Spatial skill concentration agglomeration economies

Using the Brazilian census and administrative panel data, the present paper provides evidence that the spatial concentration of analytical skills generates positive wage externalities for all workers in the local labor market. We rely on shift‐share instrumental variables to overcome the endogeneity of skill concentrations. The observed externality is independent from the classical market size economies. The estimates are robust to geography, institutions and workers' sorting on unobservable abilities.     

Principled pragmatism in climate policy? The EU and changing practices of climate justice

Climate change constitutes one of the most pressing political problems of our time and has profound implications for global justice. However, despite the recent progress of the international negotiations embodied in the Paris Agreement, most scientists and activists agree that the adopted measures are not adequate or ‘just’ considering the magnitude of the problem. Thus, there is a pressing need for political forerunners that could push the regime towards a more just handling of the problem. The European Union for most of the time has presented itself as a strong advocate for progressive climate action and has been called a climate vanguard or ‘green normative power’. This paper critically assesses the EU's role concerning climate change from a perspective of global political justice, which builds on a tripartite theoretical conception, consisting of ‘non-domination’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘mutual recognition’. It inquires to which conceptions of justice the EU's climate strategy and approach to the international negotiations have corresponded, how and why changes have come about, and whether the EU was able to influence the international regime. The paper finds that while the EU started out from a focus on political measures linked to impartiality, after the failed negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 it has become more open towards policies and instruments in line with mutual recognition and non-domination. Thus, the emphasis moved away from top-down, legally binding measures, towards voluntary bottom-up procedures, a recognition of difference and diplomatic outreach activities. While this shift was necessary to reinstate the EU's influence and secure the Paris Agreement, it could hamper the quest for robust climate abatement measures and global climate justice.     

Limits to climate action - Narratives of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

In recent years, bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has been awarded a key role in climate mitigation scenarios explored by integrated assessment models and referenced in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Because a majority of scenarios limiting global warming to 2 °C or 1,5 °C include vast deployment of BECCS, a critical discussion has emerged among experts about the moral implications of thus introducing an unproven technology into the policy realm.In this paper, we analyse this discussion as it has played out between 2013 and 2019, with a focus on how expert narratives are constructed in the mass media about the possibilities for decarbonisation within the current political-economic order. We find there are almost no narratives that support massive deployment of BECCS, and that all narratives presuppose limits to decarbonisation imposed by the current political-economic system. The perception of such limits lead some to argue, through deterministic and apolitical narratives, for the necessity of negative emissions technologies, while others argue instead that “degrowth” is the only solution. Thus, there is a distinct lack of positive narratives about how capitalism can bring about decarbonisation.     

Towards lower carbon cities: urban morphology contribution in climate change adaptation strategies

Non-urbanized areas (NUAs) play an important role in reducing the effects of climate change by providing both carbon storage and sequestration. Urban areas are responsible for the emission of 60% of global greenhouse gas, 50% of which are produced by buildings. During the past decades, increasing urban growth and sprawl processes produced several urban layouts characterized by different morphological features and a common lack of sustainable energy and environmental solutions. Investigating the relationship between urban morphology, energy demand and carbon emission/sequestration represents a relevant topic for urban planning practices implemented to face urban climate change effects. This study proposes a method for a transformability assessment aimed at investigating the transformation suitability of different urban morphology types. The case study is the metropolitan area of Catania (Italy), characterized by an impressive urban growth since the 1960s. The proposed method identification of limits and options for increasing sustainability of urban areas considering the contribution of both NUAs and built-up areas. This approach allows to identify appropriate planning tools for new layouts of urban fabrics while increasing the objectivity of the decision process. In the framework of climate change mitigation and adaptation, the outcomes of this research may lead to innovative urban planning practices.     

Modelling Resource Values and Climate Change Impacts to Set Preservation and Research Priorities

ABSTRACT

Climate change impacts will increase in their frequency and severity in the coming decades, resulting in compromised integrity or destruction of thousands of heritage resources. Efforts are needed to identify, record, and study resources that will be affected. To set research and preservation priorities, the vulnerability of resources to climate change impacts and their importance to scientific research, preservation, and other resource values needs to be understood. We advocate a modelling approach which predicts the location, timing, and severity of climate change impacts; identifies resources at risk, their resource values, and opportunity costs; and prioritises research and preservation options based on these assessments. The need for this approach is illustrated with examples from two coastal areas subject to different impacts and hosting different types of heritage resources: the Atlantic coast of Georgia in the United States and the Wismar Bight along the Baltic Sea in northern Germany.     

Climate change,conflict, and cooperation: Global analysis of the effectiveness of international river treaties in addressing water variability

Climate-driven water variability is a natural phenomenon that is observed across river basins, but one that is predicted to increase due to climate change. Environmental change of this kind may aggravate political tensions, especially in regions which are not equipped with an appropriate institutional apparatus. Increased variability is also likely to challenge regions with existing institutional capacity. We argue that our best attempts to assess the ability of states to deal with variability in the future rest with considering how agreements have fared in the past. In this paper, we explore treaty effectiveness, or treaty resilience, by investigating whether particular water allocation and institutional mechanisms help mitigate inter-country tensions over shared water. We use water-related events from the Basins at Risk events database as a dependent variable to test particular hypotheses regarding the impact of treaty design on conflict and cooperation over time. A broad set of climatic, geographic, political, and economic variables are used as controls. The analysis is conducted for the years 1948–2001 using the country dyad as the level of observation. Findings pertaining to our primary explanatory variables suggest that country dyads governed by treaties with water allocation mechanisms exhibiting both flexibility and specificity evince more cooperative behavior. Country dyads governed by treaties with a larger sum of institutional mechanisms likewise evince a higher level of cooperation, although certain institutional mechanisms appear to be more important than others.     

Too few nutrients and too many calories: climate change and the double burden of malnutrition in Asia

About half of children age under five worldwide who are classified as undernourished (84 million out of 151 million) or overweight or obese (17.5 million out of 38 million) live in Asia. Tackling malnutrition in Asia is however fairly complex since the nutritional transition, a consequence of rapid economic development and globalisation, made many Asian nations undergo the simultaneous burdens of under- and over-nutrition. The dual burden of malnutrition is characterised by a concurrence of undernutrition along with overweight and obesity within the same individual, household, community, region and/or country. Providing that household food security is closely linked to malnutrition, this raises questions about the implications of climate change on the dual burden of malnutrition. That climate change affects food availability, access, utilisation and stability is evident. Accordingly, households facing food insecurity due to climatic shocks may allocate food differentially. Adult members may receive low-cost high-calorie food inducing obesity, whilst children receive nutrient-poor foods leading to undernutrition. Little is known about the climate impacts on the double burden of malnutrition and how this affects population subgroups differentially. This Editorial discusses the potential impacts of climate change on the double burden of malnutrition and concludes with the recommendation of strategies to tackle the issue.     

Modern humans in Sarawak,Malaysian Borneo,during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3: palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Great Cave of Niah

During recent reinvestigations in the Great Cave of Niah in Borneo, the ‘Hell Trench’ sedimentary sequence seen by earlier excavators was re-exposed. Early excavations here yielded the earliest anatomically-modern human remains in island Southeast Asia. Calibrated radiocarbon dates, pollen, algal microfossils, palynofacies, granulometry and geochemistry of the ‘Hell Trench’ sequence provide information about environmental and vegetational changes, elements of geomorphic history and information about human activity. The ‘Hell’ sediments were laid down episodically in an ephemeral stream or pool. The pollen suggests cyclically changing vegetation with forest habitats alternating with more open environments; indicating that phases with both temperatures and precipitation reduced compared with the present. These events can be correlated with global climate change sequences to produce a provisional dating framework. During some forest phases, high counts of Justicia, a plant which today colonises recently burnt forest areas, point to fire in the landscape. This may be evidence for biomass burning by humans, presumably to maintain forest-edge habitats. There is evidence from palynofacies for fire on the cave floor in the ‘Hell’ area. Since the area sampled is beyond the limit of plant growth, this is evidence for human activity. The first such evidence is during an episode with significant grassland indicators, suggesting that people may have reached the site during a climatic phase characterised by relatively open habitats ∼50 ka. Thereafter, people were able to maintain a relatively consistent presence at Niah. The human use of the ‘Hell’ area seems to have intensified through time, probably because changes in the local hydrological regime made the area dryer and more suitable for human use.     

Reflections on disaster colonialism: Response to Yarimar Bonilla's ‘The wait of disaster’

After Maria, “el desastre es la colonia” became a popular hashtag in social media and was observed in graffiti and art in different parts of the country, and abroad. Yarimar Bonilla's paper continues emerging conversations amongst scholars and activists on how the colonial matrix of power is linked to the social production of disasters, and indeed, is itself a disaster. Engaging with these conversations, in this commentary I want to highlight six aspects that I consider central to a coloniality of disasters research project: necropolis and permanent war and exception; development as biocidal disaster; differential colonial vulnerabilities; climate colonialism and debt; disaster capitalism; and decolonial disaster subjectivities.     

Fording differences? Conditions mitigating water insecurity in the Niger River Basin

River basins are an extremely important source of freshwater for Africa and the impact of climate change on these communities constitutes an important question worth studying. Among these basins, the Niger River Basin is an ideal candidate for meso-level theory testing of climate change-induced political violence because of its importance as one of the largest sources of freshwater in Africa, its high vulnerability to climate change, and its location in a politically unstable region. This paper utilizes the benefits of GIS to test whether effects of water insecurity on the various incidences of political violence are conditional on economic, geographic, and social means of connectivity. Our analysis uses the density of secondary road networks, the geographic distance to the Niger River, and a shared co-ethnicity with one's head-of-state to evaluate the impact of hydrological stress and its subsequent risk for political violence across nine West African countries from 1997 to 2012. Using climatological data and an econometric de-trending method, we measure the separate, substantive impact that individualized changes in precipitation trend and precipitation variability have for the incidence of ACLED's political violence events, conditional on local economic, geographic, and social factors. Our results reveal a complicated web of circumstances under which certain forms of political violence are more/less likely to be observed. The implications of this analysis serve as a call for a closer inspection of the micro-channels by which climate stress impacts heterogeneous communities in the developing world.