A bioenergy-focused versus a reforestation-focused mitigation pathway yields disparate carbon storage and climate responses.

Limiting global warming to 2 °C requires urgent action on land-based mitigation. This study evaluates the biogeochemical and biogeophysical implications of two alternative land-based mitigation scenarios that aim to achieve the same radiative forcing. One scenario is primarily driven by bioenergy expansion (SSP226Lu-BIOCROP), while the other involves re/afforestation (SSP126Lu-REFOREST). We find that overall, SSP126Lu-REFOREST is a more efficient strategy for removing CO2 from the atmosphere by 2100, resulting in a net carbon sink of 242 ~ 483 PgC with smaller uncertainties compared to SSP226Lu-BIOCROP, which exhibits a wider range of -78 ~ 621 PgC. However, SSP126Lu-REFOREST leads to a relatively warmer planetary climate than SSP226Lu-BIOCROP, and this relative warming can be intensified in certain re/afforested regions where local climates are not favorable for tree growth. Despite the cooling effect on a global scale, SSP226Lu-BIOCROP reshuffles regional warming hotspots, amplifying summer temperatures in vulnerable tropical regions such as Central Africa and Southeast Asia. Our findings highlight the need for strategic land use planning to identify suitable regions for re/afforestation and bioenergy expansion, thereby improving the likelihood of achieving the intended climate mitigation outcomes.

The weekly cycle of photosynthesis in Europe reveals the negative impact of particulate pollution on ecosystem productivity.

Aerosols can affect photosynthesis through radiative perturbations such as scattering and absorbing solar radiation. This biophysical impact has been widely studied using field measurements, but the sign and magnitude at continental scales remain uncertain. Solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), emitted by chlorophyll, strongly correlates with photosynthesis. With recent advancements in Earth observation satellites, we leverage SIF observations from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) with unprecedented spatial resolution and near-daily global coverage, to investigate the impact of aerosols on photosynthesis. Our analysis reveals that on weekends when there is more plant-available sunlight due to less particulate pollution, 64% of regions across Europe show increased SIF, indicating more photosynthesis. Moreover, we find a widespread negative relationship between SIF and aerosol loading across Europe. This suggests the possible reduction in photosynthesis as aerosol levels increase, particularly in ecosystems limited by light availability. By considering two plausible scenarios of improved air quality-reducing aerosol levels to the weekly minimum 3-d values and levels observed during the COVID-19 period-we estimate a potential of 41 to 50 Mt net additional annual CO2 uptake by terrestrial ecosystems in Europe. This work assesses human impacts on photosynthesis via aerosol pollution at continental scales using satellite observations. Our results highlight i) the use of spatiotemporal variations in satellite SIF to estimate the human impacts on photosynthesis and ii) the potential of reducing particulate pollution to enhance ecosystem productivity.

US climate policy yields water quality cobenefits in the Mississippi Basin and Gulf of Mexico.

We utilize a coupled economy-agroecology-hydrology modeling framework to capture the cascading impacts of climate change mitigation policy on agriculture and the resulting water quality cobenefits. We analyze a policy that assigns a range of United States government's social cost of carbon estimates ($51, $76, and $152/ton of CO2-equivalents) to fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions. This policy raises energy costs and, importantly for agriculture, boosts the price of nitrogen fertilizer production. At the highest carbon price, US carbon emissions are reduced by about 50%, and nitrogen fertilizer prices rise by about 90%, leading to an approximate 15% reduction in fertilizer applications for corn production across the Mississippi River Basin. Corn and soybean production declines by about 7%, increasing crop prices by 6%, while nitrate leaching declines by about 10%. Simulated nitrate export to the Gulf of Mexico decreases by 8%, ultimately shrinking the average midsummer area of the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic area by 3% and hypoxic volume by 4%. We also consider the additional benefits of restored wetlands to mitigate nitrogen loading to reduce hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico and find a targeted wetland restoration scenario approximately doubles the effect of a low to moderate social cost of carbon. Wetland restoration alone exhibited spillover effects that increased nitrate leaching in other parts of the basin which were mitigated with the inclusion of the carbon policy. We conclude that a national climate policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States would have important water quality cobenefits.

Mitigating climate disruption in time: A self-consistent approach for avoiding both near-term and long-term global warming.

The ongoing and projected impacts from human-induced climate change highlight the need for mitigation approaches to limit warming in both the near term (<2050) and the long term (>2050). We clarify the role of non-CO2 greenhouse gases and aerosols in the context of near-term and long-term climate mitigation, as well as the net effect of decarbonization strategies targeting fossil fuel (FF) phaseout by 2050. Relying on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change radiative forcing, we show that the net historical (2019 to 1750) radiative forcing effect of CO2 and non-CO2 climate forcers emitted by FF sources plus the CO2 emitted by land-use changes is comparable to the net from non-CO2 climate forcers emitted by non-FF sources. We find that mitigation measures that target only decarbonization are essential for strong long-term cooling but can result in weak near-term warming (due to unmasking the cooling effect of coemitted aerosols) and lead to temperatures exceeding 2 °C before 2050. In contrast, pairing decarbonization with additional mitigation measures targeting short-lived climate pollutants and N2O, slows the rate of warming a decade or two earlier than decarbonization alone and avoids the 2 °C threshold altogether. These non-CO2 targeted measures when combined with decarbonization can provide net cooling by 2030 and reduce the rate of warming from 2030 to 2050 by about 50%, roughly half of which comes from methane, significantly larger than decarbonization alone over this time frame. Our analysis demonstrates the need for a comprehensive CO2 and targeted non-CO2 mitigation approach to address both the near-term and long-term impacts of climate disruption.

Carbon sequestration in soils and climate change mitigation-Definitions and pitfalls.

The term carbon (C) sequestration has not just become a buzzword but is something of a siren's call to scientific communicators and media outlets. Carbon sequestration is the removal of C from the atmosphere and the storage, for example, in soil. It has the potential to partially compensate for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and is, therefore, an important piece in the global climate change mitigation puzzle. However, the term C sequestration is often used misleadingly and, while likely unintentional, can lead to the perpetuation of biased conclusions and exaggerated expectations about its contribution to climate change mitigation efforts. Soils have considerable potential to take up C but many are also in a state of continuous loss. In such soils, measures to build up soil C may only lead to a reduction in C losses (C loss mitigation) rather than result in real C sequestration and negative emissions. In an examination of 100 recent peer-reviewed papers on topics surrounding soil C, only 4% were found to have used the term C sequestration correctly. Furthermore, 13% of the papers equated C sequestration with C stocks. The review, further, revealed that measures leading to C sequestration will not always result in climate change mitigation when non-CO2 greenhouse gases and leakage are taken into consideration. This paper highlights potential pitfalls when using the term C sequestration incorrectly and calls for accurate usage of this term going forward. Revised and new terms are suggested to distinguish clearly between C sequestration in soils, SOC loss mitigation, negative emissions, climate change mitigation, SOC storage, and SOC accrual to avoid miscommunication among scientists and stakeholder groups in future.

Increased crossing of thermal stress thresholds of vegetation under global warming.

Temperature extremes exert a significant influence on terrestrial ecosystems, but the precise levels at which these extremes trigger adverse shifts in vegetation productivity have remained elusive. In this study, we have derived two critical thresholds, using standard deviations (SDs) of growing-season temperature and satellite-based vegetation productivity as key indicators. Our findings reveal that, on average, vegetation productivity experiences rapid suppression when confronted with temperature anomalies exceeding 1.45 SD above the mean temperature during 2001-2018. Furthermore, at temperatures exceeding 2.98 SD above the mean, we observe the maximum level of suppression, particularly in response to the most extreme high-temperature events. When Earth System Models are driven by a future medium emission scenario, they project that mean temperatures will routinely surpass both of these critical thresholds by approximately the years 2050 and 2070, respectively. However, it is important to note that the timing of these threshold crossings exhibits spatial variation and will appear much earlier in tropical regions. Our finding highlights that restricting global warming to just 1.5°C can increase safe areas for vegetation growth by 13% compared to allowing warming to reach 2°C above preindustrial levels. This mitigation strategy helps avoid exposure to detrimental extreme temperatures that breach these thresholds. Our study underscores the pivotal role of climate mitigation policies in fostering the sustainable development of terrestrial ecosystems in a warming world.

The low-carbon risk society: Dilemmas of risk-risk tradeoffs in energy innovations, transitions, and climate policy.

As countries and communities grapple with climate change, they seek to rapidly decarbonize their economies and cultures. A low-carbon future will likely depend on more distributed solar energy, the electrification of mobility, and more efficient homes and buildings. But what emergent risks are evident within this low-carbon society? This exploratory study first reviews the existing literature to identify 75 risk-risk tradeoffs by their category, medium of distribution, and type. It builds on these 75 examples to apply a typology of Risk Offsets, Risk Substitution, Risk Transfer, and Risk Transformation. Based on extensive document analysis, it applies that typology to three low-carbon innovations: solar energy, battery electric vehicles, and building energy efficiency retrofits, identifying 36 distinct risk-risk tradeoffs in total. As such, the paper moves to discuss complexities and challenges in risk management. In doing so, it calls for a more refined risk assessment that better accounts for decision-making considerations such as the magnitude or probability of risk, size of population exposed, certainty in risk estimation, severity of adverse outcome, distributional considerations, and the timing of risk impacts. It also summarizes emergent research gaps. Risk management in the context of climate action becomes a three-dimensional chess game of weighing risk transmission, risk mediums, and risk categories.

Carbon-biodiversity relationships in a highly diverse subtropical forest.

Carbon-focused climate mitigation strategies are becoming increasingly important in forests. However, with ongoing biodiversity declines we require better knowledge of how much such strategies account for biodiversity. We particularly lack information across multiple trophic levels and on established forests, where the interplay between carbon stocks, stand age, and tree diversity might influence carbon-biodiversity relationships. Using a large dataset (>4600 heterotrophic species of 23 taxonomic groups) from secondary, subtropical forests, we tested how multitrophic diversity and diversity within trophic groups relate to aboveground, belowground, and total carbon stocks at different levels of tree species richness and stand age. Our study revealed that aboveground carbon, the key component of climate-based management, was largely unrelated to multitrophic diversity. By contrast, total carbon stocks-that is, including belowground carbon-emerged as a significant predictor of multitrophic diversity. Relationships were nonlinear and strongest for lower trophic levels, but nonsignificant for higher trophic level diversity. Tree species richness and stand age moderated these relationships, suggesting long-term regeneration of forests may be particularly effective in reconciling carbon and biodiversity targets. Our findings highlight that biodiversity benefits of climate-oriented management need to be evaluated carefully, and only maximizing aboveground carbon may fail to account for biodiversity conservation requirements.

Estimating future PM2.5-attributed acute myocardial infarction incident cases under climate mitigation and population change scenarios in Shandong Province, China.

BACKGROUND: The effects of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on acute myocardial infarction (AMI) have been widely recognized. However, no studies have comprehensively evaluated future PM2.5-attributed AMI burdens under different climate mitigation and population change scenarios. We aimed to quantify the PM2.5-AMI association and estimate the future change in PM2.5-attributed AMI incident cases under six integrated scenarios in 2030 and 2060 in Shandong Province, China. METHODS: Daily AMI incident cases and air pollutant data were collected from 136 districts/counties in Shandong Province from 2017 - 2019. A two-stage analysis with a distributed lag nonlinear model was conducted to quantify the baseline PM2.5-AMI association. The future change in PM2.5-attributed AMI incident cases was estimated by combining the fitted PM2.5-AMI association with the projected daily PM2.5 concentrations under six integrated scenarios. We further analyzed the factors driving changes in PM2.5-related AMI incidence using a decomposition method. RESULTS: Each 10 µg/m3 increase in PM2.5 exposure at lag05 was related to an excess risk of 1.3 % (95 % confidence intervals: 0.9 %, 1.7 %) for AMI incidence from 2017 - 2019 in Shandong Province. The estimated total PM2.5-attributed AMI incident cases would increase by 10.9-125.9 % and 6.4-244.6 % under Scenarios 1 - 3 in 2030 and 2060, whereas they would decrease by 0.9-5.2 % and 33.0-46.2 % under Scenarios 5 - 6 in 2030 and 2060, respectively. Furthermore, the percentage increases in PM2.5-attributed female cases (2030: -0.3 % to 135.1 %; 2060: -33.2 % to 321.5 %) and aging cases (2030: 15.2-171.8 %; 2060: -21.5 % to 394.2 %) would wholly exceed those in male cases (2030: -1.8 % to 133.2 %; 2060: -41.1 % to 264.3 %) and non-aging cases (2030: -41.0 % to 45.7 %; 2060: -89.5 % to -17.0 %) under six scenarios in 2030 and 2060. Population aging is the main driver of increased PM2.5-related AMI incidence under Scenarios 1 - 3 in 2030 and 2060, while improved air quality can offset these negative effects of population aging under the implementation of the carbon neutrality and 1.5 °C targets. CONCLUSION: The combination of ambitious climate policies (i.e., 1.5 °C warming limits and carbon neutrality targets) with stringent clean air policies is necessary to reduce the health impacts of air pollution in Shandong Province, China, regardless of population aging.

Climate change mitigation role of renewable energy consumption: Does institutional quality matter in the case of reducing Africa's carbon dioxide emissions?

Renewable energy and institutions have emerged among other variables touted to address climate change problems. However, empirical results have been conflicting. With a relatively poorer state of institutional quality and a lower level of renewable energy development amidst rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Africa, the study assesses: a) the direct effect of renewable energy and institutional quality on CO2 emissions in Africa; and b) the moderation role of institutional quality on the effect of renewable energy on CO2 emissions in Africa. The study relies on panel data covering 2002-2021 for 32 African countries. The Fully-Modified OLS regression method is employed to analyze the data based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis and Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, & Technology (STIRPAT) model. The results show that urbanization and trade openness increase CO2 emissions. Although income has a positive effect on carbon emissions, the square term has a negative confirming the EKC hypothesis. Renewable energy also reduces CO2 emissions. Institutional quality variables of control of corruption, rule of law, regulatory quality, political stability and absence of violence, voice and accountability, government effectiveness and institutional index created from the above indicators reduce CO2 emissions. In addition, except government effectiveness, the remaining indicators of institutional quality negatively moderate the effect of renewable energy on CO2 emissions. The results among other things imply that intensifying the development and usage of renewable energy would help address the rising carbon dioxide emissions trend in Africa. Also, strengthening institutions promises to reduce CO2 emissions.

Municipal emission pathways and economic performance toward net-zero emissions: A case study of Nakhon Ratchasima municipality, Thailand.

The transition to net-zero emissions (NZEs) in developing countries is challenging and requires the immediate adoption of comprehensive climate policy packages, strong collaboration among all sectors and stakeholders, and timely financial and technological assistance for developing economies. This research aims to analyze and evaluate the pathways to realize an NZE scheme at the municipality level. Nakhon Ratchasima (NR) Municipality, Thailand, is selected as the case study for this research. The Global Protocol for Community-Scale GHG Emission Inventories (GPC) is applied as the robust framework to assess the city's GHG emission profile. A mathematical forecasting model and the participatory multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach were adopted to support evidence-based local climate action planning based on four different scenarios: the business-as-usual (BAU), nationally determined contribution (NDC), carbon neutrality (CN), and NZE scenarios. The roles of stakeholders at the local community level across all sectors in mitigation actions and investment costs were investigated, and cost-effectiveness was evaluated to understand the economic performance of the adoption and implementation of local climate policy packages. The results indicate that by employing solely conventional technologies, a residential city that is also a hub for trade and land transportation will be unable to achieve its net-zero targets. It is imperative to seek additional low-carbon businesses and decarbonizing technologies that accompany substantial investments. According to the case of NR Municipality, the implementation costs to attain the NZE target by 2050 would range between 974.40 and 4.131.96 million USD. A pivotal driver of the municipal NZE pathway is the successful mobilization private sector investments to propel the transition toward climate-friendly technologies. Cost-effectiveness analysis significantly bolsters the municipality's transitional plan preparation, holistically encompassing economic, social, and environmental considerations. By preparing these aspects together, we ensure a smooth and equitable transition to net zero, avoid conflicts and economic harm and leave no one behind. This approach ensures a harmonious balance between a net-zero future, economic growth, and environmentally friendly living for all.

Forum: Climate, Ecological, and Social Costs of Livestock Grazing on Western Public Lands.

Grazing by domestic livestock is the most widespread use of public lands in the American West (USA) and their effects on climate change and ways to mitigate those effects are of interest to land managers, policy makers, and the broader public. Kauffman et al. (2022a) provided a meta-analysis of the ecosystem impacts, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and social costs of carbon (SCC) associated with livestock grazing on public lands in the western USA. They determined that GHG emissions from cattle on public lands equaled 12.4 million t CO2e/year. At the scale of land use planning utilized by federal agencies, GHG emissions associated with allocated livestock numbers will typically exceed US Environmental Protection Agencies' reporting limits (25,000 t) for certain industrial greenhouse gas emitters. As such, these are essentially unreported sources of GHG emissions from public lands. Using the US government's most recent SCC estimate of $51/t, Kauffman et al. (2022a) determined the total SCC of cattle grazing on public lands to be approximately $264-630 million/year. However, recent advances in the determination of SCC reveal this is to be an underestimate. Using the latest science results in an estimated SCC of $1.1-2.4 billion/year for grazing on public lands. Furthermore, the SCC borne by the public exceeds the economic benefits to private livestock permittees by over $926 million/year. Cessation of public lands grazing is an environmentally and economically sound mitigation and adaptation approach to addressing the climate crisis; an approach that will also facilitate restoration of the myriad of ecosystem services provided by intact wildland ecosystems.

Mineralogical and chemical characterization of mining waste and utilization for carbon sequestration through mineral carbonation.

Mining activities have often been associated with the issues of waste generation, while mining is considered a carbon-intensive industry that contributes to the increasing carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere. This study attempts to evaluate the potential of reusing mining waste as feedstock material for carbon dioxide sequestration through mineral carbonation. Characterization of mining waste was performed for limestone, gold and iron mine waste, which includes physical, mineralogical, chemical and morphological analyses that determine its potential for carbon sequestration. The samples were characterized as having alkaline pH (7.1-8.3) and contain fine particles, which are important to facilitate precipitation of divalent cations. High amount of cations (CaO, MgO and Fe2O3) was found in limestone and iron mine waste, i.e., total of 79.55% and 71.31%, respectively, that are essential for carbonation process. Potential Ca/Mg/Fe silicates, oxides and carbonates have been identified, which was confirmed by the microstructure analysis. The limestone waste composed majorly of CaO (75.83%), which was mainly originated from calcite and akermanite minerals. The iron mine waste consisted of Fe2O3 (56.60%), mainly from magnetite and hematite, and CaO (10.74%) which was derived from anorthite, wollastonite and diopside. The gold mine waste was attributed to a lower cation content (total of 7.71%), associated mainly with mineral illite and chlorite-serpentine. The average capacity for carbon sequestration was between 7.73 and79.55%, which corresponds to 383.41 g, 94.85 g and 4.72 g CO2 that were potentially sequestered per kg of limestone, iron and gold mine waste, respectively. Therefore, it has been learned that the mine waste might be utilized as feedstock for mineral carbonation due to the availability of reactive silicate/oxide/carbonate minerals. Utilization of mine waste would be beneficial in light of waste restoration in most mining sites while tackling the issues of CO2 emission in mitigating the global climate change.

Diffusion and upscaling of municipal climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in Germany.

Drawing on data for the 104 largest German cities, and deeper analysis of six mid-sized cities (including forerunners, followers and latecomers in climate mitigation and adaptation), we find that the spread of local mitigation and adaptation strategies across Germany can be explained by a combination of horizontal diffusion and vertical upscaling. Specifically, while the spread of climate mitigation initiatives in the 1990s was triggered primarily by transnational municipal networks (horizontal diffusion), the development and revision of climate mitigation strategies and the emergence of climate adaptation strategies during the last decade have been driven mainly by national and subnational funding programmes (vertical upscaling). Notably, forerunner cities are less dependent on external funding than followers and latecomers, because they have more internal capacity to act. By arguing that upscaling of local climate policies from forerunners to followers and latecomers depends on interventions by national and subnational authorities, we stress that the majority of German municipalities require external support in order to develop and implement effective climate strategies. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-022-02020-z.

Informing Nature-based Climate Solutions for the United States with the best-available science.

Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) are managed alterations to ecosystems designed to increase carbon sequestration or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While they have growing public and private support, the realizable benefits and unintended consequences of NbCS are not well understood. At regional scales where policy decisions are often made, NbCS benefits are estimated from soil and tree survey data that can miss important carbon sources and sinks within an ecosystem, and do not reveal the biophysical impacts of NbCS for local water and energy cycles. The only direct observations of ecosystem-scale carbon fluxes, for example, by eddy covariance flux towers, have not yet been systematically assessed for what they can tell us about NbCS potentials, and state-of-the-art remote sensing products and land-surface models are not yet being widely used to inform NbCS policymaking or implementation. As a result, there is a critical mismatch between the point- and tree-scale data most often used to assess NbCS benefits and impacts, the ecosystem and landscape scales where NbCS projects are implemented, and the regional to continental scales most relevant to policymaking. Here, we propose a research agenda to confront these gaps using data and tools that have long been used to understand the mechanisms driving ecosystem carbon and energy cycling, but have not yet been widely applied to NbCS. We outline steps for creating robust NbCS assessments at both local to regional scales that are informed by ecosystem-scale observations, and which consider concurrent biophysical impacts, future climate feedbacks, and the need for equitable and inclusive NbCS implementation strategies. We contend that these research goals can largely be accomplished by shifting the scales at which pre-existing tools are applied and blended together, although we also highlight some opportunities for more radical shifts in approach.

Carbon and climate implications of rewetting a raised bog in Ireland.

Peatland rewetting has been proposed as a vital climate change mitigation tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to generate suitable conditions for the return of carbon (C) sequestration. In this study, we present annual C balances for a 5-year period at a rewetted peatland in Ireland (rewetted at the start of the study) and compare the results with an adjacent drained area (represents business-as-usual). Hydrological modelling of the 230-hectare site was carried out to determine the likely ecotopes (vegetation communities) that will develop post-rewetting and was used to inform a radiative forcing modelling exercise to determine the climate impacts of rewetting this peatland under five high-priority scenarios (SSP1-1.9, SS1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5). The drained area (marginal ecotope) was a net C source throughout the study and emitted 157 ± 25.5 g C m-2  year-1 . In contrast, the rewetted area (sub-central ecotope) was a net C sink of 78.0 ± 37.6 g C m-2  year-1 , despite relatively large annual methane emissions post-rewetting (average 19.3 ± 5.2 g C m-2  year-1 ). Hydrological modelling predicted the development of three key ecotopes at the site, with the sub-central ecotope predicted to cover 24% of the site, the sub-marginal predicted to cover 59% and the marginal predicted to cover 16%. Using these areal estimates, our radiative forcing modelling projects that under the SSP1-1.9 scenario, the site will have a warming effect on the climate until 2085 but will then have a strong cooling impact. In contrast, our modelling exercise shows that the site will never have a cooling impact under the SSP5-8.5 scenario. Our results confirm the importance of rapid rewetting of drained peatland sites to (a) achieve strong C emissions reductions, (b) establish optimal conditions for C sequestration and (c) set the site on a climate cooling trajectory.

Evidence that a national REDD+ program reduces tree cover loss and carbon emissions in a high forest cover, low deforestation country.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is a climate change mitigation policy in which rich countries provide payments to developing countries for protecting their forests. In 2009, the countries of Norway and Guyana entered into one of the first bilateral REDD+ programs, with Norway offering to pay US$250 million to Guyana if annual deforestation rates remained below 0.056% from 2010 to 2015. To quantify the impact of this national REDD+ program, we construct a counterfactual times-series trajectory of annual tree cover loss using synthetic matching. This analytical approach allows us to quantify tree cover loss that would have occurred in the absence of the Norway-Guyana REDD+ program. We found that the Norway-Guyana REDD+ program reduced tree cover loss by 35% during the implementation period (2010 to 2015), equivalent to 12.8 million tons of avoided CO2 emissions. Our analysis indicates that national REDD+ payments attenuated the effect of increases in gold prices, an internationally traded commodity that is the primary deforestation driver in Guyana. Overall, we found strong evidence that the program met the additionality criteria of REDD+. However, we found that tree cover loss increased after the payments ended, and therefore, our results suggest that without continued payments, forest protection is not guaranteed. On the issue of leakage, which is complex and difficult to quantify, a multinational REDD+ program for a region could address leakage that results from differences in forest policies between neighboring countries.

Can the Framing of Climate Mitigation Actions into Government Policies Lead to Delivering Them? - Insights from Nepal's Experience.

Many low-income countries (LICs), including Nepal, endeavour to deliver climate mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and achieving more sustainable resource consumption. However, their prospects of delivering on such goals alongside the rapid structural changes in the economy prevalent in the LICs are not clear. This research aims to better understand the underlying complexity in the linkage between the framing of climate mitigation actions into government policies and the prospects for their delivery. We use critical discourse analysis, post-structural discourse analysis, and thematic analysis of textual data corpus generated from government policies (n = 12) and semi-structured interviews (n = 12) with policy actors, such as government policymakers and private sector and non-government organisations' representatives. We also develop energy and material consumption and GHG emissions models to predict their values up to 2050 via the R tools and machine learning algorithms that validate the accuracy of models. Our findings suggest that the social context of policymaking creates a knowledge structure on climate mitigation which is reflected in government policies. The policy actors and their institutions exchange their ideas and interests in a deliberative and collaborative environment to prioritise policies for the energy, forest, and transport sectors to deliver climate mitigation actions in Nepal. However, the energy sector, together with the agriculture sector, has insufficient climate mitigation actions. Reflecting on the high proportion of biomass in the energy mix and the rapid rise in fossil fuel and energy consumption per capita-both of which are driven by the remittance inflows-this research suggests measures to reduce these in an absolute sense.

Economy-wide impacts of road transport electrification in the EU.

While electrification of road transport is a key component of decarbonisation, the implications for the broader economy and related jobs remain underexplored. We quantify these impacts in the EU in a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, combining techno-economic assumptions about electric vehicles with deployment scenarios derived by energy models. We augment input-output tables underlying the JRC-GEM-E3 model with an explicit representation of vehicle manufacturing and upgrade the modelling of vehicle purchase and operation. Our findings illustrate that greater road transport electrification reduces the overall costs of climate mitigation, primarily driven by lower fuel costs for electric vehicles and a faster decline of battery costs. Transport electrification alters supply-chains and leads to structural shifts in employment from traditional vehicle manufacturing towards battery production, electricity supply and related investments. Finally, we expand the set of labour market indicators to cover skills and occupations, to refine the socio-economic assessments of climate policy.

Prioritizing adaptation and mitigation in the climate movement: evidence from a cross-national protest survey of the Global Climate Strike, 2019.

Climate adaptation is seen by many as increasingly important and as deeply political, leading some to argue for its democratization. Social movements could play an important role in this. Meanwhile, we have recently witnessed a major swell in climate activism, as well as a growing realization among climate activists that it may be too late to prevent major climate disruptions. Yet to what extent this may lead to a focus on adaptation in the climate movement remains understudied. To address this gap in the literature, the current paper draws on survey data from 2,344 participants in Fridays For Future climate demonstrations in September 2019 in 13 cities in Europe, Australia and the USA. The analyses show that while one-half of the respondents still attributes greater weight to mitigation, the other half attributes equal weight to adaptation and mitigation, indicating a greater emphasis on adaptation than previously assumed. It is found that those supporting (equal focus on) adaptation experience less hope about the effectiveness of climate policies, and portray a reluctance to support far-reaching climate action. The latter indicates that support for adaptation in the climate movement is associated with conservative attitudes, indicating constraints for the emergence of a climate movement for transformational adaptation.