global environmental problems essay

Environmental Issues Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on environmental issues.

The environment plays a significant role to support life on earth. But there are some issues that are causing damages to life and the ecosystem of the earth. It is related to the not only environment but with everyone that lives on the planet. Besides, its main source is pollution , global warming, greenhouse gas , and many others. The everyday activities of human are constantly degrading the quality of the environment which ultimately results in the loss of survival condition from the earth.

Source of Environment Issue

There are hundreds of issue that causing damage to the environment. But in this, we are going to discuss the main causes of environmental issues because they are very dangerous to life and the ecosystem.

Pollution – It is one of the main causes of an environmental issue because it poisons the air , water , soil , and noise. As we know that in the past few decades the numbers of industries have rapidly increased. Moreover, these industries discharge their untreated waste into the water bodies, on soil, and in air. Most of these wastes contain harmful and poisonous materials that spread very easily because of the movement of water bodies and wind.

Greenhouse Gases – These are the gases which are responsible for the increase in the temperature of the earth surface. This gases directly relates to air pollution because of the pollution produced by the vehicle and factories which contains a toxic chemical that harms the life and environment of earth.

Climate Changes – Due to environmental issue the climate is changing rapidly and things like smog, acid rains are getting common. Also, the number of natural calamities is also increasing and almost every year there is flood, famine, drought , landslides, earthquakes, and many more calamities are increasing.

Above all, human being and their greed for more is the ultimate cause of all the environmental issue.

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How to Minimize Environment Issue?

Now we know the major issues which are causing damage to the environment. So, now we can discuss the ways by which we can save our environment. For doing so we have to take some measures that will help us in fighting environmental issues .

Moreover, these issues will not only save the environment but also save the life and ecosystem of the planet. Some of the ways of minimizing environmental threat are discussed below:

Reforestation – It will not only help in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem but also help in restoring the natural cycles that work with it. Also, it will help in recharge of groundwater, maintaining the monsoon cycle , decreasing the number of carbons from the air, and many more.

The 3 R’s principle – For contributing to the environment one should have to use the 3 R’s principle that is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Moreover, it helps the environment in a lot of ways.

To conclude, we can say that humans are a major source of environmental issues. Likewise, our activities are the major reason that the level of harmful gases and pollutants have increased in the environment. But now the humans have taken this problem seriously and now working to eradicate it. Above all, if all humans contribute equally to the environment then this issue can be fight backed. The natural balance can once again be restored.

FAQs about Environmental Issue

Q.1 Name the major environmental issues. A.1 The major environmental issues are pollution, environmental degradation, resource depletion, and climate change. Besides, there are several other environmental issues that also need attention.

Q.2 What is the cause of environmental change? A.2 Human activities are the main cause of environmental change. Moreover, due to our activities, the amount of greenhouse gases has rapidly increased over the past few decades.

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The Climate Crisis – A Race We Can Win

Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. But we are far from powerless in the face of this global threat. As Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out in September, “the climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win”.

No corner of the globe is immune from the devastating consequences of climate change. Rising temperatures are fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, weather extremes, food and water insecurity, economic disruption, conflict, and terrorism. Sea levels are rising, the Arctic is melting, coral reefs are dying, oceans are acidifying, and forests are burning. It is clear that business as usual is not good enough. As the infinite cost of climate change reaches irreversible highs, now is the time for bold collective action.

GLOBAL TEMPERATURES ARE RISING

Billions of tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year as a result of coal, oil, and gas production. Human activity is producing greenhouse gas emissions at a record high , with no signs of slowing down. According to a ten-year summary of UNEP Emission Gap reports, we are on track to maintain a “business as usual” trajectory.

The last four years were the four hottest on record. According to a September 2019 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, we are at least one degree Celsius above preindustrial levels and close to what scientists warn would be “an unacceptable risk”. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change calls for holding eventual warming “well below” two degrees Celsius, and for the pursuit of efforts to limit the increase even further, to 1.5 degrees. But if we don’t slow global emissions, temperatures could rise to above three degrees Celsius by 2100 , causing further irreversible damage to our ecosystems.

Glaciers and ice sheets in polar and mountain regions are already melting faster than ever, causing sea levels to rise. Almost two-thirds of the world’s cities with populations of over five million are located in areas at risk of sea level rise and almost 40 per cent of the world’s population live within 100 km of a coast. If no action is taken, entire districts of New York, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, and many other cities could find themselves underwater within our lifetimes , displacing millions of people.

FOOD AND WATER INSECURITY

Global warming impacts everyone’s food and water security. Climate change is a direct cause of soil degradation, which limits the amount of carbon the earth is able to contain. Some 500 million people today live in areas affected by erosion, while up to 30 per cent of food is lost or wasted as a result. Meanwhile, climate change limits the availability and quality of water for drinking and agriculture.

In many regions, crops that have thrived for centuries are struggling to survive, making food security more precarious. Such impacts tend to fall primarily on the poor and vulnerable. Global warming is likely to make economic output between the world’s richest and poorest countries grow wider .

NEW EXTREMES

Disasters linked to climate and weather extremes have always been part of our Earth’s system. But they are becoming more frequent and intense as the world warms. No continent is left untouched, with heatwaves, droughts, typhoons, and hurricanes causing mass destruction around the world. 90 per cent of disasters are now classed as weather- and climate-related, costing the world economy 520 billion USD each year , while 26 million people are pushed into poverty as a result.

A CATALYST FOR CONFLICT

Climate change is a major threat to international peace and security. The effects of climate change heighten competition for resources such as land, food, and water, fueling socioeconomic tensions and, increasingly often, leading to mass displacement .

Climate is a risk multiplier that makes worse already existing challenges. Droughts in Africa and Latin America directly feed into political unrest and violence. The World Bank estimates that, in the absence of action, more than 140 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia will be forced to migrate within their regions by 2050.

A PATH FORWARD

While science tells us that climate change is irrefutable, it also tells us that it is not too late to stem the tide. This will require fundamental transformations in all aspects of society — how we grow food, use land, transport goods, and power our economies.

While technology has contributed to climate change, new and efficient technologies can help us reduce net emissions and create a cleaner world. Readily-available technological solutions already exist for more than 70 per cent of today’s emissions. In many places renewable energy is now the cheapest energy source and electric cars are poised to become mainstream.

In the meantime, nature-based solutions provide ‘breathing room’ while we tackle the decarbonization of our economy. These solutions allow us to mitigate a portion of our carbon footprint while also supporting vital ecosystem services, biodiversity, access to fresh water, improved livelihoods, healthy diets, and food security. Nature-based solutions include improved agricultural practices, land restoration, conservation, and the greening of food supply chains.

Scalable new technologies and nature-based solutions will enable us all to leapfrog to a cleaner, more resilient world. If governments, businesses, civil society, youth, and academia work together, we can create a green future where suffering is diminished, justice is upheld, and harmony is restored between people and planet.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The Sustainable Development Goals

Climate Action Summit 2019

UNFCCC | The Paris Agreement

WMO |Global Climate in 2015-2019

UNDP | Global Outlook Report 2019

UNCC | Climate Action and Support Trends 2019

IPCC | Climate Change and Land 2019

UNEP | Global Environment Outlook 2019

UNEP | Emission Gap Report 2019

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Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet Essay

Due to rapid population increases, human-generated conditions have caused significant disruption in the earth’s biosphere. Increased population has caused an increase in deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. According to Brusseau et al. (2019), the world’s population is progressively increasing at a rapid rate. This increase has promoted encroachment of forested land for human settlement. Forest clearance causes climate change, soil erosion, and flooding. Moreover, the burning of fossil fuels due to the development of technology has led to increased emissions of carbon dioxide, which destroys the ozone layer, worsening the problem of climate change. According to research done on the effect of fossil fuel on the environment, fossil fuel is the leading cause of the environmental population (Li et al., 2019). Population pressure and technology have caused significant disruption of the biosphere through deforestation and fossil fuel use.

The earth faces three major environmental crises: overpopulation, climate change, and global warming. Overpopulation is the leading cause of the two other problems. Overpopulation has been caused by the rapid increase in population in developing countries. The rapid population leads to an increase in the clearance of forests and industrialization. The gases produced in these industries disrupt the ozone layer, increasing temperatures. This situation with high temperatures causes the melting of glacial ice and increased precipitation promoting global warming (Tebaldi et al., 2021). Continued global warming slowly leads to changes in climate over time. The continued increase in population, global warming, and climate change has caused an environmental crisis.

In conclusion, human beings should take good care of their planet. They should use birth control measures to control the rate of population growth. Moreover, governments should encourage the use of renewable energy sources to fossil fuels to reduce the effects of climate change and global warming. More effort should be given to planting trees to encounter the impact of deforestation (Al-Ghussain, 2018). Every person has to take care of the environment. Therefore, every person should make it their role to conserve the environment and save the world from environmental crises.

Brusseau, M. L., Pepper, I. L., & Gerba, C. P. (2019). The Extent of Global Pollution. Environmental and Pollution Science , 3–8. Web.

Li, K., Fang, L., & He, L. (2019). How population and energy price affect China’s environmental pollution? Energy Policy , 129 , 386–396. Web.

Tebaldi, C., Ranasinghe, R., Vousdoukas, M., Rasmussen, D. J., Vega-Westhoff, B., Kirezci, E., Kopp, R. E., Sriver, R., & Mentaschi, L. (2021). Extreme sea levels at different global warming levels. Nature Climate Change , 11 (9), 746–751. Web.

Al-Ghussain, L. (2018). Global warming: Review on driving forces and mitigation. Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy , 38 (1), 13–21. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, December 29). Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-problems-care-of-the-planet/

"Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet." IvyPanda , 29 Dec. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-problems-care-of-the-planet/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet'. 29 December.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet." December 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-problems-care-of-the-planet/.

1. IvyPanda . "Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet." December 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-problems-care-of-the-planet/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet." December 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-problems-care-of-the-planet/.

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Human Impacts on the Environment

Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water. These negative impacts can affect human behavior and can prompt mass migrations or battles over clean water.

Help your students understand the impact humans have on the physical environment with these classroom resources.

Earth Science, Geology, Geography, Physical Geography

the silhouette of people can be seen as a giant glowing earth floats on a lake

ENVIRONMENT

How global warming is disrupting life on Earth

The signs of global warming are everywhere, and are more complex than just climbing temperatures.

Our planet is getting hotter. Since the Industrial Revolution—an event that spurred the use of fossil fuels in everything from power plants to transportation—Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

That may sound insignificant, but 2023 was the hottest year on record , and all 10 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past decade.

Global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably as synonyms, but scientists prefer to use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems.

Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also natural disasters, shifting wildlife habitats, rising seas , and a range of other impacts. All of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases , like carbon dioxide and methane, to the atmosphere.

What causes global warming?

When fossil fuel emissions are pumped into the atmosphere, they change the chemistry of our atmosphere, allowing sunlight to reach the Earth but preventing heat from being released into space. This keeps Earth warm, like a greenhouse, and this warming is known as the greenhouse effect .

Carbon dioxide is the most commonly found greenhouse gas and about 75 percent of all the climate warming pollution in the atmosphere. This gas is a product of producing and burning oil, gas, and coal. About a quarter of Carbon dioxide also results from land cleared for timber or agriculture.

Methane is another common greenhouse gas. Although it makes up only about 16 percent of emissions, it's roughly 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide and dissipates more quickly. That means methane can cause a large spark in warming, but ending methane pollution can also quickly limit the amount of atmospheric warming. Sources of this gas include agriculture (mostly livestock), leaks from oil and gas production, and waste from landfills.

What are the effects of global warming?

One of the most concerning impacts of global warming is the effect warmer temperatures will have on Earth's polar regions and mountain glaciers. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. This warming reduces critical ice habitat and it disrupts the flow of the jet stream, creating more unpredictable weather patterns around the globe.

( Learn more about the jet stream. )

A warmer planet doesn't just raise temperatures. Precipitation is becoming more extreme as the planet heats. For every degree your thermometer rises, the air holds about seven percent more moisture. This increase in moisture in the atmosphere can produce flash floods, more destructive hurricanes, and even paradoxically, stronger snow storms.

The world's leading scientists regularly gather to review the latest research on how the planet is changing. The results of this review is synthesized in regularly published reports known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

A recent report outlines how disruptive a global rise in temperature can be:

Coral reefs are now a highly endangered ecosystem. When corals face environmental stress, such as high heat, they expel their colorful algae and turn a ghostly white, an effect known as coral bleaching . In this weakened state, they more easily die.
Trees are increasingly dying from drought , and this mass mortality is reshaping forest ecosystems.
Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are making wildfires more common and more widespread. Research shows they're even moving into the eastern U.S. where fires have historically been less common.
Hurricanes are growing more destructive and dumping more rain, an effect that will result in more damage. Some scientists say we even need to be preparing for Cat 6 storms . (The current ranking system ends at Cat 5.)

How can we limit global warming?

Limiting the rising in global warming is theoretically achievable, but politically, socially, and economically difficult.

Those same sources of greenhouse gas emissions must be limited to reduce warming. For example, oil and gas used to generate electricity or power industrial manufacturing will need to be replaced by net zero emission technology like wind and solar power. Transportation, another major source of emissions, will need to integrate more electric vehicles, public transportation, and innovative urban design, such as safe bike lanes and walkable cities.

( Learn more about solutions to limit global warming. )

One global warming solution that was once considered far fetched is now being taken more seriously: geoengineering. This type of technology relies on manipulating the Earth's atmosphere to physically block the warming rays of the sun or by sucking carbon dioxide straight out of the sky.

Restoring nature may also help limit warming. Trees, oceans, wetlands, and other ecosystems help absorb excess carbon—but when they're lost, so too is their potential to fight climate change.

Ultimately, we'll need to adapt to warming temperatures, building homes to withstand sea level rise for example, or more efficiently cooling homes during heat waves.

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Environmental Issues Essay

Climate change is happening because of human activity. We're releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing the Earth to warm up. This is called global warming, and it's a huge problem. Here are some sample essays on environmental issues.

100 Words Essay On Environmental Issues

Our environment is changing due to disruption. These are small steps you can take on an individual level that together can have a huge impact on the environment. And if enough individuals start taking such steps, we could make huge strides towards preserving the environment for future generations. As an individual, you can:

200 Words Essay On Environmental Issues

500 words essay on environmental issues.

Reduce your energy consumption by changing to LED or CFL light bulbs and unplugging electronic devices when not in use;

Use public transport or carpool instead of driving;

Buy locally produced food and products as much as possible;

Separate your waste for composting and recycling instead of sending it all to landfills; and

Plant trees in your yard.

In the past several centuries, humans have altered land use in order to accommodate growing populations and economic development needs. This has led to a range of environmental issues such as habitat destruction, soil erosion, pollution, species extinction and water scarcity.

How Changes in Land Use Can Lead to Environmental Issues

As a result of the disruption due to growing population, the global climate has been thrown off balance, leading to more frequent and intense natural disasters like floods, hurricanes and droughts.

One of the most pressing environmental issues caused by changes in land use is deforestation. Trees are vital for storing carbon dioxide, as well as providing habitats for wildlife. Unsustainable logging practices have led to extreme cases of deforestation that result in global warming and habitat loss. Additionally, when trees are removed from ecosystems it can lead to soil erosion which contributes to water pollution and scarce resources for the surrounding wildlife.

In addition to deforestation there are many other activities that can disrupt land use such as oil drilling, urbanization or different types of agriculture. It’s important for us to be aware of how our behaviors can cause harm to our environment so that we can take steps towards improving land management practices in order to ensure our planet remains healthy for future generations.

You sit down to dinner, and suddenly you're confronted with a difficult decision. You can either have a steak that's been raised on a factory farm, where the animal has been exposed to antibiotics and growth hormones, or you can choose something that's organic and humanely raised.

The same dilemma confronts us when we shop for groceries, clothes, or anything else. Do we want to buy something that's bad for the environment, or do we want to make a conscious choice to purchase something that will help sustain it?

It's not always easy to make the right decision, but it's important that we try. Why has the climate been changing, and why do people think it's a problem?

Examining the Effects of Pollution

Pollution is having a devastating effect on the environment. Pollution is causing irreversible damage to our planet, and it's happening on a scale that is unprecedented in human history.

The effects of pollution are far-reaching and complex. They can be felt in every corner of the globe, from the air we breathe to the water we drink. Pollution is making our planet uninhabitable, and if we don't take action now, we will be facing a very uncertain future.

Impact of Deforestation on the Environment

Deforestation is a major issue that is contributing to climate change and has a serious impact on the environment.

When trees are cut down, it not only reduces the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, but it also leads to the release of carbon dioxide. This, in turn, accelerates climate change and contributes to the greenhouse effect. Deforestation also affects water systems, contributing to floods and droughts.

Exploring Lifestyle Changes to Reduce Environmental Impact

One of the biggest things you can do to reduce your environmental impact is to make lifestyle changes. This can mean anything from reducing your consumption to changing the way you travel and even altering your diet.

Reducing consumption means buying less, reusing and repurposing items, and recycling more. It also means being mindful of what you throw away.

When it comes to transportation, try switching to public transport or carpooling when possible. Or, if you’re looking for something a bit more sustainable, why not try walking or cycling?

Lastly, food is another area where you can make changes. Eating locally sourced food that’s in season reduces your carbon footprint and helps local farmers.

So, what do we need to do?

To start, it’s important to realize that individuals can make a difference. There is no single answer to this question; it will require action from all of us. But if we each take small steps in our own lives, we can make a big difference. Here are a few ideas to get started:

Reduce your consumption, and choose products that are environmentally friendly

Reuse and recycle whenever possible

Educate yourself and others about environmental issues

Support organizations that are working to protect the environment

Together, we can make a difference. Let's work together to create a more sustainable future for our planet.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

Construction
Entertainment
Manufacturing
Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi .

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive.

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues.

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description: A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials.

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story.

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans.

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party.

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems.

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process.

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‘Unstoppable’ is all in the family

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Eyes on tomorrow, voices of today.

Candice Chen ’22 (left) and Noah Secondo ’22.

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Alvin Powell

Harvard Staff Writer

Harvard students share thoughts, fears, plans to meet environmental challenges

For many, thinking about the world’s environmental future brings concern, even outright alarm.

There have been, after all, decades of increasingly strident warnings by experts and growing, ever-more-obvious signs of the Earth’s shifting climate. Couple this with a perception that past actions to address the problem have been tantamount to baby steps made by a generation of leaders who are still arguing about what to do, and even whether there really is a problem.

It’s no surprise, then, that the next generation of global environmental leaders are preparing for their chance to begin work on the problem in government, business, public health, engineering, and other fields with a real sense of mission and urgency.

The Gazette spoke to students engaged in environmental action in a variety of ways on campus to get their views of the problem today and thoughts on how their activities and work may help us meet the challenge.

Eric Fell and Eliza Spear

Fell is president and Spear is vice president of Harvard Energy Journal Club. Fell is a graduate student at the Harvard John H. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Spear is a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

FELL: For the past three centuries, fossil fuels have enabled massive growth of our civilization to where we are today. But it is now time for a new generation of cleaner-energy technologies to fuel the next chapter of humanity’s story. We’re not too late to solve this environmental challenge, but we definitely shouldn’t procrastinate as much as we have been. I don’t worry about if we’ll get it done, it’s the when. Our survival depends on it. At Harvard, I’ve been interested in the energy-storage problem and have been focusing on developing a grid-scale solution utilizing flow batteries based on organic molecules in the lab of Mike Aziz . We’ll need significant deployment of batteries to enable massive penetration of renewables into the electrical grid.

SPEAR: Processes leading to greenhouse-gas emissions are so deeply entrenched in our way of life that change continues to be incredibly slow. We need to be making dramatic structural changes, and we should all be very worried about that. In the Harvard Energy Journal Club, our focus is energy, so we strive to learn as much as we can about the diverse options for clean-energy generation in various sectors. A really important aspect of that is understanding how much of an impact those technologies, like solar, hydro, and wind, can really have on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. It’s not always as much as you’d like to believe, and there are still a lot of technical and policy challenges to overcome.

I can’t imagine working on anything else, but the question of what I’ll be working on specifically is on my mind a lot. The photovoltaics field is at a really exciting point where a new technology is just starting to break out onto the market, so there are a lot of opportunities for optimization in terms of performance, safety, and environmental impact. That’s what I’m working on now [in Roy Gordon’s lab ] and I’m really enjoying it. I’ll definitely be in the renewable-energy technology realm. The specifics will depend on where I see the greatest opportunity to make an impact.

Photo (left) courtesy of Kritika Kharbanda; photo by Tiera Satchebell.

Kritika Kharbanda ’23 and Laier-Rayshon Smith ’21

Kharbanda is with the Harvard Student Climate Change Conference, Harvard Circular Economy Symposium. Smith is a member of Climate Leaders Program for Professional Students at Harvard. Both are students at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

KHARBANDA: I come from a country where the most pressing issues are, and will be for a long time, poverty, food shortage, and unemployment born out of corruption, illiteracy, and rapid gentrification. India was the seventh-most-affected country by climate change in 2019. With two-thirds of the population living in rural areas with no access to electricity, even the notion of climate change is unimaginable.

I strongly believe that the answer lies in the conjugality of research and industry. In my field, achieving circularity in the building material processes is the burning concern. The building industry currently contributes to 40 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, of which 38 percent is contributed by the embedded or embodied energy used for the manufacturing of materials. A part of the Harvard i-lab, I am a co-founder of Cardinal LCA, an early stage life-cycle assessment tool that helps architects and designers visualize this embedded energy in building materials, saving up to 46 percent of the energy from the current workflow. This venture has a strong foundation as a research project for a seminar class I took at the GSD in fall 2020, instructed by Jonathan Grinham. I am currently working as a sustainability engineer at Henning Larsen architects in Copenhagen while on a leave of absence from GSD. In the decades to come, I aspire to continue working on the embodied carbon aspect of the building industry. Devising an avant garde strategy to record the embedded carbon is the key. In the end, whose carbon is it, anyway?

SMITH: The biggest challenges are areas where the threat of climate change intersects with environmental justice. It is important that we ensure that climate-change mitigation and adaptation strategies are equitable, whether it is sea-level rise or the increase in urban heat islands. We should seek to address the threats faced by the most vulnerable communities — the communities least able to resolve the threat themselves. These often tend to be low-income communities and communities of color that for decades have been burdened with bearing the brunt of environmental health hazards.

During my time at Harvard, I have come to understand how urban planning and design can seek to address this challenge. Planners and designers can develop strategies to prioritize communities that are facing a significant climate-change risk, but because of other structural injustices may not be able to access the resources to mitigate the risk. I also learned about climate gentrification: a phenomenon in which people in wealthier communities move to areas with lower risks of climate-change threats that are/were previously lower-income communities. I expect to work on many of these issues, as many are connected and are threats to communities across the country. From disinvestment and economic extraction to the struggle to find quality affordable housing, these injustices allow for significant disparities in life outcomes and dealing with risk.

Lucy Shaw ’21

Shaw is co-president of the HBS Energy and Environment Club. She is a joint-degree student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.

SHAW: I want to see a world where climate change is averted and the environment preserved, without it being at the expense of the development and prosperity of lower-income countries. We have, or are on the cusp of having, many of the financial and technological tools we need to reduce emissions and environmental damage from a wide array of industries, such as agriculture, energy, and transport. The challenge I am most worried about is how we balance economic growth and opportunity with reducing humanity’s environmental impact and share this burden equitably across countries.

I came to Harvard as a joint degree student at the Kennedy School and Business School to be able to see this challenge from two different angles. In my policy-oriented classes, we learned about the opportunities and challenges of global coordination among national governments — the difficulty in enforcing climate agreements, and in allocating and agreeing on who bears the responsibility and the costs of change, but also the huge potential that an international framework with nationally binding laws on environmental protection and carbon-emission reduction could have on changing the behavior of people and businesses. In my business-oriented classes, we learned about the power of business to create change, if there is a driven leadership. We also learned that people and businesses respond to incentives, and the importance of reducing cost of technologies or increasing the cost of not switching to more sustainable technologies — for example, through a tax. After graduate school, I plan to join a leading private equity investor in their growing infrastructure team, which will equip me with tools to understand what makes a good investment in infrastructure and what are the opportunities for reducing the environmental impact of infrastructure while enhancing its value. I hope to one day be involved in shaping environmental and development policy, whether it is on a national or international level.

Photo (left) by Tabitha Soren.

Quinn Lewis ’23 and Suhaas Bhat ’24

Both are with the Student Climate Change Conference, Harvard College.

LEWIS: When I was a kid, I imagined being an adult as a future with a stable house, a fun job, and happy kids. That future didn’t include wildfires that obscured the sun for months, global water shortages, or billionaires escaping to terrariums on Mars. The threats are so great and so assured by inaction that it’s very hard for me to justify doing anything else with my time and attention because very little will matter if there’s 1 billion climate refugees and significant portions of the continental United States become uninhabitable for human life.

For whatever reason, I still feel a great deal of hope around giving it a shot. I can’t imagine not working to mitigate the climate crisis. Media and journalism will play a huge role in raising awareness, as they generate public pressure that can sway those in power. Another route for change is to cut directly to those in power and try to convince them of the urgency of the situation. Given that I am 22 years old, it is much easier to raise public awareness or work in media and journalism than it is to sit down with some of the most powerful people on the planet, who tend to be rather busy. At school, I’m on a team that runs the University-wide Student Climate Change Conference at Harvard, which is a platform for speakers from diverse backgrounds to discuss the climate crisis and ways students and educators can take immediate and effective action. Also, I write about and research challenges and solutions to the climate crisis through the lenses of geopolitics and the global economy, both as a student at the College and as a case writer at the Harvard Business School. Outside of Harvard, I have worked in investigative journalism and at Crooked Media, as well as on political campaigns to indirectly and directly drive urgency around the climate crisis.

BHAT: The failure to act on climate change in the last few decades, despite mountains of scientific evidence, is a consequence of political and institutional cowardice. Fossil fuel companies have obfuscated, misinformed, and lobbied for decades, and governments have failed to act in the best interests of their citizens. Of course, the fight against climate change is complex and multidimensional, requiring scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial expertise, but it will ultimately require systemic change to allow these talents to shine.

At Harvard, my work on climate has been focused on running the Harvard Student Climate Conference, as well as organizing for Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard. My hope for the Climate Conference is to provide students access to speakers who have dedicated their careers to all aspects of the fight against climate change, so that students interested in working on climate have more direction and inspiration for what to do with their careers. We’ve featured Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, members of the Sunrise Movement, and the CEO of Impossible Foods as some examples of inspiring and impactful people who are working against climate change today.

I organize for FFDH because I believe that serious institutional change is necessary for solving the climate crisis and also because of a sort of patriotism I have for Harvard. I deeply respect and care for this institution, and genuinely believe it is an incredible force for good in the world. At the same time, I believe Harvard has a moral duty to stand against the corporations whose misdeeds and falsification of science have enabled the climate crisis.

Libby Dimenstein ’22

Dimenstein is co-president of Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society.

DIMENSTEIN: Climate change is the one truly existential threat that my generation has had to face. What’s most scary is that we know it’s happening. We know how bad it will be; we know people are already dying from it; and we still have done so little relative to the magnitude of the problem. I also worry that people don’t see climate change as an “everyone problem,” and more as a problem for people who have the time and money to worry about it, when in reality it will harm people who are already disadvantaged the most.

I want to recognize Professor Wendy Jacobs, who recently passed away. Wendy founded HLS’s fantastic Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and she also created an interdisciplinary class called the Climate Solutions Living Lab. In the lab, groups of students drawn from throughout the University would conduct real-world projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The class was hard, because actually reducing greenhouse gases is hard, but it taught us about the work that needs to be done. This summer I’m interning with the Environmental Defense Fund’s U.S. Clean Air Team, and I anticipate a lot of my work will revolve around the climate. After graduating, I’m hoping to do environmental litigation, either with a governmental division or a nonprofit, but I also have an interest in policy work: Impact litigation is fascinating and important, but what we need most is sweeping policy change.

Candice Chen ’22 and Noah Secondo ’22

Chen and Secondo are co-directors of the Harvard Environmental Action Committee. Both attend Harvard College.

SECONDO: The environment is fundamental to rural Americans’ identity, but they do not believe — as much as urban Americans — that the government can solve environmental problems. Without the whole country mobilized and enthusiastic, from New Hampshire to Nebraska, we will fail to confront the climate crisis. I have no doubt that we can solve this problem. To rebuild trust between the U.S. government and rural communities, federal departments and agencies need to speak with rural stakeholders, partner with state and local leaders, and foreground rural voices. Through the Harvard College Democrats and the Environmental Action Committee, I have contributed to local advocacy efforts and creative projects, including an environmental art publication.

I hope to work in government to keep the policy development and implementation processes receptive to rural perspectives, including in the environmental arena. At every level of government, if we work with each other in good faith, we will tackle the climate crisis and be better for it.

CHEN: I’m passionate about promoting more sustainable, plant-based diets. As individual consumers, we have very little control over the actions of the largest emitters, massive corporations, but we can all collectively make dietary decisions that can avoid a lot of environmental degradation. Our food system is currently very wasteful, and our overreliance on animal agriculture devastates natural ecosystems, produces lots of potent greenhouse gases, and creates many human health hazards from poor animal-waste disposal. I feel like the climate conversation is often focused around the clean energy transition, and while it is certainly the largest component of how we can avoid the worst effects of global warming, the dietary conversation is too often overlooked. A more sustainable future also requires us to rethink agriculture, and especially what types of agriculture our government subsidizes. In the coming years, I hope that more will consider the outsized environmental impact of animal agriculture and will consider making more plant-based food swaps.

To raise awareness of the environmental benefits of adopting a more plant-based diet, I’ve been involved with running a campaign through the Environmental Action Committee called Veguary. Veguary encourages participants to try going vegetarian or vegan for the month of February, and participants receive estimates for how much their carbon/water/land use footprints have changed based on their pledged dietary changes for the month.

Photo (left) courtesy of Cristina Su Liu.

Cristina Su Liu ’22 and James Healy ’21

How Earth Day gave birth to environmental movement

The culture of Earth Day

Spirituality, social justice, and climate change meet at the crossroads

Liu is with Harvard Climate Leaders Program for Professional Students. Healy is with the Harvard Student Climate Change Conference. Both are students at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

HEALY: As a public health student I see so many environmental challenges, be it the 90 percent of the world who breathe unhealthy air, or the disproportionate effects of extreme heat on communities of color, or the environmental disruptions to the natural world and the zoonotic disease that humans are increasingly being exposed to. But the central commonality at the heart of all these crises is the climate crisis. Climate change, from the greenhouse-gas emissions to the physical heating of the Earth, is worsening all of these environmental crises. That’s why I call the climate crisis the great exacerbator. While we will all feel the effects of climate change, it will not be felt equally. Whether it’s racial inequity or wealth inequality, the climate crisis is widening these already gaping divides.

Solutions may have to be outside of our current road maps for confronting crises. I have seen the success of individual efforts and private innovation in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, from individuals wearing masks and social distancing to the huge advances in vaccine development. But for climate change, individual efforts and innovation won’t be enough. I would be in favor of policy reform and coalition-building between new actors. As an overseer of the Harvard Student Climate Change Conference and the Harvard Climate Leaders Program, I’ve aimed to help mobilize Harvard’s diverse community to tackle climate change. I am also researching how climate change makes U.S. temperatures more variable, and how that’s reducing the life expectancies of Medicare recipients. The goal of this research, with Professor Joel Schwartz, will be to understand the effects of climate change on vulnerable communities. I certainly hope to expand on these themes in my future work.

SU LIU: A climate solution will need to be a joint effort from the whole society, not just people inside the environmental or climate circles. In addition to cross-sectoral cooperation, solving climate change will require much stronger international cooperation so that technologies, projects, and resources can be developed and shared globally. As a Chinese-Brazilian student currently studying in the United States, I find it very valuable to learn about the climate challenges and solutions of each of these countries, and how these can or cannot be applied in other settings. China-U.S. relations are tense right now, but I hope that climate talks can still go ahead since we have much to learn from each other.

Personally, as a student in environmental health at [the Harvard Chan School], I feel that my contribution to addressing this challenge until now has been in doing research, learning more about the health impacts of climate change, and most importantly, learning how to communicate climate issues to people outside climate circles. Every week there are several climate-change events at Harvard, where a different perspective on climate change is addressed. It has been very inspiring for me, and I feel that I could learn about climate change in a more holistic way.

Recently, I started an internship at FXB Village, where I am working on developing and integrating climate resilience indicators into their poverty-alleviation program in rural communities in Puebla, Mexico. It has been very rewarding to introduce climate-change and climate-resilience topics to people working on poverty alleviation and see how everything is interconnected. When we address climate resilience, we are also addressing access to basic services, livelihoods, health, equity, and quality of life in general. This is where climate justice is addressed, and that is a very powerful idea.

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Seem like Lyme disease risk is getting worse? It is.

The risk of Lyme disease has increased due to climate change and warmer temperature. A rheumatologist offers advice on how to best avoid ticks while going outdoors.

Climate change is a ‘global emergency’, people say in biggest ever climate poll

A thermal power plant in Port Louis, Mauritius is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions on the Indian Ocean island.

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Almost two-thirds of over 1.2 million people surveyed worldwide say that climate change is a global emergency, urging greater action to address the crisis, results from a new UN climate survey revealed on Wednesday.

Described as the biggest climate survey yet conducted, UN Development Programme ( UNDP )’s “People’s Climate Vote” poll also showed that people supported more comprehensive climate policies to respond to the challenges. The survey covered 50 countries with over half the world’s population.

50 countries. 17 languages. 1.2 million people.The results are in of our #PeoplesClimateVote - the largest survey of public opinion on #ClimateChange ever conducted. Read more and explore the findings now: https://t.co/9s64aEletP#Mission1Point5 pic.twitter.com/TDkN7GcIz7 UN Development UNDP January 27, 2021

“The results of the survey clearly illustrate that urgent climate action has broad support amongst people around the globe, across nationalities, age, gender and education level,” Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator said in a news release .

The poll also showed “how” people want their policymakers to tackle the climate crisis.

“From climate-friendly farming to protecting nature, and investing in a green recovery from COVID-19 , the survey brings the voice of the people to the forefront of the climate debate. It signals ways in which countries can move forward with public support as we work together to tackle this enormous challenge,” Mr. Steiner added.

‘Biggest survey ever’ on climate change

UNDP said that the poll was the world’s biggest survey ever of public opinion on climate change. It was conducted as countries prepare for negotiations at November’s COP26 , the 26th session of Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC ).

The survey asked respondents if climate change was a global emergency and whether they supported 18 key climate policies across six action areas: economy, energy, transport, food and farms, nature, and protecting people.

Its target audience of 1.2 million included over half a million people under the age of 18, a key constituency on climate change that is typically unable to vote yet in regular elections. Innovations, such as distribution across mobile gaming networks, were used to ensure that the young audience were reached.

According to UNDP, polling experts at the University of Oxford weighted the huge sample to make it representative of the age, gender, and education population profiles of the countries in the survey, resulting in small margins of error (+/- 2 per cent).

People want broad climate policies

The results showed that people supported “broad climate policies”, beyond the current situation, UNDP said.

For instance, in eight of the ten survey countries with the highest emissions from the power sector, majority backed more renewable energy. In four out of five countries with the highest emissions from land-use change and enough data on policy preferences, the majority supported conserving forests and land. Nine out of ten of the countries with the most urbanized populations backed more use of clean electric cars and buses, or bicycles.

The survey also found a direct link between a person’s level of education and their desire for climate action, according to UNDP.

There was very high recognition of the climate emergency among those who had attended university or college in all countries, from lower-income countries such as Bhutan (82 per cent) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (82 per cent), to wealthy countries like France (87 per cent) and Japan (82 per cent).

Findings also revealed that while younger people (under 18) were more likely to say climate change is an emergency, other age groups were not far behind, with 65 per cent aged 18-35; 66 per cent aged 36-59; and 58 per cent over 60, expressing affirmation.

“[This] illustrated how widely held this view has become,” said UNDP.

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Environmental Issue Essay

Essay on Environmental Issue

Environment is the surrounding of an Organism. This Environment in which an Organism lives is made up of various components like Air, Water, Land, etc. These components are found in fixed proportions to create a Harmonious Balance in the Environment for the Organism to live in. Any kind of undesirable and wanted change in the proportions of these components can be termed as Pollution. This Issue is increasing with every passing year. It is an Issue that troubles Economically, Physically and Socially. The Environmental problem that is worsening with each day needs to be addressed so that its harmful effects on Humans as well as the planet can be redressed.

Environmental Issue

Our green world is now in Jeopardy. Humans depleted Natural Resources by polluting Water, Soil, and Air. We must tackle the challenges we have created by opening our eyes. The Environment has been profoundly impacted by Industrial Growth. People emit more Pollution for more convenience. Human actions have an impact on the Environment, both directly and indirectly. As a result, there is a symbiotic link between a creature and its surroundings. Let’s discuss some major Issues our Environment Issues which our Environment is facing nowadays:

Global Warming:

Foremost symptom of natural imbalance is Global Warming. When Greenhouse Gasses accumulate and cause the temperature to rise, we see the Greenhouse effect. It has an impact on the rising of the World Ocean level and the melting of Arctic ice. According to specialists, coastal countries and certain islands could be overwhelmed by water over several decades.

Increasing Population:

People require greater space and resources as their population grows, in order to meet all of their food and housing needs. To make room for pastures and agricultural fields, people began cutting down trees. Forests serve as the Earth's main lungs and the primary habitat for a wide range of animals, birds, and insects. Deforestation and Human activities have put a lot of forest species in Jeopardy.

Ozone Layer Depletion:

Depletion of the Ozone layer is a complex Issue that Humanity is grappling with. The Ozone layer absorbs UV radiation, which is damaging to Humans. Increased Ozone hole numbers result in more intense solar radiation and a rise in skin cancer.

Deforestation:

Plants and trees are essential components of Human life. Everyone benefits from trees because they give air, food, and medicines. Forests are being cut down to meet rising demand. During the summer, natural wildfires are common. To maximize profit, people take down trees in an unethical manner.

Climate change is occurring at a faster rate than it was a century ago. The weather change has an impact on industrial advancement. Climate change has resulted in disastrous hurricanes, floods, and droughts. In recent years, many countries have been hit by a slew of natural disasters.

Polluted Environments can cause a variety of illnesses. Many species of flora and wildlife that are important to flora are threatened with extinction. Nature preserves balance, and all Organisms' feeding habits are linked in a food chain, as we all know. In areas with petroleum refineries, chemicals, iron and steel, non-metal products, pulp and paper manufacturers, and textile industries, the problem of industrial Pollution is often severe.

Causes of Environmental Issue

With the rise of the industries and the migration of people from villages to cities in search of employment, there has been a regular increase in the problem of proper housing and unhygienic conditions of living. These reasons have given rise in factors for Pollution. Environmental Pollution is of five basic types namely; Air, Water, Soil and Noise Pollution.

Air Pollution:

Air Pollution is a major Issue in today’s world. The smoke pouring out of factory chimneys and automobiles pollute the air that we breathe in. Gasses like Carbon dioxide, Carbon Monoxide and Sulphur Dioxide are emitted which mix with air and cause great harm to the Human body, Flora and Fauna. The dry farm waste, dry grass, leaves and coal used as domestic fuels in our villages also produce harmful Gasses. Acid rain occurs due to excess Sulphur Dioxide in the Air.

Water Pollution:

Water Pollution is one of the most serious Environmental Issues. The waste products from the growing industries and sewage water are not treated properly before disposing into rivers and other water bodies, thus creating Pollution. Agricultural processes with excess fertilizers and pesticides also pollute the water bodies.

Soil or Land Pollution:

The next source of Environmental Pollution is soil. Waste materials such as plastics, polythene, bottles, etc. cause land Pollution and render soil infertile. Moreover, dumping of dead bodies of men and animals, washing of clothes and utensils add to this Issue. It is a very dangerous aspect of Environment since it affects the fertility and food production of the area and the country.

Noise Pollution:

This Issue is a very subtle form of Pollution. All Human activities contribute to noise Pollution to a large extent. Horns of the vehicles, loud speakers, music system, industrial activities contribute towards this Issue.

Problems like Ozone depletion, Global Warming, Greenhouse effect, change in climatic and weather conditions, melting of glaciers etc. are some more Issues in the Environment.

How to Minimize Environmental Issues?

To minimize this Issue, preventive measures need to be taken.

Principle of 3R’s:

To save the Environment, use the principle of 3 R’s; Reuse, Reduce and Recycle.

Reuse products again and again. Instead of throwing away things after one use, find a way to use them again. Reduce the amount of waste products generated.

Recycle:

Paper, plastics, glass and electronic items can be processed into new products while using fewer natural resources and lesser energy.

To prevent and control measures of air Pollution including better-designed equipment and smokeless fuels should be used in homes and industries.

More and more trees should be planted to balance the ecosystem and control Greenhouse effects.

Noise Pollution can be minimized by better designing and proper maintenance of vehicles. Industrial noise can be reduced by sound proofing equipment like generators, etc.

To control soil Pollution, usage of plastic bags must be stopped. Sewage should be treated properly before using it as fertilizers and as landfills.

Several measures can be adopted to control water Pollution. Some of them are that the water requirement can be minimized by altering the techniques involved. Water should be reused with treatment. The quantity of water waste discharged should be reduced.

People, unfortunately, forget that we are a part of nature. We must live in harmony with nature and take care of it. We need to rethink how we consume natural resources. People must be aware that the natural world is on the verge of collapse. People must recognise that they are not the primary users of the Environment and construct Environmentally suitable homes. We must consider future generations and what will be left behind after we are gone. People come up with remedies to Environmental Issues. We recycle trash, develop electric automobiles, reduce air, water, and soil Pollution, and restore land erosion by planting new trees. But it is not enough; people must drastically alter their lifestyles until nature takes the last drastic measures.

Saving our planet from these Environmental Issues is the responsibility of every individual. If preventive measures are not taken then our future generation will have to face major repercussions. Government is also taking steps to create public awareness. Every individual should be involved in helping to reduce and control Pollution.

FAQs on Environmental Issue Essay

1. What are the Major Environmental Issues?

The major environmental issues are environmental degradation, climate change, global warming, and greenhouse effects.

2. What is the Best Way to Control Greenhouse Effect?

Afforestation is the best way to control greenhouse effect.

3. What is the Principle of 3Rs?

The principle of 3Rs is Reuse, Reduce and Recycle.

4. How do you Minimize Soil Pollution?

Stopping the use of plastics can minimize soil Pollution.

Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions (1992)

Chapter: 4 human consequences and responses, 4 human consequences and responses.

Since before recorded history, environmental changes have affected things people value. In consequence, people have migrated or changed their ways of living as polar ice advanced and retreated, endured crop failures or altered their crops when temperature and rainfall patterns changed, and made numerous other adjustments in individual and collective behavior. Until very recently, people have responded to global phenomena as if they were local, have not organized their responses as government policies, and have not been able to respond by deliberately altering the course of the global changes themselves. Things are different now from what they have been for millennia.

This chapter examines the range of human consequences of, and responses to, global environmental change. We begin by developing the concept of human consequences and showing why, to understand them, it is critical to understand the variety of human responses to global change. We then offer a framework for thinking about human responses and discuss the pivotal role of conflict. The next section examines three cases that illustrate many of the major factors influencing the human consequences of global change. The following sections describe the human systems that are affected by or respond to global change, and how they interrelate. We conclude by offering some general principles for research and some research implications.

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN CONSEQUENCES

Many human actions affect what people value. One way in which the actions that cause global change are different from most of these is that the effects take decades to centuries to be realized. This fact causes many concerned people to consider taking action now to protect the values of those who might be affected by global environmental change in years to come. But because of uncertainty about how global environmental systems work, and because the people affected will probably live in circumstances very much different from those of today and may have different values, it is hard to know how present-day actions will affect them. To project or forecast the human consequences of global change at some point in the relatively distant future, one would need to know at least the following:

the future state of the natural environment,

the future of social and economic organization,

the values held by the members of future social groups,

the proximate effects of global change on those values, and

the responses that humans will have made in anticipation of global change or in response to ongoing global change.

These elements form a dynamic, interactive system (Kates, 1971, 1985b; Riebsame et al., 1986). Over decades or centuries, human societies adapt to their environments as well as influence them; human values tend to promote behavior consistent with adaptation; and values and social organization affect the way humans respond to global change, which may be by changing social organizations, values, or the environment itself.

This complex causal structure makes projecting the human consequences of global change a trickier task than is sometimes imagined. It is misleading to picture human impacts as if global change were like a meteorite striking an inert planet, because social systems are always changing and are capable of anticipation. So, for example, an estimate of the number of homes that would be inundated by a one-meter rise in sea level and the associated loss of life and property may be useful for alerting decision makers to potentially important issues, but it should not be taken as a prediction, because humans always react. Before the sea level rises, people may migrate, build dikes, or buy insurance, and the society and economy may have changed so that people's immediate responses—and therefore the costs of

global change—may be different from what they would be in the present.

One may imagine human consequences as the output of a matrix of scenarios. Assume that four sets of scenarios are developed for the futures of the natural environment, social and economic organization, values, and policies. Joining together all combinations of one scenario from each set, and adding assumptions about people's immediate responses, would generate an extensive set of grand scenarios. The human consequences of global change could then be defined as the difference between the state of humanity at the end of one grand scenario and the state of humanity at the end of a base case or reference scenario with a different natural-environment component. By this definition, a particular change in the natural environment has different consequences depending on the scenarios assumed for society, values, and responses.

Building these scenarios, identifying the most probable ones, and assessing their outcomes would be an overwhelming analytic task. Rather than trying to set a research agenda for that task, we undertake in this chapter a less demanding but still very difficult task: to focus on human responses to global change broadly conceived. We do not discuss ways to improve forecasts of the state of the natural environment; that topic is outside the range of human dimensions. Neither do we devote much attention to improving forecasts of social and economic organization or of human values, even though these topics clearly belong to the social sciences and are critical to understanding the effects of global change. We bypass these issues because the need for improved social, economic, and political forecasting is generic in the social sciences, and addressing this broad need would take us far beyond our charge to focus on human-environment interactions. We offer only limited discussion of how future global change might proximally affect what humans value, because the variety of possible global changes and the uncertainty about the effects of each make it far too difficult to go into detail. Instead, we review basic knowledge about how human systems respond to external stresses, in the context of discussing human responses.

In our judgment, understanding human responses is key to understanding the human consequences of global change. We do not mean to downplay the importance of certain kinds of research that do not focus explicitly on responses. Two such research traditions, in particular, are highly relevant. The impact-assessment tradition involves projecting the human consequences of a

range of natural-environment scenarios under given assumptions about human response. The tradition of post hoc case analysis involves assessing the actual human outcomes after past environmental changes (and given the responses that actually occurred), in the hope of drawing more general conclusions. Research in these traditions, combined with analysis of human response, can offer valuable insights into the human consequences of global change. We discuss that research as appropriate in this chapter and in Chapter 5 .

S OME D IMENSIONS OF H UMAN R ESPONSE

The human responses relevant to global change differ along several dimensions. We consider the following analytic distinctions useful for thinking about the range of responses available.

Responses to Experienced Versus Anticipated Change

People and social institutions may respond to environmental change as it is experienced (post facto) or as it is anticipated. 1 In the past, people responded mainly to experienced environmental change; only in very recent history, because of increasing scientific knowledge, has there been any rational basis for anticipatory responses. Policy makers and others are now faced with a variety of options, some of which involve anticipatory action and some of which depend on awaiting the experience of global change.

Deliberate Responses Versus Actions with Incidental Effects

Some human actions can be taken deliberately in response to global change. For instance, people can build dikes to keep out rising seas or reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate global warming. Human actions can also affect human responses to global change incidentally to their intended purposes. For example, European settlement of the Americas gave Europeans and, later, others access to a wider variety of food crops, making human survival less dependent, at least in principle, on a small number of staples that might be vulnerable to altered growing conditions caused by environmental change. World markets have subsequently reduced the number of major staple foods so that, in practice, people may eat no larger a variety of foods than before (Plotkin, 1988). High taxes on gasoline in Europe and Japan, enacted for reasons unrelated to the global environment, encouraged

development and purchase of small, fuel-efficient automobiles that incidentally slow the pace of global warming. By bringing about technological change, these taxes also incidentally have helped make it easier for all countries—even those without high gasoline taxes or companies that produce fuel-efficient automobiles—to respond to the challenge of global warming with improved energy efficiency.

Changes in society that incidentally affect human responses to global change are important both directly and because they could become tomorrow's deliberate responses. For example, gasoline taxes, which were not initiated with the global environment as a consideration, could be increased to cut CO 2 emissions. Studies of the incidental effects of such actions might inform decision makers about what could happen without deliberate intervention and about which present policies might make societies more robust in the face of global change. Both kinds of knowledge are essential for informed policy debates.

Coordinated Versus Uncoordinated Responses

Response to global change may be coordinated, as through the policies of governments or trade associations aimed at eliciting the same action from many actors, or uncoordinated, as with independent actions of households or small firms. Both types of response can be either anticipatory or post facto; both can affect global change either deliberately or incidentally. Moreover, coordinated and uncoordinated responses can be connected to each other, in that coordinated actions by governments and industries can create new options for uncoordinated actors, prohibit responses, or raise or lower their costs.

Interventions at Different Points in the Process

Figure 4-1 elaborates on Figure 2-2 to show how human action can intervene at any point in the cycle of interaction between human and environmental systems to protect against threats to what humans value. We offer the following rough distinctions among types of interventions. 2

The term mitigation is generally used to describe interventions on the human causes side of the diagram. Mitigation includes all actions that prevent, limit, delay, or slow the rate of undesired impacts by acting directly or indirectly on environmental systems. Mitigation can operate at various points in the causal cycle.

Interactions between human and environmental systems and the role of various types of human response. Lightly shaded boxes repeat the relationships presented in Figure 2-2 .

It may involve direct interventions in the environment (type E in the figure) to counteract the effects of other human actions, direct interventions in the proximate human causes (type P), and interventions in the human systems (type H) that drive global change, intended to have an indirect or downstream effect on the proximate causes.

For example, global warming is the direct result of a change in the earth's radiative balance; humans can mitigate global warming by any actions that slow the rate of change or limit the ultimate amount of change in the radiative balance. 3 They can intervene in the environment (type E), for example by directly blocking incident solar radiation with orbiting particles or enhancing the ocean sink for carbon dioxide by adding nutrients. They can intervene in the proximate causes (type P), by regulating automo

bile use or engine design to cut carbon dioxide emissions or limiting the use of certain nitrogen fertilizers to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. They can intervene in human systems (type H) and indirectly control the proximate causes, by investing in research on renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuel or providing tax incentives for more compact settlements to lower demand for transportation.

Mitigation of ozone depletion might, in principle, involve release of substances that interact chemically with CFCs, producing compounds with benign effects on the stratospheric ozone layer (type E), limiting emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other gases that deplete ozone (type P), or developing alternative methods of cooling buildings that do not rely on CFCs (type H). Mitigation of threats to biological diversity might include, at least in principle, engineering new varieties, species, or even ecosystems to save diversity, if not individuals (type E); limiting widespread destruction of tropical forests, estuaries, and other major ecosystems (type P); or promoting systems of land tenure and agricultural production that decrease the pressure for extensive development of tropical forests (type H).

Humans can intervene in several ways on the response side of the cycle. Such actions are sometimes generically called adaptation , but there are important distinctions among them. One type of response, which can be called blocking , prevents undesired proximate effects of environmental systems on what humans value. It can be described by example. If global climate change produces sufficient warming and drying (drought) on a regional scale, it may threaten the region's crops; development and adoption of drought-resistant crops or crop strains can break the connection between environmental change (drought) and famine by preventing crop failure. Similarly, loss of stratospheric ozone threatens light-skinned humans with skin cancer, through exposure to ultraviolet radiation; avoidance of extreme exposure to sun and application of sunscreens help prevent cancer, although they do not mitigate the destruction of the ozone layer. Tropical deforestation threatens species with extinction by eliminating their habitats; creation of forest preserves would provide many species sufficient habitat to survive, while doing little to slow net deforestation.

Another type of adaptive response is to prevent or compensate for losses of welfare that would otherwise result from global change. Such actions can be called adjustments . 4 They neither mitigate environmental change nor keep it from affecting what people value, but rather intervene when a loss of welfare is imminent or after

it has begun to be manifest. Examples include evacuation from areas stricken with flood or drought, food shipments or financial assistance to those remaining in such areas, and development of synthetic substitutes for products previously obtained from extinct species. 5

Yet another type of response, sometimes called anticipatory adaptation, aims to improve the robustness of social systems, so that an unchecked environmental change would produce less reduction of values than would otherwise be the case. 6 This type of intervention does not alter the rate of environmental change, but it lowers the cost of any adjustments that might become necessary. It can be distinguished, at least in theory, from type H mitigation in that it does not necessarily alter the driving forces of global change. An example is diversification in agricultural systems. Farmers, regions, and countries that rely on a range of crops with different requirements for growth may or may not produce less greenhouse or ozone-depleting gases than monoculturists. But polycultures are more robust in the face of drought, acid deposition, and ozone depletion. There may be crop failure, but only in some crops. Similarly, families and communities that have both agricultural and nonagricultural income are harmed less by the same threats than purely agricultural groups. They have other sources of income and can purchase crops from elsewhere. 7

All social systems are vulnerable to environmental change, and modern industrial societies have different vulnerabilities from earlier social forms. Modem societies have built intricate and highly integrated support systems that produce unprecedented material benefits by relying critically on highly specialized outputs of technology, such as petrochemical fertilizers and biocides; hybrid seeds; drugs and vaccines; and the transmission of electricity, oil, and natural gas from distant sources. Although these complex sociotechnical systems contain great flexibility through the operation of global markets, they may have vulnerabilities that reveal themselves in the face of the changes that these systems have helped create. For instance, modern societies have become highly dependent on fossil fuels and vulnerable to a serious disruption of supply or distribution systems. They also support much larger and denser populations than ever before; such populations may be vulnerable to ecological changes affecting the viability of their food supplies.

Evidence from studies of disasters suggests that the poor, who lack diversified sources of income, political influence, and access to centralized relief efforts, tend to be worst off (Erikson, 1978;

Kroll-Smith et al., 1991; Mileti and Nigg, 1991). However, studies to assess the vulnerabilities of larger human systems, such as national or world food or energy systems, are rarely done (e.g., Rabb, 1983). The far side of vulnerability is also little studied: When a system fails to resist environmental pressure, under what conditions does it return to its previous state? If it undergoes permanent change, what determines the nature of the new state?

T HE P IVOTAL R OLE OF C ONFLICT

An important consequence of global environmental change is conflict, because global change affects what humans value, and different people value different things. When U.S. energy use threatens the global climate or land clearing in Brazil threatens the extinction of large numbers of species, people around the world are understandably concerned. They may express a desire—or even claim a right—to influence the choices of people or governments continents away. And the people or countries subjected to those claims may resist, especially when they feel that changing their behavior will mean suffering. The further global change proceeds, the more likely it seems that it will be a source of conflict, including international conflict, over who has a right to influence the activities implicated as causes, who will pay the costs of responding, and how disputes will be settled.

A Current Controversy: To Mitigate or Not to Mitigate?

One of the most heated policy debates about responses to a global change is between advocates of immediate efforts to mitigate global warming and those who would postpone such action. This debate arose within the committee, even though we were not charged with recommending strategies for response to global change. We offer the following brief, sharply stated version of the debate to highlight some important characteristics of controversies about global change: that they are partly, but not entirely, fact-based; that they are likely to persist even in the face of greatly increased knowledge about the causes of global change; and that they are pervasive, even in discussions restricted to research priorities.

In one view, the wise course of action on global warming is to conduct research on the phenomenon but not to take action to slow or mitigate it until the phenomenon is better understood. Proponents of this view make the following arguments:

Uncertainty of global change . The nature and extent of global warming in the future is highly uncertain because of incomplete knowledge of the relevant properties of the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere, and other relevant systems. It is wasteful for society to expend resources to prevent changes that will not occur anyway. Moreover, the mitigation efforts may themselves set in motion undesired changes.

Adjustment will make mitigation unnecessary . Human systems can adjust to global climate changes much faster than they are likely to occur. The projected doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will take place about 80 years from now. By contrast, financial markets adjust in minutes, administered-market prices in weeks, labor markets in years, and the economic long run is usually reckoned at no more than two decades. The implication for action is that what individuals and organizations do on their own in anticipating climate change may be sufficiently successful that organized, governmental responses will be superfluous. The impact of climate change will reach people through slow price increases for the factors of production; in reasonably well-functioning markets, economic actors adapt readily to such changes. They invent industrial processes that economize on scarce inputs, find substitutes, purchase energy-efficient equipment when energy prices are rising, and so forth. In the past, such adjustments have contributed to human progress, and there is every reason to expect that pattern to continue.

Don't fight the wrong war . It makes no sense to act like the generals who built the Maginot Line for the wrong war or to construct dikes for cities whose populations will have moved or dams to water crops that will be grown elsewhere. Technological and social changes often eliminate problems without any specific mitigation efforts by changing the offending technology or making it obsolete. For example, boilers no longer explode on trains because they no longer use steam engines; horses are no longer the main polluters of urban streets. Concern about the greenhouse effects of fossil fuel burning will prove premature if development of fusion or solar energy technology can replace most fossil fuel use over the next 50 years.

Better policy options may lie on the horizon . Further research may identify more effective and less costly interventions than those now available. For example, it has recently been suggested that adding iron to the oceans to fertilize phytoplankton that would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may be a way to address the greenhouse effect (Martin et al., 1990). That

proposal, whatever its ultimate feasibility or desirability (Lloyd, 1991), demonstrates that improved understanding of biogeochemical systems might generate promising new proposals for mitigating global change. Improved understanding of social systems has reasonable potential to discover other classes of effective response.

It may be more costly to act now . Actions that can be postponed will be less burdensome because of continuing economic progress. If people living in the 1890s had invested in preventing today's environmental problems, their expense on our behalf would probably have been made on the wrong problems, and it would have been an inequitable transfer of resources from a poorer generation to a richer one. It probably makes no more sense for the current generation to sacrifice to benefit a future, even wealthier generation. This is the argument for a positive social discount rate. It assumes that expenditures made now could otherwise be invested at compound interest in improvements in human well-being. If the growth rate for such investment exceeds the average rate at which environmental problems develop, people will be better off in the future if they do not spend on mitigation now.

Proponents of immediate mitigative action make the following arguments:

Action now is more feasible and effective than action later . It is in the nature of exponential growth processes that the earlier the growth rate decreases, the greater the final effect. Bringing down the birth rate in India to two children per couple in 1995 rather than in 2005 can make a difference of 300 million people by the time the Indian population stabilizes (Meadows, 1985). To achieve the same effect by starting later would impose greater restrictions on the people living at that time. It is therefore easier to mitigate the effects of exponential growth the sooner the effort is made.

It is easier to adjust to slower change . Mitigation is prudent because of the long time lags in the global environmental system. By the time it becomes clear that a response is needed, it may be too late to prevent catastrophe if the change is proceeding rapidly. Even if catastrophe is unlikely, mitigation that slows the rate of change makes it more likely that adjustments can be made in time. This is clearly the case for nonhuman organisms, such as tree species that can adjust to climatic change by migrating, as seedlings move to more favorable locations. Such species have a

maximum rate of migration, so can adjust to climatic change below that rate. 8 The same principle probably also applies to human adjustments to major environmental change.

It is wise to insure against disaster . Mitigation in the face of possibly catastrophic outcomes is like taking out insurance against flood and fire. The insurance expenses are bearable, but the expenses of catastrophe may not be.

Avoid irretrievable error . It is wise to mitigate against potentially irretrievable losses. The clearest example is species extinction. If species are valued for themselves, their loss is irretrievable; even if they are valued only for what benefits they may have for humanity, species loss may be irretrievable. Other environmental values, such as loss of the life-supporting capacity of wetlands or large bodies of water, may also be irretrievable; often we do not know until the values are lost.

Avoid high-risk environmental experiments . Humans are now conducting large-scale uncontrolled experiments on the global environment by changing the face of the earth and the flows of critical materials at unprecedented rates. It is prudent to limit the pace and extent of such experiments because of the likelihood of unanticipated consequences. Like natural mutations, most of these experiments are probably destined to fail, and there is only one global environment to experiment on. As the extent of human intervention in the global environment continues to increase, so does the strength of this argument. The argument supports mitigation efforts that slow ongoing human interventions in the environment, but generally not those that would stop greenhouse warming by new interventions in the global environment.

Economic arguments do not encompass some environmental goods . The discount-rate argument is specious in the general case because the costs and benefits of postponing action are not always commensurable. Some important and meaningful tradeoffs can be made on economic grounds, for instance, between investing in renewable energy development and in directly limiting the burning of fossil fuels. But sometimes the economic logic makes no sense. If current economic activity destroys die life-support systems on which human life depends, what investment at compound interest could ever recoup this cost? Economic arguments also cannot deal with some things—including the balance of nature—on which people place intrinsic or spiritual value. To the extent people want to preserve such values, mitigation is the only acceptable approach. Moreover, economic accountings systematically undervalue things—such as genetic resources—for

which there are few property rights or for which economic value is only potential.

Some mitigative action is fully justified on other grounds . A good example is investments in energy efficiency that provide an excellent return on investment even with narrow economic calculations. Such actions can achieve the benefits of mitigation at no extra cost, while providing other benefits.

Implications of Conflict About Human Response

Many controversies are beginning to develop out of concerns with global change. One pits Third World countries against the developed countries that are now becoming concerned with limiting use of fossil fuels and restricting the felling of tropical forests. The Third World position, of course, is that other countries used fossil fuels and undeveloped frontiers for their economic development, and fairness dictates that the poorer nations now have their turn. Many analysts believe that if large-scale climate change results from human activities, the poorer countries are likely to suffer most because they lack resources they could use to adapt. Such an outcome would produce yet other conflicts.

The controversies about global change are only partly fact-based. True, some of the disagreements might fade with better knowledge about the global environment and the likely effects of different feasible responses. As it became clear that expected global warming over the next 50 years could not cause the breakup of the West Antarctic icecap, the flood-prevention rationale for slowing greenhouse gas emissions became considerably weaker. A response such as dike building seems much more appropriate when the sea threatens only a few areas. And if it became clear what each policy option—at the local, national, and international levels—would accomplish if enacted, some of them could easily be rejected.

But knowledge often fails to resolve controversy. It frequently raises new disputes or calls old beliefs into question. And even when new knowledge reduces uncertainty, controversies persist because not only facts, but also important interests and values, are at stake. Informed people disagree because the remaining uncertainty leaves room for judgment, because they may assume different scenarios about the future of society, and because an outcome that harms what one person values may enhance what another values. Those impressed with the potential benefits of economic growth tend to line up against those who fear of the

potential costs; those with a strong faith in the ability of human ingenuity to solve life's problems line up against those awed by what is at stake; those who stand to benefit from an outcome line up against those who stand to lose. When faced with choices, some prefer international solutions to global problems, others see national action as more feasible; some favor market adaptations, others, community-based action outside the market and the state; some are attracted to large-scale technological solutions, others see them as cures that may be worse than the disease. In short, the debates are not only about the workings of human and environmental systems, but also about political and economic interests, conflicting values and faiths, differing assumptions about the future, and different judgments about resiliency in the face of the unexpected.

Research on Conflict Studies of environmental and technological conflict are a significant part of social research on conflict (e.g., Nelkin, 1979; Mazur, 1981; Freudenburg and Rosa, 1984; Jasper, 1988; Clarke, 1989). Issues of global environmental change have all the features characteristic of the most difficult technological controversies: awareness of human influence on the hazards, serious worst-case possibilities, the possibility of widespread and unintended side effects, delayed effects not easily attributable to specific causes, and lack of individual control over exposure (National Research Council, 1989b:57-62).

Social science can help illuminate the nature of environmental controversies and evaluate ways of managing them. Social scientists interested in environmental policy have studied the conditions shaping and favoring the resolution of environmental controversies and the role of scientific, governmental, and mass media communication in the decision process (e.g., Dietz and Rycroft, 1987; Gould et al., 1988; Jasanoff, 1990; Nelkin, 1979, 1988; National Research Council, 1989b). Some have begun to consider the various ways environmental change might lead to conflicts with the potential for violence (e.g., Homer-Dixon, 1990).

Social scientists specializing in conflict have developed generalizations that might be more thoroughly applied to environmental conflict. For example, conflicts may be based mainly on ideology, interest, or understanding (Aubert, 1963; Glenn et al., 1970; Rapoport, 1960, 1964; Hammond, 1965; von Winterfeldt and Edwards, 1984; Syme and Eaton, 1989), and different types of conflict tend to yield to different tactics of resolution (e.g., Druckman and Zechmeister, 1973; Druckman et al., 1977). Defining an environ-

mental conflict as either one of understanding or one of interests and values affects which groups and arguments are considered legitimate in policy debates (Dietz et al., 1989). The nature of the relationship between the parties to a conflict can determine whether the conflict focuses on ideological positions (e.g., Campbell, 1976; Zartman and Berman, 1982), differences in understanding (e.g., Axline, 1978), or differences in interests (e.g., Strauss, 1978). And the behavior of the parties to a conflict depends on the pattern and relative strength of incentives to compete and to cooperate (e.g., Pruitt and Kimmel, 1977), the probability of continued interaction in the future (e.g., Axelrod, 1984), and on whether two or more parties are involved (Groennings et al., 1970; Hopmann, 1978; Putnam, 1988).

More research seems warranted to use existing knowledge about conflict to illuminate the ways social conflict may result from global environmental change. This research would investigate the ways environmental changes may affect organized social groups and their resource bases and would hypothesize links between those effects and conflict. A first step is to construct an analytical framework for identifying the possible routes from particular environmental changes to particular types of conflict. The framework of Homer-Dixon (1990) provides a start, for causes of violent conflict. Case analyses of past social conflicts can be used to assess hypotheses drawn from such analytic frameworks.

Research on Conflict Resolution and Management Social scientists have also identified a number of approaches for resolving or managing policy disputes, some of which are beginning to be studied in the context of environmental conflicts. These include mediation techniques intended to address the value dimension of environmental conflict (e.g., Ozawa and Susskind, 1985); facilitation procedures that emphasize problem-solving discussions and have proved useful as a prelude to negotiation (Burton, 1986; Druckman et al., 1988); techniques of separating values from interests to makes conflicts appear smaller and easier to solve (Fisher, 1964; but see Druckman, 1990); efforts to focus on shared principles for decisions (Zartman and Berman, 1982) or to discuss values as ranked priorities rather than ideological differences (Seligman, 1989); policy exercises that emphasize creative use of scientific knowledge to solve environmental problems (Brewer, 1986; Toth, 1988a, b); and computer software for dealing with the cognitive and political aspects of both conflicts over the interpretation of data for environmental management (Hammond et al., 1975; Holling, 1978).

The nature of technological conflicts suggests, however, that over the long-term, management is a more realistic goal than stable resolution. Recent work on risk communication is potentially relevant to social responses to global change because global change problems, like those to which that literature refers, are characterized by high levels of scientific uncertainty and great potential for conflict about social choices (Covello et al., 1987; Davies et al., 1987; Fischhoff, 1989; National Research Council, 1989b; Stern, 1991). This work suggests that institutions responsible for decisions about global change will also have to manage conflict. These institutions will need to provide accurate information, but should not expect information to resolve conflict. The institutions will need to make a place for the stakeholders to be represented from the earliest stages of the decision process, ensure openness in processes of policy decision, include mechanisms for the main actors to have access to relevant information from sources they trust, and use the conflicting perspectives and interpretations of current knowledge and uncertainty to inform the ongoing debate (National Research Council, 1989b; Stern, 1991).

Research Needs Relatively little is known about the structure of particular conflicts about global change at the local, national, and international levels or about which means will be most effective in dealing with them. Therefore, we recommend increased empirical research, including both field studies and laboratory-simulation studies, to clarify the sources and structures of particular environmental conflicts and to test the efficacy of alternative techniques for their resolution and institutions for their management.

HUMAN RESPONSE: THREE CASES

In Chapter 3 we presented cases to illustrate how human actions can contribute to the causes of global change. Here we present three cases to illustrate the human consequences of, and responses to, environmental change. Taken together, they show the importance of all the major human systems involved (described later in the chapter) and the ways that conflicts are played out and choices made within these systems.

I NTERNATIONAL R EGULATION OF O ZONE -D EPLETING G ASES

As mentioned earlier, the most successful effort to date to address a global environmental problem by international agreement

is the ozone regime, articulated in the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, and the 1990 London Amendments to the protocol. This regime, in its current form, commits its members to phasing out the production and consumption of CFCs and a number of related chemicals by the year 2000. The regime represents the first concerted international effort to mitigate ''a global atmosphere problem before serious environmental impacts have been conclusively detected'' (Morrisette, 1989:794).

The political history of the ozone regime begins as a national issue in the United States and a handful of other Western countries in the early 1970s, in connection with emissions from supersonic transport (SST) aircraft and then from aerosol spray cans (Downing and Kates, 1982; Morrisette, 1989). Environmental groups organized opposition to the development of the SST and to the extensive use of aerosols. Individual responses led to a sharp drop in sales of aerosol products (Morrisette et al., 1990). The U.S. Congress, prodded by government studies supporting the CFC-ozone depletion theory and its links to skin cancer, approved the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which among its other provisions, gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to regulate CFCs. In 1978, the United States became the first country to ban the nonessential use of CFCs in aerosols. However, the EPA ruled that other uses of CFCs, such as in refrigeration, were both essential and lacked available substitutes.

Ozone depletion emerged as a major international issue in the 1980s. This occurred primarily as a result of initiatives by the United Nations Environment Programme (Morrisette, 1989) and the actions of the international scientific community (Haas, 1989), with the support of the international environmental movement. The Vienna convention of 1985 embodied an international consensus that ozone depletion was a serious environmental problem. However, there was no consensus on the specific steps that each nation should take.

A number of events in 1986 and 1987 created a new sense of urgency about the depletion of stratospheric ozone. These included a rapid growth in demand for CFCs due to new industrial applications and the end of a global economic recession; important new studies by the World Meteorological Organization, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the United Nations Environment Programme; and, most important, the widely publicized

discovery by scientists of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985. In January 1986, EPA initiated a series of workshops designed to build an international scientific consensus supporting the need to control the use of CFCs. In the same year, DuPont announced that its scientists had determined that CFCs were the most likely cause of ozone depletion. These events persuaded American officials of the need for decisive international action. When negotiations on a protocol to the Vienna convention for controlling CFCs resumed in December 1986, the United States adopted a firm position, calling for an international treaty not only freezing production of CFCs but also reducing production and consumption.

Following extensive and complex negotiations, the Europeans, whose earlier opposition to a cutback in production had prevented agreement in Vienna, moved closer to the U.S. position. They were persuaded to do so by three factors: the weight of scientific evidence, pressures from their own domestic environmental groups, and the fear that, in the absence of a treaty, the United States might take unilateral action to impose trade sanctions. While compromises on several controversial points proved sufficient to gain Japanese and Soviet adherence, the major developing countries (e.g., China and India) did not become signatories to the Montreal Protocol.

Only after the Montreal Protocol was signed did the full extent of ozone depletion became public: ozone depletion over Antarctica reached a historic high in 1987, and the link to the release of CFCs became a matter of scientific consensus. DuPont responded by announcing that it planned to discontinue CFC production by the end of the century and, in March 1989, 123 countries called for the absolute elimination of production by the same date. A resolution agreeing to totally phase out all production and consumption of CFCs by the year 2000 was adopted by 81 countries in May 1989 at the first governmental review of the Montreal Protocol.

Taking advantage of this momentum, the parties to the Montreal Protocol, meeting at a review conference in London in June 1990, were able to negotiate a series of strong amendments. These amendments accelerate the phaseout schedule for CFCs and halons and add methyl chloroform and carbon tetrachloride to the list of chemicals to be eliminated. Equally important, the amendments establish an international fund to be used to assist developing countries in switching to substitutes for CFCs in the production of refrigerators and air conditioners. On the strength of this

development, both China and India agreed to become members of the international ozone regime.

Why was it possible to reach a broad international agreement restricting CFCs? Analysts have identified four important factors: an evolving scientific consensus; a high degree of public anxiety in developed countries about the risks associated with the continued use of CFCs, due in large measure to an association with skin cancer; the exercise of political muscle by the United States; and the availability of commercial substitutes for CFCs (Haas, 1989; Morrisette, 1989). The last served the critical role of diminishing the opposition of the chemical industry to a phased reduction. When DuPont, the producer of 25 percent of all CFCs, decided to develop substitutes, it "forced other CFC manufacturers to follow suit or risk losing market share" (Haas, 1989:11). Haas adds that, because this issue could be resolved by a technical fix, it did not involve any hard choices and therefore may be unique in the annals of global environmental change.

Another important influence in getting CFCs on political agendas may have been the efforts of the scientific community, which has been influential in drawing attention to other environmental problems (Haas, 1991). Haas (1989) notes that it was initially a group of atmospheric physicists and chemists, most of whom worked in the United States, who attempted to place the issue of ozone depletion on the national and global environmental agendas, and that this community continued to press the issue throughout the 1980s. He argues that the speed of policy response in the United States may have been due to the "highly fragmented nature of American government and society [which] facilitates access of a strongly motivated group of technical experts" (p. 8). Thus, the access of a key group to policy debates at the national level may have influenced international action on CFCs.

The history of the ozone regime illustrates a number of key variables that affect the likelihood of reaching similar agreements on other global environmental problems (Sand, 1990b; Benedick, 1991). Further studies are desirable to clarify how these variables interact:

the emergence of scientific consensus on the causes of global environmental change;

the number of actors responsible for the proximate causes of the global change;

the nature and global distribution of the harm that might result from inaction;

the distribution of the burdens of regulation on the consumers, producers, and employees whose behaviors must change;

the importance of national regulations as a precursor to the emergence of international ones; and

the need for strong leadership in international forums.

It also suggests that international agreements can be affected by the structures of national political systems, informal international communities, and markets that would be critically affected by agreement.

T HE U.S. E NERGY C ONSERVATION A CHIEVEMENTS OF 1973-1985

Energy efficiency is probably the most widely accepted strategy for mitigating global warming. The energy shocks of the 1970s led to significant improvements in the energy productivity of Western industrialized economies. The U.S. experience is typical and instructive.

Between 1973 and 1985, the United States reduced its energy intensity—the ratio of energy use to economic output—by 25 percent. 9 Other industrialized capitalist countries made similar achievements, reducing energy intensity, usually from much lower initial levels, by an average of 21 percent during that period (International Energy Agency, 1987). The change was a sharp contrast to the record of the previous two decades and to most of the twentieth century. Between 1953 and 1973, U.S. energy intensity was almost steady, decreasing at an average of 0.1 percent per year; at only two earlier periods in the century, 1918-1926 and 1948-1953, did energy intensity decrease at a rate above 2 percent per year (Schurr, 1984). To the extent that energy intensity can continue to improve in the United States and other countries, energy efficiency can make an enormous contribution to mitigating global warming. This section takes a closer look at how and why the change occurred in the United States and the implications for other countries.

Preexisting Trends

After increasing for 40 years, U.S. energy intensity declined fairly steadily between 1920 and 1953, before stabilizing for 20 years (see Table 4-1 ). Although the reasons are not well understood, the secular decline in energy intensity since 1920 has been attributed to improved efficiency in energy conversion, a

TABLE 4-1 Average Annual Percentage Rates of Change in Total Output and Energy Intensity in the United States Private Domestic Business Economy, 1899-1981

shift in the economy away from heavy manufacturing, and technological improvements throughout the economy associated with a shift to more flexible energy sources: oil, gas, and electricity (Schurr, 1984). The decrease in energy intensity with the 1973 oil shock, and again with the 1979 shock, marked a sharp break from the previous 20 years; from 1973-1981, intensity decreased at a rate about 2 1/2 times the average of the previous 53 years.

Uncoordinated Responses to Recent Events

The behavioral change after 1973 was largely due to the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, which rapidly altered energy prices, changed perceptions of the future price and availability of fossil fuels, and brought about policy changes. Energy users made three effective kinds of responses (U.S. Department of Energy, 1989; Schipper et al., 1990). First, they changed the way they operated energy-using equipment, curtailing heat and travel, and improving management, such as by tighter maintenance of furnaces. Such changes accounted for 10-20 percent of national energy savings achieved in 1986 (compared with the pre-1973 trend; estimates from U.S. Department of Energy, 1989) but are easily reversed when energy prices drop or incomes rise, as they did in the 1980s.

Second, energy users adopted more energy-efficient technology to provide the same service with less energy use, either by retrofitting existing equipment (e.g., insulating buildings, installing reflecting windows) or by replacing existing equipment with more energy-efficient models. These improvements were responsible for 50-60 percent of total energy savings by 1986.

Third, the mix of products and services in the economy changed. Demand fell sharply in energy-intensive industries, such as primary metals, relative to less energy-intensive industries; small cars got an increased share of the automobile market; and commercial airlines improved the match between aircraft size and demand on passenger routes. Together, such shifts accounted for about 20-30 percent of the energy savings achieved in 1986.

Higher real energy prices are generally considered the most important single explanation for these responses (International Energy Agency, 1987; U.S. Department of Energy, 1989). However, price is not the whole story. Although the two energy shocks of the period had very similar price trajectories, the effects on the economic productivity of energy differed markedly after the first two years (see Figure 4-2 ). For the first two years of each shock, real energy prices increased about 40 percent and energy productivity increased about 5 percent. But over the longer-term, the second shock had much more effect than the first. A five-year price increase of about 45 percent in 1973-1978 increased energy productivity 7 percent; a similar increase in 1978-1983 increased energy productivity 18 percent. Moreover, the trend continued through several years of falling real energy prices.

Why the different reactions to the two energy shocks? One explanation is perceptions: it took the second shock to get energy

FIGURE 4-2 Changes in indexed real energy prices and energy intensity in the U.S. economy after the energy shocks of 1973 (A) and 1979 (B).

users' attention—to convince them that higher energy prices were here to stay. Another is that the decision environment had changed by 1979 in ways that made it more likely the system would respond to price signals. Government policies to promote energy-efficient technology and provide necessary information were in place by 1979, making it easier for energy users to respond effec-

tively to price; the learning curve for policy implementation had had time to progress; and entrepreneurs were ready to offer energy-efficient technologies and management programs that had not been developed in 1973. Moreover, U.S. energy inefficiency had helped open the door to foreign competition in the automobile, steel, and other industries, with the result that U.S. firms began taking efficiency of all kinds more seriously. Because these explanations reinforce each other, it is difficult to estimate their relative magnitude.

The multiple explanations suggest that the price effect depends on other factors: technological change, policy choices, change in industrial structure, and information processing by energy users. Since these factors can be changed independently of energy prices, it seems likely that with appropriate policies in place, energy intensity might have improved faster than it did, even in the apparently price-responsive 1979-1985 period.

Policy Responses and Implementation

Energy conservation policy in the United States has been predicated on the theory that government should intervene chiefly to correct so-called market imperfections such as the tendency of a supply system based on market prices to produce too little environmental quality (because individual consumers cannot be charged for it) and too little information on energy-efficient technologies and their costs. The government can also intervene to mitigate regulatory and institutional barriers to the functioning of the price system. Following this theory, many U.S. efforts to promote energy efficiency have relied on positive financial incentives (e.g., tax credits, utility rebate programs) and on information. Experience with these efforts shows that the market imperfection theory needs to be expanded to take into account deviations in energy users' behavior from conventional economic rationality. 10 Often, rather than making decisions based on minimization of long-run costs, as theory postulates, energy users act on the basis of nonfinancial values (such as environmental preservation, interest in new technology, or enhancement of social status) or are influenced by information from informal social networks rather than more accurate expert information (see Stern and Aronson, 1984, for a review of evidence). Such processes within individuals and small groups have impeded the effectiveness of conservation programs in the United States, but when they are taken into account, programs became much more effective.

Evaluations of incentive and information programs show that, although they are sometimes very effective at increasing the pace of adoption of available technology, success varies greatly, even between nominally identical programs (Berry, 1990). For instance, home energy rating systems reach between 2 and 100 percent of homes, depending on the market (Vine and Harris, 1988), and utility companies offering exactly the same financial incentive program for home retrofits typically have participation rates that vary by a factor of 10 or more (Stern et al., 1986a).

Success depends on a number of features of implementation. A key is getting the attention of potential participants with appropriate marketing efforts, targeting of audiences, selection of trustworthy sources of information, and other basic principles of communication (Berry, 1990; Ester and Winett, 1982; Stern et al., 1986a; Vine and Harris, 1988; Dennis et al., 1990). Getting people's attention appears to be the main barrier to the success of financial incentive programs for home retrofits, so that, paradoxically, "the stronger the financial incentive, the more the program's success depends on nonfinancial factors" (Stern, 1986:211). Apparently, larger incentives ensure success among those who enter a program but do little to attract participants. Finding the proper intermediary, such as a builder, manufacturer, designer, or lender, can also be critical. Home energy rating systems have been introduced most effectively with the active support of the building and lending industries (Vine and Harris, 1988), and residential conservation programs, especially in low-income areas, have often depended for success on involving highly trusted local organizations, such as churches and housing groups (Stern et al., 1986a). Involving consumers in program design can help fit a program to its audience and locale (Stern and Aronson, 1984).

Thus, conservation policies and programs played a part in the U.S. response to the energy shocks of the 1970s, but they could have had a greater effect with better implementation. Improved policies and implementation, along with higher prices, are among the reasons energy productivity improved faster at the end of the 1973-1985 period than at the beginning. These three factors act in conjunction, however. If, for example, energy prices fall or remain stable, lowering energy users' motivation to change, some policy instruments will become less effective than they were in 1973-1985. The trends of the late 1980s demonstrate this effect (U.S. Department of Energy, 1989).

Implications for Future Climate Change

The technological potential for improvements in energy productivity are huge (National Academy of Sciences, 1991b; National Research Council, 1990a). However, the worldwide prospects for implementing technological changes, and therefore for mitigating the release of greenhouse gases, depends on the behavior of several human systems, including world markets for fossil fuels, national policies for economic and technological development and energy management, global social trends in government and the development of technology, and the behavior of individuals and communities.

The world energy price and supply picture will affect the spread of the Western improvements in energy productivity to other countries. Under conditions like those of the late 1980s, with relatively low energy prices and stable supplies, sharp further improvements in installed energy efficiency are unlikely, even in the Western industrialized countries, without new policy initiatives. The price motive for efficiency is weak, policies that rely on that motive are undermined, and the lowered cost of energy is a spur to economic growth, particularly in energy-intensive sectors. Given continuing population and economic growth, those conditions point to increases in energy use in the wealthy countries, although probably not at pre-1973 rates of increase. A new round of sharp price increases would cut energy use both by reducing economic activity and energy intensity, at least for a period.

The world picture also depends greatly on the development paths of growing economies. Industrialization is energy intensive, enough to have overcome the effects of the 1973-1985 oil shocks in relatively wealthy countries, such as Greece and Portugal, that were still industrializing. Consumers' choices are also important. Where increased income goes into homes and durable possessions, as in Japan, energy productivity is more likely to be higher than where it goes into personal transportation, as in the United States, or into refrigerators or other energy-using appliances, as may become the case in China.

The future of the dissolving socialist bloc countries holds many uncertainties. Many of these countries have highly energy-intense economies and therefore seem to have room for improved energy efficiency given the rise of markets and more democratic control of policy. However, they lack finances to develop technology or implement incentive or information programs and need time to design and implement effective policies for local conditions. Whether

development moves in industrial or postindustrial directions is also uncertain. Much room exists for research and for pilot experiments with policy options as ways to reduce the uncertainty.

These and other human systems will determine the extent to which the Western experience with energy efficiency will proceed further or be repeated in other countries. The future will depend on the ways these systems interact in each country and on the ways national and local policies intervene in them.

T HE H UMAN C ONSEQUENCES OF R EGIONAL D ROUGHT IN THE S AHEL

Intensification of the greenhouse effect is likely to alter rainfall patterns on a regional scale. As a rule, regions that receive increased rainfall are likely to benefit; decreased rainfall is the more serious concern. The history of the human consequences of severe drought can be instructive about the variety of human consequences of, and responses to, unmitigated climatic change.

The human role in causing drought in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa is a matter of controversy. Throughout the modern history of drought-famine association in the region, there has been a tendency to interpret extreme events as indicators of trends and to attribute the presumed trends to human mismanagement of the local environment. In fact, Sahelian droughts have been recurrent events. The droughts of the 1970s and 1980s were preceded by several others in this century, one of which, in 1910-1915, resulted in intense famine with high mortality. The controversy over the human role in causing Sahelian drought revived with the drought of 1968-1974. The prevailing view was that desertification was an anthropogenic process reflecting deforestation, overgrazing, overfarming, burning, and mismanaged irrigation resulting in salinization of soil and water.

Lack of good data is a major obstacle to understanding the causes of Sahelian drought. Although some evidence supports the orthodox view, some recent research using remote sensing, field measurements, and intensive investigations of small areas has called that view into question. Observable ecological changes are less significant than had been supposed and correlate better with rainfall records than with land management (Mortimore, 1989).

Different Droughts, Different Responses

The consequences of Sahelian droughts in this century have depended on the ability of indigenous systems of livelihood to

make adaptations. During the century, these indigenous systems have undergone continual change, first as a result of policies of colonial powers, and later in response to postwar development policies promoting ''modernization'' and further integration into the global economy. There are competing views of the effects of these century-long trends in political economy on the ability of local populations to withstand drought. In one view, the main results were increased dependency and vulnerability; in the other, vulnerability decreased because of improved availability of medical care, famine relief, and a national infrastructure that allowed for easier. migration and food shipments (Kates, 1981).

The three major droughts of the century, in 1910-1915, in 1968-1974, and in the 1980s, have had different effects on the lives and livelihoods of the local populations. The 1910-1915 drought, which was of comparable severity to the drought of the 1970s, appears to have produced greater increases in mortality; its effects on malnutrition and on the social fabric are harder to determine (Kates, 1981). The knowledge base is better for comparing the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. 11 Local conditions changed between those two periods. Population continued to increase at up to 3 percent annually, forests continued to be cut for fuel and farming, and other forms of resource exploitation probably continued at about the previous rates. Grazing pressure fell, owing to animal mortality but, by the 1980s, cattle holdings had recovered to 60 percent of predrought levels in some areas, and small livestock probably recovered more. On balance, the human demands on the local environment were at least as severe as before the 1968-1974 drought.

The drought of the 1980s was as severe as the previous one. Annual rainfall in 1983-1984 was of the same order as in 1972-1973, and in some areas of the Western Sahel, less. Crop failures and pasture shortages were equally serious. Yet famine did not occur on the same scale, and animal mortality was lower. Possibly food aid was earlier and better in some countries, but in northern Nigeria, where food aid was not a major factor in either period, social distress was noticeably less marked in the 1980s, even in the worst affected areas.

What explains the relatively low human cost of the 1980s drought? It was not the response of the affected governments. Political officials were taken by surprise about equally by both droughts. The people most experienced in surviving failures of agricultural production and managing the environment were those living in the affected areas, but this group had little influence on policy. Of the several political interests concerned with the drought prob-

lems, both international and national, the least powerful seems to have been that of the people in the affected areas. Consequently, proposals for new technologies for coping with the drought failed to take indigenous technologies and management systems seriously, and measures to strengthen the poor—for instance by insurance, improved access to resources, alternative job opportunities, and price supports—were rarely considered or given high priority.

A key to drought response appears to have been the role of indigenous forms of land use and response to food shortage. It is possible to distinguish two strategies of land use for areas like the Sahel that face recurrent drought or a long-term threat of declining rainfall. One strategy—maladaptive in the long run—is characterized by deforestation and overcultivation and leads to land degradation, decreases in productivity, and, in the event of drought, short-term collapse. Another—adaptive in the long run—is based on flexible land use, economic diversification, integrated agroforestry-livestock management, and intensive use of wetlands. This pattern tends to generate sustainable, intensive systems and is resilient in the face of drought.

Indigenous strategies of response to acute food shortage apparently enabled the Sahelian populations to survive notwithstanding the tardiness, inadequate scale, and maladministration of most relief programs. These strategies, which relied on economic diversification, such as using labor in urban areas to supplement agricultural income, have evolved in an environment of climatic uncertainty and confer a degree of short-term resiliency. Their future evolution is hard to predict. Continued integration into the world economy may improve roads and other infrastructure, thus enabling diversification; it may also increase pressure for development of cash crops and thus hasten land degradation.

Relationship of Policy to Indigenous Response Systems

The ability of indigenous systems of land use and crisis management to cut the link between drought and famine depends on various factors that sustain the indigenous systems. These include diversity of economic opportunities, absence of war, and appropriate national and international policies on migration. Critical variables include the development of infrastructure and the set of national policies governing access to land, trees, and water. The social distribution of wealth, particularly secure rights of individual or community access to natural resources, determines the extent of human vulnerability to drought. Although some impor-

tant international actors are coming to perceive these relationships, the political balance is quite different at the national level, where the relevant policies are enacted and enforced. Ruling and military elites, professionals in the civil service, traders (especially in grain), capitalistic farmers, livestock owners, wood fuel exploiters, and small farmers and herders all have separate and distinct interests in the outcome, and most of these interests do not accord high priority to sustainable environmental management or drought preparedness.

Although not enough is known to forecast the consequences of future Sahelian droughts, two alternative scenarios can be imagined. In the doomsday scenario, increasing numbers of people generate cumulative environmental degradation (overcutting of woodland, overcultivation of soils, overgrazing of pastures, and overirrigating and possibly overuse of water), suffer increasing food scarcities as available grain per capita declines, and either starve in huge numbers or migrate in distress to other areas where they become permanently dependent on international relief. In the optimistic scenario, farming systems intensify using an increased labor supply, productivity of the land is raised, sustainable agroforestry-with livestock systems are extended, and household income sources are diversified and slowly shifted via the market and short-term mobility away from agriculture and toward other economic sectors.

The experience of the 1970s and 1980s suggests that the optimistic scenario is a plausible alternative, given the right policy environment. Its success depends on increased recognition of the potential of indigenous sociocultural systems of land use and household strategies of economic diversification to increase resilience, and on policies that promote resource access and support those local social systems. The consequences of future droughts may also depend on rates of urbanization, growth of the urban informal sector, and capital investment in better favored rural areas. The present policies of governments and international organizations in the Sahel can create conditions that promote or impede the ability of indigenous systems to respond and thus determine the human consequences of future drought.

SEVEN HUMAN SYSTEMS

This section distinguishes seven human systems that may be affected by, and respond to, global change: individual perception, judgment, and action; markets; sociocultural systems; organized action at the subnational level; national policy; international co-

operation; and global human systems. It briefly surveys current knowledge and ignorance about the responses of each system and the relationships between them and identifies broad areas in which additional research is needed. It also outlines particular research activities and needs within these areas.

I NDIVIDUAL P ERCEPTION , J UDGMENT , AND A CTION

The human consequences of global change begin with the individual. Individuals notice the effects of change and either make adjustments or not. Individual behavior is critical in three quite distinct ways: individual judgments and choices mediate responses in all human systems because decision makers begin with inputs from individuals, whether themselves or their advisers. The consequences of global change often depend on the aggregation of the uncoordinated actions of large numbers of individuals. And individual behavior can be organized to influence collective and political responses.

Individual Judgment and Choice

Responses to global changes presuppose assessments of "what is happening, what the possible effects are and how well one likes them" (Fischhoff and Furby, 1983). 12 Scientists, government officials, and other citizens make such assessments when they consider the responses they may make or advocate. Knowledge about human judgment and decision is therefore relevant to understanding responses to global change.

Normative decision principles, such as those of cost-benefit analysis or mathematical decision theory, are limited in their usefulness by the fallibility of the individuals who try to implement them (Fischhoff, 1979); they are even more imperfect for estimating the behavior of people who are not trying (Fischhoff et al., 1982). Past research on human judgment and decision has clarified many differences between decision theory and actual decision making (Kahneman et al., 1982); some of these are reflected in human responses to natural hazards (Saarinen, 1982; Slovic et al., 1974).

Behavioral decision research demonstrates that most people have difficulty comprehending the very low probabilities assigned to environmental disasters (Slovic et al., 1977; Lichtenstein et al., 1978), estimating the probability of natural events that they rarely experience (Slovic et al., 1979), interpreting uncertain knowledge, and making connections between events and their actual causes.

Moreover, it is difficult or impossible to understand unprecedented events and therefore to make wise choices between mitigating them and adapting to them. One result is that lay people frequently perceive environmental hazards differently from specialists (Saarinen, 1982; Fischhoff and Furby, 1983; Gould et al., 1988; Fischhoff, 1989; Kempton, 1991). Little direct knowledge exists, however, on perceptions of climate, climate change, or other aspects of global change (Whyte, 1985; Kempton, 1991; Doble et al., 1990).

Behavioral research also raises questions about expert judgment. Expert analyses, such as represented in general circulation models of climate, inevitably rely on judgment, and judgment becomes more unreliable when the models move into a future different from any past experience. Faith in expert judgments rests on the analysts' success in identifying all the relevant variables and measuring them and their interrelations. Psychological research suggests that people, including technical experts, "have limited ability to recognize the assumptions upon which their judgments are based, appraise the completeness of their problem representations, or assess the limits of their own knowledge. Typically, their inability encourages overconfidence" (Fischhoff et al., 1977; Kahneman et al., 1982). Overconfidence is most likely to affect expert analysts when they lack experience testing their predictions against reality—an inevitable characteristic of predictions about unprecedented events (Fischhoff, 1989). Other kinds of systematic error may also affect experts. For instance, in water resource management and other fields in which average climate parameters are used as a basis for decision, experts seem to exhibit a "stability bias," a tendency to underestimate the likelihood of extreme events (Riebsame, 1987; Morrisette, 1988).

Careful analysts also sometimes overlook or underestimate the likelihood of some possible combinations of events, as they did in a famous assessment of the likelihood of nuclear power plant failure in the 1970s (Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1978). Little is known about how individuals or groups formulate alternative action plans when faced with a problem, such as responding to a global environmental change. In particular, little is known about what facilitates or impedes creative generation of options, or how vested interest or attachment to the status quo may blind individuals or groups to available options.

Research Needs Research on what and how nonexperts think about particular global environmental problems can help estimate how individuals will respond to new information about the global

environment and identify their information needs. This research should address particular beliefs about global change as well as how people evaluate probabilistic and uncertain information and how they combine multiple bits of information from experts, mass media accounts, and personal experience (e.g., with recent weather or air pollution events) to form their judgments about the extent and seriousness of global environmental problems. Such research will require both intensive methods of interaction with informants and survey methods.

Research effort should also be devoted to studying the expert judgment of environmental analysts about global change. This research should address such questions as: Does professional training encourage or discourage particular misperceptions? Does it lead purportedly independent experts to share common preconceptions? How well do the experts understand the limits of their knowledge? Do estimates of the human effects of global change take into account feedbacks among human systems? In analyses of possible responses, what responses are likely to be omitted? To whom do experts turn for analyses of feasibility of responses? What implicit assumptions about human behavior guide the analyses? With preliminary answers to such questions, it is possible to estimate the sensitivity of analyses to variables that affect expert judgment and therefore to make better informed interpretations of these judgments.

Aggregated Individual Responses

The consequences of global environmental change often depend on the aggregated responses of very large numbers of individuals. The example of U.S. energy conservation shows the effect of millions of decisions to buy more fuel-efficient automobiles, reset thermostats, and reinsulate buildings; millions of consumers also drove down sales of aerosol cans when the news got out that they were releasing CFCs harmful to the ozone layer (Roan, 1989). Action to block UV-B radiation from the skin of a billion light-skinned people would similarly take many discrete actions by each of them.

As U.S. energy conservation efforts demonstrate, such individual actions are multiply determined. Financial considerations motivate action, but structural constraints limit action (for instance, not owning the home one would like to insulate); personal attitudes and values increase the likelihood of taking actions that fit the attitudes, subject to the other constraints; specific knowledge

about which actions would produce desired effects is helpful, but people often fail to seek it out or mistrust the information available (for reviews of relevant research, see Katzev and Johnson, 1987; Stern, 1986; Stern and Oskamp, 1987). Knowledge has been developed about the conditions under which individuals respond favorably to information (Ester and Winett, 1982; Dennis et al., 1990) and incentives (Stern et al., 1986a) in the context of residential energy conservation; more limited research has been done on other individual actions relevant to global environmental changes.

Research Needs At least three kinds of research should be pursued further to improve understanding of how individual behavior may be significant in response to global change. First is empirical research on the actual responsiveness of behavior to interventions believed to affect it. Energy conservation programs have often produced less than the predicted effects—but as already noted, the responses have been highly variable. For studying possible interventions to mitigate or adapt to global change, pilot studies and controlled evaluation research are particularly important (for a discussion of issues of method in the energy conservation context, see Stern et al., 1987).

Second, new research is warranted to determine the relative contributions and interactions of the various influences on particular individual behaviors implicated in global change (e.g., Black et al., 1985). This research should be interdisciplinary because, in most instances, behavior is jointly determined by technical, economic, psychological, and social variables in ways that are likely to differ as a function of the behavior and the societal context.

Third, research should be conducted to build an improved interface between behavioral studies of resource use and formal models, which are guided mainly by economic assumptions. Empirical analysis of the behavioral processes underlying descriptive categories such as price elasticity, implicit discount rate, and response lag is likely to add to understanding of human responses to price stimuli and government intervention, and also to encourage needed dialogue between economically and psychologically oriented analysts of consumer behavior (Stern, 1984, 1986).

Individuals as Social and Political Actors

Individuals, appropriately mobilized, can be powerful actors at the community and national levels. Individual perception and judgment determines support for social movements, such as the

environmental movement, that affect human response by linking individuals to the concerted actions of government and industry. Those actions, in turn, influence individual behavior both directly and through their effects on markets. Individual reactions, in the aggregate, determine the public acceptability of policy alternatives being considered for response. And secular changes in individual attitudes and values, such as about the importance of material goods to human well-being, may have great effects on the long-term response to global change.

Past research has investigated the correlates of environmental concern and related attitudes (e.g., Borden and Francis, 1978; Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Weigel, 1977) and tracked the rise of postmaterialist values in the United States and other Western democracies (Inglehart, 1990). Such attitudes have been strong and persistent in many countries since the 1970s. Other research has been devoted to the rise of the environmental movement and to its objectives and tactics (see below).

Research Needs There are important gaps in the literature. New research should carefully assess alternative hypotheses about the links between individuals' values and attitudes and their representation in the activities of environmental movement groups and other institutions involved in response to global change. For instance, the view that environmental organizations reflect widespread attitudes should be tested in the global context against other views, for instance that social movement activists act as entrepreneurs, with their own interests separate from those of the public they claim to represent (e.g., Touraine et al., 1983; Rohrschneider, 1990).

Future research should also address the bases of environmental concern. Such concern may derive from a new way of thinking about the relationships of humanity to the planet (e.g., Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978) or from concern about harm done to people, such as those indirectly affected by market transactions and those yet unborn (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1977; Heberlein, 1977; Stern et al., 1986b). Outside the U.S. context, yet other bases of concern may predominate. For instance, in several Soviet republics, the environmental movement of the late 1980s expressed demands for autonomy by smaller nationality groups against the dominant Russians. On another dimension, environmental concern may derive from personal experience or secondhand accounts in the mass media. The source of concern may determine the conditions under which people become aroused about a global change or recep-

tive to policies that take meaningful action but require additional costs. The determinants of concern are likely to vary with the environmental problem, the country, and characteristics of the individual, so the research should be comparative between countries and environmental problems of different kinds.

One of the most likely consequences of global change will be effects on the prices of important commodities and factors of economic production in local and world markets. As a result, uncoordinated human responses will be affected greatly by markets. According to economic theory, producers and consumers respond to changing relative incomes, prices, and external constraints, so that, if the market signals are allowed to reach individuals and market prices include all the social costs and benefits of individual actions, the responses will be relatively rapid and efficient.

Markets allow for many forms of uncoordinated adjustment, as the example of climate change illustrates. People may rapidly alter patterns of consumption (e.g., substitution of water skiing for snow skiing) and production (e.g., relying on snowmaking equipment rather than natural snowfall). Over the longer run, societies may respond, in the case of unfavorable climatic developments, with the migration of capital and labor to areas of more hospitable climates. Structures tend to retreat from the advancing sea, people tend to migrate from unpleasant climates, and agricultural, sylvan, and industrial capital tend to migrate away from lands that lose their comparative advantage. In addition, technology may change, particularly in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and building.

However, the conditions that economic theory specifies for efficient adjustment are not generally met in the case of the global environment (Baumol and Oates, 1988). In three important respects, existing markets do not provide the right signals (in the form of prices and incomes) of social scarcities and values. And in addition, as already noted, the participants in markets do not always behave as strict rules of economic rationality predict.

Environmental externalities of economic activity, that is, effects experienced by those not directly involved in economic transactions, are not priced in markets today. Someone who emits a ton of carbon into the atmosphere may produce great damage to the future climate but does not pay for the damage: effects that

have no price may be treated as if they have no value. Similar problems arise with the externalities of deforestation, CFC emissions, and other environmental problems. Economic theory recognizes that when there are significant externalities, uncoordinated responses will be inappropriate because the market does not transmit the right signals. An additional problem concerns making tradeoffs when each response option produces different externalities (Fischhoff et al., 1981; Bentkover et al., 1985; Mitchell and Carson, 1988; Fischhoff, 1991).

The market mechanism is overridden at times, either by political systems (such as when countries set the prices of oil or coal well below or above world market levels); or because custom and tradition determine property rights in a way that precludes the emergence of markets, as in the case of water allocation in the western United States. In such cases, individuals are either not faced with prices at all or are faced with prices unrepresentative of true social scarcities, and their uncoordinated behavior will not achieve the rapid and efficient adjustments characteristic of free markets.

Discount rates in markets, such as interest rates, reflect a social time preference for the present over the future that does not correspond to social valuation of the distant future reflected in concern about problems of global change (Lind, 1986). For events a century in the future, a discount rate that is, say, 3 percent per annum higher than true social preference implies that the future events are valued at only one-twentieth (that is, 1.03-100) of their appropriate value. Market interest rates may be too high to reflect this generation's concerns about the future of the environment; vigorous debate exists about whether the concept of discounting is even moral when human life is at stake (MacLean, 1990). Uncoordinated decisions following such a discount rate undervalue future threats and opportunities.

Economic theory suggests prescriptions for government action when market signals do not correspond to social values. The goal usually considered most important is to get the environmental impacts reliably translated into the price and income signals that will induce private adaptation. But it is difficult to arrive at the "correct" prices because so many of the impacts of global change are unknown or uncertain and because the appropriate values of future events are unlikely to be the same from all generational vantage points and resource endowments (Lind, 1986; Pearce and Turner, 1990).

Economists have suggested some approaches to the problem of developing well-functioning markets to guide responses to global

change (for some examples, see Pearce and Turner, 1990 and Dasgupta and Heal, 1979). Theory suggests that governments intervene with policies that meet at least one of these criteria: (1) they have such long lead times that they must be undertaken now to be effective; (2) they are likely to be economical even in the absence of global change; or (3) the penalty from waiting a decade or two to undertake the policy is extremely high. These criteria suggest four kinds of intervention, which we note here.

Government may encourage quasi-market mechanisms before shortages occur. For example, to ensure that water will be efficiently allocated if climate change affects its availability, governments might introduce general allocational devices, such as auctions, to dispatch water to the highest-value uses. The same approach might be applied to allocate land use near sea coasts and in flood plains and to control pollution by auctioning pollution rights. Governments might also support systems of risk-adjusted insurance for flood plains or hurricanes or international climate insurance. These quasi-market mechanisms have both the advantages and the disadvantages of the market. They make allocations efficiently but tend to undersupply goods needed by those who do not participate effectively in the markets, such as people outside the geographical boundaries of a quasi-market, who may receive polluted air or salinated water.

Government may support research and development on inexpensive and reliable ways of slowing or adapting to global change. Research on adaptation is undersupplied by markets because inventors cannot capture the full fruits of their inventions. Research on mitigation technologies that will slow global changes are even more seriously undersupplied in markets, because not only can inventors not collect the fruits of their efforts, but also the fruits, such as preservation of climate, are unpriced or underpriced in the market.

International agreements may provide for international adaptation strategies, such as improved international markets, which allow migration of labor and capital over a greater geographical range than national markets.

Governments may promote needed knowledge and collect and distribute data about global change, to enable rational response. It is difficult for people to mitigate or adapt if they do not understand what is happening or the costs of the available responses and of inaction; costs of adaptation will be reduced to the extent that managers, diplomats, and voters are well informed about well-established scientific results.

Research Needs Although the above market-oriented response strategies are strongly supported by economic theory, knowledge is weak about how they may be effectively implemented. Three lines of research into markets can add to understanding of the available response strategies.

First, empirical studies are needed of the implementation of quasi-market mechanisms for adaptation to global change, to determine how particular mechanisms work in particular social and political systems. For instance, systems for auctioning emission rights can be made infeasible by political opposition, subverted by fraud, undermined by political decisions, or otherwise altered from their theoretically pure operation (Tietenberg, 1985, explains the principle in the case of local air pollution; application to global change would be more difficult). Retrospective and prospective studies of the operation of such mechanisms can illuminate the problems that arise in implementation and assess the actual, as opposed to theoretical, effects of such mechanisms on equity and efficiency. Such assessments should compare quasi-market mechanisms to available regulatory mechanisms, as each actually operates (see the section below on national policy).

Second, studies of the valuation of global environmental externalities are critically important to address several key questions. For instance: To what extent can knowledge or technology be substituted for the outputs of environmental systems, thus making those outputs less indispensable? Is such substitution desirable? How can the ''services'' produced by the natural environment be included in economic accounting systems, such as national income accounts? How can the producers and recipients of externalities arrive at a common valuation if one side is disadvantaged in financial resources, and therefore in the ability to participate in markets or quasi-markets? How do people value, and make tradeoffs between, different kinds of externalities? How do different actors value the effects of human interventions in the environment and make tradeoffs between effects? (Some of these questions are addressed in work by Mitchell and Carson, 1988, and Nordhaus, 1990.)

Third, studies of social discount rates are needed, especially to estimate preferences concerning the future environment so they can be included in evaluations of global environmental change (e.g., Lind et al., 1986). Many believe that market discount rates are too high to accurately represent the social value of the future environment, although this value is unknown.

S OCIOCULTURAL S YSTEMS

Between the uncoordinated activities of individuals and the formally organized activities of governments and international organizations lie the oldest forms of social organization: families, clans, tribes, and other social units held together by such bonds as solidarity, obligation, duty, and love. These sociocultural systems have undergone considerable change throughout human history, yet informal groups connected by these bonds still exist and the bonds still influence behavior independently of governments and markets. Sociocultural systems are important in terms of global change in two ways. Some long-lived social units, whose survival may be threatened by global change, have developed ways of interacting with their environments that may be adaptable by others as strategies for response. Also, informal social bonds can have important effects on individual and community responses to global change and on the implementation of organized policy responses.

Indigenous Sociocultural Systems of Adaptation to Environment

Indigenous peoples that were not tightly integrated into world markets have developed technological and social adaptations that often maintain their subsistence in reasonable balance with the local environment. The adaptations of Sahelian peoples to an environmental regime of recurrent drought is one example. A parallel example can be found in the indigenous economic systems on the Amazon, which for at least 500 years have used the ecosystem's material in ways that do not threaten its long-term productivity (Hecht and Cockburn, 1989). The Amazon's indigenous people are a major repository of practical environmental knowledge about sustainable use of resources (Moran, 1990; Posey, 1983). Slash-and-bum cultivation with adequate fallow periods allows for the recovery of vegetation in tropic moist forests (Uhl et al., 1989), attracts game animals to crops (Linares, 1976; Balée and Gély, 1989), and provides a well-balanced, varied diet (Baksh, n.d.). Local agroforestry systems, which combine "the production of crops including tree crops, forest plants and/or animals simultaneously or sequentially on the same unit of land" (King and Chandler, 1978), mimic tropical ecosystems, protecting the soil from leaching and erosion while replicating the natural succession of plant growth over a period of years, and are a model for modern systems of agroforestry. Some such systems can give per

hectare yields over five years roughly 200 percent higher than systems established by colonists and 175 times that of livestock (Hecht, 1989a:173).

Agricultural systems based on indigenous models can be profitable in a market economy. Japanese colonist smallholders in the Amazon have created complex systems that prevent soil degradation and tolerate soil acidity and aluminum toxicity better than annual crops. These systems involve polycultures of mixed perennial and annual crops that are transformed, over time, into polycultures of mixed perennials. Commercial quantities of black pepper, cacao, passion fruit, rubber, papaya, eggs, and pumpkins and other vegetables are produced (Subler and Uhl, 1990). Into this sustainable, intensive agroforestry system, the Japanese farmers often incorporate fish culture and chicken and pig production and use waste or refuse from one operation as inputs to other operations (Uhl et al., 1989).

The knowledge about environmental adaptation resident in indigenous social groups depends, of course, on the survival of these groups. Development strategies that destroy the forests can undermine the ability to mitigate or respond to global change by threatening local sociocultural systems based on sustainable, noninvasive strategies of using the land. In the Amazon, the newly expanding, extensive land uses are not compatible with indigenous Indian systems of gathering, long-fallow cultivation, fishing, and hunting and also threaten the subsistence of some 2 million small-scale extractors who collect rubber, nuts, resins, palm products, and medicines while practicing small-scale farming and foraging. Current issues in the Brazilian policy debate that will affect the viability of indigenous groups include the implementation of reserves on which these groups collectively determine resource exploitation (Hecht and Cockburn, 1989), institutions governing the enclosure of public land for unrestricted private uses, and various types of park or biosphere areas with protected wilderness and some degree of zoned multiple use (Poole, 1989:43).

Indigenous sociocultural systems that have adapted to highly variable environments may offer lessons for improving the robustness of social systems to environmental changes outside of past experience. The adaptation in the Sahel points to the importance of diversified sources of cash and subsistence in allowing local groups to adapt to environmental change with limited human cost. An instructive counterexample may be the American Great Plains, where a new generation of settlers between the 1890s and 1920s developed an agricultural system poorly adapted to the area's vari-

able rainfall patterns. The limited adaptability became obvious in the Dust Bowl period of the 1930s. The results included large-scale out-migration and the development of a national system of governmental supports for regional agriculture that encouraged the remaining farmers to further expand their use of limited water supplies. Some analysts believe these changes brought the farmers' adaptability without continued outside assistance into even more serious question (Worster, 1989). Other recent research, however, argues that the serious drought of the 1950s did not have devastating effects and suggests that a recurrence of the climate of the 1930s in the Great Plains would have little effect on the region's agriculture (Rosenberg et al., 1990).

Research Needs Research on intensive, sustainable agricultural systems can help identify and evaluate viable alternatives to development strategies that have resulted in deforestation and land degradation in the tropics. Such research can help develop strategies that may provide subsistence and cash for rural populations but that do not afford the high returns to labor and to speculative activities of unrestricted, extensive land use (Moran, 1990).

Research on systems of land use in variable environments can help identify the characteristics of some of these systems that allow them to take environmental change in stride. Such research can identify anticipatory policies that may enable local or regional social systems to withstand the local effects of global environmental changes at low cost, with limited demands on disaster response systems.

Social Bonds and Responses to Environmental Change

Individual behaviors in response to global change are also affected by informal social influences. People imitate individuals they like or respect, follow unwritten norms of interpersonal behavior, and preferentially accept information from sources they trust (Darley and Beniger, 1981; Brown, 1981; Rogers, 1983; Rogers and Kincaid, 1981).

Such influences are significant factors in social response to natural disasters, particularly those that strike quickly and with little warning, such as floods and major storms (White, 1974; White and Haas, 1975; Burton et al., 1978; Riebsame et al., 1986; Whyte, 1986). Studies of community responses to disaster show that family and acquaintance groups and community organizations are often the focus of behavior (Dynes, 1970, 1972), and that spon-

taneous improvisation at the local level—often by nongovernmental groups—has been a key to effective response (Barton, 1969; Quarantelli and Dynes, 1977). These findings are relevant to global climatic change in that the consequences of such change are likely to include a shift or increase in the incidence of just such natural disasters.

Informal social links are also significant influences on the acceptance of mitigation strategies, such as energy conservation programs aimed at individuals and households (Stern and Aronson, 1984). Adoption of new, energy-efficient technology tends to follow lines of personal acquaintance (Darley and Beniger, 1981), and participation in government energy conservation programs is higher when the program takes advantage of personal acquaintanceships and local organizations with good face-to-face relations with members of the target group (Stern et al., 1986a).

Research Needs Efforts to develop policy responses in anticipation or response to global change will benefit from knowledge of sociocultural systems of social influence. Research efforts can profitably focus on understanding the social networks, norms, and influence patterns of groups that are highly likely to suffer from anticipated environmental change, so that policies can be designed to work with rather than against these lines of influence. Policy studies should focus on ways to directly involve affected groups, and should compare implementations of the same policies with and without such efforts.

O RGANIZED R ESPONSES O UTSIDE G OVERNMENT

Three kinds of social actors other than governments may make significant, organized responses to global change: communities, social movements, and corporations and trade associations. These collective actors form a vital link between behavior at the level of individuals, firms, and households and at the level of institutions and nations.

Communities

A community is more than a shared place of residence. It is also a unit in which people earn their living, engage in political activity, raise their children, and carry out most of their lives. Community responses to the stresses of environmental change occur both in the uncoordinated ways discussed in the previous

section and through organized activity. Decades of research on economic development in rural areas suggests that the full impacts of major social changes, including those that may be induced by environmental change, can be understood only by considering the effects of such changes on communities, as well as on individuals and institutions (e.g., Field and Burch, 1988; Machlis and Force, 1988; Machlis et al., 1990).

Communities are likely to respond in different ways to the local impacts of global environmental change. Some communities are sufficiently diverse to provide valuable buffers against hardship as individuals and households share resources. But if all members of the community use the same environment in similar ways, no such buffering is possible. Traditional relationships and patterns of action, tension, and rivalry within a community may help the community through crisis, or may prevent organized action that would help the community cope with or take advantage of local changes. And if local manifestations of global change disrupt traditional patterns of community life, they generate stress and conflict that can become violent.

Of course, the character of community life continues to change in much of the world. With the rapid growth of urban and suburban areas in the developed and especially the developing world, the historical links among home, polity, and economy are greatly weakened. The spheres in which individuals and households act become more disjunct and less well integrated. Global environmental change may increase the pace of this historical trend if it makes rural agricultural life more difficult and thus increases the migration to urban areas, with consequences for the ability of communities, particularly in the Third World, to withstand further environmental change.

Research Needs Research is needed on those characteristics of communities that affect their organized responses to global change. For example, in the United States, the spatial character of suburban communities is a significant barrier to increased use of public transportation. Yet some suburban communities and small towns have been vigorous in their implementation of environmental and energy and water conservation policies (Dietz and Vine, 1982; Berk et al., 1980; Vine, 1981). The response of those communities seems to be greater than would be expected from aggregated simple self-interest or the technical response to changes mandated by policy. The community amplifies individual action, perhaps by creating a sense of identity and trust that overcomes the usual

collective goods problem. Especially in the less-developed world, effective community response may depend on the community's access to a variety of resources that can be used to dampen adverse changes in any single resource. In addition, adaptation by individuals and households may be conditioned by the diversity and flexibility of the community, which are in turn affected both by the natural environment and the local political economy, history, and culture. Research is also needed on the conditions controlling the differential effectiveness of environmental and energy programs in different communities.

Social Movements

Environmental movement organizations have been major actors in debating national and even international responses to global change (also see the section below on national policy). The broad awareness that global changes are occurring is in large part due to various national environmental movements drawing attention to the growing body of scientific evidence on the subject.

Most of the national activity of environmental movement organizations is intended to change public policy. How environmental groups influence policy depends on the political context in which they operate, and in particular on the relationship between the movement and political parties. In political systems in which it is difficult to achieve participation via a small party, such as the United States, movements have only loose alliances with political parties. In systems where small parties can play a serious role in influencing policy, the movements either form tight alliances with parties or act as parties in themselves. These structural differences affect movement strategy and have produced some sharp differences in how environmental problems are conceptualized. The ways political structure affects the political impact of the environmental movement on policy have not been studied in enough detail to offer generalizations.

Whatever their relation to political parties, environmental groups usually find themselves in conflict with corporations, trade associations, and often with government officials. Each side brings a different mix of resources to the conflict. In the United States, environmental groups seem to have a high degree of public support and strong legitimacy with other actors in policy debates (Dietz and Rycroft, 1987). Corporations and their representatives have far greater financial and personnel resources, but less public support and less legitimacy within the policy system. Govern-

ment falls between the two. The difference in resources means that each group will struggle not only over the substance at issue, such as a specific policy, but also over the definition of the problem and the kinds of resources that are legitimate for resolving the problem (Dietz et al., 1989). The difference in resource distribution has typically led industry to favor heavy reliance on scientific analyses and technologically driven policies, and led environmentalists to be more skeptical of those alternatives and inclined to favor source reduction and infrastructure changes.

Modern environmental groups play an important role in shaping public values and consciousness. Indeed, some students of the movement have suggested that its primary goal is to change ways of thinking rather than specific political choices (Cohen, 1985; Eder, 1985; Habermas, 1981; Offe, 1985; Touraine, 1985; Touraine et al., 1983). The rise of "green" ideologies in the United States, Western Europe, and throughout the world seems to reflect changes in consumer preferences and lifestyles that may have important implications for individual, household, and community response to global change (Inglehart, 1990).

Research Needs A number of important questions need to be answered about the role of the environmental movement in responses to global change. How do the strategies pursued by environmental movements in both the developed and less-developed nations influence the character of national policy? What impacts do these influences have on the ability to reach international accords? How does environmentalism interact with scientific research on global change, and what could be done to produce better interactions? How much change in individual ideology is brought about by the environmental movement, and how do these changes affect the behavior of individuals, households, communities, and other actors? What is the likely character and influence of the environmental movements that are emerging in Japan, Eastern Europe, and less developed nations and what role will they have in shaping national and international response?

Corporations and Trade and Industry Associations

Corporations and trade and industry associations are major actors shaping response to global change. Just as the environmental movement translates public concern into political action and in turn shapes public perceptions and actions, corporations and trade associations translate the interests they represent into political

positions and also educate those connected to them. As already noted, these groups come to the policy arena with very different resources than environmental groups and, in general, tend to favor different methods for analyzing environmental problems and different strategies for solving them (Dietz and Rycroft, 1987; J.R. Wright, 1990).

Research Needs The relationships of corporations and trade associations to national policy systems, critical for understanding policy response, are discussed in the next section. The internal aspects of these collectivities, however, are little studied. Corporations communicate with each other, and trade associations are influential in shaping the response of corporate members, two processes that shape the policy positions of the business community. Research is badly needed on how corporations and trade associations attempt to communicate internationally about global environmental issues with other groups representing the same industries.

N ATIONAL P OLICY

Nation-states help determine the consequences of global change through their essential role in international agreements and by national policy decisions that affect the ability to respond at local and individual levels. This section focuses primarily on two issues: differences between nations in their environmental policies and the policy process.

National Differences in Environmental Policy

National environmental policies vary in part because of different public attitudes. People around the world have shown concern with the environment, but the intensity and focus of interest have varied from country to country. Some observers claim that during the early 1970s, environmental issues were much more politically salient in Japan and the United States than they were in Europe; during the 1980s, the reverse has been true (Vogel, 1990). Such variations may be a function of national economic performance, actual environmental quality, or national political cultures. The focus of environmental concern in Japan has been claimed to be on the protection of public health, while in Germany the protection of nature has been accorded much higher priority, with the United States and Great Britain falling some-

where in between (Vogel, 1990). These differences, which may be more or less stable over time, are likely to have important implications for different nations' responses to various kinds of global environmental issues.

Policies also vary because each nation's political system responds to public concerns in its characteristic way. Within democratic nations, many political features vary. Nongovernmental organizations concerned with environmental improvement are not equally well organized in all countries. Citizens of different nations display different propensities to join voluntary organizations concerned with environmental improvement, and these organizations do not have similar access to the policy process everywhere. The United States, with its constitutional system based on the separation of powers, provides nongovernmental organizations with substantial opportunities to shape public policy through access to the courts and the national legislature. By contrast, more centralized political systems, such as France and Japan, severely restrict participation by citizens' groups. Parliamentary systems that have proportional representation, such as in Germany, provide access to the political system by facilitating the formation and representation of political parties committed to environmental improvement (see Parkin, 1989).

Policy systems also vary in the response of major affected interests, particularly those of business. Most environmental problems, domestic as well as global, require substantial changes in what firms produce and how they produce it. To the extent that these changes increase costs, businesses are likely to oppose them and the changes are unlikely to occur. Business resistance can be reduced if new technology enables firms to behave in ways that are environmentally benign without increasing their costs, if consumers develop a "green" consciousness that opens new markets, or if government offers subsidies. As a rule, environmental policies are more likely to be effectively implemented to the extent that investors and managers in some industries and firms believe they can benefit financially.

These issues extend beyond business. Environmental regulations do not simply impose additional burdens on producers; they also affect the relative welfare of consumers, employees, and taxpayers. These burdens may be primarily nonmonetary or monetary, concentrated or dispersed, and relatively visible or invisible, but in all cases they have important political consequences. There is a relevant body of research on how interest groups respond to different kinds of expected burdens and benefits, at least

in the United States and a few other countries (Leone, 1987; Meiners and Yandle, 1989).

Environmental policy systems vary in many ways in their approaches to regulation (e.g., Tarlock and Tarak, 1983; Mangun, 1979). Regulations may control emissions at the source, by establishing environmental quality standards, or by establishing exposure standards. Each strategy has various strengths and weaknesses (see Haigh, 1989). Environmental regulation can be coordinated by a single regulatory body or dispersed among a variety of regulatory authorities; relatively centralized in the national government, as in Great Britain, Japan, and France, or administrated primarily by local governments, as in the Federal Republic of Germany. Regulation can be anticipatory, requiring firms to get permission before they can act, as with mandatory environmental impact assessments, or may take place after the fact. And there are different national styles of regulation (Vogel, 1986). The United States has developed an adversarial regulatory style, in which government establishes ambitious and highly specific standards and frequently tries to impose legal penalties for noncompliance. Great Britain, by contrast, uses an approach to regulation characterized by more flexible standards, modest goals, very infrequent use of legal penalties, and restricted participation by the public and environmental groups.

Scientists and scientific evidence play very different roles in different countries' environmental policies. The United States is unusual in providing opportunities for diverse groups of scientists to affect regulatory policies. By contrast, participation by scientists in Europe is more likely to be confined to official channels. The United States is also unusual in having regulatory decisions tied by statute to the outcomes of risk analyses. Thus, it is sometimes easier to have a product or production process banned or restricted in the United States than in most other capitalist nations (see, e.g., Brickman et al., 1985).

Research Needs Most of the sources of variation mentioned apply not only to environmental policies but also to national-level policies in many other areas that can have significant effects downstream. Research is needed to assess the effects of national macroeconomic, fiscal, agricultural, energy, economic development, and science and technology policies on global change and on the ability to respond to global change. These effects are much less well researched than the effects of environmental policy.

Cross-national research comparing the determinants of national

environmental policy, focused especially on responses to global change and on the sources of policy differences between countries, is also needed. This research should assess the effects of influences such as public opinion, environmental movement organizations, and various organized interest groups, as well as structural features such as democratic versus nondemocratic politics, market versus centrally planned economies, relative wealth, scientific and technical resource base, and position in the world political-economic system (studies of this type, not focused on responses to global change per se, include Brickman et al., 1985; Jasanoff, 1986; Vogel, 1986; and Jasper, 1990). Such research can help clarify the kinds of policy options that are viable in different countries, which is a factor in reaching and implementing international agreements. In particular, it is important to understand the conditions under which nations enact policies promoting the development of environmentally benign technologies because such development, while it could produce large benefits on a global scale, is often unlikely to come from the private sector because of the difficulty of appropriating profits.

Research should also assess the impact of environmental regulation and alternatives to regulation cross-nationally and across policy questions to clarify how, why, and under what circumstances different regulatory or other strategies work in different policy settings. Such research should proceed despite the lack of clear standards for comparing the effectiveness of the environmental policies of different governments. Every indicator has both strengths and weaknesses. For example, emissions and environmental quality are affected by many factors other than policy, including topography, the nature of industrial production, and the rate and location of economic growth. Likewise, expenditures on abatement by industry are an imperfect measure of the effectiveness of regulation because they may or may not represent a net economic burden. The useful literature on policy compliance and effectiveness is largely confined to a handful of countries and policies (e.g., Bardach and Kagan, 1982; DiMento, 1989).

Finally, research should compare the institutions used in different countries to manage conflict over environmental policy. These institutions are both formal (e.g., legislative and regulatory proceedings and court decisions) and informal (e.g., lobbying, use of publicity in the mass media), and they deal with substantive disagreements, formal procedures, and disagreements about the nature of knowledge about global change and the likely impacts of policy choices. Distinctive national systems of conflict manage-

ment can be identified and compared; each probably generates characteristic patterns of conflict and characteristic difficulties in decision making.

The Environmental Decision-Making Process

The consequences of global change depend on decisions made in government agencies and other large organizations. Knowledge about the decision process in such organizations is therefore potentially relevant to responses by both governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Specialists on decision processes, a field that makes no sharp distinction between governmental and other complex organizations, typically distinguish analytically among phases of the process, such as understanding the phenomena, identifying viable options, and selecting an alternative.

Government agencies involved in responding to global change rely on information from experts to gain understanding, but they must make it useful to their leaders, who are almost always non-experts, and must interpret the conflicts between, and uncertainty within, expert judgments. There is a general body of literature on the ways government agencies and other large organizations acquire and process expert knowledge (e.g., Lindblom and Cohen, 1979; Weiss and Bucuvalas, 1980) and on the inherent problems of informing nonexpert decision makers about uncertain and disputed scientific knowledge (National Research Council, 1989b).

Organizations can generally identify a large number of options, but they tend to funnel information to narrow the universe of issues or action alternatives presented to leaders (March and Olsen 1989). Similarly, not all options known to a society reach its legislative agendas (e.g., Kingdon, 1984). Among the factors involved in getting environmental issues on political agendas arc mass media coverage of disastrous or telegenic events and threats, of dread consequences such as cancer, danger to children and future generations, the characteristics that increase perceived seriousness of risks among most citizens (Mazur, 1981; Sandman et al., 1987; Rosenbaum, 1991). Government action on environmental hazards is typically driven by crises, with major events evoking bursts of legislation (May, 1985; National Research Council 1987). It is less clear, however, how particular response options, get on the agendas of government agencies or other organizations

Decisions within government agencies and other large organizations are affected by standard operating procedures, preassigned divisions of labor, accounting systems, organizational cultures

bureaucratic politics, organizational hierarchy, bargaining and negotiation processes, leadership practices, and the control of information by constituent individuals and subunits with goals only partly coincident with those of the organization as a whole (Seidman and Gilmour, 1986; March and Olsen, 1989). Decisions are influenced by relationships between organizations, for example, in international environmental agreements, interagency negotiations, lobbying coalitions, and even large industrial firms that must weigh the positions of their marketing, manufacturing, engineering, and legal departments in deciding whether to change to a more environmentally benign manufacturing process. Decisions are also affected by the structure of institutions—the systems of rights and rules that constrain the actions of individual parties. Examples include the effects of such institutions as markets for land and energy, land tenure systems, the law of property rights and torts, representative government, and international regimes (discussed in the next section).

Research Needs The organizational decision-making perspective points to a number of areas in which the general concepts in the field might be usefully applied to organizational actions affecting response to global change. For instance, informative studies could be done on how organizational understanding of environmental issues develops; how intraorganizational factors affect the responses of corporations, government agencies, and national political systems to global change; and how bargaining, rivalries, informal norms, and other processes of influence between organizations affect organizational responses to global change. An area of more pointed interest is the comparative study of environmental decisions in different institutional contexts. To gain understanding of the consequences of global change, it is important to understand the effects of different systems of land tenure on deforestation, of different national regulatory systems on the control of atmospheric pollutants, and of different systems of property rights in subsurface resources on policies to limit extraction of fossil fuels.

I NTERNATIONAL C OOPERATION

Sustained international cooperation is one essential element in the overall human response to global environmental changes. It is essential because efforts to cope with some large-scale environmental changes such as ozone depletion and global warming seem

doomed to fail if some of the major national actors do not cooperate. Recent agreements among the advanced industrial countries to phase out the use of CFCs cannot solve the problem of ozone depletion unless some way is devised to persuade China, India, and other developing countries to use substitutes for CFCs in their rapidly increasing production and consumption of refrigerants. The global warming problem is even more complex. Not only is there a need for cooperation between the advanced industrialized states and the major fossil fuel-using states of the developing world, but there is also the problem of controlling other sources of greenhouse gases. These sources are as diverse and widespread as methane-releasing agricultural activity in south Asian rice paddies and North American feedlots and carbon releases from cutting tropical forests in Zaire and Brazil.

Some environmental problems call for international action because activities in one country produce spillover effects or externalities affecting other countries. An example is the emission of airborne pollutants in the eastern United States and Eastern Europe. International cooperation is needed to articulate and apply liability rules or to allow the countries affected by spillover effects to compensate those responsible for the offensive emissions for terminating or redirecting their activities.

Today's concerns with international arrangements focus mainly on mitigating global environmental changes rather than adjusting to them. In the future, however, as global changes become realities, there will be more calls for international cooperation to adjust to the impacts, for instance, by developing buffer stocks of food crops or mechanisms to handle flows of environmental refugees.

International cooperation poses difficult problems, even when all the parties stand to gain from the right agreement. One of the most robust theoretical findings of the social sciences is that rational actors engaging in interactive decision making in the absence of effective rules or social conventions often fail to realize feasible joint gains, sometimes ending up with outcomes that are destructive for all concerned (Olson, 1965; Hardin, 1982). The conditions of international society make the problem more complicated than it is in other situations. The issues are seldom well defined at the start, so that preliminary negotiations may be needed to define them. When unanimity is required, some states can hold the agreement hostage to better terms for themselves. Each country is complex, and bargaining within countries can make international agreements especially difficult (Putnam, 1988). And

the agreement can take second place to more immediate issues in any of the countries involved.

Most observers now believe that the key to solving these collective-action problems is in the creation of international regimes, or more broadly, international institutions (Krasner, 1983; Young, 1989a). Regimes are interlocking sets of rights and rules that govern interactions among their members with regard to particular areas of action. Although most of the research on international regimes concerns economic regimes, interest is mounting rapidly in the study of environmental regimes, particularly the developing regime for the protection of the stratospheric ozone layer (Benedick, 1991), but also other, more geographically limited, international environmental regimes (e.g., Sand, 1990a; Haas, 1990).

The ozone regime exemplifies one model of regime formation, in which a framework convention is followed by a series of substantive protocols in quick succession. Another model sets out substantive provisions in more or less complete form in initial agreements. Cases in point include the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Lyster, 1985). Additional study is warranted to determine the circumstances under which one or the other of these models is more appropriate.

Most of the research on environmental regimes has so far emphasized regime formation, particularly the determinants of success or failure in forming regimes and the timing and content of successfully formed regimes. This work has highlighted five sets of explanatory variables. One stream of analysis emphasizes structural aspects of the relationships involved in regime formation, such as the number of participants, the extent to which interaction is ongoing, and the nature of the mixed incentives to cooperate and compete (Oye, 1986). Another stream focuses on the role of power relationships, such as the presence of a hegemonic power, that is, an actor possessing a preponderance of material resources (Keohane, 1984:Chap. 3). A third stream emphasizes factors likely to impede or facilitate the negotiation process, such as the extent to which negotiations lend themselves to ''integrative bargaining,'' the thickness of the "veil of uncertainty," the impact of exogenous crises, and the role of leadership (Young, 1989b). A fourth stream emphasizes cognitive variables, such as the role of widely shared ideas (Cox, 1983) or an "epistemic community," that is, an international group of officials and scientists who share

a set of causal beliefs and a set of preferences for action (Haas, 1990). A final stream of research stresses the importance of the international context in providing windows of opportunity for agreements that are blocked at other times by resistances in one country or another.

Research Needs Knowledge is limited on several aspects of international agreement that are particularly relevant to problems of response to global change. One is the effectiveness of institutional arrangements, that is, the factors determining how strongly a regime affects the behavior of those subject to its provisions. Effectiveness is partly a function of implementation which, as at the national level, often leads to outcomes quite different from what a reading of the initial agreement would lead one to expect (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1984). It also depends on the degree to which arrangements are structured so that those subject to the regime comply voluntarily and do not have to be continually monitored and coerced. Finally, it depends on the ability of a regime to persist even after the constellation of interests that gave rise to it has changed or disappeared (Krasner, 1989).

Another area for new research concerns preparatory negotiations, aimed at reaching a common conceptualization of environmental problems. Many international issues that require cooperation are not ripe for negotiation because the issues have not yet been defined in a way suitable for bargaining (e.g., Stein, 1989; Saunders, 1989). This certainly seems to be the case for complex environmental issues, such as would be raised in drafting a comprehensive law of the atmosphere on the model of the law of the sea. National representatives would need first to identify packages of policies they might use to comply and assess the costs of those packages in terms of their interests. The process would be much more complex than establishing limited regimes to deal with ozone depletion or acid rain or establishing a series of regional regimes combined with agreements between regional groups.

A third area concerns the problems of regime formation when the participants are deeply divided. Many global environmental problems involve north-south confrontations in which the wealthy, industrialized states want to limit environmental changes but developing countries see limits as threats to their development. Examples include conflict between the desire to limit carbon dioxide emissions and energy needs in China and India, and between the desire to protect global biodiversity and plans for the use of forests in Brazil and Indonesia. Much needs to be learned,

for example, about the bargaining power of apparently weak players, like China, which can issue credible threats to step up their use of coal or CFCs unless others make it worthwhile for them to desist.

More knowledge is also needed about the role of nonstate actors, such as intergovernmental organizations, environmental movement organizations, and transnational corporations, in the creation and operation of environmental regimes. The involvement of such nonstate actors heralds the emergence of a more complicated international society in which states remain important but share influence with several other types of actors. This change may require more sophisticated conceptualizations of international interactions.

Finally, there is need for better understanding of the relationships between institutions (sets of rights and rules) and organizations (material entities with offices, staffs, budgets, and legal responsibility) (Young, 1989a, b). Organizations, such as the United Nations Environment Programme, have sometimes been important players in regime formation; they are sometimes necessary to manage regimes, although implementation of key rules is sometimes delegated to the member governments. Given the costs of operating international organizations, it is important to have a better understanding of the conditions under which they are necessary, or more effective than alternatives.

The above research agenda is relevant not only to the practical problems of responding to global change, but also to some basic issues in social science. The gaps in knowledge about international environmental regimes are also gaps in the broader literatures on social institutions and collective action. This global change research agenda would therefore be a direct and timely contribution to political science.

G LOBAL S OCIAL C HANGE

As we note at the opening of this chapter, the consequences of global environmental change depend on the future shape of human society. A number of ongoing changes in human systems, operating systemically or cumulatively at the global level, are shaping the societies that will feel the effects of global environmental change. Although global social changes are numerous, to our knowledge, a thoughtful typology of them has not been developed. As an impetus to further analysis and research, we note several examples of global social changes that may affect the driv-

ing or mitigating forces of global environmental change or the ability of human systems to respond to such change.

Population Distribution and Size The urban population of the world continues to increase both in total and in percentage terms, in both the developed and developing countries (Berry, 1991; Smith and London, 1990). Urbanization, by increasing spatial concentration, may increase vulnerability to natural hazards, concentrated pollutant emissions, and globally systemic changes such as sea-level rise. Urban bias in developing countries may also skew national priorities away from rural resource and environmental problems (Lipton, 1977). However, urbanization may decrease vulnerability by affording economies of scale in resource use and environmental protection, allowing rural households to diversify their sources of income, decreasing population growth rates, and increasing concern with environmental amenities. Some of the key research questions concern the conditions under which urbanization affects demand for resources implicated in global change, vulnerability to environmental disasters, and the robustness of rural communities in the face of environmental change. Equally relevant are concerns of population size. Increasing human population is likely to place added pressure on political and economic systems to contain conflicts likely to arise over increasingly scarce resources (see, e.g., Homer-Dixon, 1990).

Market Growth and Economic Development The spatial reach and dominance of market forces have been widening as a world system of trade penetrates even into countries that have had central planning and command economies and into the remotest regions. The effects on the human driving forces of global change and on the ability to respond are not obvious. Expansion of the market replaces state-sponsored resource waste with an invisible-hand means for checking inefficient and degrading uses of the environment. However, ceding control to the market can also lessen the ability of the state or community to manage environmental problems that are driven by the search for profits. At the local level, sustainable practices associated with a subsistence or mixed economy may be abandoned for unsustainable profit-oriented ones (Bates, 1980; Jodha and Mascarenhas, 1985; Redclift, 1987). The increased wealth that is the usual (though not always realized) goal of a shift toward free-market policies generally increases the ability to respond to threatening changes;

it may also raise the standard of environmental quality expected by the population.

Socioeconomic Marginalization Some observers hypothesize that the global spread of capitalism has forced certain individuals, groups, and countries into a position of diminishing control over needed resources and reduced options for survival and for responding to global change. Indigenous sociocultural systems of social security are believed to be crumbling, with new capitalist economies doing little to replace the lost safety nets. Economically marginalized individuals and groups sometimes degrade the environment for subsistence and lack the resources to respond effectively to natural or human-induced damage. Marginalization and impoverishment of nations can have the same consequences for national policies and actions (Hewitt, 1983; Sen, 1981; Watts, 1987).

Geopolitical Shifts The trend in 1989-1991 of declining tensions between East and West may facilitate human response to global environmental change through reallocating funds from military uses, lowering the potential for widespread nuclear and/ or chemical warfare, redefining national security to consider environmental as well as military and ideological threats (Brown, 1982; Mathews, 1989; Bush and Gorbachev, 1990), and building trust between powerful nations that will lead to cooperation instead of conflict. At the same time, however, north-south tensions may be increasing with the disparity of wealth between the developed and developing worlds. Such increased tension will make future international cooperative action more difficult and may lead to direct conflict (Agarwal, 1990; Carroll, 1983). The net effect of such geopolitical shifts is very hard to predict.

International Information/Communication Networks A global explosion of information and communication technology has uncertain implications for response to global change. It may facilitate societal response by making it easier for scientists and policy makers around the world to cooperate and share information, disseminate it to the public, and marshal worldwide pressure for response (Cleveland, 1990; Miles et al., 1988; Mowlana and Wilson, 1990; K. Wright, 1990). Examples include international reaction to satellite photographs of daily burning in the Amazon forests and the response of the Soviet peoples to news of the desiccation of the Aral Sea. However, the network may also amplify misinformation or create barriers to response by spreading the word that some nations may gain from environmental change.

Democratization As of mid-1991, there appears to be a worldwide trend toward increasing decision-making power of the

citizenry in nation-states. Increasing democratization may influence human response by providing more power to people being affected by environmental change, but it may also give more access and power to those whose interests would be harmed by measures for environmental management and protection. Democratization may also slow responses, compared with what might be achieved in an authoritarian regime by simple decision by the leadership (Kaplan, 1989; Muller, 1988; Roberts, 1990; Stephens, 1989). The net effects on response to global change are likely to depend on conditions in particular countries.

Scientific/Technological Expansion Exponential growth in scientific and technological knowledge both drives environmental change and increases the capacity to respond to it. It increases the ability to detect and understand threatening global environmental changes (e.g., the ozone hole) and provides alternatives to destructive products and practices (e.g., substitutes for CFCs) (AMBIO, 1989; Bacard, 1989; United Nations, 1989), but it may also create new global environmental problems (Kasprzyk, 1989; Russell, 1987). And new technologies may create major changes in the structure of human society, as in the case of CFC refrigeration technology or the periodic emergence of new energy sources to replace old ones as the basis of industry (Ausubel and Sladovich, 1989). In such instances, the implications for the global environment may remain uncertain for a long period.

Resurgence of Cultural Identity Many analysts perceive a worldwide resurgence of cultural identity or differentiation in recent decades: a deeply held attachment to groups (e.g., ethnic, religious, tribal, states) and the associated movements by these groups for autonomy of expression and decision (see Nash, 1989). Examples include the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the Soviet Republics and the overt hostility, especially in Islamic countries, to the cultural invasion of Western values. The impact on response to global change is most likely to be felt when global changes or possible responses to them are perceived as threats to the values or livelihood of a particular group or when response requires cooperation between groups already in conflict.

The social changes mentioned appear to be ongoing trends, yet their future direction is, of course, uncertain. Equally uncertain are the effects of any trends in global human systems on the human ability to respond to global change. Plausible arguments can usually be made on both sides: a global social change may make resource use either more or less extensive and effective

human response either easier or harder to accomplish. The open questions point to many research opportunities for social scientists who have studied changes in these human systems and who would now consider their implications for human responses to global change.

CONCLUSIONS

This chapter examines the range of human consequences of global change and identifies specific areas in which new research can make important contributions to understanding. Where we identify research needs, priorities among studies should be set according to the criteria noted in Chapter 2 . We focus here on four general principles derived from this analysis that deserve special emphasis because they are fundamental, underappreciated, and point to critical directions for research.

T HE K NOWLEDGE B ASE FOR H UMAN R ESPONSES I S I NHERENTLY V ALUE L ADEN

We have identified the key link from environmental change to its human consequences as proximate effects on what humans value. Of course, what humans value depends on the humans. The wealthy tend to have different value priorities from the poor, national leaders from voters, business executives from laborers, miners from herders, and so forth. Yet what humans value is precisely what defines the consequences of global change and drives human responses. Different individuals and human groups will often disagree about what environmental changes are worthy of response.

Research Needs First, it is necessary to disaggregate the consequences of global change by analyzing the distribution of impacts of particular global changes on the things that different groups of people value. Such knowledge is necessary input to policy debates, even though it is not sufficient to facilitate social choices. Even with perfect knowledge of the effects of each conceivable alternative on each group affected, conflicts of value and interest will remain. Better knowledge of the impacts may even precipitate conflict by making latent conflicts more obvious.

Second, it is important to develop better ways of making the available knowledge about outcomes more accessible and understandable to nonspecialists. The body of knowledge about the de-

sign of messages about environmental risks and benefits can be brought to bear (National Research Council, 1989b; Mileti and Fitzpatrick, 1991). Better messages are also necessary but insufficient to facilitate social choices. They inform but do nothing to alter the differences in values and interests that produce conflict.

Third, it may help to understand the process of value judgment better. Several systematic methods have been used to assess the value people place on outcomes that may be affected by environmental change or responses to it, and to help individuals confront the value tradeoffs that policy choices often pose (e.g., Keeney and Raiffa, 1976; Mitchell and Carson, 1988). These methods of systematizing the valuation process can be applied to the valuation of the consequences of global change under different response regimes; such studies will advance understanding of valuation and may also help individuals and social groups choose their responses.

The most critical practical need is probably for effective means of managing the conflicts of value and interest that attend choices about global change. Human systems at every level of organization will have to develop systems of conflict management and, to the extent that different human groups (e.g., countries) need to respond in a coordinated way, their systems will also have to be compatible. These practical needs raise numerous research questions for the global change research agenda. In the discussion of conflict, we noted several bodies of relevant theory and knowledge that could be usefully applied to the study of conflict over responses to global environmental change. Methods of conflict management developed for other conflicts might be tried experimentally and monitored in efforts at global change-related conflict resolution. And experiments should be conducted with institutional means for making technological knowledge useful to nonexperts in a context of controversy—for instance, systems that enlist representatives of interested groups in the process (National Research Council, 1989b) or that harness the controversy to provide a range of perspectives as an aid to understanding (Stern, 1991).

H UMAN R ESPONSES M UST BE ASSESSED AGAINST A CHANGING BASELINE

The human consequences of an environmental change depend on when it happens and on the state of the affected human groups at that time. Global changes in the future may or may not have more serious effects than if they happened now. For instance, if recent trends continue, future societies will be wealthier, more

flexible, and more able to take global changes in stride than present ones. However, the more committed human societies become to present technologies that produce global change, the harder it will be to give them up if that becomes necessary.

Research Needs First, to understand the human consequences of global change, it is important to improve the ability to project social change. Existing methods range from simple extrapolation to more complex procedures for building scenarios. But scenario building is more art than science. Therefore, as an initial approach, it is useful to test projected environmental futures against various projected human futures to see how sensitive the human consequences of global change are to variations in the social future. In the longer run, it is much preferable to improve understanding of the relationships that drive social change. This is a long-term project in social science, on which much theoretical work is needed. We return to this theme in Chapter 5 . Research on the human dimensions of global change may help give impetus to that project.

Second, the extreme difficulty of predicting the long-term social future raises the importance of the study of social robustness in the face of environmental change. Increasing robustness against a range of environmental changes is a highly attractive strategy because it bypasses the difficult problems of predicting long-term environmental and social change. However, little is known about what makes social, economic, and technological systems robust, and the concept itself needs much more careful conceptualization.

The importance of the problem is suggested comparing two plausible arguments, both found in this chapter. One is that expansion of the market increases robustness by giving economic actors more flexibility in providing for their needs. This argument implies that further penetration of international markets will make it easier for humanity to withstand global changes without major suffering. The other argument is that sociocultural systems often provide a safety net for individuals, for example, through the obligations of others to provide. Sometimes, as in the responses to drought in northern Nigeria, these two arguments seem to support each other: the sociocultural systems there relied on the availability of urban wage labor as a supplement to subsistence agriculture. But sometimes, as with Amazonian deforestation, the two arguments seem to conflict: wealthy economic actors following market incentives crowd out peoples who have developed flexible sociocultural systems, leaving them neither land nor paid labor. Careful comparisons of cases such as the Sahel

and the Amazon might begin to clarify the role of markets and of various sociocultural systems in making social groups more or less robust with respect to environmental change.

H UMAN R ESPONSE C AN I NVOLVE I NTERVENTION A NYWHERE IN THE C YCLE OF C AUSATION

Human responses to global change can involve a variety of interventions of quite different types. It is reasonable to suppose that it makes a difference where an intervention occurs, but there is no body of knowledge that clarifies what different effects are likely to arise from different kinds of interventions. Consider an example in terms of Figure 4-1 . To respond to the threat of global warming, a government may regulate automobile manufacture or use (affecting a proximate cause—type P mitigation), institute a variety of fossil fuel taxes or incentives (to affect human systems that drive global change—type H mitigation), support research on solar energy (a more distantly type H mitigation), or support adjustment by investing in a fund to compensate citizens after the warming begins to affect what they value. Many arguments can be raised for each strategy. One may argue that mitigation directed at proximate causes is less likely to have disastrous side effects because it is targeted to the desired change only—or one may argue that adjustments are less likely to have disastrous side effects, for the same reason. One may argue that investing in solar energy is wiser than the other mitigation alternatives because it goes to the root of the carbon dioxide problem—or one may argue that it is less wise because too many things must go right for the investment to succeed. At present, not enough is known to shed light on such arguments in any systematic way.

We doubt that a general theory will be developed any time soon that can specify from the class of an intervention its likely effect and the types of unexpected consequences it might have. Such a theory will probably have to be inductive, and the necessary knowledge base does not exist. It is worthwhile to begin collecting the knowledge now.

Research Needs One research priority in the near-term should be to support studies that compare interventions at different points in the same causal cycle to identify their main and secondary effects. For example, the effects of regulating automobile fuel economy (a type P mitigation of global warming) can be compared with the effects of taxing gasoline (a type H mitigation); the ef-

fects of drought relief payments (an adjustment) can be compared with systems of crop insurance (an intervention to increase robustness). When the relevant interventions have been tried, the studies should be post hoc; when they have not been tried, theoretical analyses or studies based on responses to hypothetical situations will have to suffice.

Even absent a general theory of human intervention in environmental systems, the variety of opportunities to intervene implies an extensive agenda for ''normal'' social science research to assess the outcomes of interventions in response to anticipated or experienced environmental change. Research approaches developed for evaluating policy outcomes, studying the implementation process, comparing alternative approaches to regulation, and assessing the environmental and social impacts of government programs and policies can all be readily applied to the assessment of potential or actual responses to global change.

H UMAN R ESPONSES A FFECT THE D RIVING F ORCES OF G LOBAL C HANGE

Because the relationships of human systems and environmental systems are those of mutual causation, all human responses to global change potentially alter both systems. For many interventions, the secondary effects will be minuscule, but it is not always obvious which interventions will have the minuscule effects. Therefore, as a general rule, our conclusions about research on human causes apply equally to research on human responses. For example, policies in response to global change, which often attempt to change technology, social organization, economic structures, or even attitudes, contribute to the interactions of the human driving forces. Like the human causes, human responses can have short-term and long-term effects that may be quite different. And as with the study of the human causes, the study of human responses must be an interdisciplinary effort. Researchers will have to be attracted to the field from their home disciplines, and interdisciplinary research teams will have to be built. Human responses need to be studied separately at different levels of analysis and at different time scales; comparative studies in different social and temporal contexts are necessary; and research is needed to link responses at one level to those at other levels and short-term effects to long-term ones.

Global environmental change often seems to be the most carefully examined issue of our time. Yet understanding the human side—human causes of and responses to environmental change—has not yet received sustained attention. Global Environmental Change offers a strategy for combining the efforts of natural and social scientists to better understand how our actions influence global change and how global change influences us.

The volume is accessible to the nonscientist and provides a wide range of examples and case studies. It explores how the attitudes and actions of individuals, governments, and organizations intertwine to leave their mark on the health of the planet.

The book focuses on establishing a framework for this new field of study, identifying problems that must be overcome if we are to deepen our understanding of the human dimensions of global change, presenting conclusions and recommendations.

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The biggest threats to our natural world

The five biggest threats to our natural world … and how we can stop them

From destructive land use to invasive species, scientists have identified the main drivers of biodiversity loss – so that countries can collectively act to tackle them

Read more on the Cop15 talks to negotiate new UN targets to protect biodiversity in the coming decade
1 Changes in land and sea use
2 Direct exploitation of natural resources
3 The climate crisis
4 Pollution
5 Invasive species

T he world’s wildlife populations have plummeted by more than two-thirds since 1970 – and there are no signs that this downward trend is slowing. The first phase of Cop15 talks in Kunming this week will lay the groundwork for governments to draw up a global agreement next year to halt the loss of nature. If they are to succeed, they will need to tackle what the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) has identified as the five key drivers of biodiversity loss: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of natural resources; climate change; pollution; and invasion of alien species.

Changes in land and sea use

Clearing the US prairies: ‘On a par with tropical deforestation’

“It’s hidden destruction. We’re still losing grasslands in the US at a rate of half a million acres a year or more.”

Tyler Lark, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, knows what he is talking about. Lark and a team of researchers used satellite data to map the expansion and abandonment of land across the US and discovered that 4m hectares (10m acres) had been destroyed between 2008 and 2016.

Large swathes of the United States’ great prairies continue to be converted into cropland, according to the research, to make way for soya bean, corn and wheat farming.

Changes in land and sea use has been identified as the main driver of “unprecedented” biodiversity and ecosystem change over the past 50 years. Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66% of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions.

North America’s grasslands – often referred to as prairies – are a case in point. In the US, about half have been converted since European settlement , and the most fertile land is already being used for agriculture. Areas converted more recently are sub-prime agricultural land, with 70% of yields lower than the national average, which means a lot of biodiversity is being lost for diminishing returns.

“Our findings demonstrate a pervasive pattern of encroachment into areas that are increasingly marginal for production but highly significant for wildlife,” Lark and his team wrote in the paper , published in Nature Communications.

Boggier areas of land, or those with uneven terrain, were traditionally left as grassland, but in the past few decades, this marginal land has also been converted. In the US, 88% of cropland expansion takes place on grassland, and much of this is happening in the Great Plains – known as America’s breadbasket – which used to be the most extensive grassland in the world.

What are the five biggest threats to biodiversity?

According to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity there are five main threats to biodiversity. In descending order these are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of natural resources; climate change; pollution and invasive species.

1. For terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, land-use change has had the largest relative negative impact on nature since 1970. More than a third of the world’s land surface and nearly 75% of freshwater resources are now devoted to crop or livestock production. Alongside a doubling of urban area since 1992, things such as wetlands, scrubland and woodlands – which wildlife relies on – are ironed out from the landscape.

2. The direct exploitation of organisms and non-living materials, including logging, hunting and fishing and the extraction of soils and water are all negatively affecting ecosystems . In marine environments, overfishing is considered to be the most serious driver of biodiversity loss. One quarter of the world’s commercial fisheries are overexploited, according to a 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment .

3. The climate crisis is dismantling ecosystems at every level. Extreme weather events such as tropical storms and flooding are destroying habitats. Warmer temperatures are also changing the timing of natural events – such as the availability of insects and when birds hatch their eggs in spring. The distribution of species and their range is also changing.

4. Many types of pollution are increasing. In marine environments, pollution from agricultural runoff (mainly nitrogen and phosphorus) do huge damage to ecosystems. Agricultural runoff causes toxic algal blooms and even "dead zones" in the worst affected areas. Marine plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980, affecting at least 267 species.

5. Since the 17th century, invasive species have contributed to 40% of all known animal extinctions. Nearly one fifth of the Earth’s surface is at risk of plant and animal invasions. Invasive species change the composition of ecosystems by outcompeting native species.

Hotspots for this expansion have included wildlife-rich grasslands in the “prairie pothole” region which stretches between Iowa, Dakota, Montana and southern Canada and is home to more than 50% of North American migratory waterfowl, as well as 96 species of songbird. This cropland expansion has wiped out about 138,000 nesting habitats for waterfowl, researchers estimate.

These grasslands are also a rich habitat for the monarch butterfly – a flagship species for pollinator conservation and a key indicator of overall insect biodiversity. More than 200m milkweed plants, the caterpillar’s only food source, were probably destroyed by cropland expansion, making it one of the leading causes for the monarch’s national decline .

The extent of conversion of grassland in the US makes it a larger emission source than the destruction of the Brazilian Cerrado , according to research from 2019 . About 90% of emissions from grassland conversion comes from carbon lost in the soil, which is released when the grassland is ploughed up.

“The rate of clearing that we’re seeing on these grasslands is on par with things like tropical deforestation, but it often receives far less attention,” says Lark.

Food crop production globally has increased by about 300% since 1970 , despite the negative environmental impacts.

Reducing food waste and eating less meat would help cut the amount of land needed for farming, while researchers say improved management of existing croplands and utilising what is already farmed as best as possible would reduce further expansion.

Lark concludes: “I think there’s a huge opportunity to re-envision our landscapes so that they’re not only providing incredible food production but also mitigating climate change and helping reduce the impacts of the biodiversity crisis by increasing habitats on agricultural land.” PW

Direct exploitation of natural resources

Groundwater extraction: ‘People don’t see it’

From hunting, fishing and logging to the extraction of oil, gas, coal and water, humanity’s insatiable appetite for the planet’s resources has devastated large parts of the natural world.

While the impacts of many of these actions can often be seen, unsustainable groundwater extraction could be driving a hidden crisis below our feet, experts have warned, wiping out freshwater biodiversity, threatening global food security and causing rivers to run dry.

Farmers and mining companies are pumping vast underground water stores at an unsustainable rate, according to ecologists and hydrologists. About half the world’s population relies on groundwater for drinking water and it helps sustain 40% of irrigation systems for crops .

The consequences for freshwater ecosystems – among the most degraded on the planet – are under-researched as studies have focused on the depletion of groundwater for agriculture.

But a growing body of research indicates that pumping the world’s most extracted resource – water – is causing significant damage to the planet’s ecosystems. A 2017 study of the Ogallala aquifer – an enormous water source underneath eight states in the US Great Plains – found that more than half a century of pumping has caused streams to run dry and a collapse in large fish populations. In 2019, another study estimated that by 2050 between 42% and 79% of watersheds that pump groundwater globally could pass ecological tipping points, without better management.

“The difficulty with groundwater is that people don’t see it and they don’t understand the fragility of it,” says James Dalton, director of the global water programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). “Groundwater can be the largest – and sometimes the sole – source in certain types of terrestrial habitats.

“Uganda is luxuriantly green, even during the dry season, but that’s because a lot of it is irrigated with shallow groundwater for agriculture and the ecosystems are reliant on tapping into it.”

According to UPGro (Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor), a research programme looking into the management of groundwater in sub-Saharan Africa, 73 of the 98 operational water supply systems in Uganda are dependent on water from below ground. The country shares two transboundary aquifers: the Nile and Lake Victoria basins. At least 592 aquifers are shared across borders around the world.

“Some of the groundwater reserves are huge, so there is time to fix this,” says Dalton. “It’s just there’s no attention to it.”

Inge de Graaf, a hydrologist at Wageningen University, who led the 2019 study into watershed levels, found between 15% to 21% had already passed ecological tipping points, adding that once the effects had become clear for rivers, it was often too late.

“Groundwater is slow because it has to flow through rocks. If you extract water today, it will impact the stream flow maybe in the next five years, in the next 10 years, or in the next decades,” she says. “I think the results of this research and related studies are pretty scary.”

In April, the largest ever assessment of global groundwater wells by researchers from University of California, Santa Barbara, found that up to one in five were at risk of running dry. Scott Jasechko, a hydrologist and lead author on the paper, says that the study focuses on the consequences for humans and more research is needed on biodiversity.

“Millions of wells around the world could run dry with even modest declines in groundwater levels. And that, of course, has cascading implications for livelihoods and access to reliable and convenient water for individuals and ecosystems,” he says. PG

The climate crisis

Climate and biodiversity: ‘Solve both or solve neither’

In 2019, the European heatwave brought 43C heat to Montpellier in France. Great tit chicks in 30 nest boxes starved to death, probably because it was too hot for their parents to catch the food they needed, according to one researcher . Two years later, and 2021’s heatwave appears to have set a European record, pushing temperatures to 48.8C in Sicily in August. Meanwhile, wildfires and heatwaves are stripping the planet of life.

Until now, the destruction of habitats and extraction of resources has had a more significant impact on biodiversity than the climate crisis. This is likely to change over the coming decades as the climate crisis dismantles ecosystems in unpredictable and dramatic ways, according to a review paper published by the Royal Society.

“There are many aspects of ecosystem science where we will not know enough in sufficient time,” the paper says. “Ecosystems are changing so rapidly in response to global change drivers that our research and modelling frameworks are overtaken by empirical, system-altering changes.”

The calls for biodiversity and the climate crisis to be tackled in tandem are growing. “It is clear that we cannot solve [the global biodiversity and climate crises] in isolation – we either solve both or we solve neither,” says Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s climate and environment minister, with the launch in June of a report produced by the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts. Zoological Society of London senior research fellow Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, who led a s tudy on the subject published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in September, says: “The level of interconnectedness between the climate change and biodiversity crises is high and should not be underestimated. This is not just about climate change impacting biodiversity; it is also about the loss of biodiversity deepening the climate crisis.”

Writer Zadie Smith describes every country’s changes as a “local sadness” . Insects no longer fly into the house when the lights are on in the evening, the snowdrops are coming out earlier and some migratory species, such as swallows, are starting to try to stay in the UK for winter. All these individual elements are entwined in a much bigger story of decline.

Our biosphere – the thin film of life on the surface of our planet – is being destabilised by temperature change. On land, rains are altering, extreme weather events are more common, and ecosystems more flammable. Associated changes, including flooding , sea level rise, droughts and storms, are having hugely damaging impacts on biodiversity and its ability to support us.

In the ocean, heatwaves and acidification are stressing organisms and ecosystems already under pressure due to other human activities, such as overfishing and habitat fragmentation.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) landmark report showed that extreme heatwaves that would usually happen every 50 years are already happening every decade. If warming is kept to 1.5C these will happen approximately every five years.

The distributions of almost half (47%) of land-based flightless mammals and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by the climate crisis, the IPBES warns . Five per cent of species are at risk of extinction from 2C warming, climbing to 16% with a 4.3C rise.

Connected, diverse and extensive ecosystems can help stabilise the climate and will have a better chance of thriving in a world permanently altered by rising emissions, say experts. And, as the Royal Society paper says: “Rather than being framed as a victim of climate change, biodiversity can be seen as a key ally in dealing with climate change.” PW

The hidden threat of nitrogen: ‘Slowly eating away at biodiversity’

On the west coast of Scotland, fragments of an ancient rainforest that once stretched along the Atlantic coast of Britain cling on. Its rare mosses, lichens and fungi are perfectly suited to the mild temperatures and steady supply of rainfall, covering the crags, gorges and bark of native woodland. But nitrogen pollution, an invisible menace, threatens the survival of the remaining 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of Scottish rainforest, along with invasive rhododendron, conifer plantations and deer.

While marine plastic pollution in particular has increased tenfold since 1980 – affecting 44% of seabirds – air, water and soil pollution are all on the rise in some areas. This has led to pollution being singled out as the fourth biggest driver of biodiversity loss.

In Scotland, nitrogen compounds from intensive farming and fossil fuel combustion are dumped on the Scottish rainforest from the sky, killing off the lichen and bryophytes that absorb water from the air and are highly sensitive to atmospheric conditions.

“The temperate rainforest is far from the sources of pollution, yet because it’s so rainy, we’re getting a kind of acid rain effect,” says Jenny Hawley, policy manager at Plantlife, which has called nitrogen pollution in the air “the elephant in the room” of nature conservation. “The nitrogen-rich rain that’s coming down and depositing nitrogen into those habitats is making it impossible for the lichen, fungi, mosses and wildflowers to survive.”

Environmental destruction caused by nitrogen pollution is not limited to the Scottish rainforest. Algal blooms around the world are often caused by runoff from farming, resulting in vast dead zones in oceans and lakes that kill scores of fish and devastate ecosystems. Nitrogen-rich rainwater degrades the ability of peatlands to sequester carbon, the protection of which is a stated climate goal of several governments. Wildflowers adapted to low-nitrogen soils are squeezed out by aggressive nettles and cow parsley, making them less diverse.

About 80% of nitrogen used by humans – through food production, transport, energy and industrial and wastewater processes – is wasted and enters the environment as pollution.

“Nitrogen pollution might not result in huge floods and apocalyptic droughts but we are slowly eating away at biodiversity as we put more and more nitrogen in ecosystems,” says Carly Stevens, a plant ecologist at Lancaster University. “Across the UK, we have shown that habitats that have lots of nitrogen have fewer species in them. We have shown it across Europe. We have shown it across the US. Now we’re showing it in China. We’re creating more and more damage all the time.”

To decrease the amount of nitrogen pollution causing biodiversity loss, governments will commit to halving nutrient runoff by 2030 as part of an agreement for nature currently being negotiated in Kunming. Halting the waste of vast amounts of nitrogen fertiliser in agriculture is a key part of meeting the target, says Kevin Hicks, a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute centre at York.

“One of the biggest problems is the flow of nitrogen from farming into watercourses,” Hicks says. “In terms of a nitrogen footprint, the most intensive thing that you can eat is meat. The more meat you eat, the more nitrogen you’re putting into the environment.”

Mark Sutton, a professor at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, says reducing nitrogen pollution also makes economic sense.

“Nitrogen in the atmosphere is 78% of every breath we take. It does nothing, it’s very stable and makes the sky blue. Then there are all these other nitrogen compounds: ammonia, nitrates, nitrous oxide. They create air and water pollution,” he says. He argues that if you price every kilo of nitrogen at $1 (an estimated fertiliser price), and multiply it by the amount of nitrogen pollution lost in the world – 200bn tonnes – it amounts to $200bn (£147bn) every year.

“The goal to cut nitrogen waste in half would save you $100bn,” he says. “I think $100bn a year is a worthwhile saving.” PG

Invasive species

The problem for islands: ‘We have to be very careful’

On Gough Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, scores of seabird chicks are eaten by mice every year. The rodents were accidentally introduced by sailors in the 19th century and their population has surged, putting the Tristan albatross – one of the largest of its species – at risk of extinction along with dozens of rare seabirds. Although Tristan albatross chicks are 300 times the size of mice, two-thirds did not fledge in 2020 largely because of the injuries they sustained from the rodents, according to the RSPB .

The situation on the remote island, 2,600km from South Africa, is a grisly warning of the consequences of the human-driven impacts of invasive species on biodiversity. An RSPB-led operation to eradicate mice from the British overseas territory has been completed, using poison to help save the critically endangered albatross and other bird species from injuries they sustain from the rodents. It will be two years before researchers can confirm whether or not the plan has worked. But some conservationists want to explore another controversial option whose application is most advanced in the eradication of malaria : gene drives.

Instead of large-scale trapping or poisoning operations, which have limited effectiveness and can harm other species, gene drives involve introducing genetic code into an invasive population that would make them infertile or all one gender over successive generations. The method has so far been used only in a laboratory setting but at September’s IUCN congress in Marseille, members backed a motion to develop a policy on researching its application and other uses of synthetic biology for conservation.

“If a gene drive were proven to be effective and there were safety mechanisms to limit its deployment, you would introduce multiple individuals on an island whose genes would be inherited by other individuals in the population,” says David Will, an innovation programme manager with Island Conservation , a non-profit dedicated to preventing extinctions by removing invasive species from islands. “Eventually, you would have either an entirely all male or entirely all female population and they would no longer be able to reproduce.”

Nearly one-fifth of the Earth’s surface is at risk of plant and animal invasions and although the problem is worldwide, such as feral pigs wreaking havoc in the southern United States and lionfish in the Mediterranean , islands are often worst affected. The global scale of the issue will be revealed in a UN scientific assessment in 2023.

“We have to be very careful,” says Austin Burt, a professor of evolutionary genetics at Imperial College London, who researches how gene drives can be used to eradicate malaria in mosquito populations. “If you’re going after mice, for example, and you’re targeting mice on an island, you’d need to make sure that none of those modified mice got off the island to cause harm to the mainland population.”

In July, scientists announced they had successfully wiped out a population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes using a gene drive in a laboratory setting, raising the prospect of self-destructing mosquitoes being released into the wild in the next decade.

Kent Redford, chair of the IUCN Task Force on Synthetic Biology who led an assessment of the use of synthetic biology in conservation, said there are clear risks and opportunities in the field but further research is necessary.

“None of these genetic tools are ever going to be a panacea. Ever. Nor do I think they will ever replace the existing tools,” Redford says, adding: “There is a hope – and I stress hope – that engineered gene drives have the potential to effectively decrease the population sizes of alien invasive species with very limited knock-on effects on other species.” PG

Find more age of extinction coverage here , and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

Biodiversity
The road to Cop15
Endangered species
Endangered habitats
Climate crisis
Conservation

We Are Wasting Time on These Climate Debates. The Next Steps Are Clear.

By John Bistline , Inês Azevedo , Chris Bataille and Steven Davis

Dr. Bistline is a program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. Dr. Azevedo is an associate professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University. Dr. Bataille is a senior researcher at Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales. Dr. Davis is a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report , which was released last week and which we co-authored with many colleagues, offers hope for limiting global warming.

But there is no time to waste. And wasted time includes time spent debating issues that divert us from our most important priorities right now.

Unfortunately, debates about distant future decisions and future uncertainties are distracting advocates, policymakers, researchers and the public from their shared, near-term goals. At best, these disputes give observers — especially policymakers and their advisers, who are trying to make tough short-term decisions during a global energy security crisis — a misleading impression that experts disagree about effective steps to decarbonize energy systems. At worst, these disputes can stall progress by delaying policies and incentives that would accelerate clean energy deployment.

Rather than getting mired in these debates, we should focus on credible commitments to public policy, private investment and innovation.

The Paris Agreement goal of keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) past preindustrial levels means reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by roughly half by 2030 , on the way to net-zero emissions by near midcentury. As we pursue these ambitious reductions, debates about how much of our energy can or should come from wind and solar 30 years from now obfuscate a near-consensus on next steps . For the coming decade, rapidly reducing coal electricity and building extensive wind, solar and storage systems are low-cost strategies in many places, regardless of how much energy might or might not eventually come from renewables.

This is because plummeting costs make solar and wind increasingly competitive, and electricity from solar is now the “ cheapest source of electricity in history ” in some locations, according to the International Energy Agency. Moreover, the costs of batteries and other storage technologies are also declining. Together with demand response, energy efficiency, and behavior changes, these strategies may support reliable electricity systems with much higher levels of renewables. And while individual actions may help reduce emissions, dramatic changes to energy supply are likely to play a central role in reaching net-zero emissions.

Let’s also not argue about exactly how much carbon removal may be needed by midcentury. Carbon removal and carbon capture have proven to be polarizing among environmental groups; some have resisted state and federal climate policies because of their inclusion. Bear in mind, though, that there are many options for removing carbon from the atmosphere to offset emissions in agriculture, aviation, and industry. Investing in removal-related research and development and exploring commercialization may be valuable near-term steps, but it’s premature to worry about the right balance of carbon removal versus other strategies. Contrary to claims that carbon removal is fundamentally at odds with other strategies, we can spend the next decade simultaneously deploying available clean energy technologies and scaling up removal strategies.

We can also move past the debate over whether we have all the technologies we need . Pilot-scale and commercial projects exist for almost all emissions sources, even for harder-to-abate ones. We’re unlikely to reach ambitious goals like net-zero emissions without making use of all technology and policy tools at our disposal and without continued investments in research and development. Having more options at lower costs could make the energy transition more affordable. Conversely, progress toward mitigating climate change doesn’t depend on any one technology alone, and we’re making strong progress on many fronts. Innovation often breeds more innovation , so positive surprises may yet await us.

Ultimately, we don’t know exactly what a net-zero emissions energy system will look like, but we know enough to keep us busy for at least a decade: We need to deploy mature technologies (renewables, storage, electric vehicles, efficient equipment like heat pumps) and invest in technologies that may be needed down the road. There’s little doubt that net-zero pathways could decrease fossil fuel use, electrify transport, and improve efficiency.

The United States pledged in 2021 to cut emissions at least in half by 2030, but emissions surged almost 7 percent in 2021 . Although the budget bill is currently stalled in the Senate, over $500 billion in clean energy investments in the bill could, according to a recent analysis , put emissions back on track to meet the 2030 target. During a time when global oil and natural gas prices are rising, these tax credits and other policies in the proposed bill also could lower annual energy expenses by 6.6 percent for households and businesses by 2030.

We also need to worry more about issues of land use, permitting and infrastructure. Net-zero will likely require substantial land use for renewables and expansions in transmission and pipeline infrastructure , but there is a reluctance to agree to such projects. For example, Maine voters recently blocked a project to bring more of Quebec’s hydropower into the Northeastern United States, and environmental groups and residents in otherwise climate-conscious states like California and New York have resisted solar and wind farms. Overcoming such challenges requires careful engagement and consensus building among constituencies affected by such projects. Time spent on such engagement now may be time saved later .

Carefully mitigating the risks and balancing the trade-offs associated with different types of deeply decarbonized systems is another important priority. For example, to ensure the near-term reliability and affordability of the electricity grid, regions may want to keep nuclear and natural gas capacity in order to meet growing demand from electric vehicles and to retire coal, even as natural gas is gradually replaced by zero-carbon fuels such as hydrogen.

It is also important to consider how well-designed climate strategies may support national and regional economic goals, including jobs, equity, and overall economic activity. For example, while the costs of rooftop solar are decreasing, there have been large disparities in its adoption in the United States by race, ethnicity, and income . The consequences of air pollution from many current energy systems can be inequitable, but a transition to sustainable and low-carbon energy systems may mitigate such disparities. Decarbonization strategies should aim to equalize opportunities for adopting new technologies and to promote just transitions .

Of course, the United States can’t do this alone. Although actions on the part of this country are imperative if we are to achieve global climate goals, the United States represents a shrinking share of the world’s emissions , and U.S. leadership can help facilitate international collaboration and cooperation on technology transfer, finance, trade, and energy security for all.

The decisions we make now may have an outsize impact on humanity’s long-term future. Climate change threatens to jeopardize communities, public health and the environment. The next steps are clearer and more affordable than they have ever been.

Rather than getting distracted by distant and likely irreducible uncertainties, let’s focus on what matters: deploying clean technologies we know we need, implementing a coherent climate policy, laying the groundwork for future progress and creating a just transition that shares the benefits of a sustainable energy system.

John Bistline is a program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. Inês Azevedo is an associate professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University. Chris Bataille is a senior researcher at Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales. Steven Davis is a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Introduction

1. root causes of climate change and climate injustices, 2. climate justice: distributional, procedural, and recognitional dimensions, 3. injustices of climate responses, 4. the pursuit of climate justice, questions for classroom discussions, acknowledgments, competing interests, climate justice in the global north : an introduction.

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Prakash Kashwan; Climate Justice in the Global North : An Introduction . Case Studies in the Environment 5 February 2021; 5 (1): 1125003. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2021.1125003

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This essay provides a broad-based and jargon-free introduction to climate justice to foster critical thinking, engaged discussions, and profound reflections. It introduces the reader to three dimensions of justice—distributional, procedural, and recognitional justice—and shows how each relates to climate justice. A unique contribution of this essay is to identify and discuss the following three blind spots in the debates on climate justice: (1) the tendency to focus heavily on post hoc effects of climate change while ignoring the root causes of climate change that also contribute to injustices; (2) assuming incorrectly that all climate action contributes to climate justice, even though some types of climate responses can produce new climate injustices; and (3) although scholars have studied the causes of climate injustices extensively, the specific pathways to climate justice remain underdeveloped. This essay concludes by showcasing a few examples of the ongoing pursuits of climate justice, led by social justice groups, local governments, and some government agencies.

Climate change is an existential threat to human civilization. The increased frequency of climate-related disasters has been responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in different parts of the world. 1 Yet climate change does not affect everyone equally; its consequences are distributed unequally between world regions, countries, and social groups within countries.

Countries that make up the Global North, or the “developed countries” (For a useful discussion of the vocabulary of developing versus developed countries, see https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/04/372684438/if-you-shouldnt-call-it-the-third-world-what-should-you-call-it .), have benefited significantly from the energy-intensive industrial development responsible for warming the earth’s atmosphere. However, the poorest countries pay a steep price, especially highly vulnerable small island nations (e.g., Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Papa New Guinea, Haiti, and Guinea-Bissau) contributing the least to the climate crisis. Therefore, global policy experts often describe climate justice as an international issue.

The rapidly increasing emissions from China, India, and other middle-income countries cause concern, especially for the poor, who must bear the worst consequences of deteriorating land, water, and air quality. However, the climate crisis unfolding now is a result of the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the earth’s atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, to which middle-income countries have contributed very little. According to one estimate, the United States alone has contributed nearly 35% of the total cumulative global CO 2 emissions since 1750. 2 Irrespective of where one stands on this debate, nationality and international borders are only two of several factors contributing to various types of climate injustices. Differences in income and wealth, race, gender, ethnicity, age, and sexual identities within countries also contribute significantly to climate injustices.

This essay’s primary goal is to introduce readers to climate justice questions within the Global North. Debating these questions in our backyard is vital because a focus on the poor people in the Global South detracts from a deeper understanding of inequalities and injustice at home. Equally important, a focus on the Global North allows for a better understanding of the root causes and the here-and-now nature of the currently unfolding climate crisis. The socially discriminatory effects of climate change are evident from the reportage of climate-related disasters in the United States and elsewhere, especially beginning with Hurricane Katrina [ 1 ]. Therefore, it is useful to think of climate justice as a framework to recognize and redress the unequal distribution of costs and burdens of climate change and climate responses of various types. Moreover, climate justice also requires ensuring that those affected most severely by climate change participate in brainstorming, developing, and implementing climate responses.

Attaining a substantive and deep understanding first requires recognizing three blind spots in climate justice discussions. One, even though the leading cause of climate change is related to energy-intensive lifestyles, most climate change discussions, including those on climate justice, often focus on the effects of climate change. A comprehensive explanation of climate justice requires avoiding such post hoc tendencies and centering our discussions on climate change’s root causes. Two, very often “radical” climate response is equated with climate justice, which does not hold in all circumstances. As the discussions below show, some radical climate responses may contribute to new kinds of injustices. Three, even though understanding the sources and the effects of climate injustices is necessary, such understanding does not translate easily into the specific actions needed to realize climate justice in practice. Accordingly, this essay concludes with a brief discussion of several ongoing pursuits of climate justice.

An in-depth inquiry into the historical trajectory of climate change and climate denialism of the past half century shows that the concentration of political and economic power has been a significant cause of the current climate crisis. The distribution of power influences how environmental amenities (e.g., clean air) and problems (e.g., pollution) are valued and distributed within national boundaries. The current economic system and the patterns of consumption it promotes are responsible for environmental degradation and environmental injustices [ 2 ]. For example, a select few multinational corporations control nearly all the global food business and consume 75% of the entire food sector’s energy requirements—but feed a much smaller proportion of the world’s population[ 3 ]. More broadly, the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population produces almost as much GHG emissions as the bottom 90% combined [ 4 ]. The extent of income inequalities within the United States and the UK shows that these inequalities are not merely due to the differences in national economic growth, which advocates of the free market often present as a solution to poverty and underdevelopment. For instance, income growth over the last few decades has lowered the well-being of large parts of the U.S. population while supporting profligate consumption among the wealthiest [ 5 ]. Such a lopsided distribution of economic growth benefits is responsible for increased precariousness among large sections of the Global North population, the climate crisis, and the myriad climate injustices.

One manifestation of the imbalances in political and economic power is corporate climate denialism, which powerful corporations engineered to protect the status quo’s benefits. Fossil fuel multinational corporations based in the United States have known since the early 1970s that the burning of fossil fuels caused global warming and climate change. The documents made public during the ongoing lawsuits against Exxon Mobil show that instead of acting on their knowledge of global warming, major fossil fuel corporations orchestrated a campaign of climate denialism [ 6 ]. These campaigns sowed seeds of doubt among the public and allowed the federal and state governments to continue supporting the fossil fuel industry’s expansion.

Data from the Washington-based Environmental and Energy Study Institute suggest that as of the year 2019, the U.S. government awarded approximately US$20 billion per year in direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Eighty percent of these subsidies went to the natural gas and crude oil industries, while the coal industry received the remaining 20%. 3 Similarly, the European Union subsidizes the fossil fuel industry by an estimated 55 billion euros (or approximately US$65 billion) annually. These subsidies give fossil fuel corporations enormous power over governments in economically underdeveloped countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, where fossil fuel extraction occurs. Therefore, fossil fuel subsidies exacerbate international inequalities that date back to European colonization and continue to shape developmental disparities today [ 7 ].

The adverse environmental and public health impacts of fossil fuel subsidies cost the global community an estimated US$5.3 trillion in 2015 alone [ 8 ]. The costs of environmental toxicity burdens fall disproportionately on the poor and marginalized community groups who lack the political and economic power to hold the business and political actors to account. The situation is especially problematic in some of the poorest oil exporting countries, such as Angola and Nigeria. However, as the vast scholarship on environmental justice shows, the poor and racial minorities in the United States also suffer the worst consequences of environmental pollution from landfills, toxic waste dumps, and petrochemical facilities [ 9 ]. One particularly hard-hit area is a stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which hosts many highly polluting petrochemical facilities. Because of the pollution caused by the petrochemical industries, residents there have such high rates of cancer that the areas is known as the “Cancer Alley” [ 10 ]. Cancer Alley has been a focal point of the U.S. environmental justice movement for over three decades [ 11 ]. However, there has been no perceptible change in the extent of environmental injustices in the Cancer Alley and other Petrochemical hubs. These toxic hot spots create dangerous new hazards in the face of the calamities linked to the climate crisis.

Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana in August 2020 with a wind speed of 150 mph, which made it the strongest Category 4 hurricane on record since 1856. A Yale University report suggested that climate change may explain the rapid intensification of Atlantic hurricanes, such as Laura, which caught the forecasters and the public off guard. 4 That results in even more severe impacts on the poor because they are least well prepared to confront these crises. These calamities are especially dangerous for communities living in areas such as Cancer Alley. Well into the second day after the deadly winds from Laura had died down, the residents of Mossville were grappling with the effects of toxic gases released from a fire that erupted during the storm in a chlorine plant owned by BioLab in Westlake, Louisiana. 5 Mossville constitutes an archetypical case of the confluence of environmental and climate injustices. Still, it is also a testimony to the deeply entrenched and ongoing effects of the history of slavery in the United States.

Mossville was founded in 1790 by formerly enslaved and free people of color, who sought refuge in a swamp to escape the oppression of segregation. They made it into a community that practiced agriculture, fishing, and hunting for generations. However, successive rounds of zoning decisions by White elected officials transformed Mossville into the “ground zero of the chemical industry boom.” 6 Industry owners forced most residents to sell off their properties. At the same time, those who stayed had no choice but to suffer the consequences of prolonged exposure to industrial pollution and toxic contamination. 7 Mossville’s struggles are not just a domestic issue either. The Lake Charles Chemical Complex responsible for devastating effects on the local environment and the health and well-being of Mossville residents is under the management of the South African Synthetic Oil Limited (SASOL). The apartheid-era South African government, hamstrung by international sanctions, established SASOL in 1950 to transform coal into fuel and chemicals using a technology developed by engineers in the Nazi-era Germany. 8 This environmentally degrading technology is no longer in use, but SASOL’s record of social and environmental impacts remains appalling.

The fossil fuel industry is also tightly coupled with the defense industry, which aids the U.S. foreign policy goal of controlling the supply of oil, rare minerals, other extractive industries, and strategic shipping lanes crucial for transportation. 9 It is common knowledge that the Bush administration’s desire to control oil supply was one of the primary motivations for the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. The Department of Defense is the single largest consumer of energy in the United States and the world’s single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels [ 12 ]. The so-called military-industrial complex 10 exists to influence political decisions to support state subsidies for the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. In other words, political and administrative decisions, not some random mistakes or unavoidable trade-offs, are responsible for endangering the health of the planet and the lives of poor racial minorities in areas like Cancer Alley and communities like Mossville.

Tragically, the Black communities who suffer the most from these environmental injustices are also subject to myriad other injustices, such as the police brutalities that have catalyzed a global Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Social scientists Lindsey Dillon and Julie Sze argue that the phrase “I can’t breathe,” which became a rallying cry for the BLM, points to the environmental and social conditions through which “breath is constricted or denied” [ 13 ]. The military-industrial complex is responsible, in more than one ways, for producing the “embodied insecurity of Black lives” [ 13 ]. For example, a Department of Defense program called “1033” enables local police departments to purchase “surplus” war zone equipment, including the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. 11 The Ferguson Police Department deployed some of this military-grade equipment on the streets of Ferguson to suppress public protests against the police shooting and killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. 12 Investigations by the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit corporate and government accountability research institute, show that police foundations that support local police departments are partially funded by fossil fuel corporations such as Chevron, Shell and Wells Fargo. Their report concluded: “Many powerful companies that drive environmental injustice are also backers of the same police departments that tyrannize the very communities these corporate actors pollute” [ 14 , 15 ].

These complex links between social, environmental, and climate injustices are reminders that it may not always be useful to consider social, environmental, and climate injustices in isolation from one another. 13

“Climate justice” is commonly thought of as the unfair distribution of costs and burdens of climate change. However, two other dimensions of justice spelled out by justice theorists are equally important: procedural and recognitional justice. This section explains each of these three dimensions and their relation to pursuits of climate justice.

2.1. Distributional Effects of Climate Change

Distributional justice focuses on a fair distribution of costs and burdens of climate change and the societal responses to climate change. Vulnerability to climate change is a result of a lack of protection against risks linked to natural events. If everyone in society were equally protected, the costs and burdens related to a disaster would not fall disproportionately on some social groups. However, individuals and groups, such as racial minorities, homeless people, people with disabilities, single moms, and poor people, are more vulnerable to the effects of disasters. These vulnerabilities are a result of policies and programs that push racial minorities and other socially marginalized groups into poverty and destitution. Exclusionary zoning laws and redlining policies during the New Deal era illustrate this point well. The term “redlining” referred to the practice of drawing red lines on urban planning maps to identify African American neighborhoods as being “too risky to insure mortgages.” 14 These maps informed the actions of the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, and Home Owners Loan Corp., thereby depriving African American towns and neighborhoods of public investments. The members of minority communities could not buy properties in some areas because the administration “reserved” these neighborhoods for affluent White families [ 16 ].

This history of urban segregation and racially prejudiced urban and suburban developments is why inner-city neighborhoods lack basic civic amenities and infrastructure that middle-class neighborhoods take for granted. These historical legacies translate into increased vulnerabilities in the context of the climate crisis. For example, an estimated 400,000 New Yorkers who live in the New York City Housing Authority’s public housing developments bore the worst effects of Hurricane Sandy in October–November 2012. The floods that occurred because of Hurricane Sandy greatly exacerbated rampant mold problems in these projects, with far-reaching health impacts for residents with respiratory illnesses [ 14 ]. The quality and affordability of housing for minorities are also among the causes of “energy poverty” or high energy burden, which is the percentage of income a person or household spends on energy [ 17 , 18 ]. Energy poverty makes it difficult to cope with the impacts of storms and floods while also leaving the energy-poor families vulnerable to the shocks related to increased energy prices that could result from a transition to renewable energy.

The problem is equally or even more severe in the predominantly African American rural areas. For instance, a 2017 report in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that among 55 adults surveyed in Lowndes County, Alabama, 34.5% tested positive for hookworms. The presence of this intestinal parasite is a sign of extreme poverty. Specifically, it results from an inadequate sewage system with cracked pipes of untreated waste that contaminate drinking water. In some places, this results in open pools of raw sewage, which flush human feces back into kitchen sinks and bathtubs during the rainy season [ 19 ]. Environmental and climate justice activist Catherine Flowers argues that the intensification of heavy rains and floods because of the ongoing climate crisis is overwhelming the broken sewer systems and undermining poor African Americans’ lives and livelihoods [ 20 ].

The distributive injustices of the economic system have become even more pronounced in the presence of large and increasing wealth and income inequalities. These distributional inequalities affect entire regions and local juridisctions, undermining their ability to provide civil amenities in the aftermath of a natural disaster and ensure human security. A stark reflection of these distributional consequences is that the poor and the marginalized experience the most devastating impacts of a climate disaster, that is, the loss of human lives.

2.2. Procedural Rights

Another important dimension of climate justice is procedural justice, which refers to whether and how the groups most affected by climate change have meaningful opportunities to participate in brainstorming, designing, and implementing climate responses. Historically, African Americans and other racial minorities have been under-represented in environmental and climate movements. The U.S. environmental justice movement has been calling attention to this issue for a quarter of a century, yet the problem of a lack of diversity persists. Research on 191 conservation and preservation organizations, 74 government environmental agencies, and 28 environmental grant-making foundations shows that racial minorities constitute 16% of staff and board members. Once recruited, members of minority communities tend to concentrate in lower ranks, trapped beneath a glass ceiling [ 21 ]. Although environmental institutions have made significant progress on gender diversity, such gains have mostly accrued to White women [ 21 ]. Such an under-representation in environmental movements leads to the exclusion of minorities from policy-making processes, which also creates the mistaken assumption that racial minorities are too poor to care about the environment or climate change. However, nationally representative surveys show that people of color, including Hispanics/Latinos, African Americans, and other non-White racial/ethnic groups, are more concerned than Whites about climate change [ 22 ]. Even so, higher levels of awareness are not sufficient to foster meaningful participation, which requires carefully designed processes that facilitate respectful engagement between members of marginalized groups and decision makers, such as city leaders [ 23 ].

The involvement of those affected most by climate change is essential for two key reasons. First, there are legal, statutory, political reasons for ensuring broad-based participation. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development sets out three fundamental access rights: access to information, access to public participation, and access to justice as key pillars of sound environmental governance [ 24 ]. Agenda 21 has subsequently been integrated into various national, provincial, and local statutes and continues to be a source of learning for the ongoing debates about just transition [ 25 ]. The access rights are also in conformity with recognizing political and civil rights as the essence of universal rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A second reason for ensuring local participation has to do with the substantive effects of an inclusive process. Those most affected by the climate crisis are also likely to contribute the most insightful ideas about how best to address the vulnerabilities that produce climate injustices in the first place. For example, the Office of Sustainability in the city of Providence, RI, partnered with the city’s Racial and Environmental Justice Committee to make sure that the city’s climate action plan adhered to the Just Providence Framework developed previously by the city residents and leaders. 15 This process turned out to be so successful that the city’s Climate Action Plan metamorphosed into a Climate Justice Plan. Additionally, the city’s Office of Sustainability adopted a system of governance that is based on collaborating actively and routinely with community-based organizations. 16

2.3. “Recognitional” Justice

The promises of procedural justice remain unfulfilled in many cases because people from all social groups are not always recognized as legitimate actors, whose understanding of a problem and whose interests and priorities should inform the design and implementation of policies and programs [ 26 ]. On the other hand, marginalized groups are subject to mis recognition, which Nancy Fraser refers to as an institutionalized pattern of cultural values that “constitutes some social actors as less than full members of society and prevents them from participating as peers” [ 27 ]. Thus, the twin concepts of recognition and misrecognition are related to patterns of “privilege and oppression,” which manifest in the form of “cultural domination, being rendered invisible, and routine stereotyping or maligning in public representations” [ 26 ]. In a very profound way, recognition and misrecognition are the foundational questions of climate justice with wide-ranging consequences. As David Schlosberg has argued, a lack of respect and recognition often leads to a decline in a person’s or a group’s “membership and participation in the greater community, including the political and institutional order” [ 28 ]. Therefore, a lack of recognition presents a formidable barrier against addressing procedural and distributional concerns.

The following example illustrates how questions of recognition manifest in climate policy contexts. Harvey, a category 4 hurricane, struck Houston in August 2017. Maria, a category 5 hurricane, struck Puerto Rico in September. A review of public records from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and interviews with more than 50 people involved with disaster response revealed that the Trump administration’s response was far more swift in Houston than Puerto Rico, which experienced far greater destruction [ 29 ]. Many Puerto Ricans believed that this was more evidence that the president viewed them as “second-class American citizens” [ 30 ]. On numerous occasions, President Trump criticized Puerto Rico for being a “mess” and its leaders as “crazed and incompetent,” which constitutes an instance of misrecognition [ 31 ]. The Governor of Puerto Rico Tweeted, “Mr. President, once again, we are not your adversaries, we are your citizens” [ 31 ]. The Governor of Puerto Rico felt that the Trump administration did not recognize their rights as U.S. citizens, which influenced how the federal government responded to the most devastating climate-related disaster to date in the United States. Such lack of recognition or misrecognition is not new; it did not start with the Trump administration. Even though Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, the national political process treats them as subordinates. They do not have voting representation in the U.S. Congress or the Presidential elections. Unfortunately, a more detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this essay. Still, other scholars show how the environmental and climate injustices experienced by the people of Puerto Rico result from a long history of colonialism, occupation of large parts of the island’s territory by the U.S. Navy, and the neoliberal policies imposed on the island [ 32 , 33 ].

African American citizens in the United States have had very similar experiences, even though the political process does not disadvantage them formally. The dominant narratives used in media and political discourse, which often describe African American men as aggressive, angry, and prone to criminal violence, reinforce longstanding prejudices against racial minorities. Such negative constructions of social identities lead some to perceive the presence of African American men in the wilderness, or even in parks, as suspicious or threatening. A May 2020 incident involving an African American birder in New York’s Central Park illustrates the point. The birder asked a White woman jogger to leash her dog, as the law required. However, instead of following the park rules, the woman called the cops on the birder. A video recorded by the birder and circulated widely on social media showed the woman repeatedly telling the cops on the phone that “there’s an African American man threatening my life” [ 34 ]. Afterward, several other African American birders and hikers shared similar racial profiling experiences on social media with hashtags like #BirdingWhileBlack and #HikingWhileBlack. A common theme evident in each of these experiences is that many White people in the United States do not perceive or recognize Black people as birders, nature photographers, or hikers [ 35 , 36 ].

Other social groups, such as indigenous people and Latinx, are also often subject to prejudices and profiling, which contribute to the negative construction of their identities and instances of misrecognition in society and politics [ 37 ]. As Nancy Fraser argues, misrecognition and negative stereotyping can contribute to the institutionalization of prejudiced norms within public policies and programs, for example, via the zoning and redlining practices that sacrifice the interests of negatively portrayed groups. Notwithstanding the racialized histories of urban development in the United States and elsewhere, some commentators argue that the considerations of social justice will muddle the efforts to decarbonize the economy “quickly and efficiently.” 17 This argument draws on the perspective that there are significant trade-offs between climate action and climate justice.

One relevant example is hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which many see as a boon for providing abundant natural gas supplies crucial to the “transition” away from the dirty fuel of coal. They argue that the relatively more climate-friendly energy available from natural gas, coupled with economic benefits that local communities gain in the short term, must be weighed against the risks of adverse public health and environmental consequences. 18 Yet, laws that protect the privacy of proprietary data hinder public access to information about the health and ecological consequences of the chemical cocktails used in fracking, even though such information is vital to the goals of public health and environmental protections. Overall, a broader systems approach suggests a significantly more extensive set of adverse consequences, including the “impacts from the decline in water quality on soil, land, and ecosystem productivity (crops/animal health); effects of fracking-related air pollution on pollinators; effects on the development of local, alternative food systems; and, fracking-related boom-bust dynamics” [ 38 ]. The range of these negative consequences raise questions about the narratives of trade-offs in fracking .

Some proponents of a speedy transition to renewable energy also cite the supposed tradeoff between efficiency and equity to argue for allowing competent energy companies to develop, install, and own industrial-scale renewable energy grids. However, this view ignores the many benefits of wide-ranging consultations and collaborations with local communities that could enhance the public acceptance and efficacy of renewable energy infrastructure [ 39 ]. Somewhat ironically, some of the most challenging trade-offs may be witnessed in communities most vulnerable to climate change, for example, indigenous communities that seek to secure their “sovereignty by the barrel” because the compulsions borne out of marginality constrain their choices for economic development. 19 Such a “take it or leave it” scenario of limited choices reflects longstanding disadvantages, which the ongoing climate crisis is likely to exacerbate. Overall, it is crucial to investigate the arguments about potential trade-offs in a nuanced way so that some parties do not weaponize these arguments [ 40 ].

Climate response has three components: mitigation, which refers to actions that help reduce emissions of GHGs; adaptation, which refers to measures that reduce vulnerability to the consequences of climate change; and resilience, which refers to the properties that enable a socioecological system to withstand the shocks of climate change. Although adaptation and resilience are closely intertwined, adaptation actions are generally thought of as responses to climate change impacts, while resilience actions are anticipatory. Each of these three types of “climate responses” has important implications for justice. Additionally, we briefly consider the importance of taking an intersectional approach to understanding climate action’s justice effects.

A central component of the efforts to mitigate climate change is to curtail carbon emissions linked to energy-intensive consumption. However, in democratic societies, one cannot merely ban or arbitrarily restrict energy-intensive activities, not least because many of these activities are a source of employment and other means of economic wellbeing for many lower-income families. The next best option is to put a price on carbon emissions, commonly referred to as “carbon tax,” which many scholars and practitioners see as one of the most effective means of climate mitigation. If we lived in a world of economic and wealth equality, a carbon tax would simply realign economic incentives without imposing excessive burdens on specific social groups. However, in the presence of massive economic and wealth inequalities, a carbon tax would affect poor and/or racial minority households very differently compared to others. Unless subsistence items, such as food, water, and energy were protected from the inflationary effects of carbon taxes, even a moderate level of the carbon tax could make these items too expensive for the poor in the United States.

In Paris, the Yellow Vest protestors cited economic inequalities and the unfairness of the gas tax that President Emmanuel Macron announced in 2019 as one of the main reasons for the protests. The protestors felt that it was unfair to ask low- and middle-income folks to “make sacrifices while rich people aren’t paying taxes anymore.” This feeling of unfairness contributed to “a sense of despair, as well as a sense of social injustice” [ 41 ]. The adverse effects of climate mitigation are not always contained within the national borders, though.

Carbon offsets projects, including some that may be funded by environmentally conscious consumers paying an airline a little extra to offset the emissions linked to their air travel, have been implicated in the dispossession and displacements of indigenous groups in different parts of the world. 20 Such projects may be less problematic when implemented within the Global North, characterized by the security of property rights and a robust rule of law. These conditions do not apply to most terrestrial carbon offset projects in Africa or Asia. Over 95% of forestlands are legally defined as public lands, even though most of these lands have been used customarily by indigenous peoples and other rural populations. Under those conditions, the financial returns linked to carbon offset projects incentivize powerful government agencies and private actors to set aside these lands for carbon offset projects, including in countries where customary land tenures are protected under the statute. The international community has developed social safeguards and other codes of conduct to regulate offset projects. However, research by the Center for International Forestry Research, the Oakland Institute, and the Rights & Resources Initiative shows that international offset projects contribute to widespread human rights violations [ 42 , 43 ].

Similarly, a large-scale switch to renewables, including electric or hybrid batteries, windmills, and solar panels, could lead to a sudden spike in demand for rare minerals, such as copper and cobalt. The mining of these minerals also often contributes to gross human rights abuses, including child labor and the degradation and depletion of natural resources, such as water, forests, and pastures crucial for local livelihoods in the Global South [ 44 ]. For these reasons, some scholars argue that industrial-scale renewable energy infrastructure can be as exploitative as the fossil fuel industry practices have been. Noticeably, this argument applies to industrial-scale renewable infrastructure. Renewable energy resources can also exist in the form of “energy commons,” which give local communities real stakes in making decisions about siting, pricing, and profit-sharing [ 45 ]. Such democratization of energy infrastructure is crucial for implementing a transition plan that suits the site-specific requirements.

Some consider climate adaptation, that is, the measures designed to deal with the climate crisis, to be synonymous with climate justice. The argument is that if the worst consequences of climate change fall on the poor and the marginalized, any interventions meant to adapt to climate change would necessarily help the poor. Yet not all climate adaptation measures are created equal. For example, coastal adaptation measures in response to sea-level rise should help sustain rather than disrupt subsistence and artisanal fishing, which are the mainstay of livelihood strategies for many coastal frontline communities. More broadly, as Dean Hardy and colleagues argue, “the land facing inundation is racialized land…that has been appropriated, settled, cultivated, and distributed through a long history of deeply racialized projects” [ 46 ]. They argue that sea-level rise adaptation planning must recognize the reality of such “racial coastal formations” and must commit to “resist the reproduction of and reinvestments in racial inequality in responses to climate change” [ 46 ].

The failure to address racial inequalities means that many urban climate adaptation interventions, such as public transit systems, public parks, and improved civic amenities, may increase property prices or rentals, which makes some areas unaffordable to their current residents. These changes lead to urban gentrification, which refers to the changes in a neighborhood’s composition because of changes in property values. It is called climate gentrification when such changes are related to climate change [ 47 ]. The framework of climate gentrification helps illuminate the social determinants of vulnerability. For example, as the rising sea levels and frequent flooding threaten expensive properties on Miami’s famed beaches, wealthy people invest in properties inland. The flux of new investments and new wealthy residents makes the previously low-income neighborhoods too costly to afford for low-income groups [ 48 ]. As human geographer Jesse Ribot has argued, “vulnerability does not fall from the sky” [ 49 ]. Considering that socioeconomic deprivations contribute to climate change-related vulnerabilities, any efforts to address climate injustice must address such disadvantages.

The discussions above demonstrate that climate injustices are not just about the “climate system” or “global warming” but are rooted firmly in the unequal patterns of vulnerabilities shaped by the distribution of social and political power and economic inequalities. Climate change’s social consequences manifest in outcomes related to urban development patterns, energy prices, urban transportation, food production, and food markets. By implication, the pursuit of climate justice also requires addressing these various sectors of the economy and society. The following are some examples of how local governments, civic groups, academic institutions, and social movements seek to pursue climate justice.

The fossil-fuel divestment movement popularized by 350.org has grown to secure commitments to divest more than US$14 trillion worth of investments made by more than 1,230 institutions, including religious institutions, pension funds, university endowments, and large charitable foundations. College students from several universities in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere have made significant contributions to the global fossil fuel divestment movement’s ongoing success [ 50 ]. The decline of the fossil fuel industry, including the state-owned oil corporations in some of the largest oil producing countries, will undoubtedly lower environmental pollution and contribute to environmental and climate justice. Another example from the energy sector is the 2019 Tennessee Valley Energy Democracy Tour, which focused on building a collective grassroots vision for an egalitarian energy future in the communities impacted by the New Deal era projects of the Tennessee Valley Authority. 21 This tour served as a good reminder of why we need to pay attention to the historical legacies of unequal development and socioeconomic marginalization. Transformative reforms in state-level energy policies and programs are other crucial elements necessary for fostering an inclusive clean energy action. The Washington-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance scores and ranks states on their energy policies, specifically their devolution and inclusiveness [ 51 ]. Such rankings create useful resources for grassroots actors and could help foster healthy competition among states.

Climate justice interventions related to urban areas include the Miami City Commission’s resolution directing the city managers to research urban gentrification and ways of stabilizing property tax rates in lower income areas located further inland [ 52 ]. City governments can act to institutionalize other means of fostering a healthy urban ecosystem. In 2019, the Boston City Council voted unanimously to enact a Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) for a more equitable food purchasing system at public institutions. Seven other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cincinnati, have also adopted GFPP policies [ 53 ]. These initiatives help urban populations cut down on their reliance on imported food items that leave a significant carbon footprint. In doing so, they also undercut the stronghold of industrial agriculture, which is a large consumer of fossil fuels and one of the major causes of global climate change [ 54 ]. Equally important, food ordinances can help improve the profitability of urban and peri-urban agro-ecological farming, which is associated with multiple social, economic, environmental, and climate-related benefits [ 55 ]. More broadly, instead of privatizing urban infrastructure or having monopolistic state control, reimagining the city as a “commons” gives urban residents a collective stake in a city’s resources [ 56 ]. Democratizing urban governance—that is, allowing urban residents a meaningful say in the conduct of the ongoing affairs in a city—is an important prerequisite for incorporating concerns of ecology and environment into our urban imaginations.

La Via Campesina , a transnational social movement, promotes agroecology and food sovereignty by engaging with all relevant actors, including the United Nations at the global level and peasant federations at the subnational level. They have been instrumental in the successful enactment of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. La Via Campesina engages with 182 organizations representing an estimated 200 million farmers from 81 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Another example of a grassroots network that has made a global impact is the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), founded in 1990 in Bemidji, MN, to address environmental and economic justice issues. IEN has also been one of the key actors in the global climate justice movement, mainly via its participation in the annual United Nations Climate Change meetings. The IEN has recently launched a People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy: Protect, Repair, Invest and Transform to put indigenous sovereignty and values at the front and center of collective efforts toward a sustainable future [ 57 ].

These are some examples of interventions from various actors and agencies invested in the pursuits of climate justice. Each of the examples cited above addresses a specific policy and programmatic area relevant to the daily lives of the people at the frontlines of climate change. However, the energy-intensive luxury consumption in the Global North and in some sections of the Global South that contribute significantly to the climate crisis does not receive adequate attention from policy makers. Our collective efforts to address climate change are unlikely to succeed if we fail to reduce consumption, especially the consumption of goods and services linked to “luxury emissions,” such as privately owned planes. The average carbon footprint of the wealthiest 1% of people globally could be 175 times that of the poorest 10% [ 58 ]. On the other hand, large sections of populations in the global South are still grappling with the provision of necessities such as nutritious food, safe drinking water, and a reliable supply of clean energy. Hundreds of millions also lack access to amenities such as sanitation systems, schools, and hospitals, as reflected in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The emissions related to these activities are called “survival emissions” [ 59 ]. Some climate policy discussions tend to obfuscate these distinctions using the language of “human footprint” and “population problem” [ 60 ]. Such framings create a false equivalence between luxury consumption and survival emissions, while accounting for these distinctions provides policy guidance for climate policies that can be both just and efficient.

As the discussion on fossil fuel subsidies demonstrates, the patterns of consumption and deprivation are products of political and economic structures. National policies and the actions of powerful state and non-state corporate actors have severe consequences for what happens at the local level. Any high-level reforms would not necessarily translate into a realization of climate justice without social and political mobilization at the grassroots level. For over three decades, environmental and social justice movements have struggled to bring these issues to the public agenda both in the United States and globally. Advocates of climate justice would benefit from building on the insights and lessons from these movements [ 61 ]. Additionally, transformative reforms in the economy and society, executed via the federal or state-level agencies, are also equally important. We must seek to address the limits of liberal state, which are responsible for the entrenchment of racial capitalism and the climate crisis [ 62 ]. Climate justice calls for wide-ranging reforms and concerted actions in the cultural, social, economic, and political spheres.

What separates climate action advocacy from climate justice advocacy?

Is it too much to expect climate justice advocates to also address questions of social injustices of race, gender, and sexual identity, among others?

In your assessment, are links between the military-industrial complex, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the outcomes of environmental and climate justice that this essay suggest a bit “over the top”? Why or why not?

Do the simultaneous pursuits of climate response and climate justice necessarily entail trade-offs? What factors must be considered in assessing the extent of a trade-off in any given situation?

How does the consideration of a plurality of values to define human well-being affect our assessment of trade-offs in climate action/climate justice debates?

How could we reorient our food systems to promote socially just climate responses?

What role can municipal governments play in promoting climate justice?

Are the arguments about “city as a commons” or “energy commons” part of utopian thinking that cannot be translated into pragmatic policy reforms?

What roles do consumers and citizens play in advancing the goals of climate justice?

Could you think of examples of policies and programs not discussed above that might also contribute to climate justice? For each example, please explain the specific contribution to climate justice.

The author acknowledges the generous and insightful comments by Sikina Jinnah on the first two drafts and comments by Betty Hanson on the penultimate draft. The original impetus for this pedagogical note came from a new course I developed at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. I am thankful to the students who took the class in spring 2019, who engaged vigorously with the note and contributed to its expansion to its present form.

The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

An additional 250,000 deaths a year are attributed to climate change, though that number continues to be contested by others who argue that the global death toll related to the ongoing climate crisis is likely to be much higher. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/climate-change-health-emergency-study/index.html .

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/24/18512804/climate-change-united-states-china-emissions .

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs .

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/08/climate-change-is-causing-more-rapid-intensification-of-atlantic-hurricanes/ .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/08/28/hurricane-laura-chemicals-pollution/ .

https://www.sierraclub.org/change/2016/09/climate-justice-and-climate-apartheid .

The author owes the knowledge of these international connections to the screening of the documentary Mossville: When Great Trees Fall as part of Scalawag’s “Breathing While Black” virtual event on June 25, 2020. See https://www.scalawagmagazine.org/about/ ; and http://www.mossvilleproject.com/ .

https://slate.com/business/2006/10/the-nazi-germany-apartheid-south-africa-invention-that-could-make-oil-obsolete.html .

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/26/10-ways-climate-crisis-and-militarism-are-intertwined .

https://www.britannica.com/topic/military-industrial-complex .

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/13/ferguson-police-michael-brown-militarization-column/14006383/ .

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/the-pentagon-gave-the-ferguson-police-department-military-grade-weapons/376033/ .

https://mn350.org/2020/06/black-lives-matter-there-is-no-climate-justice-without-racial-justice/ .

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america .

https://grist.org/article/providence-shows-other-cities-how-environmental-justice-is-done/ .

Anon. 2019. The City of Providence’s Climate Justice Plan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html .

https://www.aeaweb.org/research/fracking-shale-local-impact-net .

https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/sovereignty-by-the-barrel-tribe-takes-control-of-oil-production-4F796kUAo0S2GrEx3TfGbw .

https://redd-monitor.org/2016/10/19/five-responses-to-the-aviation-industrys-carbon-offsetting-scam/ .

The tour was co-organized by Appalachian Voices, Science for the People, Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM), Working Films, and a group of community members and organizers in the greater Knoxville area. http://appvoices.org/2019/11/26/re-envisioning-public-power-in-the-tennessee-valley/ .

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4 Effects of Globalization on the Environment

Rainforest deforestation resulting from globalization

15 Apr 2021

Globalization —defined in the online course Global Business as the increased flow of goods, services, capital, people, and ideas across international boundaries—has brought many changes in its wake.

While globalization can positively and negatively impact society, its effect on the environment is primarily negative. Here’s a breakdown of how globalization impacts society and the environment and what business leaders can do to reduce these negative consequences.

How Does Globalization Affect Society?

The world has become more connected than ever before through the increase in technological advancements and economic integrations. Advanced economies are formed as domestic businesses transform into international ones and further contribute to the spread of technology around the world.

There are several benefits of globalization , such as increased international trade and cooperation and less international aggression. Social globalization —the sharing of ideas and information between countries—has led to innovation in the medical, technological, and environmental preservation industries.

Additionally, globalization has improved the quality of life in several developing nations. This includes implementing efficient transportation systems and ensuring accessibility to services such as education and healthcare.

However, globalization can also have negative effects on society, such as increased income inequality and substandard working conditions in developing countries that produce goods for wealthier nations. Income inequality is directly related to globalization as it further increases the gap between more advanced and developing areas of a nation. As a result, it can also increase the risk of societal violence.

Along with its societal effects, globalization has a lasting impact on the environment—and typically not a positive one.

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What Are the Effects of Globalization on the Environment?

4 Effects of Globalization on the Environment

1. Increased Transport of Goods

One of the primary results of globalization is that it opens businesses up to new markets in which they can sell goods and source labor, raw materials, and components.

Both of these realities mean finished products travel farther now than ever before—potentially halfway around the globe. In the past, products were more likely to be produced, sold, and consumed locally. This increased transport of goods can impact the environment in several ways, including:

Increased emissions: The farther a product travels, the more fuel is consumed, and a greater level of greenhouse gas emissions is produced. According to a report by the International Transport Forum , CO2 emissions from transport will increase 16 percent by 2050. These emissions contribute to pollution, climate change , and ocean acidification around the world and have been shown to significantly impact biodiversity.
Habitat destruction: Transportation—especially when land-based—requires infrastructure like roads and bridges. The development of such infrastructure can lead to issues including habitat loss and pollution. The more ships that travel by sea, the greater the chances for major oil spills or leaks that damage the delicate marine environment.
Invasive species: Every shipping container and vessel presents an opportunity for a living organism—from plants to animals to fungus—to hitch a ride to a new location where it can become invasive and grow without checks and balances that might be present in its natural environment.

2. Economic Specialization

One often-overlooked side effect of globalization is that it allows nations and geographical regions to focus on their economic strengths while relying on trading partners for goods they don’t produce themselves. This economic specialization often boosts productivity and efficiency.

Unfortunately, overspecialization can threaten forest health and lead to serious environmental issues, often in the form of habitat loss, deforestation, or natural resource overuse. A few examples include:

Illegal deforestation in Brazil due to an increase in the country’s cattle ranching operations, which requires significant land for grazing
Overfishing in coastal areas that include Southeast Asia, which has significantly contributed to reduced fish populations and oceanic pollution
Overdependence on cash crops, such as coffee, cacao, and various fruits, which has contributed to habitat loss, especially in tropical climates

It’s worth considering that globalization has allowed some nations to specialize in producing various energy commodities, such as oil, natural gas, and timber. Nations that depend on energy sales to fund a large portion of their national budgets, along with those that note “energy security” as a priority, are more likely to take intervening actions in the market in the form of subsidies or laws that make transitioning to renewable energy more difficult.

The main byproduct of these energy sources comes in the form of greenhouse gas emissions, which significantly contribute to global warming and climate change.

3. Decreased Biodiversity

Increased greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification, deforestation (and other forms of habitat loss or destruction), climate change, and the introduction of invasive species all work to reduce biodiversity around the globe.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s recent Living Planet Report , the population sizes of all organisms—including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles—have decreased 68 percent since 1970. Latin America and Africa—two rapidly developing regions important to global trade—have seen disproportionate levels of biodiversity loss, especially among environmentally sensitive fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

While this decrease in biodiversity has many causes, it’s widely believed that the issues listed above have contributed in part.

4. Increased Awareness

While many of globalization’s environmental effects have been negative, its increase has heightened environmental awareness worldwide.

Greater connectivity and higher rates of international travel have made it easier than ever for individuals to see the effects of deforestation, habitat loss, and climate change on the environment. This, in turn, has contributed to new laws, regulations, and processes that limit negative effects.

Which HBS Online Business in Society Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Globalization as a Threat and an Opportunity

Globalization has allowed society to enjoy many benefits, including increased global cooperation, reduced risk of global conflict, and lower prices for goods and commodities. Unfortunately, it’s also led to serious negative effects on the environment.

Since it isn’t feasible for globalization to end or reverse, it’s likely the situation will worsen until nations, governing bodies, and other organizations are compelled to implement laws and regulations that limit negative effects.

Businesses and industries that operate globally have an incentive to take whatever voluntary actions they can to reduce the potential for negative consequences. Doing so can not only provide an organization greater control over its initiatives, but also a powerful marketing and communication tool .

Some ways businesses address climate change include:

Transitioning to renewable energy sources
Choosing greener infrastructures or equipment
Reducing energy consumption
Creating credible climate transition plans
Raising awareness among employees

In addition, investing in renewable energy and packaging, embracing responsible land-use management, and shifting goods production to move closer to the end customer are all viable options that businesses can and should consider. The challenge lies in balancing a desire to embrace corporate social responsibility with the need to turn a profit and run a successful business.

Are you interested in breaking into a global market? Sharpen your knowledge of the international business world with our four-week Global Business course. In addition, explore our Business and Climate Change course to help your organization adapt to and embrace business risks and opportunities created by climate change, as well as our other online courses related to business in society .

This post was updated on February 28, 2024. It was originally published on April 15, 2021.

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