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391. Guide to Chinese Climate Policy

Author:
David B. Sandalow
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
In 2017, China was the world’s leading emitter of heat-trapping gases by a wide margin. Its policies for limiting emissions will have a significant impact on the global climate for decades to come. From a historical perspective, China’s status as the world’s leading emitter is relatively recent. During most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese emissions were modest. Then, in the early part of this century, as the Chinese economy boomed, Chinese emissions began to skyrocket, overtaking those from the United States around 2006. China’s cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution are less than half those from the United States or Europe. (Carbon dioxide, the leading heat-trapping gas, stays in the atmosphere for many years once emitted.)
Topic:
Climate Change and Energy Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

392. Economic Growth and Carbon Emissions: The Road to ‘Hothouse Earth’ is Paved with Good Intentions

Author:
Miriam Schröder and Servaas Storm
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
All IPCC (2018) pathways to restrict future global warming to 1.5°C (and well below an already dangerous 2°C) involve radical cuts in global carbon emissions. Such decarbonization, while being technically feasible, may impose a ‘limit’ or ‘planetary boundary’ to growth, depending on whether or not human society can decouple economic growth from carbon emissions. Decoupling is regarded viable in global and national policy discourses on the Paris Agreement—and claimed to be already happening in real time: witness the recent declines in territorial CO2 emissions in a group of more than 20 economies. However, some scholars argue that radical de-carbonization will not be possible while increasing the size of the economy. This paper contributes to this debate as well as to the larger literature on climate change and sustainability. First, we develop a prognosis of climate-constrained global growth for 2014-2050 using the Kaya sum rule. Second, we use the Carbon-Kuznets-Curve (CKC) framework to empirically assess the effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions using measures of both territorial (production-based) emissions and consumption-based (tradeadjusted) emissions. We run panel data regressions using OECD ICIO CO2 emissions data for 61 countries during 1995-2011; to check the robustness of our findings we construct and use panel samples sourced from alternative databases (Eora; Exio; and WIOD). Even if we find evidence suggesting a decoupling of production-based CO2 emissions and growth, consumption-based CO2 emissions are monotonically increasing with per capita GDP (within our sample). We draw out the implications of these findings for climate policy and binding emission reduction obligations.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economic Growth, Carbon Emissions, and Paris Agreement
Political Geography:
Global Focus

393. Why talk about carbon removal?

Author:
David R. Morrow, Holly J. Buck, Wil C. G. Burns, Simon Nicholson, and Carolyn Turkaly
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy, American University
Abstract:
Talk of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is spilling out of scientific circles and into the realm of climate politics and policy. Civil society has a vital role to play in ensuring that this conversation is responsive to social needs and develops in constructive and appropriate ways. This report provides a starting point to help environmental and social justice non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engage in the growing conversation about carbon removal. Section 1 of the report argues that the world needs to grapple seriously with large-scale carbon removal and long-term storage, exploring both the rationale for considering carbon removal and the associated risks and downsides. Section 2 provides a brief introduction to the range of options for large-scale carbon removal. Section 3 surveys the existing conversation in different domains, from academia to philanthropy to civil society. Section 4 considers the relationship between carbon removal and mitigation. Section 5 sketches a research agenda for assessing various approaches to carbon removal.
Topic:
Civil Society, Climate Change, Science and Technology, NGOs, and Carbon Emissions
Political Geography:
Global Focus

394. Mobilizing Knowledge To Enhance Adaptive Capacity

Author:
Casey Williams, Danielle Falzon, and Saleemul Huq
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)
Abstract:
For over a decade, researchers and policymakers have considered enhancing “adaptive capacity” to be a linchpin of successful adaptation to climate change. In 2015, at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris, the international community formally asserted the importance of increasing the ability of individuals and groups to adapt to long-term changes in the climate, and committed to doing so through the Paris Agreement. Article 7 of the Paris Agreement, the “Global Goal on Adaptation” (GGA), commits signatory countries to “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in the context of the temperature goal.”1 There are many challenges to measuring adaptation, and there is currently no internationally accepted tool for doing so. Craft and Fisher (2018)2 identify four main challenges to measurement for the GGA: designing a system that can aggregate results; managing the dual mandate of reviewing collective progress and informing the enhancement of national level actions; methodological challenges in adaptation; and political challenges around measurement. Drawing from their insights, we construct a multi-scalar, contextually flexible, multi-method based framework for measuring one central component of adaptation: adaptive capacity.
Topic:
Climate Change, Paris Agreement, and Adaptation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

395. 1.5°C Too Soon: More Must Be Done

Author:
Margareth Sembiring
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The latest IPCC special report released in early October 2018 estimated that global temperature increase may reach 1.5°C anytime between 2030 and 2050. This is much sooner than the end of the century timeframe set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Will this report lead to more ambitious and aggressive emission mitigation efforts?
Topic:
Climate Change, Treaties and Agreements, Carbon Emissions, and Paris Agreement
Political Geography:
Global Focus

396. COP24 and the Silesia Declaration: Impact on Palm Oil

Author:
Margareth Sembiring
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The negotiations in the recently concluded COP24 in Katowice produced a critical rulebook for the 2015 Paris Agreement. Equally important is the Silesia Declaration signed during the conference. It exhorted relevant stakeholders to ensure a just transition for segments of populations affected by climate agenda.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Environment, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Global Focus

397. A Non-Secular Anthropocene: Spirits, Specters and Other Nonhumans in a Time of Environmental Change

Author:
Nils Ole Bubandt, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen, Jessica Madison, and Victor Cova
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene
Abstract:
Psychologist Sigmund Freud described phenomena that are familiar and foreign at the same time as uncanny. Unheimlich – the German word for uncanny – literally means “unhomely” and captures the paradoxical mix of the homely and the strange that goes into the feeling of the uncanny (Freud 2013 [1919]). Ghosts, gods, spirits, and specters are classical icons of the uncanny. These entities are uncanny because they disturb the proper and familiar separation of things: the separation between the living and the dead, between the imaginary and the real, between the virtual and the actual. Ghosts, gods, specters and spirits are invisible apparitions, a paradoxical NO THING, a “between that is tainted with strangeness” (Cixous 1976: 543). But in 1970, the Japanese robotics engineer, Masahiro Mori, suggested that robots, too, become uncanny when they increasingly approach but still fail to achieve full human likeness. A prosthetic hand that has the fleshy look but not the proper fleshy feel of a human hand is, Mori suggested, as uncanny as a ghost. Mori called the experiential space of such phenomena “the uncanny valley”: the space where the function of increased likeness intersects with the function of decreased familiarity (Mori 2012 [1970]: 98-100). In Mori’s chart of the uncanny valley, corpses and zombies share quarters with only one human invention: the prosthetic hand. But since 1970, it is fair to say, Mori’s uncanny valley has become radically crowded with new beings far beyond robotics. Advances in genetic technology and bioengineering have added cloned animals, gene-modified crops and a host of other familiar-yet-strange denizens to the uncanny valleys of our time. The overpopulation of these uncanny valleys has also arguably grown exponentially after anthropogenic environmental disturbance has begun denaturalizing nature itself: jelly fish blooms, freak storms, and factory chicken are examples of this kind of environmental uncanniness. What are we, for instance, to make of the fact that the total biomass of the 20 billion chickens in the world’s industrial mega-farms is three times that of all wild birds combined (Bar-On et al. 2018)? A chicken is a very familiar bird for sure. But when the chicken is well on the way to becoming the signature, and one day soon perhaps the only, bird in the world, its very familiarity takes on a distinctly uncanny hue. Ecological uncanniness, one might call this.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Infrastructure, and Nonhuman
Political Geography:
Mongolia, Peru, Ecuador, Florida, Amazon Basin, Global Focus, and United States of America

398. Building Resilience: A Meta-Analysis of Oxfam’s Resilience Effectiveness Reviews

Author:
Rob Fuller and Jonathan Lain
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Oxfam’s Effectiveness Reviews evaluate the impact of the organization’s projects on the lives of those they are intended to help. This research paper uses statistical meta-analysis to summarise the results of all 16 Effectiveness Reviews carried out under the theme of resilience between 2011 and 2015. The paper finds that projects evaluated had a significant positive impact overall, as measured by an index of contextually-appropriate indicators of resilience. However, there are important differences in impact between different regions of the world. The meta-analysis also reveals a difference in the level of resilience by the gender of the head of household, and provides some insights into the resilience measurement approach.
Topic:
Climate Change, Disaster Relief, Food Security, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Global Focus

399. Uprooted by Climate Change: Responding to the Growing Risk of Displacement

Author:
Simon Bradshaw and Julie-Anne Richards
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Climate change is already forcing people from their land and homes, and putting many more at risk of displacement in the future. Supercharged storms, more intense droughts, rising seas and other impacts of climate change all magnify existing vulnerabilities and the likelihood of displacement – disproportionately affecting low-income countries, women, children and Indigenous peoples. This paper describes the effects on communities and how responding to these growing realities demands far stronger action towards ending global climate pollution, supporting resilient communities, ensuring rights for people on the move and developing long-term strategies to ensure that those who are forced to move in the future are able to do so safely and with dignity.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Migration, Displacement, and Paris Agreement
Political Geography:
Global Focus

400. Resilience in Nepal: Impact evaluation of the Joint Programme on Disaster Risk Management and Humanitarian Preparedness

Author:
Jonathan Lain
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This evaluation is presented as part of the Effectiveness Review Series 2015/16, selected for review under the resilience thematic area. This report documents the findings of a quasi-experimental impact evaluation carried out in January 2016 that sought to assess the impact of the activities of the ‘Joint Programme on Disaster Risk Management and Humanitarian Preparedness’. The project under review was implemented between April 2011 and March 2016 in four districts in the Terai region of southern Nepal – Dhanusha, Rautahat, Salarhi, and Saptari. The project was carried out by Oxfam in partnership with several organisations, including the Koshi Victims Society (KVS), the Social Development Research Centre (SDRC), Bagmati Welfare Society Nepal (BWSN), Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), and Rural Development Centre (RDC). The project had three broad objectives, which were developed during its planning phase: (1) to strengthen and institutionalise Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR), (2) to enhance the capacity of local institutions to prepare for and respond to humanitarian emergencies, (3) to create an enabling environment for people to demand their ‘rights in crisis’.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Infrastructure, and Disaster Management
Political Geography:
Global Focus