TY - JOUR
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Stehle, Fee
T1 - The Embeddedness of Urban Climate Politics in Multilevel Governance
BT - a Case Study of South Africa’s Major Cities
JF - The journal of environment & development : a review of international policy
N2 - Numerous scholars have lately highlighted the importance of cities in the global response to climate change. However, we still have little systematic knowledge on the evolution of urban climate politics in the Global South. In particular, we lack empirical studies that examine how local climate actions arise in political-administrative systems of developing and emerging economies. Therefore, this article adopts a multilevel governance perspective to explore the climate mitigation responses of three major cities in South Africa by looking at their vertical and horizontal integration in the wider governance framework. In the absence of a coherent national climate policy, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban have developed distinct climate actions within their jurisdictions. In their effort to address climate change, transnational city networks have provided considerable technical support to these cities. Yet, substantial domestic political-economic obstacles hinder the three cities to develop a more ambitious stance on climate change.
KW - climate change
KW - developing and emerging economies
KW - local climate policy making
KW - multilevel governance
KW - South Africa
KW - transnational city networks
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496518819121
SN - 1070-4965
SN - 1552-5465
VL - 28
IS - 1
SP - 54
EP - 77
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - Thousand Oaks
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Widerberg, Oscar
A1 - Lederer, Markus
A1 - Pattberg, Philipp H.
T1 - The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat as an orchestrator in global climate policymaking
JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration
N2 - Scholars have recently devoted increasing attention to the role and function of international bureaucracies in global policymaking. Some of them contend that international public officials have gained significant political influence in various policy fields. Compared to other international bureaucracies, the political leeway of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been considered rather limited. Due to the specific problem structure of the policy domain of climate change, national governments endowed this intergovernmental treaty secretariat with a relatively narrow mandate. However, this article argues that in the past few years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat has gradually loosened its straitjacket and expanded its original spectrum of activity by engaging different sub-national and non-state actors into a policy dialogue using facilitative orchestration as a mode of governance. The present article explores the recent evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat and investigates the way in which it initiates, guides, broadens and strengthens sub-national and non-state climate actions to achieve progress in the international climate negotiations.
Points for practitioners
The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has lately adopted new roles and functions in global climate policymaking. While previously seen as a rather technocratic body that, first and foremost, serves national governments, the Climate Secretariat increasingly interacts with sub-national governments, civil society organizations and private companies to push the global response to climate change forward. We contend that the Climate Secretariat can contribute to global climate policymaking by coordinating and steering the initiatives of non-nation-state actors towards coherence and good practice.
KW - climate change
KW - environmental policymaking
KW - intergovernmental relations
KW - international bureaucracies
KW - sub-national and non-state actors
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852319840425
SN - 0020-8523
SN - 1461-7226
VL - 87
IS - 1
SP - 21
EP - 38
PB - Sage
CY - Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.]
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Huang, Xiaozhong
A1 - Peng, Wei
A1 - Rudaya, Natalia
A1 - Grimm, Eric C.
A1 - Chen, Xuemei
A1 - Cao, Xianyong
A1 - Zhang, Jun
A1 - Pan, Xiaoduo
A1 - Liu, Sisi
A1 - Chen, Chunzhu
A1 - Chen, Fahu
T1 - Holocene vegetation and climate dynamics in the Altai Mountains and Surrounding Areas
JF - Geophysical research letters
N2 - A comprehensive understanding of the regional vegetation responses to long-term climate change will help to forecast Earth system dynamics. Based on a new well-dated pollen data set from Kanas Lake and a review on the published pollen records in and around the Altai Mountains, the regional vegetation dynamics and forcing mechanisms are discussed. In the Altai Mountains, the forest optimum occurred during 10-7ka for the upper forest zone and the tree line decline and/or ecological shifts were caused by climatic cooling from around 7ka. In the lower forest zone, the forest reached an optimum in the middle Holocene, and then increased openness of the forest, possibly caused by both climate cooling and human activities, took place in the late Holocene. In the lower basins or plains around the Altai Mountains, the development of protograssland or forest benefited from increasing humidity in the middle to late Holocene. Plain Language Summary In the Altai Mountains and surrounding area of central Asia, the previous studies of the Holocene paleovegetation and paleoclimate studies did not discuss the different ecological limiting factors for the vegetation in high mountains and low-elevation areas due to limited data. With accumulating fossil pollen data and surface pollen data, it is possible to understand better the geomorphological effect on the vegetation and discrepancies of vegetation/forest responses to large-scale climate forcing, and it is also possible to get reliable quantitative reconstructions of climate. Here our new pollen data and review on the published fossil pollen data will help us to look into the past climate change and vertical evolution of vegetation in this important area of the Northern Hemisphere. Based on our study, it can be concluded that the growth of taiga forest in the wetter areas may be promoted under a future warmer climate, while the forest in the relatively dry areas is liable to decline, and the different vegetation dynamics will contribute to future high-resolution coupled vegetation-climate model for Earth system modelling.
KW - climate change
KW - Kanas Lake
KW - Altai Mountains
KW - vegetation dynamics
KW - taiga forest
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078028
SN - 0094-8276
SN - 1944-8007
VL - 45
IS - 13
SP - 6628
EP - 6636
PB - American Geophysical Union
CY - Washington
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Huber, Robert
A1 - Rigling, Andreas
A1 - Bebi, Peter
A1 - Brand, Fridolin Simon
A1 - Briner, Simon
A1 - Buttler, Alexandre
A1 - Elkin, Che
A1 - Gillet, Francois
A1 - Gret-Regamey, Adrienne
A1 - Hirschi, Christian
A1 - Lischke, Heike
A1 - Scholz, Roland Werner
A1 - Seidl, Roman
A1 - Spiegelberger, Thomas
A1 - Walz, Ariane
A1 - Zimmermann, Willi
A1 - Bugmann, Harald
T1 - Sustainable land use in Mountain Regions under global change synthesis across scales and disciplines
JF - Ecology and society : a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability
N2 - Mountain regions provide essential ecosystem goods and services (EGS) for both mountain dwellers and people living outside these areas. Global change endangers the capacity of mountain ecosystems to provide key services. The Mountland project focused on three case study regions in the Swiss Alps and aimed to propose land-use practices and alternative policy solutions to ensure the provision of key EGS under climate and land-use changes. We summarized and synthesized the results of the project and provide insights into the ecological, socioeconomic, and political processes relevant for analyzing global change impacts on a European mountain region. In Mountland, an integrative approach was applied, combining methods from economics and the political and natural sciences to analyze ecosystem functioning from a holistic human-environment system perspective. In general, surveys, experiments, and model results revealed that climate and socioeconomic changes are likely to increase the vulnerability of the EGS analyzed. We regard the following key characteristics of coupled human-environment systems as central to our case study areas in mountain regions: thresholds, heterogeneity, trade-offs, and feedback. Our results suggest that the institutional framework should be strengthened in a way that better addresses these characteristics, allowing for (1) more integrative approaches, (2) a more network-oriented management and steering of political processes that integrate local stakeholders, and (3) enhanced capacity building to decrease the identified vulnerability as central elements in the policy process. Further, to maintain and support the future provision of EGS in mountain regions, policy making should also focus on project-oriented, cross-sectoral policies and spatial planning as a coordination instrument for land use in general.
KW - adaptive management
KW - climate change
KW - ecosystem services
KW - experiments
KW - interdisciplinary research
KW - land-use change
KW - modeling
KW - transdisciplinary research
Y1 - 2013
U6 - https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05499-180336
SN - 1708-3087
VL - 18
IS - 3
PB - Resilience Alliance
CY - Wolfville
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Huber, Veronika
A1 - Krummenauer, Linda
A1 - Peña-Ortiz, Cristina
A1 - Lange, Stefan
A1 - Gasparrini, Antonio
A1 - Vicedo-Cabrera, Ana Maria
A1 - Garcia-Herrera, Ricardo
A1 - Frieler, Katja
T1 - Temperature-related excess mortality in German cities at 2 °C and higher degrees of global warming
JF - Environmental Research
N2 - Background: Investigating future changes in temperature-related mortality as a function of global mean temperature (GMT) rise allows for the evaluation of policy-relevant climate change targets. So far, only few studies have taken this approach, and, in particular, no such assessments exist for Germany, the most populated country of Europe.
Methods: We assess temperature-related mortality in 12 major German cities based on daily time-series of all-cause mortality and daily mean temperatures in the period 1993-2015, using distributed-lag non-linear models in a two-stage design. Resulting risk functions are applied to estimate excess mortality in terms of GMT rise relative to pre-industrial levels, assuming no change in demographics or population vulnerability.
Results: In the observational period, cold contributes stronger to temperature-related mortality than heat, with overall attributable fractions of 5.49% (95%CI: 3.82-7.19) and 0.81% (95%CI: 0.72-0.89), respectively. Future projections indicate that this pattern could be reversed under progressing global warming, with heat-related mortality starting to exceed cold-related mortality at 3 degrees C or higher GMT rise. Across cities, projected net increases in total temperature-related mortality were 0.45% (95%CI: -0.02-1.06) at 3 degrees C, 1.53% (95%CI: 0.96-2.06) at 4 degrees C, and 2.88% (95%CI: 1.60-4.10) at 5 degrees C, compared to today's warming level of 1 degrees C. By contrast, no significant difference was found between projected total temperature-related mortality at 2 degrees C versus 1 degrees C of GMT rise.
Conclusions: Our results can inform current adaptation policies aimed at buffering the health risks from increased heat exposure under climate change. They also allow for the evaluation of global mitigation efforts in terms of local health benefits in some of Germany's most populated cities.
KW - temperature-related mortality
KW - climate change
KW - Future projections
KW - Germany
KW - global mean temperature
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109447
SN - 0013-9351
SN - 1096-0953
VL - 186
SP - 1
EP - 10
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego, California
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Huggel, Christian
A1 - Clague, John J.
A1 - Korup, Oliver
T1 - Is climate change responsible for changing landslide activity in high mountains?
JF - Earth surface processes and landforms : the journal of the British Geomorphological Research Group
N2 - Climate change, manifested by an increase in mean, minimum, and maximum temperatures and by more intense rainstorms, is becoming more evident in many regions. An important consequence of these changes may be an increase in landslides in high mountains. More research, however, is necessary to detect changes in landslide magnitude and frequency related to contemporary climate, particularly in alpine regions hosting glaciers, permafrost, and snow. These regions not only are sensitive to changes in both temperature and precipitation, but are also areas in which landslides are ubiquitous even under a stable climate. We analyze a series of catastrophic slope failures that occurred in the mountains of Europe, the Americas, and the Caucasus since the end of the 1990s. We distinguish between rock and ice avalanches, debris flows from de-glaciated areas, and landslides that involve dynamic interactions with glacial and river processes. Analysis of these events indicates several important controls on slope stability in high mountains, including: the non-linear response of firn and ice to warming; three-dimensional warming of subsurface bedrock and its relation to site geology; de-glaciation accompanied by exposure of new sediment; and combined short-term effects of precipitation and temperature. Based on several case studies, we propose that the following mechanisms can significantly alter landslide magnitude and frequency, and thus hazard, under warming conditions: (1) positive feedbacks acting on mass movement processes that after an initial climatic stimulus may evolve independently of climate change; (2) threshold behavior and tipping points in geomorphic systems; (3) storage of sediment and ice involving important lag-time effects.
KW - climate change
KW - landslides
KW - glaciers
KW - permafrost
Y1 - 2012
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2223
SN - 0197-9337
VL - 37
IS - 1
SP - 77
EP - 91
PB - Wiley-Blackwell
CY - Hoboken
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Imholt, Christian
A1 - Reil, Daniela
A1 - Eccard, Jana
A1 - Jacob, Daniela
A1 - Hempelmann, Nils
A1 - Jacob, Jens
T1 - Quantifying the past and future impact of climate on outbreak patterns of bank voles (Myodes glareolus)
JF - Pest management science
N2 - BACKGROUND Central European outbreak populations of the bank vole (Myodes glareolus Schreber) are known to cause damage in forestry and to transmit the most common type of Hantavirus (Puumala virus, PUUV) to humans. A sound estimation of potential effects of future climate scenarios on population dynamics is a prerequisite for long-term management strategies. Historic abundance time series were used to identify the key weather conditions associated with bank vole abundance, and were extrapolated to future climate scenarios to derive potential long-term changes in bank vole abundance dynamics.
RESULTS Classification and regression tree analysis revealed the most relevant weather parameters associated with high and low bank vole abundances. Summer temperatures 2 years prior to trapping had the highest impact on abundance fluctuation. Extrapolation of the identified parameters to future climate conditions revealed an increase in years with high vole abundance.
CONCLUSION Key weather patterns associated with vole abundance reflect the importance of superabundant food supply through masting to the occurrence of bank vole outbreaks. Owing to changing climate, these outbreaks are predicted potentially to increase in frequency 3-4-fold by the end of this century. This may negatively affect damage patterns in forestry and the risk of human PUUV infection in the long term. (c) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry
KW - climate change
KW - population dynamics
KW - bank vole
KW - regression tree
KW - outbreak
Y1 - 2015
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.3838
SN - 1526-498X
SN - 1526-4998
VL - 71
IS - 2
SP - 166
EP - 172
PB - Wiley-Blackwell
CY - Hoboken
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kahl, Sandra
A1 - Lenhard, Michael
A1 - Joshi, Jasmin Radha
T1 - Compensatory mechanisms to climate change in the widely distributed species Silene vulgaris
JF - The journal of ecology
N2 - The adaptation of plants to future climatic conditions is crucial for their survival. Not surprisingly, phenotypic responses to climate change have already been observed in many plant populations. These responses may be due to evolutionary adaptive changes or phenotypic plasticity. Especially plant species with a wide geographic range are either expected to show genetic differentiation in response to differing climate conditions or to have a high phenotypic plasticity. We investigated phenotypic responses and plasticity as an estimate of the adaptive potential in the widespread species Silene vulgaris. In a greenhouse experiment, 25 European populations covering a geographic range from the Canary Islands to Sweden were exposed to three experimental precipitation and two temperature regimes mimicking a possible climate-change scenario for central Europe. We hypothesized that southern populations have a better performance under high temperature and drought conditions, as they are already adapted to a comparable environment. We found that our treatments significantly influenced the plants, but did not reveal a latitudinal difference in response to climate treatments for most plant traits. Only flower number showed a stronger plasticity in northern European populations (e.g. Swedish populations) where numbers decreased more drastically with increased temperature and decreased precipitation treatment. Synthesis. The significant treatment response in Silene vulgaris, independent of population origin - except for the number of flowers produced - suggests a high degree of universal phenotypic plasticity in this widely distributed species. This reflects the likely adaptation strategy of the species and forms the basis for a successful survival strategy during upcoming climatic changes. However, as flower number, a strongly fitness-related trait, decreased more strongly in northern populations under a climate-change scenario, there might be limits to adaptation even in this widespread, plastic species.
KW - climate change
KW - global change ecology
KW - latitudinal gradient
KW - local adaptation
KW - phenotypic plasticity
KW - plant performance
KW - temperature increase
Y1 - 2019
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13133
SN - 0022-0477
SN - 1365-2745
VL - 107
IS - 4
SP - 1918
EP - 1930
PB - Wiley
CY - Hoboken
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kahmen, Ansgar
A1 - Sachse, Dirk
A1 - Arndt, Stefan K.
A1 - Tu, Kevin P.
A1 - Farrington, Heraldo
A1 - Vitousek, Peter M.
A1 - Dawson, Todd E.
T1 - Cellulose delta O-18 is an index of leaf-to-air vapor pressure difference (VPD) in tropical plants
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
N2 - Cellulose in plants contains oxygen that derives in most cases from precipitation. Because the stable oxygen isotope composition, delta O-18, of precipitation is associated with environmental conditions, cellulose delta O-18 should be as well. However, plant physiological models using delta O-18 suggest that cellulose delta O-18 is influenced by a complex mix of both climatic and physiological drivers. This influence complicates the interpretation of cellulose delta O-18 values in a paleo-context. Here, we combined empirical data analyses with mechanistic model simulations to i) quantify the impacts that the primary climatic drivers humidity (e(a)) and air temperature (T-air) have on cellulose delta O-18 values in different tropical ecosystems and ii) determine which environmental signal is dominating cellulose delta O-18 values. Our results revealed that e(a) and T-air equally influence cellulose delta O-18 values and that distinguishing which of these factors dominates the delta O-18 values of cellulose cannot be accomplished in the absence of additional environmental information. However, the individual impacts of e(a) and T-air on the delta O-18 values of cellulose can be integrated into a single index of plant-experienced atmospheric vapor demand: the leaf-to-air vapor pressure difference (VPD). We found a robust relationship between VPD and cellulose delta O-18 values in both empirical and modeled data in all ecosystems that we investigated. Our analysis revealed therefore that delta O-18 values in plant cellulose can be used as a proxy for VPD in tropical ecosystems. As VPD is an essential variable that determines the biogeochemical dynamics of ecosystems, our study has applications in ecological-, climate-, or forensic-sciences.
KW - stable isotopes
KW - plant-water relations
KW - paleoecology
KW - climate change
KW - Hawaii
Y1 - 2011
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018906108
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 108
IS - 5
SP - 1981
EP - 1986
PB - National Acad. of Sciences
CY - Washington
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kalkuhl, Matthias
A1 - Wenz, Leonie
T1 - The impact of climate conditions on economic production
BT - evidence from a global panel of regions
JF - Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
N2 - We present a novel data set of subnational economic output, Gross Regional Product (GRP), for more than 1500 regions in 77 countries that allows us to empirically estimate historic climate impacts at different time scales. Employing annual panel models, long-difference regressions and cross-sectional regressions, we identify effects on productivity levels and productivity growth. We do not find evidence for permanent growth rate impacts but we find robust evidence that temperature affects productivity levels considerably. An increase in global mean surface temperature by about 3.5°C until the end of the century would reduce global output by 7–14% in 2100, with even higher damages in tropical and poor regions. Updating the DICE damage function with our estimates suggests that the social cost of carbon from temperature-induced productivity losses is on the order of 73–142$/tCO2 in 2020, rising to 92–181$/tCO2 in 2030. These numbers exclude non-market damages and damages from extreme weather events or sea-level rise.
KW - climate change
KW - climate damages
KW - climate impacts
KW - growth regression
KW - global warming
KW - panel regression
KW - cross-sectional regression
KW - damage
KW - function
KW - social costs of carbon
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102360
SN - 0095-0696
SN - 1096-0449
VL - 103
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -