| 1. |
- Andersson, Daniel, 1989-
(författare)
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Ecologies of Integrated Modeling : Configuring Policy-Relevance in Swedish Climate Governance
- 2023
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - Lausanne : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2624-9553. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Due to the long timescales and deep uncertainties involved, comprehensive model-building has played a pivotal role in creating shared expectations about future trajectories for addressing climate change processes, mobilizing a network of knowledge-based experts who assist in defining common problems, identifying policy solutions, and assessing the policy outcomes. At the intersection between climate change science and climate governance, where wholly empirical methods are infeasible, numerical simulations have become the central practice for evaluating truth claims, and the key medium for the transport and translation of data, methods, and guiding principles among the actors involved. What makes integrated assessment unique as a comprehensive modeling-effort is that it is explicitly policy-oriented, justified by its policy-relevance. Although recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as invaluable to their review assessments, the role of integrated modeling in implementations of the Paris Agreement, such as in impact assessments of climate legislation on the national level, is far less known. Taking as its starting-point the boundary-work carried out in public administration, this paper examines how foresight knowledge produced with the help of model-based scenario analysis has been made relevant in Swedish climate policymaking, focusing on the processes by which key indicators for political action become institutionalized through the choice and use of model parameters. It concludes by arguing for an expanded understanding of policy-relevance, beyond institutional approaches and toward a process-based point of view, treating relevance as something in-the-making.
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| 2. |
- André, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing the Quality of Knowledge for Adaptation : Experiences From Co-designing Climate Services in Sweden
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - Lausanne, Switzerland : Frontiers Research Foundation. - 2624-9553. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Adaptation to climate change is becoming more urgent, but the wealth of knowledge that informs adaptation planning and decision-making is not used to its full potential. Top-down approaches to knowledge production are identified as one important reason for the gap between science and practice and are criticized for not meeting the needs of intended users. In response to this challenge, there is a growing interest in the creation of user-oriented and actionable climate services to support adaptation. At the same time, recent research suggests that greater efforts are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge co-production processes and the best criteria by which to gauge the quality of knowledge outcomes, while also considering different stakeholder perspectives. This paper explores these issues through a critical assessment of the quality of knowledge for adaptation generated from a climate services co-design process in two case studies in Sweden. The study draws on experiences from a 5-year research collaboration in which natural and social science researchers, together with local stakeholders, co-designed climate services to support climate adaptation planning and decision-making. The well-established knowledge quality criteria of credibility, legitimacy, saliency, usability, and usefulness remain relevant, but are not sufficient to capture factors relating to whether and how the knowledge actually is applied by climate change adaptation planners and decision-makers. We observe that case-specific circumstances beyond the scope of the co-design process, including the decision-making context as well as non-tangible outcomes, also play crucial roles that should be accounted for in the knowledge assessment processes.
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| 3. |
- Barron, Jennie
(författare)
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Building climate resilience in rainfed landscapes needs more than good will
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rainfed smallholder farming is particularly vulnerable to climate change, which can greatly exacerbate existing poverty and livelihood challenges. Understanding the complexity of the systems that connect the environment, society and people can help us to reduce this vulnerability and increase the resilience of communities and households to climate perturbations. In recent years, resilience theory has proven a useful approach for exploring the complexity of development challenges. As a result, there has been an increase in the development of tools and frameworks for assessing resilience. Despite this increased focus, there is no consistent use of the resilience concept in development practice and little evidence as to the benefits of using the tools. This paper aims to bridge theory and practice by coupling research on resilience with its application in the international development field. The specific hypothesis we explore is if and how rural livelihoods build resilience toward increased climatic variability in already degraded agro-ecological landscapes? We present a resilience framework with indicators to assess the extent of community resilience to climate change through improved local agricultural production and natural resources management. Primary and secondary landscape and community data, together with development of participatory watershed action plans were used to populate 16 indicators in a resilience framework baseline for the two rainfed dominated watersheds in Ethiopia and Ghana respectively. Given community awareness of the challenges related to the watershed natural resources, local agriculture and extreme weather, the communities were very willing to develop action plans to improve their management of natural resources and build climate resilience. Nevertheless, our analysis of the watershed action plans revealed that strengthening resilience through local action alone, would likely not be sufficient to meet all climate -livelihood challenges identified. To address severity and recurrence of climate change related disturbances, such as droughts, floods and disease in poverty-affected rural communities, the capacity to improve resilience will depend on external factors, in addition to inherent action. New knowledge, infrastructure and social security mechanisms, including insurance and emergency assistance need to added to build resilience for poverty-affected communities in degraded watersheds. We conclude there are also challenges in the use of resilience framework for development and climate-action related to rural poverty affected and degraded livelihood systems. Populating complex social–environmental systems will also need further development, to understand progress in resilience building under changing climate. Special attention to systemic indicators that describe the coupling and interdependencies of social-ecosystem factors will be critical to take action.
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| 4. |
- Basta, Claudia, et al.
(författare)
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Inclusiveness, Equity, Consistency, and Flexibility as Guiding Criteria for Enabling Transdisciplinary Collaboration : Lessons From a European Project on Nature-Based Solutions and Urban Innovation
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The structural research programmes of the European Union dedicated to advance thesustainability sciences are increasingly permeated by thenotion of transdisciplinarity (TD). A growing body of literature residing at the intersection of research methodology and sustainability studies can guide researchers to adopt appropriate research approaches in their projects. However, how to implement the transdisciplinary approach in multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder projects that develop in different countries for several years is still relatively undocumented. This study seeks to fill this gap by sharing the experience of a group of researchers and stakeholders involved in the Horizon 2020 research and innovation project Nature-Based Urban Innovation (NATURVATION). The article discusses the monitoring and evaluation strategy that employed four criteria of transdisciplinary research quality as “reflexive devices”to enable a systematic reporting on the project’s most important collaborative activities. By examining how the four criteria captured transdisciplinary quality, new insights were produced for improving this monitoring and evaluation strategy for future transdisciplinary research, allowing a number of concrete recommendations to be formulated.
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| 7. |
- Brandao, Miguel
(författare)
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Indirect Effects Negate Global Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Substituting Gasoline With Corn Ethanol as a Transportation Fuel in the USA
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553. ; 4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Concerns over climate change have led to the promotion of biofuels for transport, particularly biodiesel from oilseed crops and ethanol from sugar and starch crops. However, additional concerns arose on whether the climate change mitigation potential of biofuels is negated by the associated direct land requirements (dLUC) for growing biofuel feedstocks, or by the indirect land requirements (iLUC) that compensate for the diversion of food/feed crops into biofuels, both cases leading to greenhouse gas emissions. We investigated data over the last 20-year period to estimate the magnitude of the effects ethanol production in the USA has had on land use domestically and abroad. The data analyzed suggests that, over the period, the use of corn for ethanol increased by 118 Mt per year, most of it coming from displacement of other uses of corn, mainly feed, which were compensated by increased feed production elsewhere. Results suggest a relatively low dLUC but a significant iLUC effect, mainly due to the compensation for the foregone feed production as a result of diverting corn into ethanol production. The resulting 18.0 Mt CO2-eq. associated with meeting the renewable-energy target of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol more than negates the climate benefits from avoided use of gasoline, indicating that promoting corn ethanol for global climate change mitigation may be counter-productive as, despite decreasing domestic emissions, global emissions increase. We suggest that the policy be revised accordingly.
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| 8. |
- Brandao, Miguel, et al.
(författare)
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RED, PEF, and EPD: Conflicting rules for determining the carbon footprint of biofuels give unclear signals to fuel producers and customers
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553. ; 4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biofuel producers and other commodity suppliers are increasingly affected by conflicting rules for life cycle assessment (LCA). They may get multiple requests for LCAs to be used in various contexts, which require the application of different methodological approaches that vary in scope, system boundaries, data demand, and more. This results in increased cost and competence requirements for producers, as well as confusion among other actors including their customers. Differences in methodologies might also lead to various outcomes, conclusions and conflicting guidance regarding which fuels to prioritize or develop. We have analyzed the actual differences when applying three different frameworks: the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the EU framework for Product Environmental Footprints (PEF), and the framework of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), which have different modeling requirements. We analyzed the methods from a conceptual point of view and also applied the methods to estimate the carbon footprint on a wide range of biofuel production pathways: (i) ethanol from corn, (ii) fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) from rapeseed oil, (iii) biogas from food waste, (iv) hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) from rapeseed oil, and (v) HVO from used cooking oil. Results obtained for a specific fuel could differ substantially depending on the framework applied and the assumptions and interpretations made when applying the different frameworks. Particularly, the results are very sensitive to the modeling of waste management when biofuel is produced from waste. Our results indicate a much higher climate impact for, e.g., biogas and HVO produced from used cooking oil when assessed with the PEF framework compared to the other frameworks. This is because PEF assigns at least part of the production of primary materials and energy to the use of recycled material and recovered energy. Developing Category Rules for biofuels for PEF and EPD ought to help clarifying remaining ambiguities.
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| 9. |
- Buylova, Alexandra, 1989-, et al.
(författare)
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Cancel (Out) Emissions? The Envisaged Role of Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies in Long-Term National Climate Strategies
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) increasingly features in climate scenarios that hold global warming well below 2°C by 2100. Given the continuous gap between climate mitigation pledges and the emission pathways that are aligned with achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, we would expect countries to promote CDR in their long-term planning to achieve mid-century targets. Yet, countries may not consider it their responsibility to contribute to the global response to climate change using CDR. Thus, a study of the respective country's long-term climate plans is both timely and vital. Such a study could reveal the pledged collective ambition, the contribution of CDR to the pledged ambition, and how the envisaged role of CDR is described by the different countries. This paper explores the long-term low emission development strategies (LT-LEDS) of countries in order to map the role of CDR in addressing climate change. We also supplement our examination of strategies with the opinions of climate experts. Based on an inductive coding of the material and a literature review, the analytical focus of the analysis includes CDR targets and planning, types of CDR, barriers and opportunities to CDR implementation, as well as international cooperation. Our study of 25 national LT-LEDS submitted to the UN or to the EU, as well as 23 interviews with climate experts, shows that national plans for CDR vary substantially across countries and are generally lacking in detail. The findings also demonstrate that CDR is perceived to be necessary and desirable for achieving mid-century climate goals, but also reveal variation in the intended role of CDR. We use an interpretive approach to outline three possible visions of CDR in climate action: as a panacea, as a necessary fallback and as a chimera. We conclude by discussing what our findings of the envisaged roles of CDR in addressing climate change mean for climate governance. This research thereby contributes to the literature on governing CDR with new comprehensive insights into the long-term climate strategies of countries.
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| 10. |
- Carton, Wim, et al.
(författare)
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Undoing equivalence: Rethinking carbon accounting for just carbon removal
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Concerns are increasingly raised over the centrality of carbon removal in climate policy, particularly in the guise of “net-zero” targets. Most significantly perhaps, treating emissions and removals as equivalent obscures emission reductions, resulting in “mitigation deterrence.” Yet the conflation of emission reductions and removals is only one among several implicit equivalences in carbon removal accounting. Here, we examine three other forms—carbon, geographical, and temporal equivalence—and discuss their implications for climate justice and the environmental risks with carbon removal. We conclude that “undoing” these equivalences would further a just response to the climate crisis and tentatively explore what such undoing might look like in practice.
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