Essay by Jalonne L. White-Newsome: “Even with decades of data, state-of-the-art tools and prediction technologies, and clear signals that the impacts of climate change pose a threat to public health, there is still a major disconnect that is allowing extreme weather events to disrupt the health and well-being of low-income communities and people of color across the United States. Centering the health and well-being of these communities within cross-sector partnerships between residents, scientists, government, industry, and philanthropy can drive climate adaptation and resilience…(More)”
Launch of UN Biodiversity Lab 2.0: Spatial data and the future of our planet
Press Release: “…The UNBL 2.0 is a free, open-source platform that enables governments and others to access state-of-the-art maps and data on nature, climate change, and human development in new ways to generate insight for nature and sustainable development. It is freely available online to governments and other stakeholders as a digital public good…
The UNBL 2.0 release responds to a known global gap in the types of spatial data and tools, providing an invaluable resource to nations around the world to take transformative action. Users can now access over 400 of the world’s best available global spatial data layers; create secure workspaces to incorporate national data alongside global data; use curated data collections to generate insight for action; and more. Without specialized tools or training, decision-makers can leverage the power of spatial data to support priority-setting and the implementation of nature-based solutions. Dynamic metrics and indicators on the state of our planet are also available….(More)”.
The AI gambit: leveraging artificial intelligence to combat climate change—opportunities, challenges, and recommendations
Paper by Josh Cowls, Andreas Tsamados, Mariarosaria Taddeo & Luciano Floridi: “In this article, we analyse the role that artificial intelligence (AI) could play, and is playing, to combat global climate change. We identify two crucial opportunities that AI offers in this domain: it can help improve and expand current understanding of climate change, and it can contribute to combatting the climate crisis effectively. However, the development of AI also raises two sets of problems when considering climate change: the possible exacerbation of social and ethical challenges already associated with AI, and the contribution to climate change of the greenhouse gases emitted by training data and computation-intensive AI systems. We assess the carbon footprint of AI research, and the factors that influence AI’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in this domain. We find that the carbon footprint of AI research may be significant and highlight the need for more evidence concerning the trade-off between the GHG emissions generated by AI research and the energy and resource efficiency gains that AI can offer. In light of our analysis, we argue that leveraging the opportunities offered by AI for global climate change whilst limiting its risks is a gambit which requires responsive, evidence-based, and effective governance to become a winning strategy. We conclude by identifying the European Union as being especially well-placed to play a leading role in this policy response and provide 13 recommendations that are designed to identify and harness the opportunities of AI for combatting climate change, while reducing its impact on the environment….(More)”.
Solutions to Plastic Pollution: A Conceptual Framework to Tackle a Wicked Problem
Chapter by Martin Wagner: “There is a broad willingness to act on global plastic pollution as well as a plethora of available technological, governance, and societal solutions. However, this solution space has not been organized in a larger conceptual framework yet. In this essay, I propose such a framework, place the available solutions in it, and use it to explore the value-laden issues that motivate the diverse problem formulations and the preferences for certain solutions by certain actors. To set the scene, I argue that plastic pollution shares the key features of wicked problems, namely, scientific, political, and societal complexity and uncertainty as well as a diversity in the views of actors. To explore the latter, plastic pollution can be framed as a waste, resource, economic, societal, or systemic problem.
Doing so results in different and sometimes conflicting sets of preferred solutions, including improving waste management; recycling and reuse; implementing levies, taxes, and bans as well as ethical consumerism; raising awareness; and a transition to a circular economy. Deciding which of these solutions is desirable is, again, not a purely rational choice. Accordingly, the social deliberations on these solution sets can be organized across four scales of change. At the geographic and time scales, we need to clarify where and when we want to solve the plastic problem. On the scale of responsibility, we need to clarify who is accountable, has the means to make change, and carries the costs. At the magnitude scale, we need to discuss which level of change we desire on a spectrum of status quo to revolution. All these issues are inherently linked to value judgments and worldviews that must, therefore, be part of an open and inclusive debate to facilitate solving the wicked problem of plastic pollution…(More)”.
Global citizens’ assembly to be chosen for UN climate talks
Article by Fiona Harvey: “One hundred people from around the world are to take part in a citizens’ assembly to discuss the climate crisis over the next month, before presenting their findings at the UN Cop26 climate summit.
The Global Citizens’ Assembly will be representative of the world’s population, and will invite people chosen by lottery to take part in online discussions that will culminate in November, during the fortnight-long climate talks that open in Glasgow on 31 October.
Funded with nearly $1m, from sources including the Scottish government and the European Climate Foundation, the assembly is supported by the UN and UK and run by a coalition of more than 100 organisations…
A team of international scientists and other experts will explain details of the climate crisis and potential solutions, and members of the assembly will discuss how these might work in practice, seeking to answer the question: “How can humanity address the climate and ecological crisis in a fair and effective way?”. The key messages from their discussions will be presented at Cop26 and a report will be published in March.
Alok Sharma, the UK cabinet minister who will act as president of the Cop26 summit, said: “The Global Assembly is a fantastic initiative and was selected for representation in the green zone [of the Cop26 presentation hall] because we recognise just how important its work is and also because we are committed to bringing the voice of global citizens into the heart of Cop26. It creates that vital link between local conversation and a global conference.”…(More)”.
Are citizen juries and assemblies on climate change driving democratic climate policymaking? An exploration of two case studies in the UK
Paper by Rebecca Wells, Candice Howarth & Lina I. Brand-Correa: “In light of increasing pressure to deliver climate action targets and the growing role of citizens in raising the importance of the issue, deliberative democratic processes (e.g. citizen juries and citizen assemblies) on climate change are increasingly being used to provide a voice to citizens in climate change decision-making. Through a comparative case study of two processes that ran in the UK in 2019 (the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury and the Oxford Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change), this paper investigates how far citizen assemblies and juries are increasing citizen engagement on climate change and creating more citizen-centred climate policymaking. Interviews were conducted with policymakers, councillors, professional facilitators and others involved in running these processes to assess motivations for conducting these, their structure and the impact and influence they had. The findings suggest the impact of these processes is not uniform: they have an indirect impact on policy making by creating momentum around climate action and supporting the introduction of pre-planned or pre-existing policies rather than a direct impact by truly being citizen-centred policy making processes or conducive to new climate policy. We conclude with reflections on how these processes give elected representatives a public mandate on climate change, that they help to identify more nuanced and in-depth public opinions in a fair and informed way, yet it can be challenging to embed citizen juries and assemblies in wider democratic processes….(More)”.
Carbonwashing: A New Type of Carbon Data-Related ESG Greenwashing
Paper by Soh Young In and Kim Schumacher: “Despite the increased attention and capital incentives around corporate sustainability, the development of sustainability reporting standards and monitoring systems has been progressing at a slow pace. As a result, companies have misaligned incentives to deliberately or selectively communicate information not matched with actual environmental impacts or make largely unsubstantiated promises around future ambitions. These incidents are broadly called “greenwashing,” but there is no clear consensus on its definition and taxonomy. We pay particular attention to the threat of greenwashing concerning carbon emission reductions by coining a new term, “carbonwashing.” Since carbon mitigation is the universal goal, the corporate carbon performance data supply chain is relatively more advanced than that of the entire sustainability data landscape. Nonetheless, the threat of carbonwashing persists, even far more severe than general greenwashing due to the financial values attached to corporate carbon performance. This paper contextualizes sustainable finance-related carbonwashing via an outline of the communication as well as the measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) of carbon emission mitigation performance. Moreover, it proposes several actionable policy recommendations on how industry stakeholders and government regulators can reduce carbonwashing risks…(More)”.
Can Gamification be Used for Spatial Energy Data Collection?
Paper by Ernst Gebetsroither-Geringer et al regarding “Experiences Gained from the Development of the HotCity Game to Collect Urban Waste Heat Sources”: Availability of reliable data is one of the most important elements for fact-based decisions. Urban planning and spatial energy planning often suffers from a lack of availability of good, validated and up-to-date data sets. Furthermore, integrated spatial and energy planning needs to incorporate new spatially distributed energy sources and understand how these sources can be used in the future to meet climate protection targets. These new energy sources can be, for example, waste heat from industrial food production, local industrial/commercial enterprises, data centers, or urban infrastructure such as tunnels and metro stations. The utilization of such waste heat sources in heating networks has been demonstrated several times, however, their proper identification in an urban environment can be challenging, especially for smaller and unconventional sources (Schmidt, 2020).
Gamification as an innovative way to collect the needed data was investigated within a national funded research project called “HotCity”. Gamification builds on the use of game mechanics in contexts that are, by nature, unrelated to the game (Deterding, 2011). Within the project the HotCity-App was developed enabling users to spatially report and evaluate different sources of waste heat. The gamification of data collection was also intended to raise awareness of waste heat and energy use on the one hand, and to facilitate the collection of data from small energy sources on the other. For the first time, the game framework is secured using a blockchain and mapped by means of a token system. The HotCity-App was tested in the Austrian cities Vienna and Graz as a proof of concept to analyse if and how the gamification approach can deliver valid results….(More)”
Public engagement and net zero
Report by Tom Sasse, Jill Rutter, and Sarah Allan: “The government must do more to involve the public in designing policies to help the UK transition to a zero-carbon economy.
This report, published in partnership with Involve, sets out recommendations for when and how policy makers should engage with citizens and residents – such as on designing taxes and subsidies to support the replacement of gas boilers or encouraging changes in diet – to deliver net zero.
But it warns there is limited government capability and expertise on public engagement and little co-ordination of activities across government. In many departments, engaging the public is not prioritised as a part of policy making.
Climate Assembly UK, organised in 2020 by parliament (not government), involved over a hundred members of the public, informed by experts, deliberating over the choices involved in the UK meeting its net zero target. But the government has not built on its success. It has yet to commit to making public engagement part of its net zero strategy, nor set out a clear plan for how it might go about it.
The report recommends that:
- departments invest in strengthening the public engagement expertise needed to plan and commission exercises effectively
- either the Cabinet Office or the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) take increased responsibility for co-ordinating net zero public engagement across government
- the government use its net zero strategy, due in the autumn of this year, to set out how it intends to use public engagement to inform the design of net zero policies
- the independent Climate Change Committee should play a greater role in advising government on what public engagement to commission….(More)”.
Atlas of the Invisible: using data to map the climate crisis
James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti in The Guardian: “In a new book, Atlas of the Invisible, the geographer James Cheshire and designer Oliver Uberti redefine what an atlas can be. The following eight graphics reveal some of the causes and consequences of the climate crisis that are hard to detect with the naked eye but become clear when the data is collected and visualised.
Fasten your seatbelts
The Federal Aviation Administration in the US reported only nine serious injuries from clear-air turbulence out of 1 billion passengers in 2018, but the risk persists because neither captains nor their onboard instruments can see rough air ahead; instead they rely on other pilots and flight dispatchers to warn them. In recent years meteorologists have alerted aviators to bigger bumps coming this century. Simulations show that as the climate crisis makes jet streams more erratic, the chances of encountering turbulent airspace will soar, especially in autumn and winter along the busiest routes. All the more reason to cut back on transatlantic flights….(More)”