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The Wheel of Life Food, Climate, Human Rights, and the Economy
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The links between climate change and industrial agriculture create a nexus of crises—food
insecurity, natural resource depletion and degradation, as well as human
rights violations and inequities.
While it is widely recognized that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due
to human activity are detrimental to the natural environment, it can be difficult to
untangle the cascading effects on other sectors. To unravel some of the effects, this
paper focuses on three interrelated issues:
1) What are the critical links between climate change and agriculture?
2) How is the nexus of agriculture and climate change affecting human societies
particularly regarding food and water, livelihoods, migration, gender
equality, and other basic survival and human rights?
3) What is the interplay between economic and finance systems, on the one
hand, and food security, climate change, and fundamental human rights, on
the other?
In the process of drawing connections among these issues, the report will identify
the commonality of drivers, or “push” factors, that lead to adverse impacts.
A central theme throughout this report is that policies and practices must
begin with the ecological imperative in order to ensure authentic security and stability
on all fronts including food, water, livelihoods and jobs, climate, energy, and
economic. In turn this engenders equity, social justice, and diverse cultures. This
imperative, or ethos of nature, is a foundation that serves as a steady guide when
reviewing mitigation and adaptation solutions to climate change.
Infused within this theme is the sobering recognition that current consumption
and production patterns are at odds with goals of reducing GHGs and attaining
global food security. For instance, consumption and production levels, based on the
global average, are 25 percent higher than the earth’s ecological capacity.1
As societies
address the myriad ecological and social issues at the axis of global warming,
a central task will be to re-align consumption and production trends in a manner
that can fulfill economic and development requirements. This will require a major
shift away from present economic growth paradigms based on massive resource
extraction and toward creating prosperous and vital societies and economies that
preserve the planet’s environmental capacity
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The Holocene`
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Combining nine tree growth proxies from four sites, from the west coast of Norway to the Kola Peninsula of NW Russia, provides a well replicated
(> 100 annual measurements per year) mean index of tree growth over the last 1200 years that represents the growth of much of the northern pine
timberline forests of northern Fennoscandia. The simple mean of the nine series, z-scored over their common period, correlates strongly with mean
June to August temperature averaged over this region (r = 0.81), allowing reconstructions of summer temperature based on regression and variance
scaling. The reconstructions correlate significantly with gridded summer temperatures across the whole of Fennoscandia, extending north across Svalbard
and south into Denmark. Uncertainty in the reconstructions is estimated by combining the uncertainty in mean tree growth with the uncertainty in
the regression models. Over the last seven centuries the uncertainty is < 4.5% higher than in the 20th century, and reaches a maximum of 12% above
recent levels during the 10th century. The results suggest that the 20th century was the warmest of the last 1200 years, but that it was not significantly
different from the 11th century. The coldest century was the 17th. The impact of volcanic eruptions is clear, and a delayed recovery from pairs or multiple
eruptions suggests the presence of some positive feedback mechanism. There is no clear and consistent link between northern Fennoscandian summer
temperatures and solar forcing.
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The energetic implications of curtailing versus storing solar- and wind-generated electricity
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We present a theoretical framework to calculate how storage affects the energy return on energy
investment (EROI) ratios of wind and solar resources. Our methods identify conditions under which it is
more energetically favorable to store energy than it is to simply curtail electricity production.
Electrochemically based storage technologies result in much smaller EROI ratios than large-scale
geologically based storage technologies like compressed air energy storage (CAES) and pumped
hydroelectric storage (PHS). All storage technologies paired with solar photovoltaic (PV) generation yield
EROI ratios that are greater than curtailment. Due to their low energy stored on electrical energy
invested (ESOIe) ratios, conventional battery technologies reduce the EROI ratios of wind generation
below curtailment EROI ratios. To yield a greater net energy return than curtailment, battery storage
technologies paired with wind generation need an ESOIe > 80. We identify improvements in cycle life as
the most feasible way to increase battery ESOIe. Depending upon the battery's embodied energy
requirement, an increase of cycle life to 10 000–18 000 (2–20 times present values) is required for
pairing with wind (assuming liberal round-trip efficiency [90%] and liberal depth-of-discharge [80%]
values). Reducing embodied energy costs, increasing efficiency and increasing depth of discharge will
also further improve the energetic performance of batteries. While this paper focuses on only one
benefit of energy storage, the value of not curtailing electricity generation during periods of excess
production, similar analyses could be used to draw conclusions about other benefits as well
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When the river runs dry: human and ecological values of dry riverbeds
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Temporary rivers and streams that naturally cease to flow and dry up can be found on every continent.
Many other water courses that were once perennial now also have temporary flow regimes due to the effects
of water extraction for human use or as a result of changes in land use and climate. The dry beds of these
temporary rivers are an integral part of river landscapes. We discuss their importance in human culture and
their unique diversity of aquatic, amphibious, and terrestrial biota. We also describe their role as seed and
egg banks for aquatic biota, as dispersal corridors and temporal ecotones linking wet and dry phases, and as
sites for the storage and processing of organic matter and nutrients. In light of these valuable functions, dry
riverbeds need to be fully integrated into river management policies and monitoring programs. We also
identify key knowledge gaps and suggest research questions concerning the values of dry riverbeds.
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Risk Communication on Climate: Mental Models and Mass Balance
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Public confusion about the urgency of reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions results from a basic
misconception.
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Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size
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Forests are major components of the global carbon cycle, providing
substantial feedback to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations1
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Our ability to understand and predict changes in the forest carbon
cycle—particularly net primary productivity and carbon storage—
increasingly relies on models that represent biological processes
across several scales of biological organization, from tree leaves to
forest stands2,3. Yet, despite advances in our understanding of productivity
at the scales of leaves and stands, no consensus exists about
the nature of productivity at the scale of the individual tree4–7, in
part because we lack a broad empirical assessment of whether rates
of absolute treemass growth (and thus carbon accumulation) decrease,
remain constant, or increase as trees increase in size and age. Here we
present a global analysis of 403 tropical and temperate tree species,
showing that for most species mass growth rate increases continuously
with tree size. Thus, large, old trees do not act simply as senescent
carbon reservoirs but actively fix large amounts of carbon
compared to smaller trees; at the extreme, a single big tree can add
the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained
in an entire mid-sized tree. The apparent paradoxes of individual
tree growth increasing with tree size despite declining leaf-level8–10
and stand-level10 productivity can be explained, respectively, by
increases in a tree’s total leaf area that outpace declines in productivity
per unit of leaf area and, among other factors, age-related
reductions in population density. Our results resolve conflicting
assumptions about the nature of tree growth,inform efforts to undertand
and model forest carbon dynamics, and have additional implications
for theories of resource allocation11 and plant senescence1
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Managing Forests and Fire in Changing Climates
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With projected climate change, we
expect to face much more forest
fi re in the coming decades. Policymakers
are challenged not to categorize all
fires as destructive to ecosystems simply
because they have long fl ame lengths and kill
most of the trees within the fi re boundary. Ecological
context matters: In some ecosystems,
high-severity regimes are appropriate, but climate
change may modify these fi re regimes
and ecosystems as well. Some undesirable
impacts may be avoided or reduced through
global strategies, as well as distinct strategies
based on a forest’s historical fi re regime.
SCIENCE VOL 342 4 OCTOBER 2013
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Rebuilding Soils on Mined Land for Native Forests in Appalachia
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The eastern U.S. Appalachian region supports the world’s most extensive
temperate forests, but surface mining for coal has caused forest loss. New
reclamation methods are being employed with the intent of restoring native
forest on Appalachian mined lands. Mine soil construction is essential to
the reforestation process. Here, we review scientific literature concerning
selection of mining materials for mine soil construction where forest
ecosystem restoration is the reclamation goal. Successful establishment and
productive growth of native Appalachian trees has been documented on mine
soils with coarse fragment contents as great as 60% but with low soluble salt
levels and slightly to moderately acidic pHs, properties characteristic of the
region’s native soils. Native tree productivity on some Appalachian mined
lands where weathered rock spoils were used to reconstruct soils was found
comparable to productivity on native forest sites. Weathered rock spoils,
however, are lower in bioavailable N and P than native Appalachian soils and
they lack live seed banks which native soils contain. The body of scientific
research suggests use of salvaged native soils for mine soil construction when
forest ecosystem restoration is the reclamation goal, and that weathered rock
spoils are generally superior to unweathered rock spoils when constructing
mine soils for this purpose.
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Protected Areas as Frontiers for Human Migration
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Causes of human population growth near protected areas have been much debated. We conducted
821 interviews in 16 villages around Budongo Forest Reserve, Masindi district, Uganda, to explore the causes of
human migration to protected areas and to identify differences in forest use between migrant and nonmigrant
communities. We asked subjects for information about birthplace, migration, household assets, household
activities, and forest use. Interview subjects were categorized as nonmigrants (born in one of the interview
villages), socioeconomic migrants (chose to emigrate for economic or social reasons) from within Masindi
district (i.e., local migrants) and from outside the Masindi district (i.e., regional migrants), or forced migrants
(i.e., refugees or internally displaced individuals who emigrated as a result of conflict, human rights abuses,
or natural disaster). Only 198 respondents were born in interview villages, indicating high rates of migration
between 1998 and 2008. Migrants were drawn to Budongo Forest because they thought land was available
(268 individuals) or had family in the area (161 individuals). A greater number of regional migrants settled
in villages near Lake Albert than did forced and local migrants. Migration category was also associated with
differences in sources of livelihood. Of forced migrants 40.5% earned wages through labor, whereas 25.5% of
local and 14.5% of regional migrants engaged in wage labor. Migrant groups appeared to have different effects
on the environment. Of respondents that hunted, 72.7% were regional migrants. Principal component analyses
indicated households of regional migrants were more likely to be associated with deforestation. Our results
revealed gaps in current models of human population growth around protected areas. By highlighting the
importance of social networks and livelihood choices, our results contribute to a more nuanced understanding
of causes of migration and of the environmental effects of different migrant groups.
Conservation Biology, Volume 26, No. 3, 547–556
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Impact of terrestrial biosphere carbon exchanges on the anomalous CO2 increase in 2002–2003
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Understanding the carbon dynamics of the terrestrial
biosphere during climate fluctuations is a prerequisite for
any reliable modeling of the climate-carbon cycle feedback.
We drive a terrestrial vegetation model with observed
climate data to show that most of the fluctuations in
atmospheric CO2 are consistent with the modeled shift in
the balance between carbon uptake by terrestrial plants and
carbon loss through soil and plant respiration. Simulated
anomalies of the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically
Active Radiation (FAPAR) during the last two El Nin˜o
events also agree well with satellite observations. Our
model results suggest that changes in net primary
productivity (NPP) are mainly responsible for the
observed anomalies in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate.
Changes in heterotrophic respiration (Rh) mostly happen in
the same direction, but with smaller amplitude. We attribute
the unusual acceleration of the atmospheric CO2 growth rate
during 2002–2003 to a coincidence of moderate El Nin˜o
conditions in the tropics with a strong NPP decrease at
northern mid latitudes, only partially compensated by
decreased
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