Towards a physically motivated planetary accounting framework

Purpose While climate change has caused catastrophic consequences for both human and non-human habitats in the Anthropocene era, its impacts are unevenly distributed across the globe. Existing global climate change policies, discourses and practices – promulgated and adopted worldwide – fail to account for the systemic structural, political, historical, cultural, social and economic inequalities between the Majority and Minority World. Inspired by the decolonization agenda, this paper aims to deconstruct the Western technocratic theorization of public sector climate accounting and accountability from a Majority World perspective. Design/methodology/approach Theoretically, the paper draws from a critical “climate justice” lens and Latour's (2017) concept of “Down to Earth” to critique the limitations of dominant scientific and technocratic approaches of public sector climate accounting and accountability, which have perpetuated socio-environmental injustice. It also advocates for a new climatic regime – “Terrestrial” – that offers an alternative politics which leads towards the earth. Empirically, the paper draws from three empirical narratives to illustrate how climate injustices materialize in practice in the Majority World. Findings The paper argues that meaningful climate accountability requires reimagining political orientations beyond Minority–Majority national frontiers and adopting a planetary ethic that restores humanity's relationship with the earth. It urges international agencies and Global South states to address climate injustice by implementing a practical climate accounting and accountability framework comprising: (1) prioritizing local resilience and adaptive capacity over mitigation-focused agendas; (2) resisting neo-colonial extractive practices and exploring commonwealth governance alternatives; (3) fostering communitarian, Indigenous-informed participation; (4) rejecting hierarchical, technocratic approaches; and (5) developing alternative contextually grounded practices sensitive to local socio-political, cultural and environmental realities. Research limitations/implications Future research on public sector accounting and accountability for climate change must move beyond descriptive assessments towards transformative frameworks addressing climate injustice in the Majority World. This includes examining the empirical application of novel climate accounting models above, theorizing the potential and limitations of accounting tools for adaptation, advancing participatory accountability practices, exploring alternative accounting possibilities and extending inquiry into commonwealth governance. Latour's ideas – especially the “new climatic regime”, the terrestrial approach and the empirical science of nature-as-process – also provide valuable avenues for reimagining how climate accounting can be theorized and enacted in practice. Practical implications The paper develops a practical climate accounting and accountability framework in and for the Majority World, encapsulating five key features: (1) prioritizing local resilience and adaptive capacity over mitigation-focused agendas; (2) resisting neo-colonial extractive practices and exploring alternative models of commonwealth governance; (3) fostering communitarian, Indigenous-informed participatory initiatives; (4) rejecting hierarchical, technocratic approaches to accounting and accountability; and (5) advancing contextually grounded practices attuned to local socio-political, cultural and environmental realities, thereby addressing climate injustice in the Majority World. Originality/value Little research theorizes public sector climate accounting and accountability from the Majority World perspectives.

This chapter describes the current treatment of the land-use sector under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. It discusses how various financial incentive and accounting frameworks can complement each other under a future climate treaty. Despite recognizing the importance of forestry and agriculture, the climate change regime has failed to formulate incentives to encourage mitigation in the land-use sector while maintaining the ecological and social functions of landscapes. Unfortunately, the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol only formulate a fragmented set of rules, incentives, and obligations. The Protocol considers forest emissions in developed countries, but fails to create incentives for the sector’s highest emissions reduction and carbon storage potential in developing countries. This phenomenon highlights the importance of a new future climate treaty. Its discussion creates an integrated accounting and incentive framework that facilitates the formulation of robust and complementary adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Dramatic alterations to the natural environment due to human activity have produced a permanent rupture in the Earth system; the relative stable epoch of the Holocene has given way to a volatile Anthropocene. Acceptance of these claims means that we now live in this altered physical reality, inviting us to rethink how we conceptualise disasters. Yet, disaster scholars have been hesitant to apply the Anthropocene label and to acknowledge the profound changes that it can bring to the study of disasters. This paper queries whether this label is a necessary adage or unnecessary baggage for disaster studies by examining the possibilities and the challenges associated with engaging with the Anthropocene. An analysis of the concepts, causes, and consequences of disasters reveals how the Anthropocene provides, as the very least, a theoretical heuristic for challenging linear temporal assumptions, the epistemological status of uncertainty, and the location of agency in disaster studies.

<p>The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a powerful concept to drive action towards a more sustainable future. However, the SDGs are formulated in a qualitative and generic way whereas specific and quantitative definitions of targets are required to steer policy and practice.</p><p>The Indus river basin is a global hotspot for future climate change and socioeconomic development. The basin has the largest continuous irrigation scheme in the world, and hydropower is developing rapidly with a large hydropower potential still untapped. Therefore, water, food and energy are strongly interlinked in the basin’s water-food-energy nexus. The basin already faces insecurity of water, food and energy in the present situation, and with strong projected climate and socioeconomic change, achieving the SDGs for these three resources in the basin will be challenging.</p><p>Here we present a novel approach to translate the global SDGs for water, food and energy (SDGs 2, 6 and 7) to quantitative targets specified for the Indus river basin. Our approach is based on a resource accounting framework operating at sub-basin scale and monthly time step, combining models and geospatial data. The approach uses ensembles of downscaled projections for three climate change scenarios driving water availability and three sets of downscaled projections of socioeconomic drivers, including population and GDP, as main drivers for the demand for water, food and energy. The accounting framework considers dependencies between the three resources and represents scenario-specific exchange of resources between sub-basins in this transboundary river basin. The approach results in scenario-specific quantitative targets for water, food and energy to be realized to achieve the three related SDGs at the river basin scale.</p>

GI multisociety strategic plan on environmental sustainability.

Climate Change and Health: Strengthening the Evidence Base for Policy

Detecting vulnerability of humid tropical forests to multiple stressors

The nitrogen and carbon footprints of ammonia synthesis in China based on life cycle assessment

<p>As atmospheric CO₂ concentrations rise, associated ocean warming (OW) and ocean acidification (OA) are predicted to cause declines in reef-building corals globally, shifting reefs from coral-dominated systems to those dominated by less sensitive species. Sponges are important structural and functional components of coral reef ecosystems, but despite increasing field-based evidence that sponges may be ‘winners’ in response to environmental degradation, our understanding of how they respond to the combined effects of OW and OA is limited. This PhD thesis explores the response of four abundant Great Barrier Reef species – the phototrophic Carteriospongia foliascens and Cymbastela coralliophila and the heterotrophic Stylissa flabelliformis and Rhopaloeides odorabile to OW and OA levels predicted for 2100, under two CO₂ Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). The overall aim of this research is to bridge gaps in our understanding of how these important coral reef organisms will respond to projected climate change, to begin to explore whether a sponge dominated state is a possible future trajectory for coral reefs. To determine the tolerance of adult sponges to climate change, these four species were exposed to OW and OA in the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s (AIMS) National Sea Simulator (SeaSim) in a 3-month experimental study. The first data chapter explores the physiological responses of these sponges to OW and OA to gain a broad understanding of sponge holobiont survival and functioning under these conditions. In this chapter I also address the hypothesis that phototrophic and heterotrophic sponges will exhibit differential responses to climate change. In the second and third data chapters I explore the cellular lipid and fatty acid composition of sponges, and how these biochemical constituents vary with OW and OA. Lipids and fatty acids are not only vital energy stores, they form the major components of cell membranes, and the structure and composition of these biochemical constituents ultimately determines the integrity and physiological competency of a cell. Therefore through these analyses I aimed to determine how OW and OA affects the metabolic balance of sponges, and to understand mechanisms underpinning observed systemic sponge responses. Finally, to provide greater insight into the population level impacts of climate change on tropical sponges, in the last data chapter I explore the response of the phototrophic species Carteriospongia foliascens to OW/OA throughout its developmental stages. I found that while sponges can generally tolerate climate change scenarios predicted under the RCP6.0 conditions for 2100 (30ºC/ pH 7.8), environmental projections for the end of this century under the RCP8.5 (31.5ºC/ pH 7.6) will have significant implications for their survival. Temperature effects were much stronger than OA effects for all species; however, phototrophic and heterotrophic species responded differently to OA. Elevated pCO₂ exacerbated temperature stress in heterotrophic sponges but somewhat ameliorated thermal stress in phototrophic species. Furthermore, sponges with siliceous spiculated skeletons resisted the RCP 8.5 conditions for longer than the aspiculate species. Biochemical analysis revealed that spiculated species also have greater cell membrane support features, which is likely to contribute to the observed stress tolerance. I also found that the additional energy available to phototrophic sponges under OA conditions may be used for investment into cell membrane support, providing protection against thermal stress. Finally, larval survival and settlement success of C. foliascens was unaffected by OW and OA treatments, and juvenile sponges exhibited greater tolerance than their adult counterparts, again with evidence that OA reduces OW stress for some of these life stages. Based on the species studied here, this thesis confirms that sponges are better able to deal with OW and OA levels predicted for 2100 under RCP6.0, compared to many corals for which survival in a high CO₂ world requires OW to remain below 1.5°C. This suggests sponges may be future ‘winners’ on coral reefs under global climate change. However, if CO₂ atm concentrations reach levels predicted under RCP8.5, the prognosis for sponge survival by the end of this century changes as inter-species sponge tolerances to OW and OA differ. Under this projection it is likely we will also start to see a shift in sponge populations to those dominated by phototrophic sponges with siliceous spiculated skeletons. Overall, this thesis gives a holistic view of OW and OA impacts on tropical sponges and provides the basis from which to explore the potential for a sponge-coral regime shift in a high CO₂ world.</p>

The Arctic region faces increasing pollution from long-range atmospheric transport of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) being a notable threat to marine ecosystems already under pressure from climate change. Despite emission reductions in industrialized nations, understanding the sources, pathways, and temporal evolution of PAH deposition to Arctic and subarctic seas remains critical for effective pollution management and international cooperation. This study presents a comprehensive assessment of priority PAH compounds across Arctic and subarctic marine regions from 1990 to 2021 using the GLEMOS (Global EMEP Multi-media Modeling System) multicompartment chemical dispersion model at 3×3° global resolution. Simulations use emissions from the Global Emission Modeling System (GEMS) inventory, providing spatially and temporally resolved emission estimates across all major source regions. We quantify atmospheric concentrations and total deposition fluxes, providing spatial estimates of contaminant loading to vulnerable polar marine environments over three decades of significant Arctic environmental transformation. The source attribution framework identifies sector-specific and region-specific contributions to Arctic PAH contamination, linking GEMS emission sources in lower latitudes to deposition patterns across Arctic and subarctic receptors. This source-receptor analysis reveals the relative importance of different economic sectors (e.g., residential heating, transportation, industrial processes) and geographic regions in driving Arctic contamination, enabling targeted policy interventions and accountability frameworks. Our results reveal significant spatial heterogeneity in PAH deposition patterns across the Arctic, with distinct hotspots corresponding to dominant atmospheric transport pathways and regional emission intensities. Temporal trends reveal the effectiveness of emission reduction policies in some regions while highlighting emerging concerns from rapidly developing economies. The long-term GLEMOS simulations capture how changing emission profiles, atmospheric circulation patterns, and Arctic physical conditions have influenced contaminant delivery to polar marine systems. By quantifying where Arctic pollution originates and how these patterns have evolved over three decades, this work contributes to the ongoing Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) assessment efforts. The findings provide essential information for understanding PAH exposure risks to Arctic marine ecosystems, informing international pollution control agreements, and establishing baseline conditions for future monitoring priorities in this rapidly changing region.

The cumulative impacts of human and natural activity on forest landscapes in Alberta are clear. Human activity, such as forestry and oil and gas development, and natural processes such as wildfire leave distinctive marks on the composition, age class structure and spatial configuration of the forest. Also, other processes such as climate change may be slowly and subtly modifying forest dynamics and may lead to important changes over time. Given the importance and ubiquitous nature of these cumulative impacts, a forest management plan that does not adequately take such impacts into account cannot be expected to adequately manage the forest, neither its components nor its processes. In order to address the question of cumulative impacts in the context of forestry, a landscape model was designed and built in order to simulate forestry, oil and gas, climate change, wildfire, and demographic change for the Whitecourt forest management area over a long time horizon. This paper presents the model and the forest landscape states it forecasted with cumulative impacts, and evaluates the fate of some key indicators of biodiversity and forest productivity. Simulations of harvesting as the only disturbance, the nearest analogue to the current approach to forest management planning, yield results that differ greatly, in every respect, from the results of simulations of harvesting combined with other disturbance agents. The simulation of multiple disturbance agents together allows for the detection of interactions among disturbance agents, and indeed, there are important interactions between the processes of fire and oil and gas. Results also show that climate and demographic change will intensify the impact of fire on the supply of timber and other values. Also, the continued development of petroleum resources will lead to an important erosion of the forest landbase. Overall, this paper makes a strong case for cumulative impacts assessment and the use of spatial and temporal stochastic modelling in forest management. Key words: cumulative impacts, forest management, climate change, landscape modelling, APLM

Complexity and interdisciplinary approaches to environmental research

Long-term trends and influence of climate and land-use changes on pollen profiles of a Mediterranean oak forest

Climate and land use change are among the main drivers affecting virtually all species on earth. There were extensive studies projecting impacts of climate and land use changes on habitat loss and fragmentation but few on connectivity loss, and those that investigated connectivity did not disentangle the combined effects between climate change and land use change. This study uses the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) as a case study to illustrate an approach for disentangling the effects of climate change and human land use on population connectivity in the future. First, we assessed the current spatial pattern of population connectivity by simulating cumulative resistant kernels and factorial least‐cost paths with empirical field data. Then, we simulated the changes in connectivity due to future climate change under alternative emission scenarios (RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5) in mid (2041–2060) and late (2061–2080) 21st century, which served as baseline scenarios of future connectivity. Finally, we estimated the changes in future connectivity due to human land use changes by adding a low and a high human land use activity scenario to the baseline climate change scenarios in our simulations. Alarmingly, all high emission scenarios, with or without human land use change, were projected to result in >99% reduction in current core areas of connectivity by the end of 21st century at 50th percentile threshold or above. This study demonstrates a spatially explicit scenario modeling approach to examine the interplay between future climate change and human land use on species connectivity. Our results suggest that regional land use regulations may be insufficient to conserve connectivity for HBB if nothing is done to reduce climate change at a global scale.

Turf and surf