Gender Inclusion in Climate Change Adaptation

There is increasing evidence that climate change has an impact on natural disasters, such as flooding, and on agricultural production, both of which have implications for gender issues. In this paper the authors briefly review issues related to gender and poverty and examine the relationships between gender and various indices. They then look at systems of land ownership and inheritance, and discuss an example of job recovery after a disaster through interviews with three female agricultural workers in Japan. The results of the interviews demonstrate the recent empowerment of women in agricultural production and that these women have strong adaptive abilities.climate change; natural disasters; gender issues; agricultural production

Mass Media Coverage on Climate Change Issues and Public Opinion in Japan

In this paper, I described the relationship between media coverage and public perception of the most important issues in Japan from 2005 to 2013. I used 1) our monthly public opinion survey results, and 2) newspaper coverage data on the March 11, 2013 disaster issue as the representative for all media coverage. I discussed these relationships chronologically. The March 11th earthquake in 2011 occurred in the midst of economically difficult conditions in Japanese society after the 2008 financial shock. After the disaster, the response rate of the disaster as well as economy and finance had been the three highest categories among all responses. I must also refer to the differences between nationally circulated newspapers and local ones. Nationally circulated newspapers have shifted their attention to other issues quicker than local newspapers. Nationally circulated newspapers wrote many articles when the disaster had occurred, but the number of articles soon declined

Public perceptions of climate change and energy futures before and after the Fukushima accident

The threats posed by climate change call for strong action from the international community to limit carbon emissions. Before the Fukushima accident that followed the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011, both Britain and Japan were considering an ambitious expansion of nuclear power as part of their strategy to reduce carbon emissions. However, the accident may have thrown nuclear as a publicly acceptable energy technology into doubt. This study uses several nationally representative surveys from before and after the Fukushima accident to examine how it may have changed public perceptions of climate change and energy futures in Britain and Japan. The study found that already before the accident the Japanese public were less supportive of nuclear power than the British. Whereas British attitudes have remained remarkably stable over time, the Japanese public appear to have lost complete trust in nuclear safety and regulation, and have become less accepting of nuclear power, even if it would contribute to climate change mitigation or energy security. In Japan the \ud public are now less likely to think that any specific energy source will contribute to a reliable and secure supply of energy. The implications for energy policy are discussed

Media and Climate Change Observatory Monthly Summary: Nothing cool about it - Issue 56, August 2021

August media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe increased 6.5% from the previous month of July. August 2021 global radio coverage of climate change or global warming increased 53% from July 2021, while coverage in international wire services increased 9.5% from the previous month. Media attention to climate change or global warming in August 2021 was the highest levels of coverage over nearly 12 years; the highest levels were recorded in December 2009 when attention was paid to the United Nations (UN) Conference of Parties (COP) climate talks that were held in Copenhagen, Denmark, shortly after the University of East Anglia email hacking scandal. Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale &ndash; organized into seven geographical regions around the world &ndash; from January 2004 through August 2021.</p

Media and Climate Change Observatory Monthly Summary: The planet is on "red alert" because governments are failing to meet their climate change goals - Issue 50, February 2021

February is always a short month. In our summaries, we compare month-to-month and year-to-year coverage rather than articles or segments per day. That can slightly skew interpretations of ebbs and flows compared to previous months (January 2021). That said, with our open-source databases posted each month, we welcome readers to download those sources and run other analyses such as number of articles per day in certain places (e.g. Japan) and comparing them then to other days or weeks or other places (e.g. Australia) across our multi-year databases that our twenty-five member Media and Climate Change (MeCCO) team around the world provide each month. With that in mind, our MeCCO team detected that in February 2021, media coverage of climate change or global warming around the world decreased 21% from January 2021. February 2021 levels were 3% lower than coverage in leap-year February 2020 but is up 28% from the levels of coverage two years earlier (February 2019). A year ago, February 2020 was a time when we were on the precipice of media coverage of climate change dropping off dramatically in March 2020, largely due to media and public attention shifting significantly to the emergent COVID-19 pandemic. That said, as the climate has continued to change in the interim year, media attention still has not recovered to those pre-pandemic monthly levels at the global scale. Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale &ndash; organized into seven geographical regions around the world &ndash; from January 2004 through January 2021.</p

Media and Climate Change Observatory Monthly Summary: Turbocharge the…transition from fossil fuels - Issue 51, March 2021

March 2021 saw media coverage of climate change or global warming increase 10% globally from the previous month while it nearly doubled from a year ago (up 92%) when world media turned their attention to the emergent COVID-19 virus and pandemic. While media coverage has generally continued to rise again since the nadir in June 2020, the amount of coverage &ndash; as we track them in 120 sources (across newspapers, radio and TV) in 54 countries in seven different regions around the world &ndash; still remains lower than many points in previous years since our monitoring began in January 2004. Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale &ndash; organized into seven geographical regions around the world &ndash; from January 2004 through March 2021.</p

Ethics in context

Existing literatures have discussed both ethical issues in visual research with young people, and the problems associated with applying ‘universal’ ethical guidelines across varied cultural contexts. There has been little consideration, however, of specific issues raised in projects where visual research is being conducted with young people simultaneously in multiple national contexts. This paper contributes to knowledge in this area. We reflect on our experiences of planning and conducting the International CYCLES project involving photo elicitation with young people in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. While some issues such as varying access to technology for taking and sharing photos and diverse cultural sensitivities around the use of photography were anticipated in advance, others were more unexpected. Balancing the need for methods to be appropriate, ethical and feasible within each setting with the desire for sufficient consistency across the project is challenging. We argue that an ‘ethics in context’ approach and an attitude of ‘methodological immaturity’ is critical in international visual research projects with young people

Ethics in context

Existing literatures have discussed both ethical issues in visual research with young people, and the problems associated with applying ‘universal’ ethical guidelines across varied cultural contexts. There has been little consideration, however, of specific issues raised in projects where visual research is being conducted with young people simultaneously in multiple national contexts. This paper contributes to knowledge in this area. We reflect on our experiences of planning and conducting the International CYCLES project involving photo elicitation with young people in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. While some issues such as varying access to technology for taking and sharing photos and diverse cultural sensitivities around the use of photography were anticipated in advance, others were more unexpected. Balancing the need for methods to be appropriate, ethical and feasible within each setting with the desire for sufficient consistency across the project is challenging. We argue that an ‘ethics in context’ approach and an attitude of ‘methodological immaturity’ is critical in international visual research projects with young people

Young people and environmental affordances in urban sustainable development

Background: Cities are at the fore of sustainability challenges of the twenty-first century, and many, particularly in Asia and Africa, are predominantly youthful spaces. Understanding young people's experiences in urban environments is therefore important as we strive to achieve both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. Two amenities identified in the urban Sustainable Development Goal 11, transport and public and green space, are specifically recognised as applying to youth. Yet, there is little analysis that explicitly considers how youth experience these amenities across the Global North and South, and no current measures for understanding progress in youth experiences of green space and transport. Results: This paper provides a comparative analysis of young people's experiences with local transport and green space in seven diverse urban communities (Christchurch, New Zealand; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Lambeth/London, UK; Makhanda, South Africa; New Delhi, India; São Paulo, Brazil; and Yokohama, Japan). Our study contributes to a growing body of literature that seeks to listen to child and youth perspectives to understand their environmental experiences. We examine the 'affordances' young residents aged 12 to 24 years currently associate with green space and transport amenities. Affordances are defined here as the inter-relationships between what a local environment offers young people and their perceptions and actions. Drawing on focus groups and interviews conducted with 332 young people, we identify five affordances young people associate in relation to transport and public space across these diverse urban settings: (1) social inclusion and belonging; (2) autonomy; (3) physical comfort and security; (4) relaxation and reflection; and (5) health and fitness. Conclusions The paper contributes to growing interdisciplinary research interest in measuring affordances as a way to advance the Sustainable Development Goals in an urban context. In providing a comparative account of young people's experiences across diverse contexts, our discussion highlights how affordances in relation to transport or public and green space can help understand the multiple interconnections between the well-being of young people and sustainability. In particular, we argue that it is not merely the provision of transport or public and green space that matters, but the nuanced meaning of places and experiences as understood by local communities that needs to be recognised if we are to better support urban youth wellbeing and advance sustainable development goals

Youth Attitudes and Participation in Climate Protest

This article examines youth participation the school climate strikes of 2018 and 2019 (also known as #Fridays4Future), through an exploratory study conducted in seven diverse cities. Despite the international nature of the climate strikes, we know little about the factors that influenced youth participation in these protests beyond the global North. This matters because youth of the global South are disproportionately impacted by climate change and there is growing concern that the climate movement is dominated by narratives that marginalize the voices and priorities of Indigenous communities and people of color. In this context, the exploratory research reported here aimed to compare the attitudes of climate protesters (n = 314) and their non-protester peers (n = 1,217), in diverse city samples drawn from a wider study of children and youth aged 12–24 years, living in Christchurch (New Zealand); Dhaka (Bangladesh); Lambeth, London (United Kingdom); Makhanda (South Africa); New Delhi (India); São Paulo (Brazil); and Yokohama (Japan). Using cross-sectional data (N = 1,531) and binary logistic regression models, researchers examined three common explanations for youth participation in protest: availability (biographical and structural), political engagement (reported individual and collective efficacy of strikers and non-strikers), and self-reported biospheric values amongst participants. Results indicate that even in diverse city samples, structural availability (civic skills and organizational membership) predicted strike participation across city samples, but not political engagement (self-efficacy and collective efficacy). Youth who reported that ‘living in harmony with nature and animals’ was important for their wellbeing, were also more likely to strike than their peers. Descriptive statistics indicated that the majority (85 percent) of all protestors in this study agreed climate change was a serious issue and a startling 65 percent said that they think about climate change “all the time”. Reported rates of youth climate protest participation varied across city samples as did the extent to which participants reported having friends take part or expecting climate change to have a personal impact. While the study is exploratory, it points to the need for more extensive research to understand the diversity of youth participation in ‘global climate strikes’