Assessment of Indoor & Outdoor Black Carbon Emissions Rural Areas of Indo-Gangetic Plain: Seasonal Characteristics, Source Apportionment and Radiative Forcing

Black Carbon (BC) has been widely recognized as the second largest source of territorial and global climate change as well as a threat to human health. There has been serious concern of BC emission and its impact in Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) due to the use of biomass and fossil fuels for cooking, transportation and industrial activities. An attempt has been made to study indoor (Liquefied Petroleum Gas- LPG & Traditional cookstoves users households) and outdoor concentrations; seasonal characteristics; radiative forcing and source of apportionment of BC in three districts (Sitapur, Patna and Murshidabad) of IGP during January to December 2016. The seasonal concentrations of BC in LPG (traditional cookstoves) users households were 3.79 ± 0.77 μgm−3 (25.36 ± 5.01 μgm−3) during the winter; 2.62 ± 0.60 μgm−3(16.36 ± 3.68 μgm−3) during the pre-monsoon; 2.02 ± 0.355 μgm−3(8.92 ± 1.98 μgm−3) during the monsoon and 2.19 ± 0.47 μgm−3(15.17 ± 3.31 μgm−3) during the post-monsoon seasons. However, the outdoor BC concentrations were 24.20 ± 4.46, 19.80 ± 4.34, 8.87 ± 1.83, and 9.14 ± 1.84 μgm−3 during winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon seasons respectively. The negative radiative forcing (RF) at the surface suggests a cooling effect while a warming effect appears to be occurring at the top of the atmosphere. The atmospheric forcing of BC and aerosols also show a net warming effect in the selected study areas. The analysis of BC concentrations and fire episodes indicated that the emissions from biomass burning increases the pollution concentration. The backward trajectory analysis through the HYSPLIT model also suggests an additional source of pollutants during winter and pre-monsoon seasons from the northwest and northern region in the IGP

Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into Urban Climate Plans in the UK and Japan: A text analysis

open access articleCities are increasingly adopting potentially sustainable climate plans. Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into these plans could help stabilize the climate while generating jobs, narrowing equity gaps, fostering innovation, and delivering other sustainability benefits. Yet, how much cities are integrating the SDGs into climate plans remains poorly understood. This article shed light on this question with a text analysis of SDG “keywords” in climate plans for two British and two Japanese cities. The results revealed that none of the surveyed cities have connected climate with socioeconomic priorities covered in SDG1 (poverty), SDG8 (employment), SDG5 (gender), and SDG10 (inequalities). Meanwhile, the United Kingdom cities made more connections between climate and responsible consumption and production (SDG12) than the Japanese cities. Further, Kyoto, Japan shares a climate-SDGs linkages profile that resembles the United Kingdom cities more than Kawasaki. Though not without limitations, text analysis can facilitate the city-to-city peer learning needed to make urban climate plans sustainable within and across countries

Innovations for Sustainability: Pathways to an efficient and post-pandemic future

3rd Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiativ

One Atmosphere: Integrating Air Pollution and Climate Policy and Governance

Few challenges pose a greater threat to a healthy planet and people than air pollution and climate change. Over the past three decades, research has demonstrated that integrated solutions to air pollution and climate change can yield co-benefits that support cost-effective, coherent policies. However, research on co-benefits has yet to generate policy responses consistent with this promise. This paper argues that realizing this potential requires more rigorous research on how governance affects the opportunities and incentives to align the interests of government agencies, scientists, and other stakeholders at multiple levels. The article proposes a “One Atmosphere approach” consisting of three building blocks to strengthen that alignment: (1) continually incorporating and strategically timing the introduction of integrated visions; (2) reforming governance arrangements to encourage interagency collaboration and multi-stakeholder cooperation; and (3) supporting integrated visions and institutional cooperation with standardized metrics and assessment methods. This article is also the introduction to the Special Issue ‘One Atmosphere: Integrating Air Pollution and Climate Policy and Governance’, aimed at fostering the multidisciplinary dialogue needed for more integrated air pollution and climate change policies

The River Runs Dry: Examining Water Shortages in the Yellow River Basin

The Yellow River (Huang He) has been deservedly cast as a source of great prosperity and great despair in the annals of Chinese history. Droughts have been a part of the struggles of the Yellow River basin’s population and, in an arguably less dramatic fashion, exacted an even more crippling toll than floods. In recent years, a lack of water has once again reawakened the anxiety caused by droughts, attracting the attention of Chinese policymakers and the Chinese media. In 18 out of the past 26 summers the Yellow River has run dry further and further upstream for longer and longer periods of time. During the summer of 1998, the river failed to reach its mouth at Bohai Bay for over 250 days.Water managers in China cite a combination of unique characteristics or tedian as factors that contribute to the basin’s water shortages. The most obvious of these tedian is the yellow soil or huang tu from which the Yellow River gets its name. The Yellow River is the most heavily sediment-laden river in the world, holding nine-times as much sediment as the Ganges River, the closest standard for comparison. Less often mentioned as a factor contributing to water shortages in China is growth in agricultural, municipal and industrial rates of water usage that followed the liberalizing of the Chinese economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The least frequently mentioned reason for water shortages, however, is the system that manages the Yellow River. Over the past two decades, economic reforms have been sporadic and uneven, creating gaps between subsidized input prices for items such as water and marketized output prices for items that water helps to produce. The optimal long-term strategy for remedying the basin’s current water shortages is neither a demand-side nor a supply-side measure; instead, the most effective approach to resolving water problems is reforming the river’s management system