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This chapter offers a plausibility probe of IST in the case of China and the contemporary liberal international order. The LIO – a multifaceted set of institutions covering a range of security and non-security issues – has contributed immensely to China’s economic growth, diplomatic influence, and national security. China, nonetheless, opposes some and embraces other parts of the international order. The chapter shows that existing theories of revisionism struggle to explain this pattern of cooperation and discord in China’s approach. It then traces China’s status aspirations in the post-Cold War period and applies IST’s predictions to China’s stances in various prominent international institutions. The chapter concludes that IST can broadly apply in this case across institutions and issue areas, though further research is required to decisively demonstrate this claim.
In “Narrating Nature,” Erin James considers how modern literature and theory grapple with the broader timescales, planetary conceptions of space, and inhuman perspectives that representations of climate change demand. Focusing on the “unnatural nature” of climate change, James undertakes a narratological analysis two recent “cli-fi” novels, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. Maintaining a pedagogical emphasis, the chapter foregrounds strategies teachers can use to help students understand and write about climate change. The chapter ultimately considers how narrative can both perpetuate and subvert dominant ideologies about nature and how changing nature is changing the texture of modern narratives.
Chapter 2 examines an ‘agricultural revolution’ in the rural areas around Lake Tanganyika’s emporia, characterised by changes in labour regime, crop choice, and land-use. It uses climatological sources and the wider context of the Indian Ocean monsoon system to examine how the introduction of new crops (cassava, maize, and rice) affected agricultural productivity and vulnerability to the effects erratic climatic conditions, including droughts and floods. It argues that benign environmental conditions in the Indian Ocean World during mid-century contributed to the viability of large port-towns. However, erratic rainfall from 1876 onwards, the replacement of East African staples with less drought-resistant crops, and the increased demands on the region’s agricultural supplies from emporia and the caravan trade exacerbated trends towards violence and instability during the late 1870s and 1880s.
The centuries after the so-called collapse of the Mycenaean palace administration from the twelfth to the eighth centuries BCE saw several transformations of social and economic structures. These had an impact on the economic performance in the period. It is also significant that during this period there was no attempt to restore palatial administration, but instead Early Iron Age communities built new social and economic relationships on household units that could be understood as adaptable social-political organisations with fluid boundaries. Moreover, the Early Iron Age should not be seen as a period of stagnation but one characterised by adaptive and resilient features. These led to the well-documented visibility of the archaeological record of the eighth century BCE.
Monitoring the spread of non-indigenous species is fundamental to study global warming effects on marine biodiversity. A valuable tool is represented by the continuous updating of the geographic range expansion of non-indigenous species. Lamprohaminoea ovalis is a Lessepsian mollusc initially recorded in the Mediterranean Sea in 2001. This paper reports its range expansion over the last 20 years related to water warming. The first record of Lamprohaminoea ovalis from the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean) is also reported. Two individuals (about 10 mm length) were observed on a sub-vertical rocky bottom at 26 m depth displaying potential trailing behaviour. This recent finding extends the currently known distributional range of Lamprohaminoea ovalis, representing the northernmost occurrence of this non-indigenous species in the western Mediterranean Sea.
The coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei Ferrari (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae), is the most devastating insect pest of coffee worldwide. It feeds on the beans inside the berries leading to significant crop losses and unmarketable products. This study aims to model the impact of temperature on H. hampei fecundity and population growth parameters, as a contribution to the prediction of infestation risk. The fecundity was assessed on fresh coffee beans at six constant temperatures in the range 15–30°C, with RH 80 ± 5% and photoperiod 12:12 L:D. Nonlinear models were fitted to the relationship between fecundity and temperature using the ILCYM software. The best fecundity model was combined to development models obtained for immature stages in a previous study in order to simulate life table parameters at different constant temperatures. Females of H. hampei successfully oviposited in the temperature range 15–30°C, with the highest fecundity observed at 23°C (106.1 offspring per female). Polynomial function 8 model was the best fitted to the relationship between fecundity and temperature. With this model, the highest fecundity was estimated at 23°C, with 110 eggs per female. The simulated net reproductive rate (R0) was maximal at 24°C, with 50.08 daughters per female, while the intrinsic rate of increase (rm) was the highest at 26°C, with a value of 0.069. Our results will help understand H. hampei population dynamics and develop an ecologically sound management strategy based on a better assessment of infestation risk.
This article deals with the sea level rise phenomenon caused by the climate change process and its impact on the statehood of so-called disappearing island states as well as on the consequent factual and legal status of their populations. In classical international law doctrine, the loss of a state’s territory will lead to the extinction of statehood and, consequently, the loss of that state’s international legal personality, and possibly also to the statelessness of its nationals. This article proposes an alternative solution based on the transformation of disappearing island states into new non-territorial subjects of international law — “climate deterritorialized nations” — as successors to disappeared inundated states.
Contemporary technologies for offshore electricity generation and transmission enable sea uses of types and at scales that could not have been envisaged when the text of UNCLOS was agreed. The chapter considers whether UNCLOS is able to accommodate the offshore renewables revolution. It focuses on offshore wind energy, which is likely to see massive growth during the next three decades as the world decarbonizes. The review finds that UNCLOS does not always make adequate legal provision for them. Support will be needed from national laws, interstate agreements, and resolutions and guidelines of international organizations such as the International Maritime Organization to fill gaps in the law, clarify uncertainties and to meet challenges posed by offshore wind’s growth. Further regulation by states of offshore wind will also be needed to address the environmental effects of relevant development in line with duties for marine environmental protection, and to answer difficult legal questions raised by the pursuit of development that may itself cause significant environmental harm to address the environmental threats posed by climate change.
The last decade has witnessed the emergence and rise of trade disputes over renewable energy support measures. By pitting trade against the environment, these disputes ignited a considerable debate over the adequacy of the green policy space available under WTO law. This article examines whether and to what extent the first ten years of litigation settled the key issues in this debate by undertaking a systematic analysis of the developments in the case law and in the renewable energy policy landscape. The analysis reveals that the case law has raised more questions than answers and much uncertainty remains as to the scope of the policy space available for the subsidization of renewables. It also highlights how these disputes steered the debate away from the most contentious issue of subsidy regulation to the slam-dunk issue of non-discrimination. In doing so, they helped conceal rather than resolve the green policy space deficit in multilateral renewable energy subsidy governance.
Climate change is a matter of extreme urgency. Integrating science and economics, this book demonstrates the need for measures to put a strict lid on cumulative carbon emissions and shows how to implement them. Using the carbon budget framework, it reveals the shortcomings of current policies and the debates around them, such as the popular enthusiasm for individual solutions and the fruitless search for 'optimal' regulation by economists and other specialists. On the political front, it explains why business opposition to the policies we need goes well beyond the fossil fuel industry, requiring a more radical rebalancing of power. This wide-ranging study goes against the most prevalent approaches in mainstream economics, which argue that we can tackle climate change while causing minimal disruption to the global economy. The author argues that this view is not only impossible, but also dangerously complacent.
From Gaelic annals and medieval poetry to contemporary Irish literature, A History of Irish Literature and the Environment examines the connections between the Irish environment and Irish literary culture. Themes such as Ireland's island ecology, the ecological history of colonial-era plantation and deforestation, the Great Famine, cultural attitudes towards animals and towards the land, the postcolonial politics of food and energy generation, and the Covid-19 pandemic - this book shows how these factors determine not only a history of the Irish environment but also provide fresh perspectives from which to understand and analyze Irish literature. An international team of contributors provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish literature to show how the literary has always been deeply engaged with environmental questions in Ireland, a crucial new perspective in an age of climate crisis. A History of Irish Literature and the Environment reveals the socio-cultural, racial, and gendered aspects embedded in questions of the Irish environment.
The Western Tragopan Tragopan melanocephalus is endemic to the Western Himalayas and currently listed as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List which also emphasizes a data deficiency regarding its distribution and population size. With this study we provide new data from the Palas Valley, northern Pakistan and deliver a range wide estimate of the species current, past, and future potential distribution as derived from environmental niche models. In the Palas Valley, Western Tragopans occupied different summer habitats on north-facing slopes and winter habitats on south-facing slopes. A quantitative estimate of local populations in six side valleys was inferred from individual call-count surveys during two breeding seasons (April and May 2017, 2018) and disturbance factors were evaluated from information of local people provided in questionnaires. Generalized-linear models (GLMs) showed a significant effect of disturbance factors on Western Tragopans, i.e. local abundances decreased with increasing disturbance from livestock, collectors and hunters visiting the area. This effect was visible across survey years and at both, south- as well as north-facing slopes. While the known distributional range of the Western Tragopan is small and fragmented, our niche models inferred climatically suitable space between Himachal Pradesh and northwestern Pakistan to be more continuous. Given the species sensitivity to disturbance, these findings indicate that the observed fragmentation of the current range might also be attributed to habitat transformation or anthropogenic disturbance rather than climatic suitability. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) T. melanocephalus was probably restricted to small forest refugia, whereas projections onto eleven future climate simulations were inconclusive with the majority suggesting that climatically suitable space for T. melanocephalus will likely expand in response to anthropogenic climate change. In conclusion, we recommend that future conservation measures should be planned with regard to the species’ sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbances.
Few contemporary crises have reshaped public policy as dramatically as the COVID-19 pandemic. In its shadow, policymakers have debated whether other pressing crises—including climate change—should be integrated into COVID-19 policy responses. Public support for such an approach is unclear: the COVID-19 crisis might eclipse public concern for other policy problems, or complementarities between COVID-19 and other issues could boost support for broad government interventions. In this research note, we use a conjoint experiment, panel study, and framing experiment to assess the substitutability or complementarity of COVID-19 and climate change among US and Canadian publics. We find no evidence that the COVID-19 crisis crowds out public concern about the climate crisis. Instead, we find that the publics in both countries prefer that their governments integrate climate action into COVID-19 responses. We also find evidence that analogizing climate change with COVID-19 may increase concern about climate change.
Fundamental to food security is irrigated agriculture. This chapter discusses different aspects that impact food security, including population, agricultural land, water availability, water quality, crop water requirement, energy requirement, food production, increase in food production due to irrigated agriculture, and impacts of climate change.
On the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, 405 glaciers with an estimated total mass of 49 Gt were reported in the 1970s. These have been retreating at an accelerated rate since the start of the 21st century. Because glacier studies in this region are scarce, ice loss and its influence on sea level rise and regional environments is poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed satellite data to quantify glacier mass change from 2000 to 2016 in six major glacier-covered regions on the peninsula. The mean rate of the glacier mass change over the study period was −0.46 ± 0.01 m w.e. a−1 (total mass change was −4.9 ± 0.1 Gt, −304.2 ± 9.1 Mt a−1), which is slightly lower than other regions in mid-latitude and subarctic zones. The mass loss accelerated from >−0.33 ± 0.02 m w.e. a−1 in the period 2000–2006/2010 to <−1.65 ± 0.12 m w.e. a−1 in 2006/2010–2015/16. The increase in mass loss is attributed to a rise in average decadal summer temperatures observed in the region (+0.68°C from 1987–99 to 2000–13). Moreover, a recent trend in Pacific decadal oscillation suggests future acceleration of mass loss due to a decline in winter precipitation.
Edited by
Marie Roué, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris,Douglas Nakashima, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), France,Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
The objective of this chapter is to describe the ways in which traditional (ribeirinho) and Indigenous (Cocama) farmers of Central Amazonia are modifying their agricultural and livelihood practices in response to extreme flood events, linked to global climate change, which have occurred over the last ten years. Data were gathered through observation and semi-structured interviews conducted by researchers and technicians of the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, Brazil. Farmers from upland and floodplain environments agree that large floods are more frequent in the region. Extreme floods have resulted in the disappearance of farmers’ local varieties of manioc and diverse fruit species. Residents also discuss the social consequences of floods, including cyclical migration of families between upland and lowland areas and a deteriorating quality of community life during floods. While our initial results demonstrate farmers’ abilities to adapt in the face of rapid global change, we continue to try to understand the processes of ongoing social, economic and environmental change and the extent and limits of local adaptive capacity.
To the extent that we can make education a science, we will gain some power to predict future directions for educational improvements. This chapter begins with quotations from some famous people that indicate that in the past, we have not learned from our mistakes. If we can succeed in creating a viable science of education and apply this in all educational settings, we may change the course of history in a positive way. This chapter presents a critique of some of the things we have done, and a description of more promising alternatives.
Edited by
Marie Roué, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris,Douglas Nakashima, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), France,Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
As an Indigenous herder and President of the Association of Traditional Herders of the Sahel, the author describes the difficulties experienced by herders due to the series of severe droughts that they have endured in recent decades due to climatic change. Having suffered huge losses of animals, some have drastically changed their way of life, becoming increasingly nomadic, migrating far beyond traditional teritories or taking up agriculture to help feed their herds.
Edited by
Marie Roué, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris,Douglas Nakashima, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), France,Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Assessing potential drivers of and linkages between sea ice retreat or thinning across Arctic Russia and maintenance of the ancient and unique social-ecological systems of the Indigenous reindeer-herding Nenets is a pressing task. Sea ice loss is accelerating in the Barents and Kara Seas in the northwestern region of Arctic Russia. Warming summer air temperatures in recent decades have been linked to more frequent and sustained summer high-pressure systems over West Siberia but not to sea ice retreat. At the same time, autumn/winter rain-on-snow events across the region have become more frequent and intense. Two major rain-on-snow events during November 2006 and 2013 led to massive winter reindeer mortality episodes on Yamal Peninsula, where tundra nomadism remains a vitally important livelihood activity for the indigenous Nenets.
Here we review evidence for autumn atmospheric warming and precipitation increases over Arctic coastal lands in proximity to Barents and Kara sea ice loss. Realizing mutual coexistence of tundra nomadism within the Arctic’s largest natural gas complex under a warming climate will require ready access to and careful interpretation of real-time meteorological and sea-ice data and modelling, as well as meaningful consultation with local communities.
For speakers of Arctic Indigenous languages, intense language contact has come as a result of colonization, leading to extensive shift and loss across different Arctic communities. Recent years have seen contact and shift intensified by a nexus of interrelated factors, or stressors, with urbanization, climate change, and the ongoing effects of colonization being among the most significant. The case study of the multilingual language ecologies in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Russia shows how these factors affect language vitality and overall wellbeing. Greenland provides a contrastive example as the local ecologies differ considerably. The net impact of stressors on Arctic Indigenous communities has been language shift, but the communities are currently experiencing widespread interest in and commitment to increasing language vitality and usage, a pan-Arctic movement of revitalization and resilience to build language and cultural sustainability.