Hot in Twitter: Assessing the emotional impacts of wildfires with sentiment analysis

[Abstract]: Social media generates a significant amount of information in terms of perceptions, emotions, and sentiments. We present an economic analysis using the information provided by Twitter messages, describing impressions and reactions to wildfires occurring in Spain and Portugal. We use natural language processing techniques to analyze this text information. We generate a hedonometer estimate on how sentiments about wildfires vary with exposure, measured via Euclidean distance from the catastrophic event, and air quality. We find that direct exposure to wildfires significantly decreases the expressed sentiment score and increases the expressions of fear and political discontent (protest). Economic valuation of these losses has been computed to be between 1.49€–3.50€/year/Kilometer of distance to the closest active fire. Welfare losses in terms of air quality have been computed as 4.43€–6.59€/day of exposure.Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, ´ RETOS program, grant number PID2019-111255RB-I0

Perceptions across scales of governance and the Indonesian peatland fires

Across leading environmental challenges—fire management, climate change, deforestation – there is growing awareness of the need to better account for diverse stakeholder perceptions across complex, multi-level governance arrangements. Perceptions often condition behavior, compliance and engagement in ways that impact environmental outcomes. We illustrate the importance of, and approaches to, examining perceptions across scales of governance (e.g. international, national, local) and sectors (e.g. civil society, government, corporate) through the example of Indonesian peatland fires. Peatlands are crucial global carbon stocks threatened by land use change and fire and subject to a range of policy interventions that affect many different stakeholder groups. Peatland drainage and conversion to plantation agriculture has been associated with severe, uncontrolled peat fires that present significant climate, public health and economic risks. Peatland fire management has become a domestic and international priority, spurring intensely contentious debates, policies and legal proceedings. Previous fire management interventions (FMI) are numerous yet have suffered widespread implementation failures. Against this backdrop, our manuscript provides a thematically and methodologically novel analysis of how diverse stakeholders, from local farmers to international policy makers, perceive peatland fires in terms of, i) how they prioritize the associated benefits and burdens, and ii) the perceived effectiveness of FMI. We adopt an innovative application of Q method to provide needed insights that serve to quantify the areas of contention and consensus that exist among the stakeholders and their multi-dimensional perspectives. We show that many of the contemporary FMI were perceived as among the most effective interventions overall, but were also the most controversial between groups. Clear consensus areas were related to the shared concerns for the local health impacts and the potential of government support for fire-free alternatives as a solution pathway. Improved understanding of stakeholder perceptions has potential to: give voice to marginalized communities; enable transparent mediation of diverse priorities; inform public education campaigns, and shape future policy and governance arrangements

ANALYSIS OF POLICY EFFECTIVENESS ON FOREST FIRES IN RIAU, INDONESIA

Annual land and forest fires in Indonesia have been a major environmental issue in the country for years. To solve the problem, the Indonesian government enacted a plan of action in 2007 to deal with land and forest fires. Numerous studies have focused on forest fires in Indonesia and their causes, but less attention has been devoted to whether the government’s policy is making any difference with respect to recent fire events. This analysis attempts to understand the effectiveness of the policy by focusing on Riau province, a major site of fires in the country. In the analysis I estimate the impacts of the policy by comparing the damage and losses caused by the 2014 fire and a counterfactual scenario of how they would have been different had the policy not been enacted. I interviewed experts who work in Indonesia’s land and forest fires to obtain a prediction of this counterfactual scenario. Based on these interviews, they believed, on average, that the 2014 forest fire would have burnt more areas had the policy not been enacted. There was also an indication that the benefits most likely outweighed the cost of implementing the plan of action. Therefore, I believe that some elements of the policy implemented in 2014 had some influence in limiting the level of damage and losses from the fire early that year and the policies overall provided a net benefit to society

Americas

This document explores some of the examples of peatland restoration under different circumstances around the World in order to present an overview of the variety of benefits and inspiring ways in which peatland restoration can be delivered, and so avoid serious and costly consequences for society. Richard Lindsay wrote the Asia and Americas sections of this edited publication

Asia

This document explores some of the examples of peatland restoration under different circumstances around the World in order to present an overview of the variety of benefits and inspiring ways in which peatland restoration can be delivered, and so avoid serious and costly consequences for society. Richard Lindsay wrote the Asia and Americas sections of this edited publication

Big Data as A Tool to Monitor and Deter Environmental Offenders in the Global South: A Multiple Case Study

While prior research has looked at big data’s role in strengthening the environmental justice movement, scholars rarely examine the contexts, mechanisms and processes associated with the use of big data in monitoring and deterring environmental offenders, especially in the Global South. As such, this research aims to substitute for this academic gap through the use of multiple case studies of environmental offenders’ engagement in illegal deforestation, as well as legal deforestation followed by fire. Specifically, we have chosen four cases from three economies in the Global South: Indonesia, Peru and Brazil. We demonstrate how the data utilized by environmental activists in these four cases qualify as true forms of big data, as they have searched and aggregated data from various sources and employed them to achieve their goals. The article shows how big data from various sources, mainly from satellite imagery, can help discern the true extent of environmental destruction caused by various offenders and present convincing evidence. The article also discusses how a rich satellite imagery archive is suitable for analyzing chronological events in order to establish a cause-effect chain. In all of the cases studied, such evidentiary provisions have been used by environmental activists to oblige policy makers to take necessary actions to counter environmental offenses

Using remarkability to define coastal flooding thresholds.

Coastal flooding is increasingly common in many areas. However, the degree of inundation and associated disruption depend on local topography as well as the distribution of people, infrastructure and economic activity along the coast. Local measures of flooding that are comparable over large areas are difficult to obtain. Here we use the remarkability of flood events, measured by flood-related posts on social media, to estimate county-specific flood thresholds for shoreline counties along the east coast of the United States. While thresholds in most counties are statistically-indistinguishable from minor flood thresholds of nearby tide gauges, we find evidence that several areas experience noticeable flooding at tide heights lower than existing flood thresholds. These 22 counties include several major cities such as Miami, New York, and Boston, with a total population over 13 million. Our analysis implies that large populations might currently be exposed to nuisance flooding not identified via standard measures