REDD+ and community-controlled forests in low-income countries: any hope for a linkage?

Deforestation and forest degradation are estimated to account for between 12% and 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions and in the 1990s (largely in the developing world) released about 5.8 Gt per year, which was bigger than all forms of transport combined. The idea behind REDD + is that payments for sequestering carbon can tip the economic balance away from loss of forests and in the process yield climate benefits. Recent analysis has suggested that developing country carbon sequestration can effectively compete with other climate investments as part of a cost effective climate policy. This paper focuses on opportunities and complications associated with bringing community-controlled forests into REDD +. About 25% of developing country forests are community controlled and therefore it is difficult to envision a successful REDD + without coming to terms with community controlled forests. It is widely agreed that REDD + offers opportunities to bring value to developing country forests, but there are also concerns driven by worries related to insecure and poorly defined community forest tenure, informed by often long histories of government unwillingness to meaningfully devolve to communities. Further, communities are complicated systems and it is therefore also of concern that REDD + could destabilize existing well-functioning community forestry systems.

Stakeholder perceptions of event attribution in the loss and damage debate

In 2013 the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change impacts was established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For scientists, L&D raises ques- tions around the extent that such impacts can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, which may generate complex results and be controversial in the policy arena. This is particularly true in the case of probabilistic event attribution (PEA) science, a new and rapidly evolving field that assesses whether changes in the probabilities of extreme events are attributable to GHG emissions. If the potential applications of PEA are to be considered responsibly, dialogue between scientists and policy makers is fundamental. Two key questions are considered here through a literature review and key stakeholder interviews with representatives from the science and policy sectors underpinning L&D. These provided the opportunity for in-depth insights into stakeholders’ views on firstly, how much is known and understood about PEA by those associated with the L&D debate? Secondly, how might PEA inform L&D and wider climate policy? Results show debate within the climate science community, and limited understanding among other stakeholders, around the sense in which extreme events can be attributed to climate change. However, stake- holders do identify and discuss potential uses for PEA in the WIM and wider policy, but it remains difficult to explore precise applications given the ambiguity surrounding L&D. This implies a need for stakeholders to develop greater understandings of alternative conceptions of L&D and the role of science, and also identify how PEA can best be used to support policy, and address associated challenges.

The role of agronomic research in climate change and food security policy

Societal concern is growing about the consequences of climate change for food systems and, in a number of regions, for food security. There is also concern that meeting the rising demand for food is leading to environmental degradation thereby exacerbating factors in part responsible for climate change, and further undermining the food systems upon which food security is based. A major emphasis of climate change/food security research over recent years has addressed the agronomic aspects of climate change, and particularly crop yield. This has provided an excellent foundation for assessments of how climate change may affect crop productivity, but the connectivity between these results and the broader issues of food security at large are relatively poorly explored; too often discussions of food security policy appear to be based on a relatively narrow agronomic perspective. To overcome the limitation of current agronomic research outputs there are several scientific challenges where further agronomic effort is necessary, and where agronomic research results can effectively contribute to the broader issues underlying food security. First is the need to better understand how climate change will affect cropping systems including both direct effects on the crops themselves and indirect effects as a result of changed pest and weed dynamics and altered soil and water conditions. Second is the need to assess technical and policy options for either reducing the deleterious impacts or enhancing the benefits of climate change on cropping systems while minimising further environmental degradation. Third is the need to understand how best to address the information needs of policy makers and report and communicate agronomic research results in a manner that will assist the development of food systems adapted to climate change. There are, however, two important considerations regarding these agronomic research contributions to the food security/climate change debate. The first concerns scale. Agronomic research has traditionally been conducted at plot scale over a growing season or perhaps a few years, but many of the issues related to food security operate at larger spatial and temporal scales. Over the last decade, agronomists have begun to establish trials at landscape scale, but there are a number of methodological challenges to be overcome at such scales. The second concerns the position of crop production (which is a primary focus of agronomic research) in the broader context of food security. Production is clearly important, but food distribution and exchange also determine food availability while access to food and food utilisation are other important components of food security. Therefore, while agronomic research alone cannot address all food security/climate change issues (and hence the balance of investment in research and development for crop production vis à vis other aspects of food security needs to be assessed), it will nevertheless continue to have an important role to play: it both improves understanding of the impacts of climate change on crop production and helps to develop adaptation options; and also – and crucially – it improves understanding of the consequences of different adaptation options on further climate forcing. This role can further be strengthened if agronomists work alongside other scientists to develop adaptation options that are not only effective in terms of crop production, but are also environmentally and economically robust, at landscape and regional scales. Furthermore, such integrated approaches to adaptation research are much more likely to address the information need of policy makers. The potential for stronger linkages between the results of agronomic research in the context of climate change and the policy environment will thus be enhanced.

Climate change policy and business climate strategies: EU cement companies' response to climate change and barriers against action

The paper provides a descriptive analysis of the carbon management activities of the cement industry in Europe based on a study involving the four largest producers of cement in the world. Based on this analysis, the paper explores the relationship between managerial perception and strategy with particular focus on the impact of government regulation and competitive dynamics. The research is based on extensive documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with senior managers from the four companies who have been responsible for and/or involved in the development of climate change strategies. We find that whilst the cement industry has embraced climate change and the need for action, their remains much scope for action in their carbon management activities with current effort concentration on hedging practices and win-win efficiency programs. Managers perceive that inadequate and unfavourable regulatory structure is the key barrier against more action to achieve emission reduction within the industry. EU Cement companies are also shifting their CO2 emissions to less developed countries of the South.

Introduction to politics of climate change: discourses of policy and practice in developing countries

This Themed Section aims to increase understanding of how the idea of climate change, and the policies and actions that spring from it, travel beyond their origins in natural sciences to meet different political arenas in the developing world. It takes a discursive approach whereby climate change is not just a set of physical processes but also a series of messages, narratives and policy prescriptions. The articles are mostly case study-based and focus on sub-Saharan Africa and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). They are organised around three interlinked themes. The first theme concerns the processes of rapid technicalisation and professionalisation of the climate change ‘industry’, which have sustantially narrowed the boundaries of what can be viewed as a legitimate social response to the problem of global warming. The second theme deals with the ideological effects of the climate change industry, which is ‘depoliticisation’, in this case the deflection of attention away from underlying political conditions of vulnerability and exploitation towards the nature of the physical hazard itself. The third theme concerns the institutional effects of an insufficiently socialised idea of climate change, which is the maintenance of existing relations of power or their reconfiguration in favour of the already powerful. Overall, the articles suggest that greater scrutiny of the discursive and political dimensions of mitigation and adaptation activities is required. In particular, greater attention should be directed towards the policy consequences that governments and donors construct as a result of their framing and rendition of climate change issues.

Participatory scenarios as a tool to link science and policy on food security under climate change in East Africa

How effective are multi-stakeholder scenarios building processes to bring diverse actors together and create a policy-making tool to support sustainable development and promote food security in the developing world under climate change? The effectiveness of a participatory scenario development process highlights the importance of ‘boundary work’ that links actors and organizations involved in generating knowledge on the one hand, and practitioners and policymakers who take actions based on that knowledge on the other. This study reports on the application of criteria for effective boundary work to a multi-stakeholder scenarios process in East Africa that brought together a range of regional agriculture and food systems actors. This analysis has enabled us to evaluate the extent to which these scenarios were seen by the different actors as credible, legitimate and salient, and thus more likely to be useful. The analysis has shown gaps and opportunities for improvement on these criteria, such as the quantification of scenarios, attention to translating and communicating the results through various channels and new approaches to enable a more inclusive and diverse group of participants. We conclude that applying boundary work criteria to multi-stakeholder scenarios processes can do much to increase the likelihood of developing sustainable development and food security policies that are more appropriate.

The drivers of corporate climate change strategies and public policy: a new resource-based view perspective

Effective public policy to mitigate climate change footprints should build on data-driven analysis of firm-level strategies. This article’s conceptual approach augments the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and identifies investments in four firm-level resource domains (Governance, Information management, Systems, and Technology [GISTe]) to develop capabilities in climate change impact mitigation. The authors denote the resulting framework as the GISTe model, which frames their analysis and public policy recommendations. This research uses the 2008 Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) database, with high-quality information on firm-level climate change strategies for 552 companies from North America and Europe. In contrast to the widely accepted myth that European firms are performing better than North American ones, the authors find a different result. Many firms, whether European or North American, do not just “talk” about climate change impact mitigation, but actually do “walk the talk.” European firms appear to be better than their North American counterparts in “walk I,” denoting attention to governance, information management, and systems. But when it comes down to “walk II,” meaning actual Technology-related investments, North American firms’ performance is equal or superior to that of the European companies. The authors formulate public policy recommendations to accelerate firm-level, sector-level, and cluster-level implementation of climate change strategies.

A review of the potential impacts of climate change on surface water quality

It is now accepted that some human-induced climate change is unavoidable. Potential impacts on water supply have received much attention, but relatively little is known about the concomitant changes in water quality. Projected changes in air temperature and rainfall could affect river flows and, hence, the mobility and dilution of contaminants. Increased water temperatures will affect chemical reaction kinetics and, combined with deteriorations in quality, freshwater ecological status. With increased flows there will be changes in stream power and, hence, sediment loads with the potential to alter the morphology of rivers and the transfer of sediments to lakes, thereby impacting freshwater habitats in both lake and stream systems. This paper reviews such impacts through the lens of UK surface water quality. Widely accepted climate change scenarios suggest more frequent droughts in summer, as well as flash-flooding, leading to uncontrolled discharges from urban areas to receiving water courses and estuaries. Invasion by alien species is highly likely, as is migration of species within the UK adapting to changing temperatures and flow regimes. Lower flows, reduced velocities and, hence, higher water residence times in rivers and lakes will enhance the potential for toxic algal blooms and reduce dissolved oxygen levels. Upland streams could experience increased dissolved organic carbon and colour levels, requiring action at water treatment plants to prevent toxic by-products entering public water supplies. Storms that terminate drought periods will flush nutrients from urban and rural areas or generate acid pulses in acidified upland catchments. Policy responses to climate change, such as the growth of bio-fuels or emission controls, will further impact freshwater quality.