and environmental impacts.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/environmental-impact-assessment" title="Learn more about Sustainable development from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">Sustainable development</a>&nbsp;in this global biodiversity hotspot requires careful&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/land-use-planning" title="Learn more about land use planning from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link">land use planning</a><span>&nbsp;to support nature and people, along with continued efforts for peace-building.</span></p>

    2021-01-01

    Patterns of land system change in a Southeast Asian biodiversity hotspot

  • Establishing a science-policy-society interface for biodiversity conservation and human well-being in the Amazon: the case of Madre de Dios, Peru

    <p>El objetivo de esta investigaci&oacute;n transdisciplinaria fue establecer las bases para una interfaz ciencia-gesti&oacute;n-sociedad para la conservaci&oacute;n ambiental y el desarrollo sostenible en Madre de Dios, Per&uacute; mediante: (1) la identificaci&oacute;n y la caracterizaci&oacute;n de los actores de la conservaci&oacute;n de la biodiversidad y el bienestar humano; (2) el an&aacute;lisis de los puntos de vista de los actores sobre las principales tendencias del desarrollo en la regi&oacute;n; y (3) un proceso de involucramiento de los actores desde la academia, el gobierno y la sociedad civil. Los m&eacute;todos usados incluyeron visitas de campo, entrevistas a expertos, un mapeo detallado de actores, una encuesta a actores y un taller participativo multiactor. El mapeo de partes interesadas identific&oacute; a 16 categor&iacute;as de actores clave dentro de los usuarios directos de los recursos de la tierra, los usuarios indirectos de los recursos de la tierra, el sector p&uacute;blico, la sociedad civil y las organizaciones de investigaci&oacute;n. Seg&uacute;n los actores encuestados, la debilidad de las instituciones gubernamentales y la corrupci&oacute;n son unas de las causas subyacentes a los problemas ambientales y sociales en Madre de Dios, y en particular de la miner&iacute;a aur&iacute;fera y otras actividades extractivas ilegales e informales. El estudio resalt&oacute; tambi&eacute;n el potencial innovador que existe en la regi&oacute;n, que ha sido el hogar de varias iniciativas exitosas para la naturaleza y la gente en las &uacute;ltimas d&eacute;cadas.</p>

    2020-04-24

    Establishing a science-policy-society interface for biodiversity conservation and human well-being in the Amazon: the case of Madre de Dios, Peru

  • Meteorological Observations in Bern and Vicinity, 1777–1834

    <p>This paper describes several meteorological records from Bern and vicinity, together covering the period 1777-1834. They comprise measurements in Bern by Karl Lombach, 1777-1789, Samuel Studer, 1779-1789 and 1797-1827, and Emanuel Fueter, 1803-1834. Studer was pastor and later professor of theology in Bern, but during the period 1789-1797 was appointed to B&uuml;ren an der Aare, where he also continued his measurements before returning back to Bern and con-tinuing measurements. As no other measurements were performed in Bern during these years, the B&uuml;ren measurements could help to fill the gap, together with the series by Johann Jakob Spr&uuml;ngli in Sutz, 1785-1802. In this paper, we describe the sources and metadata pertaining to these series. Then we analyse the data, their processing and quality control and we compare the series during their overlapping periods. These series, together with others already digitised and published in this volume, will contribute to a 250-yr meteorological series for Bern.</p>

    2020-01-07

    Meteorological Observations in Bern and Vicinity, 1777–1834

  • The indirect approach of semi-focused groups: Expanding focus group research through role-playing

    <p>&nbsp;The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative way of using focus groups in research &ndash; a role‐play‐enhanced focus group method &ndash; in which participants are presented with the challenge of dealing with a specific task while playing a familiar but nevertheless fictive role. Design/methodology/approach &ndash; The research is performed through an experimental approach in which a focus group of small business owner‐managers are assembled and presented with a prepared case exercise. The design is a role‐play‐like setting in which the participants are to act as the board of a company. Findings &ndash; Carefully designed, well‐prepared role‐play‐like activities can add substantially to focus‐groups. Originality/value &ndash; Adding an experimental dimension to focus groups offers the possibility of addressing topics indirectly and thus increases their usefulness.</p>

    2009-05-08

    The indirect approach of semi-focused groups: Expanding focus group research through role-playing