Global Environmental Change

Drastic reductions of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions are required to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5–2.0 °C over pre-industrial levels. We introduce the material stock-flow framework as a novel way to develop scenarios for future GHG emissions using methods from social metabolism research. The basic assumption behind our exploratory scenario approach is that nearly all final energy is required to either expand and maintain stocks of buildings, infrastructures and machinery or to provide services by using them. Distinguishing three country groups, we develop GDP- and population-driven scenarios for the development of these material stocks and the corresponding energy requirements based on historically calibrated model parameters. We analyze the results assuming different future pathways of CO2 emissions per unit of primary energy. The resulting cumulative carbon emissions from 2018 to 2050 range from 361 Gt C in the lower GDP-driven to 568 GtC in the higher population-driven scenario. The findings from the population-driven scenarios point towards the huge implications of a hypothetical convergence of per-capita levels of material stocks assuming current trajectories of technological improvements. Results indicate that providing essential services with a considerably lower level of material stocks could contribute to large reductions in global resource demand and GHG emissions. A comparison of different stock levels in 2050 demonstrates that complying with ambitious climate targets requires much faster declines of CO2 emissions per unit of primary energy if growth of material stocks is not limited.

The size and structure of the socioeconomic metabolism are key for the planet’s sustainability. In this article, we provide a consistent assessment of the development of material flows through the global economy in the period 1900–2015 using material flow accounting in combination with results from dynamic stock-flow modelling. Based on this approach, we can trace materials from extraction to their use, their accumulation in in-use stocks and finally to outflows of wastes and emissions and provide a comprehensive picture of the evolution of societies metabolism during global industrialization. This enables outlooks on inflows and outflows, which environmental policy makers require for pursuing strategies towards a more sustainable resource use. Over the whole time period, we observe a growth in global material extraction by a factor of 12 to 89 Gt/yr. A shift from materials for dissipative use to stock building materials resulted in a massive increase of in-use stocks of materials to 961 Gt in 2015. Since materials increasingly accumulate in stocks, outflows of wastes are growing at a slower pace than inputs. In 2015, outflows amounted to 58 Gt/yr, of which 35% were solid wastes and 25% emissions, the reminder being excrements, dissipative use and water vapor. Our results indicate a significant acceleration of global material flows since the beginning of the 21st century. We show that this acceleration, which took off in 2002, was not a short-term phenomenon but continues since more than a decade. Between 2002 and 2015, global material extraction increased by 53% in spite of the 2008 economic crisis. Based on detailed data on material stocks and flows and information on their long-term historic development, we make a rough estimate of what a global convergence of metabolic patterns at the current level in industrialized countries paired with a continuation of past efficiency gains might imply for global material demand. We find that in such a scenario until 2050 average global metabolic rates double to 22 t/cap/yr and material extraction increases to around 218 Gt/yr. Overall the analysis indicates a grand challenge calling for urgent action, fostering a continuous and considerable reduction of material flows to acceptable levels.

This paper examines vulnerability to climate change in the context of multiple stressors through a case study of Funafuti, Tuvalu. Climate change research in Pacific Islands has largely focused on biophysical changes such as sea-level rise. Less is known about how livelihoods are affected and what adaptation options are realistic. The research employs a vulnerability framework to identify where climate fits in the suite of forces (socioeconomic, cultural, environmental) already affecting livelihoods. The participatory approach includes semi-structured interviews with community members, initially without reference to climate. Key areas of concern to people in Funafuti are economic, food, water and overcrowding, rather than climate change. Vulnerability to changing climatic conditions is evident in water, land, and food through the interaction of non-climatic forces (e.g. overcrowding, urbanization, few economic opportunities, changing land use, and shifting cultural norms), and climatic forces (e.g. dry spells, extreme sea-levels, strong winds and changing marine conditions). Adaptations, beyond bearing the effects and sharing the burden, are mainly reactive and short-term. Future changes in climate will be experienced in the context of these multiple, interacting forces, and adaptation initiatives will need to be designed in light of these.

Climate change effects such as sea-level rise are almost certain. What these outcomes mean for different populations, however, is far less certain. Climate change is both a narrative and material phenomenon. In so being, understanding climate change requires broad conceptualisations that incorporate multiple voices and recognise the agency of vulnerable populations. In climate change discourse, climate mobility is often characterised as the production of ‘refugees’, with a tendency to discount long histories of ordinary mobility among affected populations. The case of Tuvalu in the Pacific juxtaposes migration as everyday practice with climate refugee narratives. This climate-exposed population is being problematically positioned to speak for an entire planet under threat. Tuvaluans are being used as the immediate evidence of displacement that the climate change crisis narrative seems to require. Those identified as imminent climate refugees are being held up like ventriloquists to present a particular (western) ‘crisis of nature’. Yet Tuvaluan conceptions of climate challenges and mobility practices show that more inclusive sets of concepts and tools are needed to equitably and effectively approach and characterise population mobility.

In the limited literature on gender and climate change, two themes predominate – women as vulnerable or virtuous in relation to the environment. Two viewpoints become obvious: women in the South will be affected more by climate change than men in those countries and that men in the North pollute more than women. The debates are structured in specific ways in the North and the South and the discussion in the article focuses largely on examples from Sweden and India. The article traces the lineage of the arguments to the women, environment and development discussions, examining how they recur in new forms in climate debates. Questioning assumptions about women's vulnerability and virtuousness, it highlights how a focus on women's vulnerability or virtuousness can deflect attention from inequalities in decision-making. By reiterating statements about poor women in the South and the pro-environmental women of the North, these assumptions reinforce North–South biases. Generalizations about women's vulnerability and virtuousness can lead to an increase in women's responsibility without corresponding rewards. There is need to contextualise debates on climate change to enable action and to respond effectively to its adverse effects in particular places.

The resilience perspective is increasingly used as an approach for understanding the dynamics of social–ecological systems. This article presents the origin of the resilience perspective and provides an overview of its development to date. With roots in one branch of ecology and the discovery of multiple basins of attraction in ecosystems in the 1960–1970s, it inspired social and environmental scientists to challenge the dominant stable equilibrium view. The resilience approach emphasizes non-linear dynamics, thresholds, uncertainty and surprise, how periods of gradual change interplay with periods of rapid change and how such dynamics interact across temporal and spatial scales. The history was dominated by empirical observations of ecosystem dynamics interpreted in mathematical models, developing into the adaptive management approach for responding to ecosystem change. Serious attempts to integrate the social dimension is currently taking place in resilience work reflected in the large numbers of sciences involved in explorative studies and new discoveries of linked social–ecological systems. Recent advances include understanding of social processes like, social learning and social memory, mental models and knowledge–system integration, visioning and scenario building, leadership, agents and actor groups, social networks, institutional and organizational inertia and change, adaptive capacity, transformability and systems of adaptive governance that allow for management of essential ecosystem services.

This paper examines contemporary national scale responses to tropical storm risk in a small island in the Caribbean to derive lessons for adapting to climate change. There is little empirical evidence to guide national planners on how to adapt to climate change, and less still on how to build on past adaptation experiences. The paper investigates the construction of institutional resilience and the process of adaptation to tropical storm risk by the Cayman Islands’ Government from 1988 to 2002. It explains the roles of persuasion, exposure and collective action as key components in developing the ability to buffer external disturbance using models of institutional economics and social resilience concepts. The study finds that self-efficacy, strong local and international support networks, combined with a willingness to act collectively and to learn from mistakes appear to have increased the resilience of the Cayman Islands’ Government to tropical storm risk. The lessons learned from building resilience to storm risk can contribute to the creation of national level adaptive capacity to climate change, but climate change has to be prioritised before these lessons can be transferred.

Few developing countries possess sufficient indigenous financial and personnel resources to address adequately the predicted impacts of global climate change. In recognition of this fact, the Oceans and Coastal Areas Programme Activity Centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1987 established a series of regional teams to examine potential impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, on coastal environments, and on the socioeconomic structures of countries throughout the world. Drawing mainly on the work of the South Pacific Task Team, this article provides an overview of interrelated environmental problems and development problems in the Indo-Pacific region and reviews efforts to develop response strategies. The case of the Maldives is highlighted.