ALBERT

Beschreibung: Climate change affects societies across the globe in various ways. In addition to gradual changes in temperature and other climatic variables, global warming is likely to increase intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Beyond biophysical impacts, these also directly affect societal and economic activity. Additionally, indirect effects can occur; spatially, economic losses can spread along global supply-chains; temporally, climate impacts can change the economic development trajectory of countries. This thesis first examines how climate change alters river flood risk and its local socio-economic implications. Then, it studies the global economic response to river floods in particular, and to climate change in general. Changes in high-end river flood risk are calculated for the next three decades on a global scale with high spatial resolution. In order to account for uncertainties, this assessment makes use of an ensemble of climate and hydrological models as well as a river routing model, that is found to perform well regarding peak river discharge. The results show an increase in high-end flood risk in many parts of the world, which require profound adaptation efforts. This pressure to adapt is measured as the enhancement in protection level necessary to stay at historical high-end risk. In developing countries as well as in industrialized regions, a high pressure to adapt is observed - the former to increase low protection levels, the latter to maintain the low risk levels perceived in the past. Further in this thesis, the global agent-based dynamic supply-chain model acclimate is developed. It models the cascading of indirect losses in the global supply network. As an anomaly model its agents - firms and consumers - maximize their profit locally to respond optimally to local perturbations. Incorporating quantities as well as prices on a daily basis, it is suitable to dynamically resolve the impacts of unanticipated climate extremes. The model is further complemented by a static measure, which captures the inter-dependencies between sectors across regions that are only connected indirectly. These higher-order dependencies are shown to be important for a comprehensive assessment of loss-propagation and overall costs of local disasters. In order to study the economic response to river floods, the acclimate model is driven by flood simulations. Within the next two decades, the increase in direct losses can only partially be compensated by market adjustments, and total losses are projected to increase by 17% without further adaptation efforts. The US and the EU are both shown to receive indirect losses from China, which is strongly affected directly. However, recent trends in the trade relations leave the EU in a better position to compensate for these losses. Finally, this thesis takes a broader perspective when determining the investment response to the climate change damages employing the integrated assessment model DICE. On an optimal economic development path, the increase in damages is anticipated as emissions and consequently temperatures increase. This leads to a significant devaluation of investment returns and the income losses from climate damages almost double. Overall, the results highlight the need to adapt to extreme weather events - local physical adaptation measures have to be combined with regional and global policy measures to prepare the global supply-chain network to climate change.

Beschreibung: Airborne influenza virus transmission is depending on climate. Infected individuals are able to travel to any country in the world within one day. In this study we combine these two insights to investigate the influence of climate change on pandemic spreading patterns of airborne infectious diseases, like influenza. Well-known recent examples for pandemics are severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS, 2002/2003) and H1N1 (Influenza A virus subtype, 2009), which have demonstrated the vulnerability of a strongly connected world.

Beschreibung: GRASP (Governance of Resources for Arctic Sustainable Policy and Practice) is an inter- and transdisciplinary research project jointly developed in 2014 by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and the Jade University of Applied Sciences

Beschreibung: Here we present the results of the demonstration tests that took place in Summer 2018 during the final months of the four-year Best Paths project. Details will be given on the assembly and finalizing of the demonstrator installation as well as the testing strategy defined for HVDC superconducting cables and adopted in the project. Some possibilities of installation within the electricity grids will also be discussed.

Beschreibung: Current efforts at the International Seabed Authority to develop regulations pertaining to the exploitation of deep seabed minerals would benefit from a moment of reflection on the future governance of these resources. As the Area and its resources have been declared a common heritage of mankind, this principle must be taken into account when designing the future governance of activities in the Area.

Beschreibung: In order to fulfill multiple sustainable development targets, most prominently human development, poverty eradication and climate change mitigation, African countries need infrastructure that cover basic needs while at the same time promote industrialization and value creation. G20 countries can support African countries by: (1) aligning and cementing the G20 Agenda for Africa with African initiatives, SDGs and the Paris Agreement, (2) mitigating economic risks of climate change through supporting low carbon development pathways in Africa, (3) incentivizing low carbon development by phasing out subsidies and eventually putting a price on carbon and (4) creating and enabling a level playing field for low carbon technologies, which includes integrated strategies for de-risking renewable energy investments.

Beschreibung: New energies form new energy landscapes (Apostol, Palmer, Pasqualetti, Smardon, & Sullivan, 2016; Gailing & Leibenath, 2013). Energy carriers converge within space and open up leeway and scope for design. Different spaces are affected: offshore and onshore, plains and mountains, waters, volcanic areas, coastal regions, deserts, etc. Different energy sources and types of technology are used and integrated through grids. Grids are increasingly governed as smart energy systems equipped with smart meters and apps etc., linked with smart mobility.

Beschreibung: With our attitudes and behavior, which aim at promoting sustainable behavior, we face a temporal dilemma – a temporal conflict between short-term and long-term interests. Accordingly, psychological time is an essential variable in understanding how people decide between options of short-term self-interest, which can be experienced at present, and long-term common interest, such as sustainable development with an outcome that lies far in the future. Present feelings are often so powerful that considerations of future events are neglected. Individuals differ in their emphasis on present and future dimensions. A stronger future orientation and a mindful present orientation are positive predictors of sustainable behavior; hedonistic and impulsive present orientations are negative predictors. We discuss the concept of the balanced time perspective as the propensity to consciously switch among the time orientations of past, present, and future. Fitting with their overall psychological profile, individuals with a balanced time perspective might display a range of sustainable attitudes and behaviors.

Beschreibung: The "Berlin Air quality and Ecosystem Research: Local and long-range Impact of anthropogenic and Natural hydrocarbons" (BAERLIN2014) campaign was conducted during the 3 summer months (June–August) of 2014. During this measurement campaign, both stationary and mobile measurements were undertaken to address complementary aims. This paper provides an overview of the stationary measurements and results that were focused on characterization of gaseous and particulate pollution, including source attribution, in the Berlin–Potsdam area, and quantification of the role of natural sources in determining levels of ozone and related gaseous pollutants. Results show that biogenic contributions to ozone and particulate matter are substantial. One indicator for ozone formation, the OH reactivity, showed a 31 % (0.82 ± 0.44 s−1) and 75 % (3.7 ± 0.90 s−1) contribution from biogenic non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) for urban background (2.6 ± 0.68 s−1) and urban park (4.9 ± 1.0 s−1) location, respectively, emphasizing the importance of such locations as sources of biogenic NMVOCs in urban areas. A comparison to NMVOC measurements made in Berlin approximately 20 years earlier generally show lower levels today for anthropogenic NMVOCs. A substantial contribution of secondary organic and inorganic aerosol to PM10 concentrations was quantified. In addition to secondary aerosols, source apportionment analysis of the organic carbon fraction identified the contribution of biogenic (plant-based) particulate matter, as well as primary contributions from vehicles, with a larger contribution from diesel compared to gasoline vehicles, as well as a relatively small contribution from wood burning, linked to measured levoglucosan.

Beschreibung: This paper discusses proposals for tabular standards in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, we focus on Keynes’ proposal for an international tabular standard (ITS) as the gold standard unravelled in the 1930s. The paper explains the origins of Keynes’ ITS proposal which pegged the value of an international reserve to a broad index of primary commodities, weighted in terms of their value in world production. We argue that the ITS should be viewed as an important and enduring component of Keynes’ ideal long-run vision for anchoring the international monetary system, even post-Bretton Woods.

Beschreibung: In four short meditations, approaches to time and the future are explored through both a time and futures lens. A compressed poetic form of expression is used to distil the essence of the processes involved. The shapes emerge in the writing and once discernable they begin to guide the choice of words. Theory becomes a playful activity that draws on a deep and extensive pool of time theory. The first meditation expresses the difficulty for conventional social science to engage with the future. The second depicts temporal relations of modernity that encompass features shared by humanity across the ages. The third piece explores time encoded in nature, money and society. The last meditation engages with approaches to sustainability and indicates the significant differences that arise with the respective standpoints of the present future and future present. It closes the circle back to the first meditation on disciplinary challenges presented by the temporal and engagement with future presents.

Beschreibung: This chapter explores aspects of the relationship between the financial system and resource industries, starting with general criteria for sound investment and an overview of the various materials and resources that need to be distinguished. To this end, the focus is first placed on fossil energy commodities that do not lend themselves to management in a circular economy, before the metals and mining sector and its regulation are presented. The global transformation of energy systems presents an opportunity to phase out a non-circular industry and replace it with one that is characterised less by commodities for consumption and more by commodities for the manufacture of energy conversion equipment and durable investment goods. Combining the energy and mineral resource industries, the impact of the decline of fossil energy industries is discussed, including the implications for international trade, economic activity, public finance and the financial sector. The chapter concludes with the general argument that the financial system is affected by changes in the resource industries and their shift to a circular economy, and that it can facilitate that shift if the political, legal and regulatory framework is right. Finally, a suite of criteria for investment in support of resource sector transformation and the circular economy is proposed.

Beschreibung: This report is intended to provide a review of the relevant governance frameworks currently in place for the management of high seas biodiversity in these regions. The report uses the issues under discussion in the ongoing negotiations for a new legally binding BBNJ agreement under the United Nations, as well as selected Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 targets, as a lens through which to assess progress towards conservation and sustainable use.

Beschreibung: This brief seeks to identify approaches to SSC results assessment led or supported by Governments of the South. It explores how some Southern partners are conducting initiatives to assess the results of SSC and whether and how these initiatives are affecting the way they conduct their SSC. Finally, the brief reflects upon the potential of such initiatives to foster the contribution of South-South cooperation to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development and Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Beschreibung: Focusing on critical aspects of infrastructure, such as energy, this paper argues that African countries, and African cities in particular, need infrastructure that advances both basic needs and industrialization, and avoids a lock-in of unsustainable, high-carbon technologies. G20 countries can promote and support quality of life in African countries by: (1) aligning and cementing the G20 Agenda for Africa with African initiatives, SDGs and the Paris Agreement, (2) mitigating economic risks of climate change through supporting low carbon development pathways in Africa, (3) creating and enabling a level playing field for low carbon technologies, which includes integrated strategies for de-risking renewable energy investments, and (4) supporting smart and sustainable urban planning.

Beschreibung: This handbook offers the first comprehensive, state-of-the-field guide to past weather and climate and their role in human societies. Bringing together dozens of international specialists from the sciences and humanities, this volume describes the methods, sources, and major findings of historical climate reconstruction and impact research. Its chapters take the reader through each key source of past climate and weather information and each technique of analysis; through each historical period and region of the world; through the major topics of climate and history and core case studies; and finally through the history of climate ideas and science. Using clear, non-technical language, The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History serves as a textbook for students, a reference guide for specialists and an introduction to climate history for scholars and interested readers.

Beschreibung: Air pollution in the Kathmandu valley is influenced by a variety of domestic and industrial sources such as garbage and biomass burning, brick kilns, and vehicular emissions. During non-monsoon seasons, the air quality index is considered hazardous, and consequently, air pollution is a leading cause of death in Nepal. During winter and spring of 2017-18, part two of the Nepal Ambient Monitoring and Source Testing Experiment (NAMaSTE-2) involved stationary sampling of gas and aerosol phase species in four locations across Nepal as well as 14 mobile measurement drives throughout the Kathmandu valley, Nepal. This work presents spatially and temporally resolved aerosol mass spectrometry and gas phase measurements from a mobile laboratory capable of high time resolution aerosol composition measurements. Spatially resolved aerosol composition results highlight chemical differences in aerosol due to strong regional sources, topography, and meteorology. For example, aerosol composition in regions with a high concentration of brick kilns had enhanced concentrations of sulfate aerosol, consistent with emission factors measured from brick kilns. Similarly, small towns outside of Kathmandu exhibited strongly elevated concentrations of chloride and organic aerosol due to garbage burning. These results are important for apportionment of the aerosol burden in the valley to their sources, and the consequent reduction of aerosol emissions.

Beschreibung: Inhabitants of Pacific Small Island States are facing multiple socio-ecological pressures and the impacts of global climate change aggravate the situation. In order to reduce present and future vulnerabilities it is necessary to address the causes of such detrimental alterations and to find sustainable ways to cope with present and projected challenges. Studying people’s perspectives and agency, or in other words, their perceptions and behaviour, can help to better understand how sustainable practices can be motivated and can contribute to an increased efficiency of mitigation and adaptation projects. Despite increasing research related to environmental changes and their resulting impacts for the Pacific island region, the breadth of perspectives of local people is often under-represented in science and policy. This thesis therefore illustrates the role and diversity of perceptions that guide human behaviour in the context of addressing environmental challenges. Based on a summary of theoretical considerations three major areas of relevant perceptions have been identified. These include perceptions related to environmental change, coping strategies, and social processes. In a survey study (N=180) perceptions of climate-related environmental changes and ways of addressing resulting impacts have been investigated in Tuvalu, Samoa, and Tonga. The results reveal that the respondents perceive a multitude of alterations and attribute them mainly to irresponsible human behaviour. The perceptions of the intensity of change and the degree of perceived impacts vary within and between island states. A certain fraction of this variance can be explained by geographical and climatic differences between the islands and sociodemographic variables. People’s perspectives on their ability to cope with the impacts on their lives reflect not only the diversity of measures that locals use, but also their will to adapt and the acknowledgement of their own responsibilities. However, the perception of lacking skills, opportunities, and low self-efficacy are likely to hinder effective adaptation. Sustainable ways of adaptation could therefore be encouraged by offering information about effective measures, skills to implement them, and the availability of materials. Here, the study results regarding the expectations that locals have of other actors, such as governments, NGOs, and the church, can be helpful for developing coherent support. The findings could be incorporated by local organizations to a) further identify specific needs of communities, b) work on tailored information about environmental change and effective coping strategies, and c) find ways for approaching and motivating different demographic groups. Thereby, this dissertation could contribute to an enhanced understanding of the complexity of local perspectives on current developments and to advance strategies for a transition to more sustainable lifestyles.

Beschreibung: The implementation of European emission abatement strategies has led to a significant reduction in the emissions of ozone precursors during the last decade. Ground-level ozone is also influenced by meteorological factors such as temperature, which exhibit interannual variability and are expected to change in the future. The impacts of climate change on air quality are usually investigated through air-quality models that simulate interactions between emissions, meteorology and chemistry. Within a multi-model assessment, this study aims to better understand how air-quality models represent the relationship between meteorological variables and surface ozone concentrations over Europe. A multiple linear regression (MLR) approach is applied to observed and modelled time series across 10 European regions in springtime and summertime for the period of 2000–2010 for both models and observations. Overall, the air-quality models are in better agreement with observations in summertime than in springtime and particularly in certain regions, such as France, central Europe or eastern Europe, where local meteorological variables show a strong influence on surface ozone concentrations. Larger discrepancies are found for the southern regions, such as the Balkans, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean basin, especially in springtime. We show that the air-quality models do not properly reproduce the sensitivity of surface ozone to some of the main meteorological drivers, such as maximum temperature, relative humidity and surface solar radiation. Specifically, all air-quality models show more limitations in capturing the strength of the ozone–relative-humidity relationship detected in the observed time series in most of the regions, for both seasons. Here, we speculate that dry-deposition schemes in the air-quality models might play an essential role in capturing this relationship. We further quantify the relationship between ozone and maximum temperature (mo3 − T, climate penalty) in observations and air-quality models. In summertime, most of the air-quality models are able to reproduce the observed climate penalty reasonably well in certain regions such as France, central Europe and northern Italy. However, larger discrepancies are found in springtime, where air-quality models tend to overestimate the magnitude of the observed climate penalty.

Beschreibung: The background, purpose, and design of this special section are briefly explained in this introductory article. Three aspects emerged from the articles in this special section and are highlighted to provide a frame of reference for the reader: (1) a paradigm shift towards adaptive and integrative disaster risk governance; (2) a framework that situates adaptive and integrative risk governance in the context of transformation toward sustainability; and (3) the introduction of “implementation science” as a concept, method, and emerging field that brings natural and social sciences, engineering, and humanities jointly to bear in risk mitigation and adaptation.

Beschreibung: Tenders are a fast spreading instrument to attract and procure new generation capacity from renewable energy sources. However, there is a need for current analysis of experiences as in many countries tenders were introduced only few years ago. The objective of this study is to provide an up-to-date comparison of tender results for wind power and photovoltaics in Brazil, France, Italy and South Africa. We analyze and discuss rates of completion, market concentration and auction prices, based on data and literature research as well as expert interviews. Data on project status shows that rates of on-schedule completion are well below 100% ranging between 14% in Brazil and 41% in South Africa (wind). However, final rates of completion of 100% are possible (South Africa). With exception of France current data suggests cancellation rates of less than 5%. A systematic connection between project cancellations and the instrument of tenders could not be identified. The market share of the five largest owners differs largely between the countries and ranges from 33% (Italy) to 70% (South Africa). Despite the high level in South Africa, the significant oversubscription of tender volumes suggests that free price formation likely was not constrained. Nevertheless, small actors (〈50 MW total capacity) are rare in Brazil and South Africa. For Italy their share cannot be determined due to lack of data. In all countries except Brazil auction prices have continuously fallen by 33% (Italy, wind energy) to 76% (South Africa, photovoltaics). In Brazil, the auction price increased from auction round eight to 14 from 50% to 85% of the first auction price. However, auction prices are highly dependent on factors outside of the support scheme of tenders (e.g. interest rates), so that their evolution and level are not a suitable indicator to determine whether tenders lead to minimal support costs.

Beschreibung: Education is essential for economic and human development. The effectiveness of education governance, however, is severely inhibited by the condition of (limited) statehood. This chapter sets out to present an overview of the specific characteristics that define education governance, how its effectiveness is assessed, who the main actors are and how they and their interplay strengthens or inhibits education effectiveness in areas of limited statehood (ALS). Empirically, the chapter mainly draws upon sub-Saharan Africa as a region that is prone to exhibit ALS. After providing an overview of empirical findings on the effectiveness of the activities of state and non-state actors—and their joint activities—in ALS, the chapter concludes by formulating policy recommendations for increasing education effectiveness under conditions of limited statehood.

Beschreibung: Risk perception differs from scientific or statistical assessment of risks. More than reflecting probability and magnitude, risk perception also includes aspects such as voluntariness of risk, possibility of personal control, or familiarity. It is also based on intuitive processes of making inferences, social values, and cultural beliefs. They follow specific patterns of semantic images and facilitate judgments about acceptability. Risk perceptions should not be seen as irrational responses to complex phenomena but rather as indicators for individual and societal concerns that require management and communication action.

Beschreibung: The evaluation and intercomparison of air quality models is key to reducing model errors and uncertainty. The projects AQMEII3 and EURODELTA-Trends, in the framework of the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants and the Task Force on Measurements and Modelling, respectively (both task forces under the UNECE Convention on the Long Range Transport of Air Pollution, LTRAP), have brought together various regional air quality models to analyze their performance in terms of air concentrations and wet deposition, as well as to address other specific objectives. This paper jointly examines the results from both project communities by intercomparing and evaluating the deposition estimates of reduced and oxidized nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) in Europe simulated by 14 air quality model systems for the year 2010. An accurate estimate of deposition is key to an accurate simulation of atmospheric concentrations. In addition, deposition fluxes are increasingly being used to estimate ecological impacts. It is therefore important to know by how much model results differ and how well they agree with observed values, at least when comparison with observations is possible, such as in the case of wet deposition. This study reveals a large variability between the wet deposition estimates of the models, with some performing acceptably (according to previously defined criteria) and others underestimating wet deposition rates. For dry deposition, there are also considerable differences between the model estimates. An ensemble of the models with the best performance for N wet deposition was made and used to explore the implications of N deposition in the conservation of protected European habitats. Exceedances of empirical critical loads were calculated for the most common habitats at a resolution of 100 × 100m2 within the Natura 2000 network, and the habitats with the largest areas showing exceedances are determined. Moreover, simulations with reduced emissions in selected source areas indicated a fairly linear relationship between reductions in emissions and changes in the deposition rates of N and S. An approximate 20% reduction in N and S deposition in Europe is found when emissions at a global scale are reduced by the same amount. European emissions are by far the main contributor to deposition in Europe, whereas the reduction in deposition due to a decrease in emissions in North America is very small and confined to the western part of the domain. Reductions in European emissions led to substantial decreases in the protected habitat areas with critical load exceedances (halving the exceeded area for certain habitats), whereas no change was found, on average, when reducing North American emissions in terms of average values per habitat.

Beschreibung: The Paris Agreement has been hailed as a victory for multilateralism. However, collective efforts to reach the Paris goals are presently insufficient to protect those adversely affected by the impacts of climate change who stand to suffer loss and damage (L&D). This calls for an assessment to what extent those most vulnerable and adversely affected by climate impacts can shape decisions on L&D. Taking an international law perspective, the article finds that despite a strong normative demand, the mandate and procedures for participation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are presently insufficient to lend an effective voice to affected communities in the negotiations. The article considers the suitability and political feasibility of the affected persons’ organisations (APO) model of representation in the climate regime, specifically in the context of the L&D negotiations. It argues that this model could in principle be useful to enhance the participation of communities vulnerable to and affected by L&D. However, the article finds that in order for the APO model to become a political reality in the specific context of L&D, conceptual challenges of who is affected need to be addressed and a shift in the framing of L&D is required.

Beschreibung: Air pollution resulting from rapid urbanization and associated human activities in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal has been leading to serious public health concerns over the past 2 decades. These concerns led to a multinational field campaign SusKat-ABC (Sustainable atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley – Atmospheric Brown Clouds) that measured different trace gases, aerosols and meteorological parameters in the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions during December 2012 to June 2013 to understand local- to regional-scale processes influencing air quality of the Kathmandu Valley. This study provides information about the regional distribution of ozone and some precursor gases using simultaneous in situ measurements from a SusKat-ABC supersite at Bode, Nepal, and two Indian sites: a high-altitude site, Nainital, located in the central Himalayan region and a low-altitude site, Pantnagar, located in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). The diurnal variations at Bode showed a daytime buildup in O3 while CO shows morning and evening peaks. Similar variations (with lower levels) were also observed at Pantnagar but not at Nainital. Several events of hourly ozone levels exceeding 80ppbv were also observed at Bode. The CO levels showed a decrease from their peak level of about 2000ppbv in January to about 680ppbv in June at Bode. The hourly mean ozone and CO levels showed a strong negative correlation during winter (r2 = 0.82 in January and r2 = 0.71 in February), but this negative correlation gradually becomes weaker, with the lowest value in May (r2 = 0.12). The background O3 and CO mixing ratios at Bode were estimated to be about 14 and 325ppbv, respectively. The rate of change of ozone at Bode showed a more rapid increase ( ∼ 17ppbvh−1) during morning than the decrease in the evening (5–6ppbvh−1), suggesting the prevalence of a semi-urban environ. The lower CO levels during spring suggest that regional transport also contributes appreciably to springtime ozone enhancement in the Kathmandu Valley on top of the local in situ ozone production. We show that regional pollution resulting from agricultural crop residue burning in northwestern IGP led to simultaneous increases in O3 and CO levels at Bode and Nainital during the first week of May 2013. A biomass-burning-induced increase in ozone and related gases was also confirmed by a global model and balloon-borne observations over Nainital. A comparison of surface ozone variations and composition of light non-methane hydrocarbons among different sites indicated the differences in emission sources of the Kathmandu Valley and the IGP. These results highlight that it is important to consider regional sources in air quality management of the Kathmandu Valley.

Beschreibung: Here, expert authors delineate approaches that can support both decision makers as well as their concerned populations in overcoming unwarranted fears and in elaborating policies based on scientific evidence. Four exemplary focus areas were chosen for in-depth review, namely: - The scientific basis of risk management - Risk management in the area of environmental and ecological policy - Risk management in radiation medicine - Risk management in context with digitalization and robotics General as well as specific recommendations are summarized in a memorandum. Fundamental thoughts on the topic are presented in the introductory part of the book. The idea for and contents of the book were developed at a workshop on “Sustainable Risk Management: How to manage risks in a sensible and responsible manner?” held in Feldafing at Lake Starnberg (Germany) on April 14 to 16, 2016. The book offers important information and advice for scientists, entrepreneurs, administrators and politicians.

Beschreibung: Multi-stakeholder participation (MSP) has become a central feature in several institutions and processes of global governance. Those who promote them trust that these arrangements can advance the deliberative quality of international institutions, and thereby improve the democratic quality, legitimacy and effectiveness of both the institutional landscape, as well as decisions made within it. This paper employs a heuristic framework to analyze the deliberative quality of MSP. Specifically, it applies Dryzek’s deliberative systems framework to the case of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The assessment shows that the CFS improves the deliberative quality of food security governance by including and facilitating the transmission of discourses from the public to the empowered spaces. However, the deliberative quality of CFS could be higher with stronger accountability mechanisms in place, more meta-deliberation and adoption of CFS outcomes at national and local levels. Reflecting on the limitations of using this heuristic framework to assess MSP, we conclude that the analysis would benefit from more explicit consideration of different forms of power that are part of the social relations between actors involved in such settings. By proposing this analytical approach, we expect to advance a heuristic framework for assessing deliberation in an international context of the growing importance of MSP in sustainability and global governance.

Beschreibung: What are the main challenges of capacity development in the marine context, and what are possible approaches to meet them? During the first UN Ocean Conference, a consortium of different collaborating institutions representing the scientific community, international development cooperation and civil society invited participants to exchange their experiences on enhancing capacities for the sustainable management and the use of the ocean and its resources. During the side event “Capacity development for sustainable ocean governance: Lessons learned from academia, policy and practice”, participants discussed the relevance of capacity development for achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG14 – Life below water). Being practitioners in the field of capacity development themselves, participants contributed valuable insights according to their own experiences. This document summarizes the main points of the discussion: it briefly introduces the different concepts of capacity development and elaborates the main challenges and possible approaches according to the contributions made during the side event. In a last step, the document summarizes the conclusions drawn from the participants’ exchange of experiences.

Beschreibung: Puzzled by how geographical changes in the Arctic might cause changes in state behavior the authors of this article have been inspired to return to the roots of geopolitical reasoning. By combining insights from the intellectual roots of the geopolitical tradition with empirical data on geographical changes as well as policy changes in the Arctic today, we investigate the degree to which geopolitics, in the sense of geography influencing politics, is still a useful approach in the discipline of International Relations (IR). In limiting our primary focus to the state level, and investigating the period since the turn of the millennium, this article seeks to develop new knowledge concerning if, how, and to what extent geography matters in international politics. Our empirical investigation indicates that geographical changes in the Arctic have indeed had an effect on power relations among several states. Overall, this article shows that geography is an important factor in IR in the sense of enabling or empowering state actors. However, while it appears that physical geography is a possible factor in the cases analyzed to explain changes in identified power potentials, it does not always account for these changes on its own. Economic, political, legal, and historical factors also play a role in the observed power shifts.

Beschreibung: In an international context, auctions are becoming increasingly common as a support scheme for renewable energies. In this case study, we analyze the Brazilian experience with wind power in the period from 2009 to 2015 with regard to the development of auction prices, rates of completion and market concentration. Inflation-adjusted auction prices in Brazil decreased by 54% until the end of 2012, before subsequently growing again to 87% of the first round price. The declines in prices can be attributed to the increasing experience of actors and the increasing level of competition among project developers, investors and turbine manufacturers. Various factors played a role in the price increase, including both regulatory changes such as a modification of grid connection terms, as well as external factors such as the falling value of the Brazilian real against the US dollar. Only 14% of wind projects from the first eight auction rounds were completed on schedule. The reasons cited for this include delayed grid connections, delays resulting from environmental feasibility permits, supply bottlenecks for wind power plants, the bankruptcy of the turbine manufacturer IMPSA or delayed financing approval by the Brazilian development bank BNDES. However, the number of project cancellations is low to date, so that a final rate of completion of between 89% and 98% is likely to be achieved. The number of owners of wind power projects has increased from 16 to 49 actors. The market share of the five largest owners has declined from nearly 60% to 37%. The ratio of pre-qualified to awarded capacity was consistently at over five, and the Herfindahl Index suggests an unconcentrated market. These findings indicate that the level of competition is sufficient to ensure free price formation in the market. The owners are primarily large, financially strong project planners, energy providers or investment firms.

Beschreibung: This chapter analyses two groups of non-profit external non-state governance actors that are active in areas of limited statehood (ALS): international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). After some examples of the collective goods these actors provide in contexts of limited statehood, their effectiveness is assessed in terms of output, outcome, and impact. It is found that in ALS, the activities of MSPs and INGOs can become part of the solution, but may also exacerbate existing problems. Empirical research shows that it is already demanding for INGOs and MSPs to produce good output in ALS, let alone broader impact. The analysis provides insights on the conditions under which INGOs and MSPs can—and cannot—successfully provide governance in ALS and how their activities impact limited statehood itself. Finally, the findings are discussed against the background of recent trends affecting governance by external state and non-state actors in ALS.

Beschreibung: Climate change poses a range of current and future health risks that health professionals need to understand, track, and manage. However, conventional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as practiced in the health sector, including the use of indicators, does not adequately serve this purpose. Improved indicators are needed in three broad categories: (1) vulnerability and exposure to climate-related hazards; (2) current impacts and projected risks; and (3) adaptation processes and health system resilience. These indicators are needed at the population level and at the health systems level (including clinical care and public health). Selected indicators must be sensitive, valid, and useful. And they must account for uncertainties about the magnitude and pattern of climate change; the broad range of upstream drivers of climate-sensitive health outcomes; and the complexities of adaptation itself, including institutional learning and knowledge management to inform iterative risk management. Barriers and constraints to implementing such indicators must be addressed, and lessons learned need to be added to the evidence base. This paper describes an approach to climate and health indicators, including characteristics of the indicators, implementation, and research needs.

Beschreibung: Having been enmeshed in modernity’s quest for innovative progress on one hand, and in attempts at fundamental critique and warning on the other, academic research nowadays struggles both with a positive conceptual framing of sustainability transformations and with redefining its own roles vis-à-vis policy formulation and societal debate. Expectations towards “transformative research” partially involve the necessity to stronger contribute to societally-defined normative goals. This, however, has the potential to blur the demarcation of research as an independent functional system. Addressing this challenge, the headings of “transdisciplinarity” and “co-creation” promise renewed relevance through procedural modesty, but tend to do so at the expense of substantial goal articulations. The corresponding science society narratives either leave the articulation of sustainability goals to real-world ‘processes,’ thus deferring them into nebulous futures and negating a distinct normative contribution of science itself (beyond process facilitation). Or they simply revert to environmentalist notions of danger prevention, as in the planetary boundaries concept – with limited communicative impact in local policy arenas. In our contribution, we develop a typology of different understandings of transformative research based on explicit and implicit narrative elements of sustainability discourses. If sustainability research were to truly – and not only rhetorically – embrace the term “transformation,” it would have to reflexively seek to reposition itself between semantics of danger prevention and innovation, the latter being a precondition for any substantially loaded transformation concept. This, in itself, is hard enough with hindsight not only to the normative tensions between precaution and adaptation, conservation and betterment, that inevitable arise in almost every developmental context; and it becomes even more difficult when wanting to maintain a productive relationship with actual policy deliberations. To this adds the third, and decisive, key element of modern sustainability discourse: justice. It makes for good stories – including heroes and villains – and seems therefore an ideal candidate for framing sustainability communication. Its semantics, on the other hand, may cause unease for those who wish to be a counterpart to “all relevant stakeholders.” Our conceptual sketch is based on interviews and qualitative discourse analysis (MAXQDA) within our own sustainability research institute and within broader domains of marine and urban mobility policies. We critically reflect on structural elements for narratives of sustainability, such as actor constellations, purpose-agency-ratios, and metaphors, thereby covering substantial parts of the sustainability discourse.

Beschreibung: Climate change is one of the largest challenges of our time. One of the major causes of anthropogenic climate change, carbon dioxide, also leads to ocean acidification. Left unaddressed, these two challenges will alter ecosystems and fundamentally change life, as we know it. Under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and through the Paris Agreement, there is a commitment to keep global temperature increase to well below two degrees Celsius. This will require a variety of strategies including increased renewable power generation and broad scale electrification, increased energy efficiency, and carbon-negative technologies. We believe that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is necessary to prove that a technology could contribute to the mitigation of environmental impacts and that Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) will show how the technology could be competitively delivered in the market. Together the guidelines for LCA and TEA that are presented in this document are a valuable toolkit for promoting carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technology development.

Beschreibung: Evaluation research can provide policy advice on the basis of evidence that it is increasingly expected to rely upon. At the same time, policy advice itself can take on the role of the evaluandum and become the very object of evaluation. Both these dimensions of the evaluation-advice interface merit attention. However, while there are criteria for the evaluation of policy advice, the use of evaluation for policy advice remains a black box, as this is part of less formal communication and consultation. This notwithstanding, this article will offer an introduction to the various reasons for – as well as various contexts of – evaluation’s increasing importance in policy advice.

Beschreibung: Lately, black carbon (BC) has received significant attention due to its climate-warming properties and adverse health effects. Nevertheless, long-term observations in urban areas are scarce, most likely because BC monitoring is not required by environmental legislation. This, however, handicaps the evaluation of air quality models which can be used to assess the effectiveness of policy measures which aim to reduce BC concentrations. Here, we present a new dataset of atmospheric BC measurements from Germany constructed from over six million measurements at over 170 stations. Data covering the period between 1994 and 2014 were collected from twelve German Federal States and the Federal Environment Agency, quality checked and harmonized into a database with comprehensive metadata. The final data in original time resolution are available for download (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.881173). Though assembled in a consistent way, the dataset is characterized by differences in (a) measurement methodologies for determining evolved carbon and optical absorption, (b) covered time periods, and (c) temporal resolutions that ranged from half hourly to measurements every 6th day. Usage and interpretation of this dataset thus requires a careful consideration of these differences. Our analysis focuses on 2009, the year with the largest data coverage with one single methodology, as well as on the relative changes in long-term trends over ten years. For 2009, we find that BC concentrations at traffic sites were at least twice as high as at urban background, industrial and rural sites. Weekly cycles are most prominent at traffic stations, however, the presence of differences in concentrations during the week and on weekends at other station types suggests that traffic plays an important role throughout the full network. Generally higher concentrations and weaker weekly cycles during the winter months point towards the influence of other sources such as domestic heating. Regarding the long-term trends, advanced statistical techniques allow us to account for instrumentation changes and to separate seasonal and long-term changes in our dataset. Analysis shows a downward trend in BC at nearly all locations and in all conditions, with a high level of confidence for the period of 2005–2014. In depth analysis indicates that background BC is decreasing slowly, while the occurrences of high concentrations are decreasing more rapidly. In summary, legislation – both in Europe and locally – to reduce particulate emissions and indirectly BC appear to be working, based on this analysis. Adverse human health and climate impacts are likely to be diminished because of the improvements in air quality.

Beschreibung: In economics as well as environmental policy, Economic policy instruments for the environment (EPI) are typical and widely used measures to address ecological problems. However, very little is known about teaching and learning EPIs. This paper investigates qualitatively different ways in which teacher trainees of Economics in two German universities assess typical EPIs and compares them to disciplinary criteria. Data has been gained in group discussions. The paper applies the phenomenographic and documentary method. Teacher trainees’ conceptions are found to only partially represent means-end-relations typical for Economics. Furthermore, important differences between teacher trainees’ conceptions are found depending on the scenario used and the instrument they are evaluating. Based on teacher trainees’ preconceptions and a comprehensive literature review of the relevant research from Ecological, Environmental and Behavioural Economics, I derive implications for teaching, primarily for teachers, but adaptable to suit for other students as well.

Beschreibung: Climate change is expected to alter global, regional and local meteorological conditions and as a result, the changes in the climate system will play an essential role on future air quality. Tropospheric ozone is considered one of the most harmful pollutants and it is strongly dependent on weather conditions. Therefore, understanding the impacts of near-term climate change on ozone concentrations is crucial for developing effective air quality policies. This dissertation focuses on the analysis of the influence of synoptic and local meteorological conditions on ground-level ozone over Europe and it provides a comprehensive spatial characterization of the most important meteorological key-driving factors of surface ozone concentrations over the whole domain. For this purpose two approaches are proposed: i) a weather types classification and ii) regression methods. Firstly, large-scale atmospheric circulation is examined through a weather types classification, implemented grid cell-by-grid cell over Europe. The ability of a suite of global climate models to reproduce realistic synoptic patterns in the present climate is evaluated against two reanalysis products. Additionally, the association between weather types and anomalies of maximum and minimum temperatures is investigated. In general, the models are able to capture realistic synoptic patterns when compared to the reanalyses. However, some limitations to reproduce the frequencies of certain weather types, such as low flow conditions over South Europe in summer and autumn are found. The projected changes in the frequency of weather types under future climate scenarios reveal an increase of anticyclonic days and warmer conditions affecting the British Isles in summer, and more westerlies and consequently mild winter conditions over Central Europe. As a result of a projected increase of low flow conditions over the Mediterranean basin, stagnant situations would become more frequent, favouring episodes of air pollution. Further analysis indicate that changes in the frequency of weather types represent a minor contribution of the total change of projected European temperatures. Thus, the temperature changes could be attributed to the so-called within-type variations (changes of the weather types themselves). In the context of climate change, that implies that global warming would also affect the characteristics of some weather types over time (i.e., within-type variations) that are associated with warmer temperatures under future conditions. Secondly, the classification of weather types provides an easy physically interpretable framework for assessing the impacts of synoptic conditions on ozone concentrations. A synoptic-regression approach is developed to investigate the effect of both, synoptic and local meteorological conditions on surface ozone over the European domain. It is shown that local meteorological conditions are generally dominant factors influencing surface ozone variability, rather than the synoptic conditions. The results reveal distinctive regional and seasonal patterns of the most influential ozone drivers. In particular, local meteorological conditions have a strong influence over Central and East Europe, where maximum temperature becomes the most important driver of surface ozone in summer and relative humidity along with surface solar radiation in spring. Finally, a multi-model assessment examines the capability of a set of state-of-the-art air quality models to reproduce the observed relationship between meteorological variables and surface ozone. The results show distinctive seasonal and regional performances in the statistical models developed for each dataset (i.e. observations and model outputs). Overall, the air quality models are in better agreement with observations over the regions referred to as internal regions: England, France, Mid-Europe, North Italy and East Europe. On the contrary, they present more limitations over the rest of the regions, referred to as the external regions: Inflow, Scandinavia, Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean and the Balkans. There is a larger meteorological contribution in the internal regions, especially in summer where the local meteorology plays an important role in photochemical processes. A minor meteorological effect is found in the external regions, probably due to a major influence of the dynamical processes that are not captured by the statistical models. Most of the air quality models tend to overestimate the sensitivity to maximum temperature and solar radiation and none of them are able to capture the strength of the observed relationship between ozone and relative humidity appropriately. Here, dry deposition schemes may be a key for the underestimation of such relationship. Further analysis of the slopes of the ozone-temperature relationship indicates that the air quality models capture the observed relationship between ozone and temperature in most of the internal regions in summer, while in spring they overestimate it in most of the European regions.

Beschreibung: Da zu erwarten ist, dass der Klimawandel die globalen, regionalen und kommunalen meteorologischen Zustände verändern wird, werden die Veränderungen des Klimasystems eine wesentliche Rolle in Bezug auf die zukünftig Luftqualität spielen. Troposphärisches Ozon gilt als einer der schädlichsten Schadstoffe und ist stark abhängig von den Wetterbedingungen. Die zeitnahen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels zu verstehen ist daher dringend erforderlich, um eine effektive Luftqualitätspolitik zu entwickeln. Diese Doktorarbeit legt den Schwerpunkt auf die Analyse des Einflusses von synoptischen und kommunalen meteorologischen Zuständen auf bodennahes Ozon in Europa und sie liefert eine umfassende räumliche Charakterisierung der wichtigsten Schlüsselfaktoren der Oberflächen-Ozon-Konzentration auf dem gesamten Gebiet. Zu diesem Zweck werden zwei Ansätze vorgeschlagen: i) eine objektive Wetterlagenklassifikation und ii) Regressionsmethoden. Zunächst wird die großflächige atmosphärische Zirkulation durch eine objektive Wetterlagenklassifikation untersucht – umgesetzt in Form von Gitterzelle zu Gitterzelle in Europa. Es wird ein Vergleich zwischen der Fähigkeit mehrerer globaler Klimamodelle realistisch aussehende synoptische Muster im gegenwärtigen Klima zu reproduzieren einerseits und neuen Darlegungen andererseits aufgestellt und anschließend ausgewertet. Darüber hinaus wird der Zusammenhang zwischen Wetterarten und Anomalien von Maximal- und Mindesttemperaturen untersucht. Im Vergleich mit den neuen Darlegungen können die Modelle im Allgemeinen realistische synoptische Muster erfassen. Allerdings gibt es einige Einschränkungen in der Reproduktion der Frequenzen bestimmter Wetterarten, wie z. B. niedrige Strömungsbedingungen über Südeuropa im Sommer und Herbst. Die prognostizierten Veränderungen bezüglich der Häufigkeit der Wetterarten unter zukünftigen Klimaszenarien zeigen einen Anstieg antizyklonischer Tage und wärmeren Bedingungen, die die britischen Inseln im Sommer beeinflussen, sowie mehrere Westwindzonen, welche folglich mildeWinterbedingungen über Mitteleuropa hervorbringen. Infolge einer prognostizierten Zunahme der niedrigen Strömungsbedingungen über dem Mittelmeerraum würden stagnierende Situationen häufiger vorkommen, was die Folgen der Luftverschmutzung begünstigt. Eine Analyse des Abbaus zur Beurteilung der Auswirkungen der Frequenzänderungen auf die prognostizierten Temperaturen deutet darauf hin, dass Veränderungen in der Häufigkeit derWetterarten einen geringen Beitrag zur Gesamtveränderung der europäischen Temperaturen darstellen. So könnten die Temperaturveränderungen den sogenannten In-Typ-Variationen (selbst Änderungen der Wetterarten) zugeschrieben werden. Im Kontext des Klimawandels bedeutet dies, dass die globale Erwärmung auch die Eigenschaften einiger Wetterarten im Laufe der Zeit beeinflussen würde (d.h. In-Typ-Variationen ), die mit wärmeren Temperaturen unter zukünftigen Bedingungen verbunden sind. Zweitens bietet die Einordnung von Wetterarten einen einfachen physikalisch interpretierbaren Rahmen, um die Auswirkungen von synoptischen Bedingungen auf die Ozonkonzentration zu bewerten. Ein Ansatz der synoptischen Regression wird entwickelt, um die Wirkung von sowohl synoptischen als auch kommunalen meteorologischen Bedingungen auf Oberflächen-Ozon auf europäischem Gebiet zu untersuchen. Es wird gezeigt, dass kommunale meteorologische Bedingungen in der Regel dominierende Faktoren sind, die die Oberflächen-Ozon-Variabilität beeinflussen, und nicht synoptische Bedingungen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen regionale und saisonale Muster der einflussreichsten Ozon Treiber. Die Ozon-Persistenz (vom Vortag) ist auch als Prädiktor enthalten und scheint eine wesentliche Rolle über Südeuropa zu spielen, wohingegen die kommunalen/regionalen meteorologischen Bedingungen einen starken Einfluss auf Mittel- und Osteuropa haben. Besonders die Maximaltemperatur und relative Luftfeuchtigkeit sind der wichtigste Treiber für Oberflächen-Ozon im Sommer zusammen mit Oberflächen-Sonnenstrahlung im Frühling. Der letzte Teil der Doktorarbeit untersucht eine Multimodell-Bewertung der Fähigkeit einer Reihe von hochmodernen Modellen zur Luftqualität, um die beobachtete Beziehung zwischen meteorologischen Variablen und Oberflächen-Ozon zu reproduzieren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen deutliche saisonale und regionale Leistungen der statistischen Modellen, die für jeden Datensatz (d. H. Beobachtungen und Modellausgaben) entwickelt wurden. Insgesamt stehen die Luftqualitätsmodelle in größerer Übereinstimmung zu den Beobachtungen über die Regionen, welche als folgende interne Regionen bezeichnet werden: England, Frankreich, Mitteleuropa, Norditalien und Osteuropa. Dem gegenübergestellt sind Regionen, welche mehr Einschränkungen gegenüber den übrigen Regionen haben. Solche werden als äußere Regionen bezeichnet: Inflow, Skandinavien, die Iberische Halbinsel, das Mittelmeer und die Balkanstaaten. Es gibt einen größeren meteorologischen Beitrag in den internen Regionen, vor allem im Sommer, wo die lokale Meteorologie eine wichtige Rolle bei photochemischen Prozessen spielt. Eine kleinere meteorologische Wirkung findet sich in den äußeren Regionen, vermutlich aufgrund eines großen Einflusses der dynamischen Prozesse, die nicht durch die statistischen Modelle erfasst werden. Die meisten Luftqualitätsmodelle neigen dazu, die Empfindlichkeit gegen Maximaltemperatur und Sonneneinstrahlung zu überschätzen, und keines von ihnen kann die Stärke der beobachteten Wechselwirkung zwischen Ozon und relativer Feuchtigkeit passend erfassen. Hier könnten trockene Ablagerungsschemata ein Lösungsansatz für die Unterschätzung einer solchen Beziehung bieten. Eine weitere Analyse des Anstiegs der Beziehung zwischen Ozon und Temperatur deutet darauf hin, dass die Luftqualitätsmodelle die beobachtete Beziehung zwischen Ozon und Temperatur in den meisten internen Regionen im Sommer einfangen, während sie diese im Frühjahr sie in den meisten europäischen Regionen überschätzen.

Beschreibung: Blog post on Oxfam Blog Views & Voices. Analysis and debate on international development issues

Beschreibung: This report discusses the use of country systems by Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), focusing on social and environmental systems. It presents a brief history of the emergence of the country systems approach and the building of a global consensus on the need for greater use of country systems, within an agenda of development effectiveness. The study compares the country systems approach in social and environmental safeguards of seven DFIs: six multilateral banks and a national development bank. For each of the analysed institutions, the study sought to unravel their commitment to make greater use of country systems for the assessment and mitigation of social and environmental impacts, as well as the objectives, governance and instruments for the integration and strengthening of such systems. The study also focuses on the system of a specific country: Brazil. The current status of Brazilian social and environmental governance was assessed based on five case studies, encompassing different types of projects in the energy and transportation/logistics sectors. The analysis comprises rules, policies and practices applicable to each case. Lastly, following the lead of the young institution set up by the BRICS, the New Development Bank (NDB), the study discusses challenges and opportunities for greater use of country systems by the entity and how it could improve the design and implementation of innovative solutions for the strengthening of social and environmental country systems under a South-South Cooperation (SSC) perspective. The analyses concluded that initiatives aiming at the use and strengthening of social and environmental country systems by DFIs have yielded unsatisfactory results due to the presence of four big challenges: i) Inadequacies between the planning/financial instruments and the measures for the strengthening of national systems; ii) Limitations in the process for dealing with setbacks in the national system; iii) Failures in the methodologies for measuring the benefits and results of the use of country systems; and iv) Incoherencies and additional risks in situations in which there are financial intermediaries. The biggest challenge for the NDB is to not confine itself in a restrictive view of its own potential role, as a development partner, of ensuring a high level of social and environmental protection, in proper balance with the principles of sovereignty and horizontality. In this sense, the unique characteristics of NDB, such as its “lean” policy framework and its commitment to sovereignty, are, at the same time, points of concern and a unique opportunity for the development of innovative methods and instruments for the assessment of the capacity of clients to abide by their own commitments, and to put in motion effective solutions to overcome weaknesses in order to enable a development based on projects capable of creating transformational changes and that are truly sustainable.

Beschreibung: Several studies have reported the transport of short-lived climate forcers/pollutants (SLCF/P) from the highly polluted areas in southern Asia (e.g., the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayan foothills) to the Himalayas, with significant implications for the global and regional climate, crop yields, and human health. In this work, we perform a comparison of nearly three years (February 2013–October 2015) of simultaneous black carbon (BC) and surface ozone (O3) measurements at two sites in Nepal, viz., Paknajol (1380 m a.s.l.), in the Kathmandu Valley, and the WMO/GAW global station Nepal Climate Observatory-Pyramid (NCO-P, 5079 m a.s.l.), near the base camp of Mt. Everest. The two sites are only 150 km apart and are characterized by different situations: While the Kathmandu Valley is one of the regional urban “hot spots” for concerns related to air pollution, NCO-P is representative of the background conditions of the high Himalayas and the free troposphere. Therefore, the possible role played by emissions occurring in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) of the Kathmandu Valley in influencing the variability in SLCF/P at NCO-P was investigated. BC and O3 concentrations at NCO-P showed a linear correlation with the modeled PBL height over the Kathmandu urban area, providing evidence that the anthropogenic emissions occurring within the Kathmandu PBL could affect the variability in BC and O3 at NCO-P. Furthermore, when introducing an additional constraint into the analysis (viz., back-trajectories), we show that on days when air mass transport between the two measurement sites was observed (10% of the period), at least 22% and 16% of BC and O3 variability at NCO-P can be explained by concurrent variability in SLCF/P over the Kathmandu Valley.

Beschreibung: On June 19, 2015, following a long period of preparation, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution A/69/L.65: 65 “Development of an international legally-binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction”. A preparatory committee will develop draft recommendations in 2016 and 2017. The proposed new instrument will have important implications for the areas beyond national jurisdiction, including the Central Arctic Ocean and therefore for the Arctic governance regime overall. Key components of the “package” of measures discussed during the sessions of the Working Group were area-based management tools, including MPAs; marine genetic resources, including questions related to the sharing of benefits; environmental impact assessments and capacity-building and technology transfer. The potential implication of such a new legal instrument on areas beyond national jurisdiction in the Arctic will be manifold. They will affect shipping and other marine operations. Arctic nations have expressed initial views on the proposed measures but it will in the end be a decision of the international community as a whole to decide on the details of the new Implementing Agreement which will then provide a binding regime for all High Seas areas, including the Central Arctic Ocean.

Beschreibung: Mandates to execute ecosystem-based management exist but are not implemented sufficiently enough to reap the benefits of a growing blue economy.

Beschreibung: A gridded, geographically extended weather type classification has been developed based on the Jenkinson–Collison (JC) classification system and used to evaluate the representation of weather types over Europe in a suite of climate model simulations. To this aim, a set of models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) is compared with the circulation from two reanalysis products. Furthermore, we examine seasonal changes between simulated frequencies of weather types at present and future climate conditions. The models are in reasonably good agreement with the reanalyses, but some discrepancies occur in cyclonic days being overestimated over North, and underestimated over South Europe, while anticyclonic situations were overestimated over South, and underestimated over North Europe. Low flow conditions were generally underestimated, especially in summer over South Europe, and Westerly conditions were generally overestimated. The projected frequencies of weather types in the late twenty-first century suggest an increase of Anticyclonic days over South Europe in all seasons except summer, while Westerly days increase over North and Central Europe, particularly in winter. We find significant changes in the frequency of Low flow conditions and the Easterly type that become more frequent during the warmer seasons over Southeast and Southwest Europe, respectively. Our results indicate that in winter the Westerly type has significant impacts on positive anomalies of maximum and minimum temperature over most of Europe. Except in winter, the warmer temperatures are linked to Easterlies, Anticyclonic and Low Flow conditions, especially over the Mediterranean area. Furthermore, we show that changes in the frequency of weather types represent a minor contribution of the total change of European temperatures, which would be mainly driven by changes in the temperature anomalies associated with the weather types themselves.

Beschreibung: The global electronics industry has faced pressure from diversity standards and regulations such as RoHS, WEEE, and REACH, among others. Therefore, electronics firms are striving to implement the triple bottom line (TBL) in their real practices to attain the co-benefits for stakeholders. However, to assess the firms’ performance, there is a lack of a hierarchical structure to consider the interrelationships among these co-benefits. Hence, the objective of this study is to develop a precise TBL structure to assist firms in identifying the key practices to attain the co-benefits. There are three notable results: 1. there are nine aspects of the hierarchical structure, in contrast to the original TBL framework; 2. the hierarchical structure offers precise guidelines for firm practices; and 3. the proposed hybrid method is employed to address the co-benefits the industry seeks to attain. This study provides a theoretical basis for enhancing the understanding of co-benefits and identifies a precise way to guide firms to achieve the co-benefits of the TBL.

Beschreibung: Trends are predicting a further 'industrial revolution' based on digitalisation. The industry has always had an influence on the sustainable development and it, therefore, seems essential to better understand and monitor the transformations in the industry from a sustainability science perspective. This short study intends to provide a starting point for research focused specifically on the environmental dimension of the triple bottom line. Based on a survey conducted among 100 participants from companies and research institutions and complemented by two semi-structured interviews, this study provides the first set of ideas and insights. Our results suggest that digitalisation has the potential to positively affect the environmental dimension of a sustainable development. However, the overall sustainability of digitalised industry has to receive more attention from researchers as well as from companies, in order to better understand and quantify this potential, and avoid a mere problem shifting as well as rebound effects.

Beschreibung: Space charge measurements under operating conditions bring useful information on the behavior of the insulating material at high voltage and low temperature. Here we present the results of space charge measurements with the pressure-wave-propagation method for various electrode materials.

Beschreibung: This study quantifies the present-day global and regional distributions (2010–2014) and trends (2000–2014) for five ozone metrics relevant for short-term and long-term human exposure. These metrics, calculated by the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report, are: 4th highest daily maximum 8-hour ozone (4MDA8); number of days with MDA8 〉 70 ppb (NDGT70), SOMO35 (annual Sum of Ozone Means Over 35 ppb) and two seasonally averaged metrics (3MMDA1; AVGMDA8). These metrics were explored at ozone monitoring sites worldwide, which were classified as urban or non-urban based on population and nighttime lights data. Present-day distributions of 4MDA8 and NDGT70, determined predominantly by peak values, are similar with highest levels in western North America, southern Europe and East Asia. For the other three metrics, distributions are similar with North–South gradients more prominent across Europe and Japan. Between 2000 and 2014, significant negative trends in 4MDA8 and NDGT70 occur at most US and some European sites. In contrast, significant positive trends are found at many sites in South Korea and Hong Kong, with mixed trends across Japan. The other three metrics have similar, negative trends for many non-urban North American and some European and Japanese sites, and positive trends across much of East Asia. Globally, metrics at many sites exhibit non-significant trends. At 59% of all sites there is a common direction and significance in the trend across all five metrics, whilst 4MDA8 and NDGT70 have a common trend at ~80% of all sites. Sensitivity analysis shows AVGMDA8 trends differ with averaging period (warm season or annual). Trends are unchanged at many sites when a 1995–2014 period is used; although fewer sites exhibit non-significant trends. Over the longer period 1970–2014, most Japanese sites exhibit positive 4MDA8/SOMO35 trends. Insufficient data exist to characterize ozone trends for the rest of Asia and other world regions.

Beschreibung: India is currently experiencing degraded air quality, and future economic development will lead to challenges for air quality management. Scenarios of sectoral emissions of fine particulate matter and its precursors were developed and evaluated for 2015–2050, under specific pathways of diffusion of cleaner and more energy-efficient technologies. The impacts of individual source sectors on PM2.5 concentrations were assessed through systematic simulations of spatially and temporally resolved particulate matter concentrations, using the GEOS-Chem model, followed by population-weighted aggregation to national and state levels. We find that PM2.5 pollution is a pan-India problem, with a regional character, and is not limited to urban areas or megacities. Under present-day emissions, levels in most states exceeded the national PM2.5 annual standard (40 µg m−3). Sources related to human activities were responsible for the largest proportion of the present-day population exposure to PM2.5 in India. About 60 % of India's mean population-weighted PM2.5 concentrations come from anthropogenic source sectors, while the remainder are from other sources, windblown dust and extra-regional sources. Leading contributors are residential biomass combustion, power plant and industrial coal combustion and anthropogenic dust (including coal fly ash, fugitive road dust and waste burning). Transportation, brick production and distributed diesel were other contributors to PM2.5. Future evolution of emissions under regulations set at current levels and promulgated levels caused further deterioration of air quality in 2030 and 2050. Under an ambitious prospective policy scenario, promoting very large shifts away from traditional biomass technologies and coal-based electricity generation, significant reductions in PM2.5 levels are achievable in 2030 and 2050. Effective mitigation of future air pollution in India requires adoption of aggressive prospective regulation, currently not formulated, for a three-pronged switch away from (i) biomass-fuelled traditional technologies, (ii) industrial coal-burning and (iii) open burning of agricultural residue. Future air pollution is dominated by industrial process emissions, reflecting larger expansion in industrial, rather than residential energy demand. However, even under the most active reductions envisioned, the 2050 mean exposure, excluding any impact from windblown mineral dust, is estimated to be nearly 3 times higher than the WHO Air Quality Guideline.

Beschreibung: Tropospheric ozone and particulate matter affect human health and cause vegetation stress, dysfunction and damages. In this study we investigate the effect of increasing urban vegetation i.e. tree species on atmospheric chemistry, a potential urban management strategy to counteract high levels of local pollutants such as ozone, OH and PM10 caused by e.g. traffic. We use an extended version of an atmospheric chemistry box model including detailed gas-phase chemistry, mixing layer height variation and secondary organic aerosol calculations based on observations for Berlin, Germany. It is shown to accurately simulate the observed ozone volume mixing ratios during the intensive measurement period in July 2014 (BAERLIN2014) if basic parameters such as nitrogen oxides, meteorological conditions, PM10 concentrations as well as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are considered as 1 h resolved datasets. Based on this setup the effects of changing present day vegetation mixture by 24 different relevant tree species and of urban greening is tested to elucidate benefits and drawbacks in order to support future urban planning. While the present day vegetation causes boundary layer ozone to decline slightly at 35 °C, individual tree types alter the ozone production rate and concentration as well as the secondary organic aerosol mass in different ways. Our results suggest that trees intensively emitting isoprene such as black locust, European oak and poplar result in higher ozone and total PM10 concentrations than at present, while tree species emitting primarily monoterpenes such as beech, magnolia and wayfaring trees yield less of both. This is in line with the similar behaviour of OH concentration and new particle formation rates. Thus, for future urban planning including urban greening, consideration of the beneficial and harmful aspects of tree species need to ensure that citizens benefit from and are not being negatively affected by climate adaptation strategies.

Beschreibung: Green infrastructures play an essential role in urban planning, namely with their potential to reduce the impact from air pollution episodes together with extreme weather events. This chapter focuses on the assessment of green infrastructures’ benefits on current and future microclimate and air quality patterns in Porto’s urban area (Portugal). The effects of green infrastructures on flow dynamics are evaluated for the baseline scenarios by means of numerical and physical simulations, using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model VADIS and the wind tunnel of the University of Aveiro. The baseline morphological (BM) scenario focuses on the current morphological characteristics of Porto’s urban area, while a baseline green (BG) scenario comprises the replacement of built-up areas by green areas and parks. In addition, the benefits of green infrastructures on air quality are assessed for the baseline and under future climate scenarios. The air quality simulations focus on particulate matter, one of the most critical air pollutants with severe impacts on human health. For the BM scenario, the simulated concentrations are compared with hourly averaged PM10 concentrations measured during a weekday at the air quality station located within the study domain.

Beschreibung: The principles of responsibility and accountability have increasingly become a significant concept for the political capability to act independently and make decisions without superior authorization.

Beschreibung: A system for source attribution of tropospheric ozone produced from both NOx and volatile organic compound (VOC) precursors is described, along with its implementation in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 1.2.2 using CAM4. The user can specify an arbitrary number of tag identities for each NOx or VOC species in the model, and the tagging system rewrites the model chemical mechanism and source code to incorporate tagged tracers and reactions representing these tagged species, as well as ozone produced in the stratosphere. If the user supplies emission files for the corresponding tagged tracers, the model will produce tagged ozone tracers which represent the contribution of each of the tag identities to the modelled total tropospheric ozone. Our tagged tracers preserve Ox. The size of the tagged chemical mechanism scales linearly with the number of specified tag identities. Separate simulations are required for NOx and VOC tagging, which avoids the sharing of tag identities between NOx and VOC species. Results are presented and evaluated for both NOx and VOC source attribution. We show that northern hemispheric surface ozone is dominated year-round by anthropogenic emissions of NOx, but that the mix of corresponding VOC precursors changes over the course of the year; anthropogenic VOC emissions contribute significantly to surface ozone in winter–spring, while biogenic VOCs are more important in summer. The system described here can provide important diagnostic information about modelled ozone production, and could be used to construct source–receptor relationships for tropospheric ozone.

Beschreibung: The series of the Yamal 2040 Scenario Workshops is a part of the international research project “BlueAction – Arctic Impact on Weather and Climate” funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. This project aims to evaluate the impact of a changing Arctic on northern hemisphere weather and climate. Blue-Action brings together 120 experts from over 40 organizations in 17 countries most of whom are climate scientists dealing with improvement of existing and development of new techniques that will enable robust and reliable forecasting of weather and hazardous climate events in the Arctic and over the northern hemisphere. However, Blue-Action is not limited to natural science’ goals alone. As a final result, the project aims to improve the safety and wellbeing of people in the Arctic and across the northern hemisphere by reducing risks associated with a changing climate and Arctic operations like resource exploitation, and to support evidence-based decision-making by policymakers worldwide. To achieve this, Blue- Action takes a transdisciplinary approach, bridging scientific understandings of Arctic climate, weather and risk management research with key rights- and stakeholder knowledge. This is being done within the project’s Work Package 5 “Developing and Valuing Climate Services”, which consists of a set of case studies that bring scientists together with stakeholders to co-develop products that “translate” the model outputs and improved modelling skill developed in other work packages into societal- and sectorrelevant products. Our case study in the Blue-Action project develops a study of the impact of the Arctic changes on resource development in the Russian Arctic with the goal of improving stakeholders’ capacity to adapt to these changes. The Yamal 2040 Scenario Workshop series is at the core of the case study. The work carried out in this deliverable is a desk study producing a map of stakeholder groups involved in oil and gas development on the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YNAO). This study is part of the preparatory work for the scenario exercise conducted in cooperation with various stakeholder groups active in or affected by oil and gas development in YNAO.

Beschreibung: Tropospheric aerosol optical depth (AOD) over India was simulated by Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS)‐Chem, a global 3‐D chemical‐transport model, using SMOG (Speciated Multi‐pOllutant Generator from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay) and GEOS‐Chem (GC) (current inventories used in the GEOS‐Chem model) inventories for 2012. The simulated AODs were ~80% (SMOG) and 60% (GC) of those measured by the satellites (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and Multi‐angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer). There is no strong seasonal variation in AOD over India. The peak AOD values are observed/simulated during summer. The simulated AOD using SMOG inventory has particulate black and organic carbon AOD higher by a factor ~5 and 3, respectively, compared to GC inventory. The model underpredicted coarse‐mode AOD but agreed for fine‐mode AOD with Aerosol Robotic Network data. It captured dust only over Western India, which is a desert, and not elsewhere, probably due to inaccurate dust transport and/or noninclusion of other dust sources. The calculated AOD, after dust correction, showed the general features in its observed spatial variation. Highest AOD values were observed over the Indo‐Gangetic Plain followed by Central and Southern India with lowest values in Northern India. Transport of aerosols from Indo‐Gangetic Plain and Central India into Eastern India, where emissions are low, is significant. The major contributors to total AOD over India are inorganic aerosol (41–64%), organic carbon (14–26%), and dust (7–32%). AOD over most regions of India is a factor of 5 or higher than over the United States.

Beschreibung: Industrial production plays an important role for achieving a green economy and the sustainable development goals. Therefore, the nascent transformation of industrial production due to digitalization into a so-called Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is of great interest from a sustainable development point of view. This paper discusses how the environmental dimension of a sustainable development can potentially benefit from the IIoT—focusing especially on three topics: resource efficiency, sustainable energy and transparency. It presents a state of the art literature analysis of IIoT-enabled approaches addressing the three environmental topics. This analysis is compared with the findings of a survey among Chinese industrial companies, investigating the sustainability-related expectations of participants coming along with the implementation of IIoT solutions. China has been chosen as a case study because it brings together a strong industrial sector, ambitious plans regarding industrial digitalization and a high relevance and need for more sustainability. The survey was conducted with the means of a questionnaire which was distributed via email and used for direct on-site interviews. It focused on large and medium sized companies mainly from Liaoning Province and had a sample size of 109 participants.

Beschreibung: This article depicts a dialectic relationship between the creative conduct of public administrators on the one hand, and the institutional complexity of their political surrounding, on the other. An ethnographic study of the collaborative policy design of the Dutch predecessor of REACH (‘Regulation for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals’), so-called SOMS (Dutch: Strategy dealing with substances), shows how risk governance policies are created, or even co-created against the backdrop of Europeanization. This creativity is depicted and operationalized through the notions of articulation work (Strauss, 1988), mobility work (Bardram and Bossen, 2005) and mutual monitoring (Heath and Luff, 1992). Dutch public administrators engaged heavily in European negotiations, thus operating amidst contradictory hierarchies and juggling with several evaluative criteria. Eventually, in 2007, this trajectory led to what some call the European Commission’s most complex bill (Rettman, 2007). The Europeanization of risk governance is characterized as a process in which hierarchies are primarily not steepened or overcome, but rather multiplied and recombined into contradictory value systems and conflictual policy constellations. The paper therefore argues that Europeanization creates a political heterarchy, in which the creativity of policy-makers plays a pivotal, but paradoxical role.

Beschreibung: For the first time, aerosol optical properties are measured over Lumbini, Nepal, with CIMEL sunphotometer of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) program. Lumbini is a sacred place as the birthplace of Lord Buddha, and thus a UNESCO world heritage site, located near the northern edge of the central Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) and before the Himalayan foothills (and Himalayas) to its north. Average aerosol optical depth (AOD) is found to be 0.64 ± 0.38 (0.06–3.28) over the sampling period (January 2013–December 2014), with the highest seasonal AOD during the post-monsoon season (0.72 ± 0.44). More than 80% of the daily averaged AOD values, during the monitoring period, are above 0.3, indicating polluted conditions in the region. The levels of aerosol load observed over Lumbini are comparable to those observed at several heavily polluted sites in the IGP. Based on the relationship between AOD and Ångstrom exponent (α), anthropogenic, biomass burning, and mixed aerosols are found to be the most prevalent aerosol types. The aerosol volume-size distribution is bi-modal during all four seasons with modes centered at 0.1–0.3 and 3–4 μm. For both fine and coarse modes, the highest volumetric concentration of ~ 0.08 μm−3 μm−2 is observed during the post-monsoon and pre-monsoon seasons. As revealed by the single-scattering albedo (SSA), asymmetry parameter (AP), and refractive index (RI) analyses, aerosol loading over Lumbini is dominated by absorbing, urban-industrial, and biomass burning aerosols.

Beschreibung: Various emerging technologies challenge existing governance processes to identify, assess, and manage risk. Though the existing risk-based paradigm has been essential for assessment of many chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear technologies, a complementary approach may be warranted for the early-stage assessment and management challenges of high uncertainty technologies ranging from nanotechnology to synthetic biology to artificial intelligence, among many others. This paper argues for a risk governance approach that integrates quantitative experimental information alongside qualitative expert insight to characterize and balance the risks, benefits, costs, and societal implications of emerging technologies. Various articles in scholarly literature have highlighted differing points of how to address technological uncertainty, and this article builds upon such knowledge to explain how an emerging technology risk governance process should be driven by a multi-stakeholder effort, incorporate various disparate sources of information, review various endpoints and outcomes, and comparatively assess emerging technology performance against existing conventional products in a given application area. At least in the early stages of development when quantitative data for risk assessment remain incomplete or limited, such an approach can be valuable for policymakers and decision makers to evaluate the impact that such technologies may have upon human and environmental health.

Beschreibung: Measurement of reactive air pollutants and greenhouse gases underpin a huge variety of applications that span from academic research through to regulatory functions and services for individuals, governments, and businesses. Whilst the vast majority of these observations continue to use established analytical reference methods, miniaturization has led to a growth in the prominence of a generation of devices that are often described generically as “low-cost sensors” (LCSs). LCSs can in practice have other valuable features other than cost that differentiate them from previous technologies including being of smaller size, lower weight and having reduced power consumption. Different technologies falling within this class include passive electrochemical and metal oxide sensors that may have costs of only a few dollars each, through to more complex microelectromechanical devices that use the same analytical principles as reference instruments, but in smaller size and power packages. As a class of device, low-cost sensors encompass a very wide range of technologies and as a consequence they produce a wide range of quality of measurements. When selecting a LCS approach for a particular task, users need to ensure the specific sensor to be used will meet application’s data quality requirements. This report considers sensors that are designed for the measurement of atmospheric composition at ambient concentrations focusing on reactive gaseous air pollutants (CO, NOx, O3, SO2), particulate matter (PM) and greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4. It examines example applications where new scientific and technical insight may potentially be gained from using a network of sensors when compared to more sparsely located observations. Access to low-cost sensors appears to offer exciting new atmospheric applications, can support new services and potentially facilitates the inclusion of a new cohort of users. Based on the scientific literature available up to the end of 2017, it is clear however that some trade-offs arise when LCSs are used in place of existing reference methods. Smaller and/or lower cost devices tend to be less sensitive, less precise and less chemically-specific to the compound or variable of interest. This is balanced by a potential increase in the spatial density of measurements that can be achieved by a network of sensors. The current state of the art in terms of accuracy, reliability and reproducibility of a range of different sensors is described along with the key analytical principles and what has been learned so far about low-cost sensors from both laboratory studies and real-world tests. A summary of concepts is included on how sensors and reference instruments may be used together, as well as with modelling in a complementary way, to improve data quality and generate additional insight into pollution behaviour. The report provides some advice on key considerations when matching a project/study/application with an appropriate sensor monitoring strategy, and the wider application-specific requirements for calibration and data quality. The report contains a number of suggestions on future requirements for low-cost sensors aimed at manufacturers and users and for the broader atmospheric community. The report highlights that low-cost sensors are not currently a direct substitute for reference instruments, especially for mandatory purposes; they are however a complementary source of information on air quality, provided an appropriate sensor is used. It is important for prospective users to identify their specific application needs first, examine examples of studies or deployments that share similar characteristics, identify the likely limitations associated with using LCSs and then evaluate whether their selected LCS approach/technology would sufficiently meet the needs of the measurement objective.

Beschreibung: The world we live in has been shaped by expertise. Yet experts were not born with power: they had to struggle to achieve their authority and legitimacy. Experts have framed economic development, the environment, energy and infrastructure as »work in progress«, allowing them to put their specialist knowledge into practice. But who qualifies as the »right« expert for the job? Who decides how expertise is used, and to what ends? This book traces the changing contours of expert cultures, their global diffusion and local resistance. The contributors examine international organisations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Energy Council. They show how experts have tried to manage and navigate the competing demands of scientific knowledge, political power, and the public sphere throughout the last century. Amid the unfolding crises of democracy and climate change, this volume offers a timely, critical analysis of the power of experts and its limitations.

Beschreibung: Rural and peri-urban communities in Japan, as well as in many other regions of the world, face risks of discrete event natural phenomena, including earthquakes, floods, and landslides. They also face persistent disruptive stress due to risks that remain active over long durations, such as the loss of community capacities due to an aging population. This article describes my observations of and subsequent reflections on adaptive risk governance and community resilience building processes in two areas of western and southern Japan—Chizu in Tottori Prefecture and towns near Kumamoto City in Kumamoto Prefecture. Four aspects of adaptive risk governance from this limited set of observations stood out: (1) the importance of establishing a durable, patient process, (2) initiated and facilitated by a trusted figure, in (3) a space or venue accessible and open to the community, and (4) augmented by boundary objects that facilitate role playing, iteration, and ownership by the community of solutions generated in these dialogues.

Beschreibung: In this work, results for the different MgB2 wires and cables designed in Best Paths will be presented, with a focus on the critical parameters influencing the cable manufacturing. These include the wire and cable diameter, cabling pitch, critical current performance, mechanical properties, stress tolerance of the wire subjected to bending and tension during assembly on industrial cabling machines.

Beschreibung: With a growing impetus to meet energy demand through decentralized hybrid mini-grids in rural and semi-urban locations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the need to accurately assess the market drivers, policy requirements and job creation impacts of this energy system typology within this region cannot be ignored. This work provides a techno-economic impact analysis of decentralized hybrid energy systems in selected locations in SSA. To optimally satisfy an electricity demand time-series for a year and minimize all cost components amortized over a period of 20 years, a least-cost modelling approach and tool is applied. An Employment Factor approach was used to calculate the direct employment impacts across the value chain of different hybrid mini-grid types. Additionally, the Leontief Inverse Input–Output model is used to determine the backward linkage economy-wide-jobs (gross jobs) created. The preliminary results show that the “Solar + Wind + Diesel + Battery” hybrid system (SWDB) has the lowest Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE), thus it provides the cheapest means of meeting the electricity demand in the modelled regions. However, the highest locally created direct and net employment impact in the model locations is provided by the “Wind + Battery” (WB) system. Two major sectors, manufacturing and agriculture have the largest number of gross jobs in the local economy for all decentralized hybrid systems analysed. This occurs due to higher linkages between these two sectors and the productive energy use in the area. Conversely, despite higher employment impacts obtained for WB, the cost and duration needed for wind resource mapping and assessment serve as a major bottleneck to WB systems market access in the regions. The results of the sensitivity analysis suggest that by de-risking economic factors, such as discount rates, market access for decentralized renewable energy mini-grids can be improved in SSA.

Beschreibung: Atmospheric aerosol possesses impacts on climate system and ecological environments, human health and agricultural productivity. The environment over Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau region are continuously degraded due to the transport of pollution from the foothills of the Himalayas; mostly the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). Thus, analysis of aerosol optical properties over two sites; Lumbini and Kathmandu (the southern slope of central Himalayas) using AERONET’s CIMEL sun photometer were conducted in this study. Aerosol optical depth (AOD at 500 nm), angstrom exponent (α or AE), volume size distribution (VSD), single scattering albedo (SSA) and asymmetry parameter (AP) were studied for 2013–2014 and the average AOD was found to be: 0.64 ± 0.41 (Lumbini) and 0.45 ± 0.30 (Kathmandu). The average AE was found to be: 1.25 ± 0.24 and 1.26 ± 0.18 respectively for two sites. The relation between AOD and AE was used to discriminate the aerosol types over these sites which indicated anthropogenic, mixed and biomass burning origin aerosol constituted the major aerosol types in Lumbini and Kathmandu. A clear bi-modal distribution of aerosol volume size was observed with highest volume concentration during the post-monsoon season in fine mode and pre-monsoon season in coarse mode (Lumbini) and highest value over both modes during pre-monsoon season in Kathmandu. The single scattering albedo (SSA) and asymmetry parameter (AP) analyses suggested aerosols over the Himalayan foothills sites are dominated by absorbing and anthropogenic aerosols from urban and industrial activities and biomass burning. Long-term studies are essential to understand and characterize the nature of aerosol over this research gap zone.

Beschreibung: With NO2 limit values being frequently exceeded in European cities, complying with the European air quality regulations still poses a problem for many cities. Traffic is typically a major source of NOx emissions in urban areas. High-resolution chemistry transport modelling can help to assess the impact of high urban NOx emissions on air quality inside and outside of urban areas. However, many modelling studies report an underestimation of modelled NOx and NO2 compared with observations. Part of this model bias has been attributed to an underestimation of NOx emissions, particularly in urban areas. This is consistent with recent measurement studies quantifying underestimations of urban NOx emissions by current emission inventories, identifying the largest discrepancies when the contribution of traffic NOx emissions is high. This study applies a high-resolution chemistry transport model in combination with ambient measurements in order to assess the potential underestimation of traffic NOx emissions in a frequently used emission inventory. The emission inventory is based on officially reported values and the Berlin–Brandenburg area in Germany is used as a case study. The WRF-Chem model is used at a 3 km  ×  3 km horizontal resolution, simulating the whole year of 2014. The emission data are downscaled from an original resolution of ca. 7 km  ×  7 km to a resolution of 1 km  ×  1 km. An in-depth model evaluation including spectral decomposition of observed and modelled time series and error apportionment suggests that an underestimation in traffic emissions is likely one of the main causes of the bias in modelled NO2 concentrations in the urban background, where NO2 concentrations are underestimated by ca. 8 µg m−3 (−30 %) on average over the whole year. Furthermore, a diurnal cycle of the bias in modelled NO2 suggests that a more realistic treatment of the diurnal cycle of traffic emissions might be needed. Model problems in simulating the correct mixing in the urban planetary boundary layer probably play an important role in contributing to the model bias, particularly in summer. Also taking into account this and other possible sources of model bias, a correction factor for traffic NOx emissions of ca. 3 is estimated for weekday daytime traffic emissions in the core urban area, which corresponds to an overall underestimation of traffic NOx emissions in the core urban area of ca. 50 %. Sensitivity simulations for the months of January and July using the calculated correction factor show that the weekday model bias can be improved from −8.8 µg m−3 (−26 %) to −5.4 µg m−3 (−16 %) in January on average in the urban background, and −10.3 µg m−3 (−46 %) to −7.6 µg m−3 (−34 %) in July. In addition, the negative bias of weekday NO2 concentrations downwind of the city in the rural and suburban background can be reduced from −3.4 µg m−3 (−12 %) to −1.2 µg m−3 (−4 %) in January and from −3.0 µg m−3 (−22 %) to −1.9 µg m−3 (−14 %) in July. The results and their consistency with findings from other studies suggest that more research is needed in order to more accurately understand the spatial and temporal variability in real-world NOx emissions from traffic, and apply this understanding to the inventories used in high-resolution chemical transport models.

Beschreibung: The growing demand for energy, natural resources and urban expansion during the last two centuries increased human interference with the geosphere far beyond geothermal usage. The increasing number of large-scale projects intervening the area of life of communities raised public concerns related to their environmental and social impact. Integration of public concerns into such projects should therefore go beyond outreach and communication measures. It requires an open approach to inclusive governance structures with respect to designing research and development processes and to modify technological options. Geoethical concepts emphasize that geoscientific knowledge may assist society in decision making as well as in dealing with risks, user conflicts and environmental threats on local, regional and global scale in order to support more sustainable practices at the intersection of human beings and the geosphere.In the present article, we analyse the social response to recent geothermal development and identify the precondition for public acceptability of geothermal projects. On this basis, the potential contribution of a GeoLaB, a Geothermal Laboratory in the crystalline Basement, to a geoethic approach in geothermal research and technology development is discussed. The underground research laboratory is planned as an infrastructure to answer scientific challenges and to offer the necessary transparency to interact with the public. The GeoLaB approach aims on transparent, tangible science and can serve to enhance mutual understanding of stakeholder groups. It may increase public awareness on geothermal research and potentially enhance the opportunity for public approval of planned activities. As a generic site, GeoLaB can develop scientific-technological solutions for a responsible exploitation of geothermal energy accompanied by sociological studies. The underground research laboratory will serve as a platform for science communication, participation and dialogue of stakeholders from industry, politics, administration and society. This complies with the comprehension of responsible research in a geoethical sense.

Beschreibung: Partnerships are again being positioned as a central means of implementation (MOI)of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). After several decades of experiences with multi-stakeholder partnerships, current calls go beyond an increase in quantity and ask for better quality and impact, in particular regarding the concurrent objectives of becoming an effective, inclusive, and transformative MOI. To this effect, recent calls ask for frameworks and platforms tosupport and guide partnerships. This study uses a series of interviews with donors and fundersto evaluate if and how they, through the frameworks they provide, already assist partnerships in becoming effective, inclusive, and transformative. The findingsshow several examples that hold the potential to make partnerships fit for purpose of implementing the SDGs. Remaining gaps and limitations and possible strategies of donors and funders to overcome these are discussed.

Beschreibung: This transdisciplinary volume puts forward proposals for wiser, socially just and sustainable socio-economic systems in transition. There is growing support for the view that the end of capitalism is around the corner, but on which conceptual and ethical basis can we interpret these times? With investigations into feminist economics, post-growth environmentalism, socio-technical digital design, collaborative and commons economics, the editors create a dialogue between radical knowledge/practices and contemplative social sciences to transgress disciplinary boundaries and implement new visions of reality. This important book challenges our ways of thinking and outlines a pathway for new research.

Beschreibung: Introduction Giorgino, Vincenzo Mario Bruno (et al.) Seiten 1-11 In Search of a New Compass in the Great Transition: Toward Co-designing the Urban Space We Care About Giorgino, Vincenzo Mario Bruno Seiten 15-41 Navigating the Great Transition Via Post-capitalism and Contemplative Social Sciences Walsh, Zack Seiten 43-61 Having, Being, and the Commons Mattei, Ugo Seiten 63-71 Par Cum Pari: Notes on the Horizontality of Peer-to-Peer Relationships in the Context of the Verticality of a Hierarchy of Values Bauwens, Michel Seiten 73-88 Economics Beyond the Self Zsolnai, Laszlo Seiten 89-97 The Koan of the Market Nelson, Julie A. Seiten 99-107 Epistemology of Feminist Economics Łapniewska, Zofia Seiten 109-133 How to Make What Really Matters Count in Economic Decision-Making: Care, Domestic Violence, Gender-Responsive Budgeting, Macroeconomic Policies and Human Rights Bjørnholt, Margunn Seiten 135-159 Contemplative Economy and Contemplative Economics: Definitions, Branches and Methodologies Renteria-Uriarte, Xabier Seiten 161-187 From Smart Cities to Experimental Cities? Calzada, Igor Seiten 191-217 FirstLife: From Maps to Social Networks and Back Antonini, Alessio (et al.) Seiten 219-233 The Organic Internet: Building Communications Networks from the Grassroots Antoniadis, Panayotis Seiten 235-272 Technocratic Automation and Contemplative Overlays in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing Butler, Philip Seiten 273-296 One Bright Byte: Dōgen and the Re-embodiment of Digital Technologies Casacuberta, David Seiten 297-315

Beschreibung: From clean energy to sustainable production and the fight against poverty – insights into the many challenges of sustainable development are not in short supply. But despite the wealth of knowledge available to policymakers, little progress has been made in the transformation towards a sustainable future. How can we bring our knowledge to bear more effectively? This question underpins the Global Sustainability Strategy Forum, which will bring together 15 leading international experts for a week-long retreat in Potsdam every two years, beginning on 4 – 8 March 2019.

Beschreibung: A multivariate linear regression model was proposed to achieve short period prediction of PM2.5 (fine particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm or less). The main parameters for the proposed model included data on aerosol optical depth (AOD) obtained through remote sensing, meteorological factors from ground monitoring (wind velocity, temperature, and relative humidity), and other gaseous pollutants (SO2, NO2, CO, and O3). Beijing City was selected as a typical region for the case study. Data on the aforementioned variables for the city throughout 2015 were used to construct two regression models, which were discriminated by annual and seasonal data, respectively. The results indicated that the regression model based on annual data had (R2 = 0.766) goodness-of-fit and (R2 = 0.875) cross-validity. However, the regression models based on seasonal data for spring and winter were more effective, achieving 0.852 and 0.874 goodness-of-fit, respectively. Model uncertainties were also given, with the view of laying the foundation for further study.

Beschreibung: Residents of the Kathmandu Valley experience severe particulate and gaseous air pollution throughout most of the year, even during much of the rainy season. The knowledge base for understanding the air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley was previously very limited but is improving rapidly due to several field measurement studies conducted in the last few years. Thus far, most analyses of observations in the Kathmandu Valley have been limited to short periods of time at single locations. This study extends the past studies by examining the spatial and temporal characteristics of two important gaseous air pollutants (CO and O3) based on simultaneous observations over a longer period at five locations within the valley and on its rim, including a supersite (at Bode in the valley center, 1345m above sea level) and four satellite sites: Paknajol (1380ma.s.l.) in the Kathmandu city center; Bhimdhunga (1522ma.s.l.), a mountain pass on the valley's western rim; Nagarkot (1901ma.s.l.), another mountain pass on the eastern rim; and Naikhandi (1233ma.s.l.), near the valley's only river outlet. CO and O3 mixing ratios were monitored from January to July 2013, along with other gases and aerosol particles by instruments deployed at the Bode supersite during the international air pollution measurement campaign SusKat-ABC (Sustainable Atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley – endorsed by the Atmospheric Brown Clouds program of UNEP). The monitoring of O3 at Bode, Paknajol and Nagarkot as well as the CO monitoring at Bode were extended until March 2014 to investigate their variability over a complete annual cycle. Higher CO mixing ratios were found at Bode than at the outskirt sites (Bhimdhunga, Naikhandi and Nagarkot), and all sites except Nagarkot showed distinct diurnal cycles of CO mixing ratio, with morning peaks and daytime lows. Seasonally, CO was higher during premonsoon (March–May) season and winter (December–February) season than during monsoon season (June–September) and postmonsoon (October–November) season. This is primarily due to the emissions from brick industries, which are only operational during this period (January–April), as well as increased domestic heating during winter, and regional forest fires and agro-residue burning during the premonsoon season. It was lower during the monsoon due to rainfall, which reduces open burning activities within the valley and in the surrounding regions and thus reduces sources of CO. The meteorology of the valley also played a key role in determining the CO mixing ratios. The wind is calm and easterly in the shallow mixing layer, with a mixing layer height (MLH) of about 250m, during the night and early morning. The MLH slowly increases after sunrise and decreases in the afternoon. As a result, the westerly wind becomes active and reduces the mixing ratio during the daytime. Furthermore, there was evidence of an increase in the O3 mixing ratios in the Kathmandu Valley as a result of emissions in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) region, particularly from biomass burning including agro-residue burning. A top-down estimate of the CO emission flux was made by using the CO mixing ratio and mixing layer height measured at Bode. The estimated annual CO flux at Bode was 4.9µgm−2s−1, which is 2–14 times higher than that in widely used emission inventory databases (EDGAR HTAP, REAS and INTEX-B). This difference in CO flux between Bode and other emission databases likely arises from large uncertainties in both the top-down and bottom-up approaches to estimating the emission flux. The O3 mixing ratio was found to be highest during the premonsoon season at all sites, while the timing of the seasonal minimum varied across the sites. The daily maximum 8h average O3 exceeded the WHO recommended guideline of 50ppb on more days at the hilltop station of Nagarkot (159 out of 357 days) than at the urban valley bottom sites of Paknajol (132 out of 354 days) and Bode (102 out of 353 days), presumably due to the influence of free-tropospheric air at the high-altitude site (as also indicated by Putero et al., 2015, for the Paknajol site in the Kathmandu Valley) as well as to titration of O3 by fresh NOx emissions near the urban sites. More than 78% of the exceedance days were during the premonsoon period at all sites. The high O3 mixing ratio observed during the premonsoon period is of a concern for human health and ecosystems, including agroecosystems in the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions.

Beschreibung: Some scientists suggest that it might be possible to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight back into space to reduce climate change and its impacts. Others argue that such solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering is inherently incompatible with democracy. In this article, we reject this incompatibility argument. First, we counterargue that technologies such as SRM lack innate political characteristics and predetermined social effects, and that democracy need not be deliberative to serve as a standard for governance. We then rebut each of the argument’s core claims, countering that (1) democratic institutions are sufficiently resilient to manage SRM, (2) opting out of governance decisions is not a fundamental democratic right, (3) SRM may not require an undue degree of technocracy, and (4) its implementation may not concentrate power and promote authoritarianism. Although we reject the incompatibility argument, we do not argue that SRM is necessarily, or even likely to be, democratic in practice.

Beschreibung: The energy consumption and carbon emission of Chinese households is growing rapidly and will continue to do so for the near future. Currently, Chinese energy policies mainly focus on the industrial sector instead of the residential sector. Among industrialized countries, Germany has performed relatively well in the residential sector, which can provide valuable lessons for China. This paper investigates the policy-making, implementation, and resulting patterns of Chinese and German residential energy policies from a multi-level perspective. The policy system study provides a holistic view over the factors influencing residential energy sustainability. The main findings are: (1) the German residential energy policy system follows a hybrid policy model, combining top-down and bottom-up policy designs, with more demand-side or market-oriented policies, and a high level of public participation, resulting in remarkable headway toward sustainability in the residential energy sector; and (2) the Chinese energy policy system is characterized by top-down, supply-side oriented market policies with limited public participation. The policy implication of this study for China is to shift its top-down policy paradigm to a hybrid policy model that facilitates public participation in the residential energy sector.

Beschreibung: E-governance (e-gov) might provide the missing tools in order to move closer to the good governance ideal, often depicted as a key element for a sustainable future. But how is sustainability considered in the scientific debate around e-gov? The main objective of this paper is to review the current research at the intersection of e-gov and sustainability in order to provide insights on the identified challenges and opportunities arising from e-gov as well as the preconditions for sustainable e-gov. A systematic review of the existing body of scientific literature published since 2012 has been performed, and after several screenings - from the 180 documents initially identified - 30 articles were selected and analysed in-depth. The results of the analysis are structured based on the sustainability perspective and governance perspective respectively, with authors from developing countries rather looking into development opportunities while authors from developed countries focus on efficiency gains.

Beschreibung: What are the prerequisites for employing superconducting links in the power grid of the future? This document assesses the main elements of a new 3-gigawatt-class superconducting cable. In addition to discussing the technical details of the cable conductor, electrical insulation, and grid connections, it outlines the environmental benefits and future implementation challenges of this new technology. The concluding remarks include recommendations for industry and policymakers.

Beschreibung: The special issue Scaling up bioenergy? identifies major policy expectations attached to biofuels production worldwide, and it provides systematic reviews of actual biofuel performance and governance in these areas. Papers address the extent to which policy expectations related to climate change mitigation, energy security, rural livelihoods and risk mitigation have been achieved, and the effectiveness of public and private governance in advancing sector sustainability. Building on these findings, the synthesis paper asks, "What next?" for countries wishing to advance national biofuel programmes as one option for the necessary divestment from fossil fuels. Among other sine qua nons, the special issue highlights the urgent need to downscale global energy demand, and to stop treating biofuels as an isolated sector. Goldemberg et al. (2018) query several aspects of our approach, from research design, data collection, to our recommendation to apply the "precautionary principle" in research as well as policy making. Unfortunately, Goldemberg et al. (2018) incorrectly portray our main argument. Moreover, they claim bias in our approach and mistakes in our empirical evidence, however, without bringing forward an evenhanded critique of research philosophy, methodology or referencing different empirical literature. We fully stand behind our research philosophy and findings presented.