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Includes bibliographical references. ; In Sub-Saharan Africa, climate change is set to hit the agricultural sector the most severely and cause suffering particularly for smallholder farmers. To cushion themselves against potential welfare losses, smallholder farmers need to recognize the changes already taking place in their climate and undertake appropriate investments in adaptation. This study investigates whether these smallholder farmers in Tanzania recognize climate change and, consequently, adapt to it in their agricultural activities. The study also investigates the factors influencing their choice of adaptation methods. In order to achieve this, the study analysed data from 534 randomly selected households in a sample of districts representing the six of the seven agro-ecological regions of the country. The data shows that Tanzanian smallholder farmers have observed changes in mean and variance precipitation and temperature and responded to it. The farmers have generally used short-season crops, drought-resistant crops, irrigation, changing planting dates and tree planting to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change on their agricultural yields. In this study, selection bias is corrected using a Heckman sample selection model. A binary probit model is used as a selection equation to investigate the factors influencing a farmer's decision to undertake any adaptation at all to climate change while a multinomial probit model is used as an outcome equation to investigate the factors influencing farmers' choice of specific adaptation methods. The inverse Mill's ratio reported selection bias in choosing three of the adaptation methods. The findings of the study suggest that the Tanzanian government needs to assist smallholder farmers overcome the constraints they face in their attempts to adapt. The government can play a significant role by promoting adaptation methods appropriate for particular circumstances e.g. particular crops for different agro-ecological zones.

In a transformative moment for European and global climate litigation, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled today that the state has a positive duty to adopt, and effectively implement in practice, regulations and measures capable of mitigating the existing and potentially irreversible future effects of climate change. In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland ("KlimaSeniorinnen"), the Court held that by failing to put in place a domestic regulatory framework for climate change mitigation, the Swiss government violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the right to respect for private and family life. The judgment is a milestone for human rights protection.

States have undertaken increasingly ambitious climate change mitigation and adaptation commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)1 and instruments adopted thereunder, notably the 1997 Kyoto Protocol2 and the 2015 Paris Agreement.3

Climate change mitigation requires immediate and enduring cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, achievable only through the transformation of today's fossil fuel energy systems. Those systems today provide high-quality, inexpensive, and dependable energy to industrial societies. The low-emissions renewable energy systems that would replace them are, as of 2013, still more expensive, more complex, and unproven.This combination of factors makes the political economy of climate change mitigation immensely difficult. Achieving real emissions reduction will impose very large material costs powerful interests, in pursuit of distant--if potentially massive--environmental benefits. These conditions are not auspicious for adopting, much less sustaining, effective climate policy.Yet an increasingly large number of countries have taken explicit or implicit action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These actions include emissions pricing schemes, renewable energy research and development, energy efficiency mandates, technological research and development, and a host of other policies. The list of states pursuing such policy is as diverse as the policies themselves: the European Union, South Korea, India, and even China have adopted some or all of the provisions outlined above.This dissertation addresses how states have overcome the apparently sizable barriers to climate change mitigation. It argues that successful states have made progress by choosing policies that target environmental ends with economic gains. Those gains comes through benefits derived from the transformation of national energy systems--transformations that improve energy security, increase economic competitiveness, improve technological leadership, or target other opportunities and challenges in the legacy energy infrastructure. By targeting such areas explicitly, these policies create new constituents with a material stake in long-term policy stability. Those constituents act as valuable political allies in the political fight over the scale and distribution of costs for emissions reduction.But while such policy strategies have proven successful to date, they do not resolve the underlying problem of cost that has plagued climate change mitigation to date. Massive emissions reduction still poses net economic costs, even if it yields huge positive environmental benefits. The benefits created by a low-emissions energy systems transformation can offset those costs, and if targeted can create supportive economic constituents. But the low-emissions energy systems of the future still do not, as of this writing, offer any novel economic or technological improvements over the reliably and ubiquitous energy we enjoy today. Hence these policies remain at risk of disruption from outside forces. The recent policy stagnation in the United States and Europe point to the risks posed by this inherent policy vulnerability.

pt. 1. The economics of climate change in China : an overview of the possible / Fan Gang. [et al.] -- pt. 2. Towards climate protection for development -- pt. 3. Growth, opportunity and sustainability -- pt. 4. Climate change mitigation : a fair, effective and efficient global deal.

The world politics of the 2020s seems to consist of two realities: People are concerned about an ecological catastrophe, as pollution kills millions and climate change threatens societies. The focus of this article is to discuss climate change, and state politics in the Arctic in the context of the two realities. Behind this is the assumption that climate change mitigation is a challenge to state politics and national security. The commentary assumes that, although in world politics, there is a new (East-West) great power rivalry with its related conflicts, no armed conflicts appear in the Arctic, but environmental degradation and rapid climate change still threaten the people. The study firstly analyses how environmental issues came onto the political agenda of States, in particular, that of the Arctic states; secondly, it discusses huge investment packages and great power rivalry as substitutes for climate change mitigation, revealing the political inability of states; thirdly, it examines the Arctic from the point of view of functional cooperation on environmental protection, and that on science; and finally, it concludes what has possibly gone wrong in state politics related to the environment, and could be taken as the biggest challenge.

We design a global refunding scheme as a new international approach to address climate change. A global refunding system allows each country to set its carbon emission tax, while aggregate tax revenues are partially refunded to member countries in proportion to the relative emission reductions they achieve within a given period, compared to some given baseline emissions. In a simple model we show that a suitably designed global refunding scheme is self-enforcing and achieves the social global optimum

Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) are closely associated. After the Bali Conference of Parties (COP) 2007, there has been significant awareness in global and national level to make collective focus on CCA and DRR. There exists some literature on CCA, however, the linkages with the DRR is not clear. The Nairobi Work Program (NWP), facilitated by the UNFCCC (UN Framework of Convention on Climate change) and the Parties have found specific scope of actions to enhance the CCA and DRR agenda in developing countries. Different national and international agencies have started undertaking initiatives on this aspect but very few concrete measures have been implemented. At this onset, the book provides 19 case studies from 13 countries and regions in Asia. The case studies highlight different aspects of CCA-DRR entry points, like policy interventions, drought risk management, coastal management, agro-forestry, lagoon management, livelihood issues and risk communication. This book is a complimentary volume of Volume 4: Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction: Issues and Challenges, which focuses on the theory of CCA and DRR and its enabling environment, CCA-DRR linkages framework of governance, education and technology, different entry points like urban, coast, forest, river, and housing; and finally provided a regional perspective of developing countries. The primary targets of this book are the students and researchers in the field of disaster risk reduction, climate change, environmental studies and related risks. The book will help them to have a better idea on the current trend of research in the field, and will provide basic knowledge on this important topic. The other target group is practitioners and policy makers for applying the collective knowledge into policy and decision making.

Academics and practitioners from across Asia and beyond revisit the issues and impact of climate change in Asia. They examine the preconditions for good governance regarding climate change, and the role of state and non-state actors in climate change governance, and explore different political-legal frameworks.

"The ultimate solutions to climate change are workable, cost-effective technologies which permit society to improve living standards while limiting and adapting to changes in the climate. Yet scientific, engineering, and organizational solutions are not enough. Societies must be motivated and empowered to adopt the needed changes. For that, the public must be able to interpret and respond to often bewildering scientific, technological, and economic information. Social psychologists are aware, through their painstaking scientific research, of the difficulties that individuals and groups have in processing and responding effectively to the information surrounding long-term and complex societal challenges. This guide powerfully details many of the biases and barriers to scientific communication and information processing. It offers a tool—in combination with rigorous science, innovative engineering, and effective policy design—to help our societies take the pivotal actions needed to respond with urgency and accuracy to one of the greatest challenges ever faced by humanity: global-scale, human-induced environmental threats, of which the most complex and far-reaching is climate change."