Net-zero energy transition in ASEAN countries: The evolutionary model brings novel perspectives to the cooperative mechanism of climate governance.

In an era marked by escalating climate change, the fragile ecological balance faces increasing strain. Whilst significant knowledge exists regarding the accumulation of carbon emission within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, little is known about when and how countries could reach net-zero emission goal as agreed in Paris Agreement. For this purpose, our study examines the primary driving factors of carbon emission from 1990 to 2020 across the ten countries using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index model. We leverage the random forest model to explore the net-zero scenarios and the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average approach to identify the evolutionary trajectories of carbon emission trends. Our findings underscore the imperative need for expediting decarbonization efforts, emphasizing the urgency for widespread adoption of clean technologies and substantial investment in green initiatives. Countries at similar stages of progress might establish a cooperation mechanism of clean energy base construction, energy storage allocation and policy formulation. These insights can help us better estimate future demand of clean energy, explore strategies for decarbonization, and inform historical commonalities of carbon emission growth.

A temporospatial assessment of environmental quality in urbanizing Ethiopia.

Global environmental quality has been negatively affected by urbanization, particularly vulnerable in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, understanding the underlying mechanism and driving forces for the change of environmental quality with urbanization process is essential to improve the environmental sustainability. In this study, the compounded night light index (CNLI) and remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) were used respectively to evaluate the urbanization level and environmental quality in Ethiopia from 2010 to 2020. On this basis, a temporospatial assessment framework was proposed, followed by methods of coupling coordination degree, spatial autocorrelation, elasticity, and decomposition. The results showed that 63 out of 690 woredas experienced environmental deterioration. Socioeconomic effect, carbon intensity, and climate change were decomposed as drivers to environmental quality, with socioeconomic effects contributing >68% of environmental improvement, while carbon intensity and climate change were responsible for >51% and >58% of environmental deterioration from 2010 values. Continuous increase in impervious surfaces resulted in a six-fold increase in surface runoff, which raised the flooding risk in sub areas and rural landscapes. This demands reforms of climate strategies and proper livestock management.

Estimating the Environmental Costs of Africa's Massive "Development Corridors".

In sub-Saharan Africa, dozens of major "development corridors" have been proposed or are being created to increase agricultural production [1-4], mineral exports [5-7], and economic integration. The corridors involve large-scale expansion of infrastructure such as roads, railroads, pipelines, and port facilities and will open up extensive areas of land to new environmental pressures [1, 4, 8]. We assessed the potential environmental impacts of 33 planned or existing corridors that, if completed, would total over 53,000 km in length and crisscross much of the African continent. We mapped each corridor and estimated human occupancy (using the distribution of persistent night-lights) and environmental values (endangered and endemic vertebrates, plant diversity, critical habitats, carbon storage, and climate-regulation services) inside a 50-km-wide band overlaid onto each corridor. We also assessed the potential for each corridor to facilitate increases in agricultural production. The corridors varied considerably in their environmental values, and many were only sparsely populated. Because of marginal soils or climates, some corridors appear to have only modest agricultural potential. Collectively, the corridors would bisect over 400 existing protected areas and could degrade a further ~1,800 by promoting habitat disruption near or inside the reserves. We conclude that many of the development corridors will promote serious and largely irreversible environmental changes and should proceed only if rigorous mitigation and protection measures can be employed. Some planned corridors with high environmental values and limited agricultural benefits should possibly be cancelled altogether. VIDEO ABSTRACT.