20253 research outputs found
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Sustainable intensification of fodder crop production can mitigate feed shortage and seasonality in East Africa
Get PDFThe growing demand for livestock products from growing populations and economies will require additional forage to meet livestock feed requirements. Employing a novel, globally applicable seasonal demand and supply assessment methodology, we investigate the seasonal availability of fodder for ruminants and the potential for growing fodder crops to mitigate current and future demand shortfalls while preserving key conservation and wetland areas in East Africa. Our results indicate that grazing, which respects land for environmental conservation, will not provide sufficient fodder to meet demand throughout the year in many areas. Fodder crops from improved pastures, some conserved as hay, and new crops such as dual-purpose sorghum for food and feed production have a significant potential to provide fodder biomass, especially for maintaining sufficient fodder in the dry season. Forage production in East Africa needs to be intensified in a sustainable way while carrying capacity and stocking rates must be closely monitored
The truth about co-benefits: a multidimensional feasibility assessment for thailand and beyond
Get PDFResearch has yielded increasingly robust estimates of the co-benefits from mitigating climate change while reducing air pollution, improving health, and meeting other development needs. Though quantifying these often hidden benefits could ease cost concerns and lower technological constraints for development-friendly climate solutions, achieving co-benefits frequently requires overcoming difficult-to-measure social and institutional barriers. This study extends insights from research focusing on quantitatively assessing the feasibility of a 1.5 °C future to build a multidimensional framework for measuring different barriers to achieving co-benefits. The framework offers a novel yet generalizable approach for bringing context-appropriate assessments of different dimensions of feasibility into the integrated assessment modelling that underpins work on co-benefits. It then outlines five steps for applying that framework to evaluate the size of different barriers for transport, agricultural and residential energy co-benefit solutions in Thailand. The results demonstrate that the sum of the delays from social/institutional barriers exceed economic/technological barriers for four out of six studied solutions. These delays also lead to increases of 24% to 31% in PM2.5 emissions relative to a no-barriers effective implementation scenario between 2015 and 2030 and 2040. The feasibility framework can be integrated into not only national policy scenarios but also project assessments, following trends in carbon finance. An international barriers database as well as strengthening links to work on barriers and technological diffusion, transaction costs, and multi-level transitions can also help spread multi-dimensional feasibility assessments across countries and scales
Unveiling Land Use Dynamics: Insights from a Hierarchical Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Modelling of Compositional Data
Get PDFChanges in land use patterns have significant environmental and socio-economic impacts, making it crucial for policymakers to understand their causes and consequences. This study, part of the European LAMASUS (Land Management for Sustainability) project, aims to support the EU's climate neutrality target by developing a governance model through collaboration among policymakers, land users, and researchers. We present a methodological synthesis for treating land use data using a Bayesian approach within spatial and spatio-temporal modelling frameworks. The study tackles the challenges of analysing land use changes, particularly the presence of zero values and computational issues with large datasets. It introduces joint model structures to address zeros and employs sequential inference and consensus methods for Big Data problems. Spatial downscaling models approximate smaller scales from aggregated data, circumventing high-resolution data complications. We explore Beta regression and Compositional Data Analysis (CoDa) for land use data, review relevant spatial and spatio-temporal models, and present strategies for handling zeros. The paper demonstrates the implementation of key models, downscaling techniques, and solutions to Big Data challenges with examples from simulated data and the LAMASUS project, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding and managing land use changes
Towards an ecological metaphor for regenerative circular economies
Get PDFAn ecological metaphor can enable transitions towards regenerative circular economies. Yet, this potential remains latent because its conceptual development, which is a prerequisite for its practical operationalization, is in its incipient phase and largely vague. To strengthen its epistemological underpinning, we propose a forward-looking interdisciplinary research agenda which brings together theories, ontological positions, analytical approaches, and strategies of action from ecological economics, panarchy theory, socio-metabolic research, process ecology, environ network theory, the constructal law, nature-based solutions, complexity economics, doughnut economics, regenerative economics, and ergodicity economics. The agenda facilitates the concentration, consolidation, and acceleration of theoretical and methodological innovation for the generation and accumulation of a diverse yet coherent body of knowledge on the interpretation of the process of regeneration and for illuminating the ways in which regenerative circular economies may function
Optimal entry deterrence under uncertainty
Get PDFThe objective of this paper is to analyze an incumbent–entrant model under uncertainty. The entrant observes the realization of the random variable(s) prior to making decisions regarding market entry and capacity selection, leaving the uncertainty entirely on the incumbent’s side. The sources of this uncertainty pertain to the characteristics of the entrant’s product and the entry costs the entrant must incur before becoming operational. The key findings indicate that uncertainty generally enhances entry, and, apart from blockaded entry, entry deterrence and accommodated entry, the incumbent can pursue entry deterrence with a certain probability
Firm level optimisation strategies for sustainable and cost effective electric vehicle workplace charging
Get PDFExpanding electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure is essential for transitioning to an electrified mobility system. With rising EV adoption rates, firms face increasing regulatory pressure to build up workplace charging facilities for their employees. However, the impact of EV charging loads on businesses’ specific electricity consumption profiles remains largely unknown. Our study addresses this challenge by presenting a mathematical optimisation model, available via an open-source web application, that empowers business executives to manage energy consumption effectively, enabling them to assess peak loads, charging costs and carbon emissions specific to their power profiles and employee needs. Using real-world data from a global car manufacturer in South East England, UK, we demonstrate that smart charging strategies can reduce peak loads by 28% and decrease charging costs and emissions by 9% compared to convenience charging. Our methodology is widely applicable across industries and geographies, offering data-driven insights for planning EV workplace charging infrastructure
Understanding multiple resilience dividends and system boundaries in disaster- and climate-risk management: a systems approach for enhanced decision-making
Get PDFChallenges in managing multi-hazards and multi-risks within complex risk landscapes—where numerous stakeholders with different priority needs and risk perceptions interact—remain unresolved. Here we suggest ways to tackle these pressing challenges in an integrated and comprehensive manner by applying key concepts from systemic risk research to triple- and multiple-dividend approaches. The central idea is that additional dividends (i.e., economic, social, and environmental co-benefits of disaster-risk reduction that go beyond loss-reduction benefits) can be related to different system boundaries (e.g., individual systems and system of systems) through their interdependencies. This approach allows for an integrated evaluation of interventions that may be more beneficial across various scales and for corresponding threats, thus increasing synergies (or co-benefits) and decreasing asynergies (or trade-offs) of disaster-risk reduction in a systemic way. Importantly, triple and multiple dividends, along with their related tools and approaches, can be seen as part of a ‘dividend continuum’, reflecting the varying levels of interdependencies across spatial and temporal scales within complex risk landscapes. As a consequence, dividends within and across systems can be managed simultaneously, based on determining priority needs, risk perceptions, and trade-offs involved in building resilience against current and future risks
Attributing global impacts of local extremes to climate change for improving loss and damage estimates
Get PDFThe impact of air conditioning on residential electricity consumption across world countries
Get PDFWe provide a first globally-relevant assessment of the electricity consumption consequences of households' adaptation to ambient heat through air conditioning (AC). We use household survey data from 25 countries within a discrete-continuous choice empirical framework to model households' joint air conditioning adoption and utilization decisions, and combine the estimated responses with scenarios of socioeconomic, demographic, and climatic change to project air conditioning prevalence and cooling electricity demand circa mid-century. We find that air conditioning ownership increases households' electricity consumption by 36%, on average, but the effect is heterogeneous, varying with weather conditions, income and country contexts, revealing the importance of behaviors, practices, climate, and technologies. Compared to the other drivers of electricity consumption, air conditioning has the leading marginal effect, also accounting for a significant share of household budgets. By 2050, the overall effect is a net increase in global yearly residential cooling electricity to 976-1393 TWh, with an additional 670-956 Mt of CO2 emissions, and associated social costs of $124-177 billion. Our findings highlight cooling energy expenditure as an emerging indicator of energy poverty as the climate warms, and provide an initial quantification of the economic and environmental risks associated with air conditioning as an adaptation to climate change
Accelerating Access to Clean Air for a Livable Planet
Get PDFAir pollution is taking a heavy toll on both people and economies across the world. Reducing it will require effective, targeted, and integrated policies. This report identifies the main sources of air pollution in the world today, with a focus on ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5). It deploys scenario modeling to assess the extent to which current air pollution policies will reduce exposure to PM2.5 by 2040, and to show how adopting an integrated suite of decarbonization and air quality management policies could yield significant progress towards clean air, with substantial co-benefits. The report also assesses strategies and financing requirements to mobilize clean air investments, and emphasizes the features of effective air quality management governance