Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit

Abstract Climate risk assessments are crucial to inform actions for adaptation and guide funding at multiple levels. The paper evaluates the climate risk assessment (CRA) approach—how climate risks are identified and subsequent adaptation actions are prioritized—within India’s subnational State Action Plans on Climate Change (SAPCC) for the climate-sensitive agriculture sector. Using our developed analytical framework—the “Climate-Risk Informed Adaptation Action Assessment” (CRIAAA)—a qualitative content analysis was conducted along three components: science-informed, engagement and social inclusion, and adaptation planning for SAPCCs of two Indian states, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Our comparative analysis reveals that although risk assessment gets incorporated into the planning, there is still scope to make them robust, backed by stronger scientific evidence, while integrating the local-level (district and below) insights as opposed to the current orientation toward analyses at coarse spatial levels. These course scales of analysis do not match well with the localized nature impacts of climate change, with insufficient attention to localized vulnerabilities, cross-sectoral integration, gender-disaggregated data, and multistakeholder engagement. A holistic risk assessment approach is needed—one that integrates cross-sectoral collaboration, addresses physical drivers through climate system understanding and multimodel projections, and incorporates socioeconomic dimensions via participatory methods and gender considerations.

Exposure to traumatic events is associated with biases in the perception of emotional facial expressions. By bridging research on trauma exposure and emotion recognition, the present study investigated the impact of war-related trauma on the recognition of facial expressions of emotions in a sample of war trauma-exposed refugees (N=108) from West Asian countries. Through a forced-choice facial emotion recognition experiment, we assessed how trauma exposure and face gender influenced accuracy and biases in identifying six primary emotions. Participants judged facial expressions of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and happiness displayed by a set of 240 faces corresponding to 20 female and 20 male models from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces dataset. Expressions consisted of short videos showing each face's transition from neutral to full emotion. The results showed impaired recognition of negative emotions, with fear being the least accurately recognized emotion, suggesting the avoidance of negative affective states as a coping mechanism putatively associated with war-related trauma. For main effects, partial eta-squared effect sizes ranged from.159 to.573, and effect sizes for interaction effects ranged from.027 to.189, with most effects being in the medium-to-large range. Furthermore, the biases in emotion recognition observed in the present study may reflect gender stereotypes and social norms that shape how individuals perceive and interpret emotional expression in men and women.

The agroforestry system combines the best features of agricultural practices and forest ecosystems. This approach provides diverse environmental and socio-economic benefits, such as preventing soil erosion and degradation, increasing soil moisture and water retention, and yielding harvests from planted fruit trees, bushes, edible plants, and various agricultural crops. Additionally, agroforestry offers several added benefits, including enhanced biodiversity, beekeeping and improved pollination, carbon sequestration, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. With these advantages in mind, a 3.5 ha model agroforest was established in 2022 on the Southern bank of Lake Sevan, near the village of Tsovinar in the Martuni consolidated community. Over two years of project implementation, all major activities and system-forming elements were put in place, including fencing, an irrigation system, and the planting of approximately 10 000 tree and bush species, along with edible plants. This model, through further monitoring and evaluation, could provide strong justification for the Government of Armenia to expand its forest cover in alignment with its international commitments under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

ABSTRACT This study critically examines the relationship between the neo‐liberal economic ideas about development cooperation, overseas development assistance and foreign direct investment (FDI). Specifically, it explores how Germany's neo‐liberal Marshall Plan with Africa influences the investment decisions of German companies in Africa. The analysis is based on in‐depth semi‐structured key informant interviews conducted with German companies, business associations and development cooperation institutions active in Côte d'Ivoire—one of the largest French‐speaking countries in Africa. This paper introduces reputational and network effects of development cooperation on FDI into the mainstream international business literature. This contribution is illustrated by showing how the reputational and network effects of development cooperation provide a clear signal to the German firms an improved image of the host country due to its reform partner status. The study also extends the development economic view that new forms of development cooperation can significantly impact FDI. It further contributes to the location‐specific factors within the entry strategy literature by suggesting that development cooperation and a country's reputation are critical in shaping firm‐level decisions and government policy for most emerging economies seeking to attract FDI.

Abstract. The annual, accumulated stomatal ozone uptake during the vegetation season, i.e. the species-specific phytotoxic ozone dose above a threshold of 1.0 nmol m−2 s−1 (POD1SPEC), was estimated for European forest tree plant functional types for the years 2008–2012. These POD1SPEC estimates were based on ozone concentrations simulated with the EMEP CTM model in combination with stomatal ozone uptake estimated with the DO3SE (Deposition of Ozone for Stomatal Exchange) model. To consider the impacts of ozone on forest growth rates, POD1SPEC-based dose–response relationships were constructed based on results from multi-year experiments with young trees generated within the framework of the UNECE LRTAP Convention. Official information on forest gross growth rates and on natural and harvest removals for different European countries for the years 2008–2012 was used to estimate annual changes in forest living biomass carbon (C) stocks due to ozone. This was achieved using two different scenarios: with and without the negative impacts of ozone on forest gross growth rates, estimated using the POD1SPEC-based dose–response relationships as they relate to impacts. Results provided an estimate of the annual gap between forest gross growth and the total removals, i.e. the annual forest stock changes, both for current levels of ozone and their associated impacts and in the absence of ozone. Estimates were made by collating species-specific information into broad European coniferous and deciduous forest types for consistency with forest statistics. The default IPCC methodology was used to convert estimates of the impacts of ozone on the annual changes in forest living-biomass C stocks. The results showed that the critical level for negative ozone impacts on forests as suggested by the UNECE LRTAP Convention, based on POD1SPEC, was exceeded in large parts of Europe during 2008–2012, except in inland areas in the Mediterranean and in small parts of continental Europe and the Fennoscandian mountain range. The highest POD1SPEC was estimated for the coastal regions of mid-latitude Europe, including the UK and extending northwards to the middle of Sweden, the south of Norway, and Finland. To the south, lower values for POD1SPEC were estimated for most of the Iberian Peninsula and parts of the Mediterranean coastal regions. It was estimated that reduced ozone exposure, similarly to pre-industrial conditions, would increase European forest stem volume growth rates by 9 %, but this would increase European forest annual net changes in standing stocks by 28 %. The difference in gross forest stem volume growth with and without ozone impacts was relatively similar in, for example, Germany and France. However, since the gap between gross growth and total removals was much smaller for Germany, the enhanced growth in the absence of ozone had a much larger relative impact on the forest standing stock changes in Germany compared to in France. Summarized for all European forests, the C sequestration to the living-biomass C stock was estimated to increase by 31 % in the absence of ozone exposure. A thorough review of the literature resulted in the conclusion that mature trees under field conditions cannot be assumed to be less sensitive to ozone exposure compared to young trees under experimental conditions, strongly suggesting that these results are credible for European forest stands of different age classes.

Africa's wildlife decline has received increasing attention, yet underlying reasons have remained opaque. Using generalized additive models of 25 terrestrial and aerial counts, we present West Africa's first large herbivore population trend series alongside potential drivers. Following Comoé national park's creation in 1968, large herbivore populations increased till the mid-1980s, but subsequently declined, amplified during Côte d'Ivoire's political crisis (2002-2011) when active management ceased. Between 2010-2022, populations of roan, hartebeest and waterbuck have quasi-recovered to pre-crisis numbers. The previously dominant kob, common hippopotamus and savanna elephant have remained at c. 10% of their 1970-80s numbers, however. Grasslands declined from 15 to 2% between 1979-2020, negatively impacting kob and common hippopotamus. Since 1962, surrounding human populations and cattle inside the park increased over six-fold, yet the number of rangers only doubled. These developments have resulted in a different wildlife assemblage. Species typical of long-coarse shrub savanna - hartebeest and roan - have reached pre-crisis levels, contrary to kob and common hippopotamus likely because of the reduction of floodplain grasslands and their gregarious distribution rendering them vulnerable to poaching. We recommend increased efforts to understand habitat changes and poaching pressures, prior to re-introducing extinct species. This study highlights the importance but also the challenges of studying large herbivore populations trends alongside drivers of change.