The article by Cook et al offers an interesting new methodological approach to the debate about (supposedly lacking) scientific consensus on global warming, showing that contrarian claims that there ...was no such consensus are clearly misleading. But once the attribution issue can be regarded as settled, new questions and controversies arise. They ultimately result from the different technological and organizational pathways towards a new global society model that takes its adverse climate change effects into account and seeks for new, but also risky solutions.
This paper compares the carbon footprint effects of a voluntary real lab with those of the involuntary “real lab” provided by the lockdowns during the recent Corona crisis. In a voluntary real lab ...situation, 100 private households in Berlin (Germany) have tried to reduce their personal carbon footprints over 1 year (2018). The households have been equipped with a weekly carbon tracker, calculating their CO
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footprint in the domains housing energy, mobility on ground, air travel, food, other consumption, and public consumption. The households have been informed by various channels and supported by a network of “green” local enterprises and NGOs. It was also possible for them to make use of in-home energy advisors, identifying easy-to-accomplish saving potential. On average, the households managed to reduce their footprint by 11%, with individual savings of up to 40%. One of the major problems the households have been experiencing was refraining from air travel, e.g., by substituting it by train l. Others identified road safety as a major problem when switching from cars to bikes. With an annual reduction of 10%, carbon neutrality could be reached in or even before 2050. But political decisions are needed in order to change the collective boundary conditions. In 2020, Germany–as many other countries–has experienced a COVID-19 lockdown with substantial restrictions to all kinds of consumption activities (flying, international travel, consumption activities in the public etc.). This work compares the CO
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reduction effects of these two “real labs,” a voluntary and an imposed one, and ask what the relative quantitative effects are. Following that comparison, it reflect upon the similarities and differences of voluntary and imposed situations, and what there can be learned for the implementation of policies for more sustainable production and consumption patterns.
Self-protective behavior by residents of flood-prone urban areas can reduce monetary flood damage by 80%, and reduce the need for public risk management. But, research on the determinants of private ...households' prevention of damage by natural hazards is rare, especially in Germany. To answer the question of why some people take precautionary action while others do not, a socio-psychological model based on Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) is developed, explaining private precautionary damage prevention by residents' perceptions of previous flood experience, risk of future floods, reliability of public flood protection, the efficacy and costs of self-protective behavior, their perceived ability to perform these actions, and non-protective responses like wishful thinking. The validity of the proposed model is explored by means of representative quantitative telephone surveys and regression analyses, and compared with a socio-economic model (including residents' age, gender, income, school degree and being owner or tenant). Participants were 157 residents of flood-prone homes in Cologne, Germany, a city that has traditionally been subject to minor and major flood events. Results of the study show the explanatory power of the socio-psychological model, with important implications for public risk communication efforts. To motivate residents in flood-prone areas to take their share in damage prevention, it is essential to communicate not only the risk of flooding and its potential consequences, but also the possibility, effectiveness and cost of private precautionary measures.
A growing number of local energy conflicts around wind power and power-grid extensions are slowing down the deployment of the German Energiewende. In this paper, a local conflict on wind energy in ...the state of Baden-Württemberg is analysed in detail. In the little community of Engelsbrand, local opposition against a planned wind park was able to turn around a set of favourable a priori conditions, such as a supporting state government planning process, a local supporter group, a transparent planning process, including a majority vote pro wind energy, and a round table discussion. Distancing itself from the NIMBY-explanation (‘Not In My Back Yard’), the paper applies insights from discourse network analysis and micro-sociology in order to study the local conflict dynamics. Special attention is given to the resource mobilisation strategies of the opponents, including social networks, mass and social media use. The paper ends by drawing some general conclusions for the German Energiewende.
Urban agriculture, including peri-urban farming, can nourish around one billion city dwellers and provide multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits. However, these benefits depend on ...various factors and are debated. Therefore, we used machine learning to semi-automate a systematic review of the existing literature on urban agriculture. It started with around 76,000 records for initial screening based on a broad keyword search strategy. We applied the topic modeling approach to systematically understand various aspects of urban agriculture based on the full text of around 1,450 relevant publications. Urban agriculture literature covers 14 topics, clustered into 11 themes related to urban agriculture forms, their multi-functionalities, and their underlying challenges. These forms are small-scale ground-based and building-integrated systems. The multi-functionalities include food, livelihoods, health benefits, social space, green infrastructure, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Therefore, promoting urban agriculture requires accounting for its multi-functionalities, besides food provisioning, and encouraging efficient and sustainable practices.
•We identify 14 topics on urban agriculture, which vary spatially and temporally.•Urban agriculture provides socioeconomic and environmental benefits, besides food.•Urban agriculture faces challenges of inefficient practices and health risks.•Sustainable practices can reduce health risks and input needs for urban agriculture.•Promoting urban agriculture requires accounting for its multi-functionalities.
Der Klimawandel stellt Gesellschaften weltweit vor gewaltige Herausforderungen. Im Begriff der Nachhaltigkeit scheint ein Konsens darüber, wie mit dieser Bedrohung umgegangen werden kann, ...kondensiert. Doch die vermeintliche Einmütigkeit kaschiert immer weniger Konflikte darüber, was genau unter Klimaschutz und nachhaltiger Lebensführung zu verstehen ist: Wie und von wem kann das erreicht werden? Und wie verhalten sich diese Bestrebungen zu demokratischen Systemen? 41 Beiträger*innen nähern sich empirisch und konzeptionell den Erzählungen, Vorstellungen und ersten Manifestationen von Zukunft und dem darin implizierten Verhältnis von Demokratie, Nachhaltigkeit und Konflikt an.
Purpose – Many cities have taken action in order to reduce their carbon footprints. Moreover, the European city has historically been the home of democratic institutions, which have proven to be ...crucial for successful policy. The leading question of this chapter is whether or not this traditional link between democracy and active citizen participation also holds with respect to local climate policy.Design/methodology/approach – In our chapter, we take a comparative look at two cities – Muenster in Rhineland Westphalia and Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg next to Berlin. We have a look at the track records of both cities’ carbon footprint and analyze the role of civil society in local climate policy. We develop a set of qualitative indicators, measuring local climate policy outcomes on the one hand and local climate policy performance on the other. We base our analysis on documents and on stakeholder interviews in both cities.Findings – The findings show that Muenster has performed better in urban climate protection than Potsdam. Also the level of civil society engagement is higher in Muenster. Thus, the hypothesis that cities with a higher level of civil society engagement also perform better in urban climate policy can be confirmed. However, Muenster performs just slightly better than Potsdam. Both cities have failed to meet their climate goals. A closer look to the local climate policy performance leads us to the final conclusion that cities should be more active in supporting and including citizens in their local climate policies in all areas of life – including lifestyle politics and political consumerism.
Purpose – Adaptation to climate change requires that the population at risk and decision makers in various sectors become aware of the possible detrimental impacts in order to take whatever action is ...needed, especially in highly vulnerable countries and regions. In order to assess the climate change and impact awareness in a particularly vulnerable area – the Indian city Hyderabad, located within a semiarid region – we wanted to learn more about the local climate discourse, in particular the daily newspaper coverage of climate change and weather extremes.Methodology/approach – After having looked at the Indian climate change discourse (CCD) in general, based on literature review, we were studying the local public CCD, based on the in-depth analysis of two English language daily newspapers, and three Telugu (the dominant local language) daily newspapers, covering the period of 2008–2009. This qualitative and quantitative analysis was completed by two expert interviews with local journalists.Findings – We find that the more recent Indian CCD has shifted if compared to the dominant argumentation pattern of the period before, as reported in other analyses. While the former discourse was characterized by the scheme “the poor/developing countries suffer from anthropogenic climate change caused by the industrialized countries,” the recent Indian CCD has become more differentiated, taking into account both impacts elsewhere, and, most notably, conceding a (limited) responsibility of countries like India. On a local level, while reports on weather extremes are very common, we find that local newspapers of Hyderabad do not provide a link between these extreme events and (global) climate change.Research limitations – Our discourse analysis could only cover a short time period of a local CCD, leaving open the questions of (a) its further development, and (b) how things might stand in other places in India. Furthermore it would be necessary to complement our study by analyses of the impact of mass media reporting on people's attitudes and behavior.Originality/value of paper – Given the importance of public participation in adaptation measures, it is crucial to know if and how the wider public and the majority of the nonexpert public administration (which needs to be involved) understands the causes, potential impacts, and possible adaptive action in the face of climate change. This chapter provides a necessary (though not sufficient) element for that assessment. The findings can help to identify weaknesses, and thus to give hints how to improve the adaptive capacity in places like Hyderabad (India).
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