Resilience, Disaster, Risk and Hazard studies—The Benefits of Multidisciplinary Studies and Future Aspirations

Background/Aim : Climate Change has an impact on critical components of “One Health” such as human health, animal health, plant health and environmental health. Climate and environmental change also affects socio-economic determinants of “One Health” such as development, demographics, agriculture, animal production, global trade, food prices, poverty etc. The study aims to provide an analysis of the impacts of climate change on “One Health” and identify adaptation and mitigation strategies to address these impacts. Methods: The analysis of the impacts of climate change and variability on “One Health” integrates the WHO Health Impact Assessment methodology with the FAO Biosecurity framework which includes human health (food safety), animal health, plant health and environmental health. The study provides a cross-sectoral analysis of the adaptation and mitigation strategies and policies to address climate change and variability challenges to “One Health” focusing in a case study in California’s green economy. Results: There are multiple pathways through which climate change may impact “One Health” including: changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, ocean warming and acidification, changes in complex contaminants’ transport pathways, and socio-economic and demographic factors among others. To address the challenges of climate change and variability to One Health is complex and requires trade-offs in a green economy framework. The case study in California addressing agriculture and environment sectors in show that decisions made in the agricultural sector impact environment, health and social factors and that health impact assessments are critical for policy change. Conclusion: To address the impacts of climate and environmental change One Health in a green economy it is necessary to develop inter-sectoral adaptation and mitigation strategies that are integrated in resilient climate development plans. Approaches such as health promoting agriculture policies and green chemistry are critical to mainstream health across sectors in California’s green economy. In this context health impact assessments facilitate decision-making and policy changes in a green economy since address socio-economic and development aspects.

25 - Late Holocene vegetation, climate dynamics, and human-environment interaction along Konkan coast, India

During the last two decades significant socio-economic and environmental changes took place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), including collapse of the old socio-economic systems and climate change. The main objective of the paper is to analyse changes in water resources in the region and to relate them either to ongoing climate change or to socio-economic changes in the region, where possible. Two basins located in the Eastern part of Germany and in the Western part of Poland were taken as case study areas. An attempt to compare changes of water resources triggered by socio-economic and environmental (therein climate) changes was undertaken, including quantitative assessment of relative magnitudes of impacts, where feasible. The impacts on both water quantity and water quality aspects were investigated, considering changes in river discharge, groundwater dynamics, water demand, point and non-point source pollution in both basins under study. Where necessary, the analysis of data was supported by modelling results. The analysis reported confirms that until now the changes in socio-economic systems have impacted regional water resources in a more significant way than the climate change. However, the impacts of climate change on water resources in the study regions are likely to increase in the future, warmer climate, as projected by the existing scenarios.

Climate Change and Health: Strengthening the Evidence Base for Policy

World population will reach an estimated nine billion by 2050. Given this factor and continued economic development in today's low-income countries, the total global demand for food will increase approximately threefold over the coming half-century. Meanwhile, against this background, newly-occurring global environmental changes such as climate change are anticipated to affect food production. Other incipient large-scale environmental changes likely to affect food production include stratospheric O3 depletion, the accelerating loss of biodiversity (with knock-on effects on crop and livestock pest species) and the perturbation of several of the great elemental cycles of N and S. The ways in which these various environmental influences affect the production of food (crops and livestock on land, and wild and cultivated fisheries) are complex and interactive. Uncertainties therefore persist about how global climate change is likely to affect world and regional food production. On balance, recent modelling-based estimates indicate that, in the medium to longer term, if not over the next several decades, climate change is likely to affect crop yields adversely, especially in food-insecure regions. The prospect of increased climatic variability further increases the risks to future food production. Given these possible though uncertain adverse impacts of climatic and other environmental changes on world food production, there is a need to apply the Precautionary Principle. There are finite, and increasingly evident, limits to agro-ecosystems and to wild fisheries. Our capacity to maintain food supplies for an increasingly large and increasingly expectant world population will depend on maximising the efficiency and sustainability of production methods, incorporating socially-beneficial genetic biotechnologies, and taking pre-emptive action to minimise detrimental ecologically-damaging global environmental changes.

<p>This case study explores the aspirations of young people in a youth training programme and how structure and agency shape their aspirations. Transition policy is currently based on the pathways framework which provides many different educational and training ‘pathways’ to assist young people to move from school to work. The pathways framework uses the ‘pathways metaphor’ as a response to the knowledge-wave economy where the individual is responsible for creating their own ‘pathway’ in a flexible and complex labour market. For youth in Youth Training their ‘pathway’ is often non-linear and complex; not having followed conventional or mainstream transitional markers they are easily labelled problem-youth and ‘at-risk’ or vulnerable to failure. This study endeavoured to move beyond the labels of young in Youth Training to explore their stories in the context of the lived-experiences. It gave them the opportunity to voice their aspirations for the future and considered the structure or societal constraints associated with their transitional experience. A case study was undertaken with a group young people in Youth Training aged between 16 and 17 years old. Eight semi-structured interviews and two focus groups were held with four male and four female participants, of which the interview questions gave the opportunity to explore how young people felt about their future aspirations, the relevance of their training to their aspirations and how the students exercise their agency during training. Themes were drawn from the data and interpreted using choice biography, youth agency frameworks and discourse theory. The discussion of the data also explored the structural constraints within which the data sits. Findings showed that the future aspirations of young people in youth training are shaped by their lived-experiences. These lived-experiences are mediated by structural constraints and their ability to use agency. Structural constraints negatively affected their lived-experiences; and therefore, at times impacted on their future aspirations. The young people in this study described many complex and unique stories that exhibited the use of agency. Agency was exercised in the context of their lived-experiences to move beyond structural constraints and pursue their future aspirations. This study recommends the use of the contextual research approach when exploring youth transition research.</p>

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> The information of global spatially explicit urban extents under scenarios is important to mitigate future environmental risks caused by global urbanization and climate change. Although future dynamics of urban extent were commonly modelled with conversion from non-urban to urban using cellular automata (CA) based models, gradual changes of impervious surface area (ISA) at the pixel level were limitedly explored in previous studies. In this paper, we developed a global dataset of urban fractional changes at a 1 km resolution from 2020 to 2100 (5-year interval), under eight scenarios of socioeconomic pathways and climate change. First, to quantify the gradual change of ISA within the pixel, we characterized ISA growth patterns over past decades (i.e., 1985&ndash;2015) using a sigmoid growth model and annual global artificial impervious area (GAIA) data. Then, by incorporating the ISA-based growth mechanism with the CA model, we calibrated the state- specific urban CA model with quantitative evaluation at the global scale. Finally, we projected future urban fractional changes at 1km resolution under eight development pathways based on the harmonized urban growth demand from Land Use Harmonization2 (LUH2). The evaluation results show that the ISA-based urban CA model performs well globally, with an overall R² of 0.9 and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.08 between modeled and observed ISAs in 2015. With the inclusion of temporal contexts of urban sprawl gained from GAIA, the dataset of global urban fractional change shows good agreement with 30-year historical observations from satellites. The dataset can capture spatially explicit variations of ISA and gradual ISA change within pixels. The dataset of global urban fractional change is of great use in supporting quantitative analysis of urbanization-induced ecological and environmental change at a fine scale, such as urban heat islands, energy consumption, and human-nature interactions in the urban system. The developed dataset of global urban fractional change is available at <a href="https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20391117.v2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20391117.v2</a> (He et al., 2022).

Groundwater contributes a significant proportion of stream flow, and its contribution varies temporally throughout the year. The objective of this study was to investigate the temporal dynamics of groundwater contribution to stream flow under the effects of climate and land use changes. A study area of the Mainstem sub-watershed of the Kiskatinaw River watershed, British Columbia, Canada was used as a case study. A physically conceptual model, Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA), was developed for the study area. One greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenario (i.e., B1: more integrated and environmental friendly world) was used for climate change study for 2012-2016, and land use changes scenarios were generated for shortterm period (2012-2016) due to limited future projected land use data. The simulation results revealed that climate change affects significantly the temporal patterns of mean groundwater contribution to stream flow. Due to precipitation variability, these contributions varied monthly, seasonally, and annually. When land use changes (i.e., increasing forest clear cut area, and decreasing forest and agricultural areas) were combined with climate change scenarios, these contributions were decreased due to changes in the flow patterns to the regime with more surface runoff and stream flow but less groundwater discharge. Compared to the reference period (20072011), the mean annual groundwater contribution to stream flow from 2012 to 2016 under the B1 climate change scenario and the combined effects of B1 scenario and land use changes is expected to decrease by 1.8% and 4.3%, respectively, due to increased precipitation (on average 3.6% under the B1 scenario) and temperature (on average 0.36°C under the B1 scenario), and land use changes. The results obtained from this study will provide useful information for seasonal and annual water extractions from the river and allocation to the stakeholders for future water Original Research Article Saha; BJECC, 5(1): 1-22, 2015; Article no.BJECC.2015.001 2 supply, as well as ecological conditions of the stream, which will be beneficial to aquatic ecosystems. They will also provide how land use changes can impact the groundwater contribution to stream flow, which will be useful for planning of water resources management considering future climate and land use changes.

Climate change is one of the main challenges facing many countries, particularly developing countries, because of its negative impact on their various ecosystems and their socio-economic development, which very often leads them down a slow descent into poverty. This is because climate change can manifest itself in different forms such as climate variability and extreme events (droughts, epidemics, floods, storms and hurricanes), which can affect biodiversity and cause many human and animal diseases and deaths. In fact, the evolution of ecosystems is dependent on climate and environmental change and appears to be closely associated with many emerging or re-emerging diseases. In general, the ecosystems considered to be most exposed to climate change are those located in and around the intertropical convergence zone in particular. They are believed to be closely linked to the occurrence of several emerging diseases, particularly vector-borne diseases. For years, the Republic of Haiti has been experiencing the adverse effects of these global changes with a marked disruption of its rainfall pattern and prolonged periods of drought as well as a pronounced increase in temperatures even in high altitude areas. Although there is evidence that climate change is increasing the frequency of vector-borne diseases and may contribute to increasing the virulence of their pathogens, there are very few studies conducted in Haiti on the relationship between climate change and vector-borne diseases. The purpose of this chapter is to define the interrelationships between climate change and vector-borne diseases in Haiti by identifying avenues of research to better understand the effects of climate change on public health and to make appropriate recommendations to decision-makers to ensure proper management.

Rural communities are subjected to impact of climate change and children are the most vulnerable. Adaptation to climate change poses, great challenge to Zambia, planners and decision makers need to appreciate application of strategic management. The study desired to establish the extent and impact of climate change on realization of children’s fundamental rights in rural agriculture dependent households, management and child protection systems in Zambia as well as to assess key factors of climate change and how it has contributed to inabilities of rural agricultural dependent households to fulfill fundamental rights of children. Contribute to the body of knowledge through proposing some measures that can address climate changes, with strategic management approach, community engagement, integrated with child rights approach. National Climate Change Policy sets two objectives with immediate relevance responding to climate change, public health and need strategic management, decisions: “To promote, strengthen implementation of adaptation and disaster risk reduction measures to reduce vulnerability to climate variability and change.” “To strengthen, institutional and human resource capacity, to effectively and efficiently address all aspects of climate change at, national, provincial, district and local levels.” There is need to strengthen, policies, promote application of prediction models and technologies to determine vulnerability sectors to climate change, support higher learning and research institutions on climate related research that supports child rights governance and protection. The study used combined methodology, action and explanatory. Much of the study methodology was explanatory in nature as it attempted to identify circumstances surrounding the extent and impact of climate change on realization of children’s fundamental rights in rural households. Key results includes Stakeholders, have not appreciated the application of strategic management in their planning and implementation of interventions on climate change with a child right’s lens. Climate change and environmental degradation are creating various crisis situations for children and rural households including social and economic crisis hence increasing vulnerability and poverty.

Global Climate and Environmental Change is an international hot field. To enhance native awareness on climate change is one mission of "State Policy and Action on Climate Change 2009 in China". As an implement, a course on Global Climate and Environmental Change has been opened in Shanghai Normal University since 2005. The course includes three fields. In the first field, it is introduced on which problems and harms have been caused from Global Climate and Environmental Changes according to UNEP Year Books 2003~2013. In the second field, to introduce the Earth System and Climate-Environment Change. In the third part, the hot climate-environmental issues are analyzed and discussed. By joining this course, the students have understanding earth system science and global change. It helped students to set up the view of ecological civilization of the harmonious development between human and nature, inspire students responsibility to protect the earth. During past 8 year, there were 4 to 5 classes opening for different levels in Shanghai Normal University for each year, more than 1000 students joined the study in the course.

Although climate change jeopardizes the fundamental human rights of current as well as future people, current actions and ambitions to tackle it are inadequate. There are two prominent explanations for this motivational gap in the climate ethics literature. The first maintains that our conventional moral judgement system is not well equipped to identify a complex problem such as climate change as an important moral problem. The second explanation refers to people’s reluctance to change their behaviour and the temptation to shirk responsibility. We argue that both factors are at play in the motivational gap and that they are complemented by crucial moral psychological insights regarding moral disengagement, which enables emitters to dissociate self-condemnation from harmful conduct. In this way, emitters are able to maintain their profligate, consumptive lifestyle, even though this conflicts with their moral standards with respect to climate change. We provide some illustrations of how strategies of moral disengagement are deployed in climate change and discuss the relationship between the explanations for the motivational gap and moral disengagement. On the basis of this explanatory framework, we submit that there are three pathways to tackle the motivational gap and moral disengagement in climate change: making climate change more salient to emitters and affirming their self-efficacy; reconsidering the self-interested motives that necessitate moral disengagement; and tackling moral disengagement directly.

Ours is an age of unprecedented levels of environmental alteration and biodiversity loss. Beyond the exposure to environmental hazards, conditions such as environmental degradation, biotic impoverishment, climate change, and the loss of ecosystem services create important health threats by changing the ecology of many pathogens and increasing the incidence and/or severity of certain noncommunicable conditions. They also threaten health in the future by weakening the Earth's life support systems.Although physicians remain one of the most often accessed and most trusted sources of information about the environment, there is currently little emphasis on educating medical professionals about these environmental issues. This lack of training reduces the ability of most physicians to be efficient science-public interfaces and makes them ineffective at contributing to address the fundamental causes of environmental problems or participate in substantive environmental policy discussions. This is an important challenge facing medical education today.To turn medical students into effective physician-citizens, an already-overwhelmed medical school curriculum must make way for a thoughtful exploration of environmental stressors and their impacts on human health. The overarching question before medical educators is how to develop the competencies, standards, and curricula for this educational endeavor. To this end, the authors highlight some of the critical linkages between health and the environment and suggest a subset of key practical issues that need to be addressed in order to create environmental education standards for the physician of the future.

In this paper, from a cybernetic perspective, the human-nature interactions are considered in the context of modern climate change, unprecedented in its scale and rate caused by anthropogenic activity. The developed structure of the “climate-economy” cybernetic system is presented, the weaknesses of the global governance bodies are analysed, and the main causes of the uncertainties in assessing climate change and the economic damage caused by this change are discussed. It is noted that adaptation measures and strategies developed and implemented by governments of different countries and intergovernmental organizations do not eliminate the causes of global warming and, therefore, have limited capacities, since humans and nature can exist only under specified environmental conditions. Going beyond these conditions, due to climate change, can lead to a global biological catastrophe. Climate policy decisions are made under uncertainty due to the ambiguity of estimates of the future climate, which, in turn, is the result of an insufficiently adequate description of feedbacks in the climate system models. Using low-parametric models of the Earth's climate system, the influence of system’s feedbacks on tangible inter-model differences of climate change estimates obtained using modern climate models of a high degree of complexity is illustrated. Since the climate change adaptation measures proposed by experts are not the struggle with causes, but the fight with consequences, we see geoengineering as a radical adaptation strategy. In contrast to previous studies, we consider the problem of purposefully modifying climatic conditions, implemented by geoengineering methods, within the framework of optimal control theory with mathematical formalization of geoengineering objectives and methods for achieving them. In this paper, an example of the formulation and solution of the optimization problem for stabilizing the Earth’s climate through the injection of finely dispersed sulfate aerosol into the stratosphere is presented.

Modelling regional cropping patterns under scenarios of climate and socio-economic change in Hungary