Emerging Insights (Asynchronous Session)
Featured Climate Justice and the Impact of Climate Change on Health in Uganda View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brianne O'sullivan
This paper analyzes the impact of climate change on human health in the country of Uganda, specifically regarding alterations in temperature, precipitation, and zoonotic disease transmission. These indicators suggest a disproportionate increase in climate-related environmental changes when compared to higher-income countries, such as the United States of America and Canada, despite a significantly lower contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. This reflects the global pattern of climate injustices, where low and middle-income countries consistently contribute the least to climate change yet experience the greatest environmental and health impacts. Technology-based methods of improving climate change preparedness and adaptation in Uganda are suggested based on the success of interventions in comparable countries. Additionally, a call for high-income countries to take accountability and recognize the “climate justice” movement will be imperative to progression of global climate adaptation funding and policy.
Electric Vehicles Transition Evaluation : From the Demand Cross-price Elasticity as a Supplementary Good Evidence and Greenhouse Gas Related Effects View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Heiner Camacho
Based on historic evidence related to technology developments that arise into the society with the promise of cutting-edge energy-efficient goods and the puisne consequences the present paper evaluates electric vehicles demand as a new technology intended to displaced the ICE and determine if a new raw material market arises with the Co2 footprint of this industry and the links with the fossil fuel derivates (Xing et al., 2019). The methodology (cross-price elasticities of demand) evaluates all the data consistently and considers evidence in order to determine if, besides the main benefits of the massive use and implementation of BEV, the impact of this new industry will cause a non-reversible effect in humanity as once was caused by the gasoline even when at that time they were provided with enough proofs relating its poisonous with several humans deceases. Nowadays the relation is given the current world industry infrastructure and its emissions/contamination can beard a new industry demand that will duplicate (or more) the raw materials demand in case of the BEV end-up as a complementary good. Exist from the governments committed and involved in this new industry clear guidelines to determine the most accurate and responsible extraction of raw materials and production from developed countries.
Featured Dead in the Water: Influence of Threatening Water Messages on Sustainable Worldviews View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lauren Smith
Due to climatic changes, water is an increasingly stressed resource requiring innovative solutions. Yet water crises - and solutions - communication frequently involve life-threatening messaging. This messaging may evoke mortality anxieties, triggering psychological defenses that can result in counter-productive behaviours. Terror Management Theory (TMT) finds these defenses involve resource hording and outgroup derogation, features that contradict collaborative, pro-environmental behaviour. While some TMT research indicates climate change messaging can evoke mortality anxieties, threatening water messaging has not been explicitly tested. This is valuable as water resources are important, threatened components of climate change, and necessary for human survival. We compared three threatening water messages (drowning, n=92; dehydration, n=84; contaminated water, n=88) to a traditional mortality reminder (n=127) and a control (n=129) to determine if similar psychological defenses emerged. Following interventions and delay tasks, we measured death-thought availability (DTA), a frequently used subconscious mortality salience measure, and compared DTA between groups. Two of the three messages resulted in similar DTA as the traditional mortality prime. Reasons for why the one message did not evoke DTA are discussed. We further examined messaging influence on sustainable worldviews, measured after intervention and delay. Environmental worldviews were compared between groups to determine messaging influence. Results are discussed. Identifying human responses and mortality salience within threatening water messaging will inform water crises communication and approaches for greater pro-environmental behaviours and outcomes. For example, should threatening water messaging increase outgroup derogation, this communication will prevent effective, sustainable water solutions that require diverse input and collaboration.
Understanding Responses to Declines in Coastal Water Quality: An Integrated Collaborative Coastal Management Approach View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alvin Thompson
Coastal water quality decline has become a major governance issue for different sectors. Like other coastal problems, responding to declines in coastal water quality requires involvement of several sectors to navigate of arenas of collaboration that: 1) enables disparate coastal interests to make decisions within autonomous and interdependent management arrangements; 2) helps these interests to negotiate power, leadership and accountability within collaborative processes; and 3) enables disparate interests to negotiate trade-offs between resource uses. This research uses a case study approach to examine three collaborative coastal management projects. Each project was managed by a collaborative committee, involving state and non-state agents. Several key findings were identified. Primarily, the results show how existing managerial and research capacity in state and non-state agents enable collaborative committees, to mediate power and leadership across several sectors operating within autonomous and interdependent governance arrangements, in a dual-level coastal jurisdiction. For example, the results show how existing interdependent governance arrangements related to water quality management could enable transitions from sector-specific approaches to more collaborative responses to water quality management. Conversely, the results show how autonomous governance arrangements impede collaborative water quality management. Given that this case study included wide engagement of public and private and national and subnational coastal interests, the findings could have significance for shaping collaboration as a strategic approach for responding to coastal water quality decline in other jurisdictions.
Crossing Disciplinary Divide : Addressing Climate Change through Interdisciplinary Teaching and Active Learning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Suzanne Dieringer, Timothy Ridlen, Kristian Taylor
This paper addresses how to prepare the next generation of leaders to address the complex problem of climate change by integrating the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. It demonstrates how to teach college students to integrate the disciplines and to initiate change through publicly engaged projects with real community stakeholders. The authors of this paper have designed a 200-level college course titled “Florida’s Future: Addressing Climate Change at Home” that integrates the fields of economics, biology, and the environmental humanities while acting as an impetus to respond to global issues by instituting local change. Here we present an example lesson on sustainability that asks students to apply economic concepts such as negative externalities and Tragedy of the Commons to a case study identifying fishery decline as a result of climate change on Florida’s marine ecosystem. Students are tasked with synthesizing this knowledge by identifying the underlying assumptions of economic solutions and comparing these with strategies of place-making from the environmental humanities. The final class project requires students to apply what they have learned by creating a project and presenting it to the local community. We argue that integrating habits of mind from these three fields better prepares students to carry out public-facing projects that contextualize, convey, and mitigate the negative effects of climate change. Our course empowers students to develop their own reasoned intellectual commitments to address this complex issue, preparing students to become the leaders and activists of tomorrow.
Featured Japanese Climate Change Litigation in the Cradle View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Masako Ichihara
Over the past several decades, climate change litigation (CCL) has rapidly increased worldwide, mainly in Western countries. Accordingly, most scholarship has focused on those areas, and Japan has received scant attention. However, Japan had the first climate change case in 2017 and three other cases in 2018 and 2019, claiming injunction against the operation and construction of coal-fired power plants (CFPP). Considering that Japan still has many CFPPs in operation, there may be some obstacles that hinder the further development of Japanese CCL. This study investigates the obstacles that hinder the development of Japanese CCL. Some implications may be drawn through those abovementioned observations. First, it added another piece of empirical data of climate change cases in East Asia to global society. Especially, this study is the first piece that provided a detailed description and academic exploration of four Japanese climate cases in litigation. Considering that most literature on climate change cases remains in the Western countries so far, this supplement may be significant. Second, it attached a new field of climate change to the Japanese scholarship in policymaking litigation by locating it in the extension of the trajectory of the environmental litigation. Finally, it prospected one possible change of climate policy through further development of Japanese CCL, through the comparison with the trajectory of the past U.S. tobacco litigation.
