| 1. |
- Bastos Lima, Mairon G., 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Leakage and boosting effects in environmental governance: a framework for analysis
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In an increasingly interconnected world, leakage-broadly understood as unintended displacement of impacts caused by an environmental policy intervention-has become a major governance concern. Yet, leakage remains both loosely conceptualized and poorly understood as a phenomenon in policy making. To fill this gap and broaden the leakage research agenda, we conduct a state-of-the-art review of scientific assessments on leakage (particularly on land use) and combine it with conceptual and analytical frameworks from the environmental governance literature. We then propose a rigorous definition of leakage, discuss frequently overlooked political dimensions, and develop a typology of leakage pathways. Our analysis of leakage through a governance lens yields five core insights: (1) Leakage is not simply a mechanistic phenomenon, but a complex governance issue involving questions of institutional fit, interactions, and political agency. (2) Although the land use literature traditionally focuses on leakage through markets or activity displacement, a governance lens shows that it also occurs through information, motivation, or institutional channels. (3) As policy-makers may act strategically, the unintentionally of leakage should not be assumed but rather become an object of research. (4) A phenomenon not initially regarded as leakage can come to be framed as such through the action of 'problem brokers' and changes in policy fields. (5) Policy-makers and researchers should broaden their focus from only avoiding leakage to seeking positive spillovers and institutional synergies. These insights are illustrated with examples from two cases relating to land use policy in Brazil and Southeast Asia.
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| 2. |
- Ottelin, Juudit, et al.
(författare)
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Household carbon footprint patterns by the degree of urbanisation in Europe
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urbanisation increases household carbon footprints in developing economies. However, the results from developed countries have varied, particularly in Europe. This study provides a coherent comparison of the impact of the degree of urbanisation on income, expenditure and carbon footprints in Europe. On average, carbon footprints are 7% lower in cities than in rural areas when income and household characteristics are controlled. However, this is compensated by the 6% higher average income in cities. The patterns are not uniform in all countries. In Eastern Europe, the pattern is similar to other developing regions. In some Western European countries, both the income level and the carbon footprints are lower in urban areas than in rural areas. In the rest of Europe, the differences in income level between rural and urban areas are small, but they still largely compensate for the efficiency benefits of urban areas. We call for more systemic emissions accounting and climate strategies.
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| 3. |
- Johansson, Emma, et al.
(författare)
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Foreign demand for agricultural commodities drives virtual carbon exports from Cambodia
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 15:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rapid deforestation is a major sustainability challenge, partly as the loss of carbon sinks exacerbates global climate change. In Cambodia, more than 13% of the total land area has been contracted out to foreign and domestic agribusinesses in the form of economic land concessions, causing rapid large-scale land use change and deforestation. Additionally, the distant drivers of local and global environmental change often remain invisible. Here, we identify hotspots of carbon loss between 1987-2017 using the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS and by comparing past and present land use and land cover. We also link global consumption and production patterns to their environmental effects in Cambodia by mapping the countries to which land-use embedded carbon are exported. We find that natural forests have decreased from 54%-21% between 1987 and 2017, mainly for the expansion of farmland and orchards, translating into 300 million tons of carbon lost, with loss rates over twice as high within economic land concessions. China is the largest importer of embedded carbon, mainly for rubber and sugarcane from Chinese agribusinesses. Cambodian investors have also negatively affected carbon pools through export-oriented products like rubber. The combined understanding of environmental change and trade flows makes it possible to identify distant drivers of deforestation, which is important for crafting more environmentally and socially responsible policies on national and transnational scales.
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| 4. |
- Stevens, Bo Maxwell, et al.
(författare)
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Analysis of biased language in peer-reviewed scientific literature on genetically modified crops
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 16:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social, political, and economic forces may inadvertently influence the stance of scientific literature. Scientists strive for neutral language, but this may be challenging for controversial topics like genetically modified (GM) crops. We classified peer-reviewed journal articles and found that 40% had a positive or negative stance towards GM crops. Proportion of positive and negative stance varied with publication date, authors' country of origin, funding source, and type of genetic modification. Articles with a negative stance were more common at the beginning of the millennium. Authors from China had the highest positive:negative ratio (8:1), followed by authors from the USA (12:5) and the EU (5:7). Positive stance articles were six times more likely to be funded by private sources compared to those with a neutral or negative stance. Articles about glyphosate were more likely to be negative compared to articles about Bacillus thuringiensis. Linguistic features of articles with positive and negative stances were used to train a random forest classifier that predicts stance significantly better than random chance. This suggests the possibility of an automated tool to screen manuscripts for unintended biased language prior to publication.
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| 5. |
- Vinichenko, Vadim, et al.
(författare)
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Phasing out coal for 2 °C target requires worldwide replication of most ambitious national plans despite security and fairness concerns
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ending the use of unabated coal power is a key climate change mitigation measure. However, we do not know how fast it is feasible to phase-out coal on the global scale. Historical experience of individual countries indicates feasible coal phase-out rates, but can these be upscaled to the global level and accelerated by deliberate action? To answer this question, we analyse 72 national coal power phase-out pledges and show that these pledges have diffused to more challenging socio-economic contexts and now cover 17% of the global coal power fleet, but their impact on emissions (up to 4.8 Gt CO2 avoided by 2050) remains small compared to what is needed for achieving Paris climate targets. We also show that the ambition of pledges is similar across countries and broadly in line with historical precedents of coal power decline. While some pledges strengthen over time, up to 10% have been weakened by the energy crisis caused by the Russo-Ukrainian war. We construct scenarios of coal power decline based on empirically-grounded assumptions about future diffusion and ambition of coal phase-out policies. We show that under these assumptions unabated coal power generation in 2022-2050 would be between the median generation in 2 °C-consistent IPCC AR6 pathways and the third quartile in 2.5 °C-consistent pathways. More ambitious coal phase-out scenarios require much stronger effort in Asia than in OECD countries, which raises fairness and equity concerns. The majority of the 1.5 °C- and 2 °C-consistent IPCC pathways envision even more unequal distribution of effort and faster coal power decline in India and China than has ever been historically observed in individual countries or pledged by climate leaders.
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| 6. |
- Pendrill, Florence, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Deforestation displaced: trade in forest-risk commodities and the prospects for a global forest transition
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While many developed countries are increasing their forest cover, deforestation is still rife in the tropics and subtropics. With international trade in forest-risk commodities on the rise, it is becoming increasingly important to consider between-country trade linkages in assessing the drivers of-and possible connections between-forest loss and gain across countries. Previous studies have shown that countries that have undergone a forest transition (and are now increasing their forest cover) tend to displace land use outside their borders. However, lack of comprehensive data on deforestation drivers imply that it has not been possible to ascertain whether this has accelerated forest loss in sourcing countries. To remedy this, we present a land-balance model that quantifies deforestation embodied in production of agricultural and forestry commodities at country level across the tropics and subtropics, subsequently tracing embodied deforestation to countries of apparent consumption using a physical, country-to-country trade model. We find that in the period 2005-2013,62% (5.5 Mha yr(-1)) of forest loss could be attributed to expanding commercial cropland, pastures and tree plantations. The commodity groups most commonly associated with deforestation were cattle meat, forestry products, oil palm, cereals and soybeans, though variation between countries and regions was large. Alarge (26%) and slightly increasing share of deforestation was attributed to international demand, the bulk of which (87%) was exported to countries that either exhibit decreasing deforestation rates or increasing forest cover (late-or post-forest transition countries), particularly in Europe and Asia (China, India, and Russia). About a third of the net forest gains in post-forest transition countries was in this way offset by imports of commodities causing deforestation elsewhere, suggesting that achieving a global forest transition will be substantially more challenging than achieving national or regional ones.
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| 7. |
- Zu Ermgassen, Erasmus K.H.J., et al.
(författare)
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Using supply chain data to monitor zero deforestation commitments: an assessment of progress in the Brazilian soy sector
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326 .- 1748-9318. ; 15:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs) are voluntary initiatives where companies or countries pledge to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. These commitments offer much promise for sustainable commodity production, but are undermined by a lack of transparency about their coverage and impacts. Here, using state-of-the-art supply chain data, we introduce an approach to evaluate the impact of ZDCs, linking traders and international markets to commodity-associated deforestation in the sub-national jurisdictions from which they source. We focus on the Brazilian soy sector, where we find that ZDC coverage is increasing, but under-represents the Cerrado biome where most soy-associated deforestation currently takes place. Though soy-associated deforestation declined in the Amazon after the introduction of the Soy Moratorium, we observe no change in the exposure of companies or countries adopting ZDCs to soy-associated deforestation in the Cerrado. We further assess the formulation and implementation of these ZDCs and identify several systematic weaknesses that must be addressed to increase the likelihood that they achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation in future. As the 2020 deadline for several of these commitments approaches, our approach can provide independent monitoring of progress toward the goal of ending commodity-associated deforestation.
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| 8. |
- Creutzig, Felix, et al.
(författare)
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Reviewing the scope and thematic focus of 100 000 publications on energy consumption, services and social aspects of climate change: a big data approach to demand-side mitigation *
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - Stockholm : IVL Svenska Miljöinstitutet. - 1748-9326 .- 1748-9318. ; 16:3, s. 033001-033001
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As current action remains insufficient to meet the goals of the Paris agreement let alone to stabilize the climate, there is increasing hope that solutions related to demand, services and social aspects of climate change mitigation can close the gap. However, given these topics are not investigated by a single epistemic community, the literature base underpinning the associated research continues to be undefined. Here, we aim to delineate a plausible body of literature capturing a comprehensive spectrum of demand, services and social aspects of climate change mitigation. As method we use a novel double-stacked expert—machine learning research architecture and expert evaluation to develop a typology and map key messages relevant for climate change mitigation within this body of literature. First, relying on the official key words provided to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by governments (across 17 queries), and on specific investigations of domain experts (27 queries), we identify 121 165 non-unique and 99 065 unique academic publications covering issues relevant for demand-side mitigation. Second, we identify a literature typology with four key clusters: policy, housing, mobility, and food/consumption. Third, we systematically extract key content-based insights finding that the housing literature emphasizes social and collective action, whereas the food/consumption literatures highlight behavioral change, but insights also demonstrate the dynamic relationship between behavioral change and social norms. All clusters point to the possibility of improved public health as a result of demand-side solutions. The centrality of the policy cluster suggests that political actions are what bring the different specific approaches together. Fourth, by mapping the underlying epistemic communities we find that researchers are already highly interconnected, glued together by common interests in sustainability and energy demand. We conclude by outlining avenues for interdisciplinary collaboration, synthetic analysis, community building, and by suggesting next steps for evaluating this body of literature.
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| 9. |
- Blennow, Kristina, et al.
(författare)
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The role of beliefs, expectations and values in decision-making favoring climate change adaptation : implications for communications with European forest professionals
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Beliefs, expectations and values are often assumed to drive decisions about climate change adaptation. We tested hypotheses based on this assumption using survey responses from 508 European forest professionals in 10 countries. We used the survey results to identify communication needs and the decision strategies at play, and to develop guidelines on adequate communications about climate change adaptation. We observed polarization in the positive and negative values associated with climate change impacts accepted by survey respondents. We identified a mechanism creating the polarization that we call the 'blocked belief' effect. We found that polarized values did not correlate with decisions about climate change adaptation. Strong belief in the local impacts of climate change on the forest was, however, a prerequisite of decision-making favoring adaptation. Decision-making in favor of adaptation to climate change also correlated with net values of expected specific impacts on the forest and generally increased with the absolute value of these in the absence of "tipping point" behavior. Tipping point behavior occurs when adaptation is not pursued in spite of the strongly negative or positive net value of expected climate change impacts. We observed negative and positive tipping point behavior, mainly in SW Europe and N-NE Europe, respectively. In addition we found that advice on effective adaptation may inhibit adaptation when the receiver is aware of effective adaptation measures unless it is balanced with information explaining how climate change leads to negative impacts. Forest professionals with weak expectations of impacts require communications on climate change and its impacts on forests before any advice on adaptation measures can be effective. We develop evidence-based guidelines on communications using a new methodology which includes Bayesian machine learning modeling of the equivalent of an expected utility function for the adaptation decision problem.
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| 10. |
- Bolin, Karl, et al.
(författare)
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Infrasound and low frequency noise from wind turbines : exposure and health effects
- 2011
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 6:3, s. 035103-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wind turbines emit low frequency noise (LFN) and large turbines generally generate more LFN than small turbines. The dominant source of LFN is the interaction between incoming turbulence and the blades. Measurements suggest that indoor levels of LFN in dwellings typically are within recommended guideline values, provided that the outdoor level does not exceed corresponding guidelines for facade exposure. Three cross-sectional questionnaire studies show that annoyance from wind turbine noise is related to the immission level, but several explanations other than low frequency noise are probable. A statistically significant association between noise levels and self-reported sleep disturbance was found in two of the three studies. It has been suggested that LFN from wind turbines causes other, and more serious, health problems, but empirical support for these claims is lacking.
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