Strategizing for Strength in EU PharmaN

"Though Europe's response has demonstrated strengths," the strategy document reports, "existing vulnerabilities have been thrown into sharp focus, including those related to data availability, the supply of medicines, or the availability of manufacturing capacities to adapt and support the production of medicines" (2). [...]a lot of the strategy's proposals stem from the European Green Deal, published in late 2019 (4), from which has emanated last year's EU industrial strategy (5). [...]setting up critical medicines production capacity in the EU would have to be compliant with the Union's competition rules and those of the World Trade Organization, the commission warned (2).

Recent Development of Climate Change Mitigation in the Aviation Sector: For Better Incentive Design Between Developed and Developing Countries

During the past several years, the circumstances surrounding aviation sector have changed considerably from the environmental aspects. International aviation sector is included in neither Kyoto Protocol (1997) nor Paris Agreement (2015), although domestic aviation is covered by both. In fact, the international aviation is left to the deliberation at ICAO, a UN specialized agency. In 2016, ICAO has set the first ever global market-based measure for an entire sector, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) in order to achieve the global sector target of 2% annual fuel efficiency improvement and carbon-neutral growth from 2020 onward. Market-based mechanism is also written in Paris Agreement (Article 6) but member states continued to negotiate its details and they are not yet agreed upon as of August 2020. It might be said that the general perception of air travel has been significantly diversified from traditional safety and efficiency only, to include more and more environment and sustainability just as we can see in the terminology of "Fly Shame.” This could be because there have been steadily growing concerns about environmentally negative aspects of aviation congestion at many air travel hubs, social and community levels of adverse effects of over-tourism, and occurrence of more and more severe natural disasters from powerful typhoons or huge wildfires, which many suspect could be caused by climate change stemming from emission of GHGs including from autos or aircrafts. Then came the COVID-19, which could fundamentally change the way of traveling, working, and even communicating in the direction of touchless, remote, or virtual relationships. Its imminent effects are overwhelming worldwide, but the medium-or longer-term effects are yet to be seen. We have now common global target and the basket of measures to achieve it in international aviation sector at ICAO. In the domestic aviation sector, which is now covered in Paris Agreement, parties also agreed on the common global target and started constructing details of the measures to achieve the target, such as market-based mechanism. The effective financial and technical aids, for example, from developed countries to the developing ones, are ever more important to incentivize and execute the necessary efforts of both sides to actually meet the global target. We are going to shed lights on the incentive design problem between developing countries and developed ones with the framework of the game theoretic analysis under asymmetric information structure focusing on the so-called double moral hazard situation of the two sides. The main results show that it is extremely difficult for both sides to achieve common optimal incentive rules about aid payments under the information asymmetry. The measures to drastically mitigate the cost of efforts, to fundamentally reduce risk averse, and to equalize damage effects of temperature anomaly between the two sides through scientific researches and long-term education on the matter are the key for such optimal incentive design. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights are reserved.

Coal Is a Priority for Energy Security, until It Is Not: Coal Phase-Out in the EU and Its Persistence in the Face of the Energy Crisis

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many countries see coal as the easiest solution to their energy sector challenges, despite the consequences for climate goals. Several countries of the European Union started to re-evaluate their coal policies vis-à-vis the current energy crisis and, although such a change is expected to be short-term in nature, it nevertheless has negative consequences for the Union's 2050 climate goal. However, most of the EU countries did not revise their phase-out goals. This paper examines Slovakia as a country that embarked on a coal phase-out trajectory only a few years before the pandemic broke out and stayed firmly on this path despite benefits stemming from the continued use of domestic coal. Domestic coal used to be considered a safeguard of energy security in Slovakia, especially after the 2009 gas crisis. However, a decision was made in 2018 to phase out coal by 2023, and this has not changed despite increased focus on domestic energy sources as energy security guarantors during the current energy crisis. This paper explains the decision in favour of a coal phase-out and its support vis-à-vis the energy crisis using the concept of ‘financial Europeanisation', which stresses the importance of EU funds for the development of the domestic policies of EU member states. While the expected funds serve as a catalyst for the coal phase-out needed to reach climate goals, short-term advantages of revising a coal phase-out were outweighed by long-term benefits provided by EU funds.

An Evaluation of ASEAN Renewable Energy Path to Carbon Neutrality

Maintaining our standard of living and keeping the economy running smoothly is heavily reliant on a consistent supply of energy. Renewable energy systems create abundant energy by utilizing resources such as the sun, wind, earth, and plants. The demand for renewable energy is increasing, despite power scarcity, pollution, and climate change posing challenges to long-term development in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has seen significant social and economic growth in recent years. To achieve its 23% renewable energy (RE) target, ASEAN can develop solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity. Members of the ASEAN have established regulations and incentives to encourage individuals and businesses to use renewable energy in the future. This paper explores Southeast Asian countries' comprehensive fossil-free energy options, the region's renewable energy potential, current capacity, goals, and energy needs. Through the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) 2016–2025 and the ASEAN Declaration on Renewable Energy, ASEAN is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainable development aligning with the Paris Agreement's aim to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Results show that decarbonizing the region's energy system is possible, but current policies and actions must be altered to reach that target level. Further research is necessary to optimize the ASEAN region's renewable resource technical potential and commercial viability with available technology.

Climate change and the challenge to liberalism

In this editorial, we consider the ways in which liberal constitutionalism is challenged by and presents challenges to the climate crisis facing the world. Over recent decades, efforts to mitigate the climate crisis have generated a new set of norms for states and non-state actors, including regulatory norms (emission standards, carbon regulations), organising principles (common but differentiated responsibility) and fundamental norms (climate justice, intergenerational rights, human rights). However, like all norms, these remain contested. Particularly in light of their global reach, their specific behavioural implications and interpretations and the related obligations to act remain debatable and the overwhelming institutionalization of the neoliberal market economy makes clear and effective responses to climate change virtually impossible within liberal societies.

China's Arctic Policy and Engagement: Review and Prospects

The Arctic is experiencing greatly accelerated change under the influence of climate change, economic globalization, and world power shifts. After China became an official observer state of the Arctic Council in 2013, its involvement in Arctic affairs has grown increasingly and intensively. It has been particularly prominent in three areas: science, economics, and governance. When China became an observer state, few people could have predicted the extent to which the world would change over the next decade. At that time, China did not stand out so much from the other four new observer countries in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and India). Features such as Japan's close scientific cooperation with Arctic countries, South Korea's shipbuilding skills, and Singapore's important shipping position are why they have been granted observer status.A year later, however, a series of black swan events occurred, starting with the Crimean crisis in 2014. Like dominoes, the world landscape has since shifted dramatically. In 2016, Britain announced its departure from the European Union, while Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. After then U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo delivered an infamous speech at the ministerial meeting in 2019 warning China and Russia against "aggressive behavior," the Arctic Council closed for the first time without issuing a joint statement.1 In the speech, Pompeo used metaphorical and parallel questions to warn about China's presence in the Arctic, such as "Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?"2 However, this situation cannot happen because China has no legal right to claim any territorial sovereignty in the Arctic. Moreover, the only territorial dispute in the Arctic-over the small island Hans Island between Canada and Denmark (via Greenland)-was peacefully settled with an agreement.-3 When Covid-19 arrived, China was the first to respond with a strict epidemic prevention policy, but the country also entered a three-year self-imposed quarantine that slowed communication with the international community. At the same time, however, China has further deepened cooperation with Russia. In February 2022, after meeting at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement that announced their intention to develop a "polycentric world order."4 The world now is a very different place than it was in 2013.China released its official white paper on Arctic policy in 2018.5 The white paper marked the culmination of a five-year period of gradual outreach and initial involvement in the Arctic governance arena as an Arctic Council observer state. Therefore, its release announced the beginning of the first year of the country's full participation in Arctic affairs in a mature and steady manner, guided by defined objectives and principles. This essay reviews China's involvement in Arctic affairs, using the white paper as a blueprint. Following a discussion of China's Arctic identity, the subsequent two sections concentrate on Arctic science and technology development and international cooperation in polar science. The essay then concludes by commenting on the implications of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict for Arctic governance and China's position and prospects in the region.

An Algorithm for Transport Optimization as the Effect of the European Green Deal and Climate Neutrality Goals

The exponential growth of the worldpopulation in the last decades (approx. eight billion people in 2022), corroborated with spectacular development of various sectors of activity such as transport, construction, information, and communication technology, etc. exert a worrying pressure on limited natural resources. Moreover, climate change, environmental degradation, increasing pollution, recent armed conflicts are increasingly real existential threats to the global population in general and to the old continent in particular. In this context, the European Green Deal (EGD) comes to counteract such unhealthy developments and proposes to transform Europe into a society with a modern, high performing and resource-efficient economy, with a goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. EGD involves a series of legislative measures that will support and implement policies on financial and competitive issues related to climate, energy, industry, sustainable and smart mobility, agriculture and biodiversity conservation and protection. From the EGD perspective, the objectives of this research have focused on the transport sector, with a view to ensuring safe, sustainable, green, and smart mobility. The main result of the research consists of the optimization algorithm developed and implemented by authors at one of the largest alliances transport, which calculates the best option for the delivery of goods, respecting the price lists and the proposed carbon dioxide emissions targets. At the same time, in the light of the results and conclusions of the research, the general implications regarding the financial and competitive aspects of the EGD are analysed, as well as the particular ones, specific to the alliance that is the object of the case study.

Carbon Tax: Moving Towards a Net-Zero Emissions Future

In the wake of the 21st century, climate change has emerged as the biggest lifethreatening challenge with a potential of evolving into the largest, if not the most complex, economic opportunity since the industrial revolution. While narrowing down its focus to carbon tax as a regulatory fiscal aspect of international economic law, this article explores the potential role of the tax in moulding this economic opportunity in line with the commitments assumed by countries under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The issue is whether imposition of carbon tax or restructuring tax rates can have a significant impact in regulating carbon emissions by rationally pushing consumers, investors, and producers, towards an environmentally sound direction. To answer this, the article investigates three carbon-tax implementation case studies;British Columbia, South Africa, and the revision of European Union Energy Taxation Directive in the context of aviation, with the aim to explore the scope of contributing factors – from adequate tax rate determination to optimum tax revenue use – in successfully curbing carbon-based emissions. Drawing upon the policy-efforts of the countries in the case studies, the challenges and the solutions, the article proposes a suggestive policy model of carbon-tax in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, as the way forward in ensuring global carbon-neutrality.Alternate :In the wake of the 21st century, climate change has emerged as the biggest lifethreatening challenge with a potential of evolving into the largest, if not the most complex, economic opportunity since the industrial revolution. While narrowing down its focus to carbon tax as a regulatory fiscal aspect of international economic law, this article explores the potential role of the tax in moulding this economic opportunity in line with the commitments assumed by countries under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The issue is whether imposition of carbon tax or restructuring tax rates can have a significant impact in regulating carbon emissions by rationally pushing consumers, investors, and producers, towards an environmentally sound direction. To answer this, the article investigates three carbon-tax implementation case studies;British Columbia, South Africa, and the revision of European Union Energy Taxation Directive in the context of aviation, with the aim to explore the scope of contributing factors – from adequate tax rate determination to optimum tax revenue use – in successfully curbing carbon-based emissions. Drawing upon the policy-efforts of the countries in the case studies, the challenges and the solutions, the article proposes a suggestive policy model of carbon-tax in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, as the way forward in ensuring global carbon-neutrality.

The environmental pillar of ESG and financial performance: A portfolio analysis

Our research uses the environmental pillar of ESG as a proxy for environmental corporate social responsibility. We examine the performance of environmentally clustered portfolios by using simple quantitative investment strategies with optimum asset rotation. Post-hoc, sample-split analysis with non-parametric tests is performed. The results suggest that both environmental status and dynamic environmental performance are key characteristics of divergent financial behaviors. We show that environmentally low-rated companies present better financial performance, while environmental leaders are less risky and show more resilience. Assets with a dynamic environmental profile outperform on average in terms of returns and risk. Furthermore, supporting evidence of positive spillovers in high-rated environmental clusters is identified after the Paris Agreement. We evaluate the resilience of the environmental clusters during the COVID-19 crisis and the Russia-Ukraine war effect. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Climate policy and the concept of co-benefits in India.

Until the late 1990s, developing countries had perceived the pursuit of development as coming into conflict with the mitigation of climate change. Research showed that mitigation and development can go hand in hand, giving rise to the co-benefits approach. In this paper, the relationship between aiming for development and aiming for climate change mitigation is analyzed from the perspective of the developing country India. While industrialized countries prefer the approach of co-benefits of mitigation, developing countries tend to follow the development-first paradigm with mitigation co-benefits, as a literature and document study show. India had a long way to come from the notion that mitigation was threatening economic growth to adopting the co-benefits approach. The paradigms of "differentiated responsibilities" and of having a right to emit as much as the industrialized countries are deeply rooted. This is also shown by India's reaction to the current economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evolutionary Challenges to Humanity Caused by Uncontrolled Carbon Emissions: The Stockholm Paradigm.

This review paper discusses the Stockholm Paradigm (SP) as a theoretical framework and practical computational instrument for studying and assessing the risk of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) as a result of climate change. The SP resolves the long-standing parasite paradox and explains how carbon emissions in the atmosphere increase parasites' generalization and intensify host switches from animals to humans. The SP argues that the growing rate of novel EID occurrence caused by mutated zoonotic pathogens is related to the following factors brought together as a unified issue of humanity: (a) carbon emissions and consequent climate change; (b) resettlement/migration of people with hyper-urbanization; (c) overpopulation; and (d) human-induced distortion of the biosphere. The SP demonstrates that, in an evolutionary way, humans now play a role migratory birds once played in spreading parasite pathogens between the three Earth megabiotopes (northern coniferous forest belt; tropical/equatorial rainforest areas; and hot/cold deserts), i.e., the role of "super-spreaders" of parasitic viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa. This makes humans extremely vulnerable to the EID threat. The SP sees the +1.0-+1.2 °C limit as the optimal target for the slow, yet feasible curbing of the EID hazard to public health (150-200 years). Reaching merely the +2.0 °C level will obviously be an EID catastrophe, as it may cause two or three pandemics each year. We think it useful and advisable to include the SP-based research in the scientific repository of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, since EID appearance and spread are indirect but extremely dangerous consequences of climate change.

Global tourism, climate change and energy sustainability: assessing carbon reduction mitigating measures from the aviation industry.

As many business activities-especially those associated with the energy-intensive industries-continue to be major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and hence significantly contributing to global warming, there is a perceived need to identify ways to make business activities eventually carbon neutral. This paper explores the implications of a changing climate for the global tourism business and its intertwining global aviation industry that operates in a self-regulatory environment. Adopting a bibliometric analysis of the literature in the domain of global tourism and climate change (772 articles), the paper reveals the underlying sustainability issues that entail unsustainable energy consumption. The aviation industry as a significant source of carbon emission within the sector is then examined by analyzing the top 20 largest commercial airlines in the world with respect to its ongoing mitigating measures in meeting the Paris Agreement targets. While self-regulatory initiatives are taken to adopt Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) as alternative fuel production and consumption for drastically reducing carbon emission, voluntary alignment and commitment to long-term targets remain inconsistent. A concerted strategic approach to building up complementary sustainable infrastructures among the global network of airports based in various international tourist destination cities to enable a measurable reduction in carbon emission is necessary to achieve a transformational adaptation of a business sector that is of essence to the recovery of the global economy while attempting to tackle climate change in a post-COVID-19 era.

Key Aspects of Climate Strategies in Europe

Climate change is one of the main challenges and threats of the 21st century. Accordingly, the analysis in this study is based on the conceptual economic strategy of the United Nations Green Economy. Attention is paid to topical issues on the problem of climate change, since the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected human economic activities. For this study, three European Union member states have been selected for their economic performance and economic development: Germany, France and Italy. According to the statistics of the International Monetary Fund for 2020, the data on the GDP of these countries is the highest. Compared to other member states, the selected countries have the largest population. Moreover, the leaders of the three states have repeatedly expressed their concern about the problem of climate change. The paper provides a brief analysis of the most important international conferences devoted to the climate problem, as well as a comparison of the main approaches in relation to anthropological factors causing climate change. Unfortunately, the climate agenda is still viewed by some industrialists, government elites and energy sector businessmen as less significant than economic benefits. Academic circles are also divided and many believe that the transition to "green rails” is not feasible at the moment and the climate issue can be postponed. Thus, economic reforms, compliance with environmental recommendations, the introduction of legal and institutional mechanisms and methods remain under the responsibility of each state separately. The avoidance and reluctance of transformations allows us to speak about the initial stage of the formation of awareness of the climate threat. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Near-real-time CO2 fluxes from CarbonTracker Europe for high-resolution atmospheric modeling

We present the CarbonTracker Europe High-Resolution (CTE-HR) system that estimates carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange over Europe at high resolution (0.1 × 0.2∘) and in near real time (about 2 months' latency). It includes a dynamic anthropogenic emission model, which uses easily available statistics on economic activity, energy use, and weather to generate anthropogenic emissions with dynamic time profiles at high spatial and temporal resolution (0.1×0.2∘, hourly). Hourly net ecosystem productivity (NEP) calculated by the Simple Biosphere model Version 4 (SiB4) is driven by meteorology from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis 5th Generation (ERA5) dataset. This NEP is downscaled to 0.1×0.2∘ using the high-resolution Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) land-cover map and combined with the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) fire emissions to create terrestrial carbon fluxes. Ocean CO2 fluxes are included in our product, based on Jena CarboScope ocean CO2 fluxes, which are downscaled using wind speed and temperature. Jointly, these flux estimates enable modeling of atmospheric CO2 mole fractions over Europe.We assess the skill of the CTE-HR CO2 fluxes (a) to reproduce observed anomalies in biospheric fluxes and atmospheric CO2 mole fractions during the 2018 European drought, (b) to capture the reduction of anthropogenic emissions due to COVID-19 lockdowns, (c) to match mole fraction observations at Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) sites across Europe after atmospheric transport with the Transport Model, version 5 (TM5) and the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport (STILT), driven by ECMWF-IFS, and (d) to capture the magnitude and variability of measured CO2 fluxes in the city center of Amsterdam (the Netherlands).We show that CTE-HR fluxes reproduce large-scale flux anomalies reported in previous studies for both biospheric fluxes (drought of 2018) and anthropogenic emissions (COVID-19 pandemic in 2020). After applying transport of emitted CO2, the CTE-HR fluxes have lower median root mean square errors (RMSEs) relative to mole fraction observations than fluxes from a non-informed flux estimate, in which biosphere fluxes are scaled to match the global growth rate of CO2 (poor person's inversion). RMSEs are close to those of the reanalysis with the CTE data assimilation system. This is encouraging given that CTE-HR fluxes did not profit from the weekly assimilation of CO2 observations as in CTE.We furthermore compare CO2 concentration observations at the Dutch Lutjewad coastal tower with high-resolution STILT transport to show that the high-resolution fluxes manifest variability due to different emission sectors in summer and winter. Interestingly, in periods where synoptic-scale transport variability dominates CO2 concentration variations, the CTE-HR fluxes perform similarly to low-resolution fluxes (5–10× coarsened). The remaining 10 % of the simulated CO2 mole fraction differs by >2 ppm between the low-resolution and high-resolution flux representation and is clearly associated with coherent structures ("plumes”) originating from emission hotspots such as power plants. We therefore note that the added resolution of our product will matter most for very specific locations and times when used for atmospheric CO2 modeling. Finally, in a densely populated region like the Amsterdam city center, our modeled fluxes underestimate the magnitude of measured eddy covariance fluxes but capture their substantial diurnal variations in summertime and wintertime well.We conclude that our product is a promising tool for modeling the European carbon budget at a high resolution in near real time. The fluxes are freely available from the ICOS Carbon Portal (CC-BY-4.0) to be used for near-real-time monitoring and modeling, for example, as an a priori flux product in a CO2 data assimilation system. The data are available at 10.18160/20Z1-AYJ2 .

Global warming in the minds of Mexican higher education students: an exploratory study

Purpose>The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 is at the core of many sustainability initiatives on Mexican higher education institutions (HEIs). Yet, progress to SDG 13 and the entire 2030 Agenda might today appear unlikely to meet. To change this situation, it is necessary to form professionals aware of the impacts of climate change and competent to respond efficiently to its adaptation and mitigation. In this context, the purpose of this study is to reveal the beliefs and concerns about global warming of Mexican students enrolled in engineering bachelor's degrees at higher education institutes that promote sustainability.Design/methodology/approach>In an exploratory study, engineering university students at six large public universities in Mexico answered questions regarding their beliefs and concerns regarding climate change. The study was carried out by using the Global Warming's Six Americas survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed by a research team from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University to identify different audiences within the American public regarding climate change. Participants were recruited via convenience/snowball techniques which provided access to a diverse sample. Those who agreed to partake in the study were directed to an online platform via Google forms. Data were collected from January to April 2021. Coding and data treatment was conducted according to the developers' codebook and SPSS scripts. After running the statistical program scripts to determine the respondents' segment, a univariate descriptive analysis was performed for each item in the questionnaire to describe general properties in each variable. Subsequently, a series of correspondence analyses was conducted to examine the existence of clusters or patterns that could indicate relationships among selected questions.Findings>The findings of this study revealed that the majority of the Mexican engineering higher education students participating in the survey fell in the segment of alarmed, 47.3%, or the segment of concerned, 46.%. Furthermore, 78.6% of higher education students in the alarmed segment were extremely sure that global warming is happening. In addition, 98% believed that it is caused mostly by human activities. Furthermore, 89% stated that global warming would harm them personally significantly and 96% thought that future generations would be harmed considerably. About 78% believed that people in Mexico and the USA are currently being harmed by global warming. On the other hand, about 45% of students in the concerned group noted they were extremely sure. In addition, 96% of them thought that global warming is being produced mostly by anthropogenic activities. Furthermore, 39% said global warming will harm them personally to a great deal. However, nearly 80% noted that global warming would also hurt future generations. Although those students in the alarmed and concerned group show similar beliefs and concerns about global warming, the magnitude of concern was more significant for those in the alarmed segment.Research limitations/implications>There are several limitations to the study. First, the online questionnaire did not allow for clarification or follow-up on behalf of the respondents. Therefore, it could be possible that respondents misunderstood some items. However, the research team took the following measures to limit confusion: (1) The questionnaire had been previously used in several studies. None of these studies reported problems related to confusion, so the research team took this fact as evidence of the acceptable reliability of the questionnaire. (2) A face-to-face pilot test was carried out with 30 university students where no problems of comprehension were reported. (3) The target population had adequate prior knowledge of climate change, so the possibility of misunderstandings was likely low. A second limitation relates to the nature of the study. Fighting to mitigate the global climate crisis is a positive social norm. Respondents may have provided answ rs in line with this social norm and presented themselves as more pro-environmental than they actually are. Second, because of our selection criteria, our data may overestimate the general public's "worldviews” on climate change. Finally, this study was carried on during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have impacted items' responses. These limitations constitute future opportunities for future research. Specifically, future research might ideally use a large-scale comprehensive study evaluating the broader Mexican public's beliefs and views about climate change. Furthermore, because our data showed that our respondents were very concerned about climate change, but did little in terms of behavioral mitigation, future research should continue to examine and explore differences in various measures of climate friendly behaviors among different segments of the population.Practical implications>This study's findings have at least twofold implications for university authorities and sustainability practitioners in their pursuit of meeting SDG 13. The first implication is related to academic life. Undoubtedly, having a high percentage of students believing in global warming and mainly that this phenomenon is by anthropogenic activities is a strong indication of their knowledge. But, indirectly, these results validate the sustainability teaching and research efforts in their HEIs, implying the commitment to sustaining and improving the quality of their sustainability-educational initiatives in all institutional areas. The second implication of our findings is related to HEIs' future commitments to address the target of SDG 13 during the present Decade of Actions. Results also lead us to reflect on the role of Mexican HEIs as agents of change, beyond offering good instruction on climate science as an agent of socialization to encourage positive mitigation and adaptation behaviors among the general population.Social implications>The social implication behind the environmental values of younger people found in this study is that a deeper understanding of these millennials' beliefs and concerns toward global warming will help Mexican policymakers implement policies in this regard and hopefully will be endorsed by a significant proportion of the Mexican population.Originality/value>The originality of this study is the application of the Global Warming's Six Americas survey questionnaire in higher education settings. Therefore, the knowledge generated determines the quality of the article. As findings in this study revealed, there is apparently little disagreement among the Mexican engineering higher education students about the belief of the existence of global warming and this phenomenon is being caused mainly by human-related activities. Nevertheless, a minority of students still believe that global warming is caused naturally or not occurring. However, it is not possible to claim victory, as these achievements should not be considered, in any way, a guarantee that students will carry out behaviors in their daily lives that impact a reduction in global warming. Nevertheless, the study provides insights to allow university authorities to ensure that the current beliefs and concerns will not fade in the post-pandemic times. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic should be taken a pivotal era toward the goal of increasing the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Key Aspects of Climate Strategies in Europe

Climate change is one of the main challenges and threats of the 21st century. Accordingly, the analysis in this study is based on the conceptual economic strategy of the United Nations Green Economy. Attention is paid to topical issues on the problem of climate change, since the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected human economic activities. For this study, three European Union member states have been selected for their economic performance and economic development: Germany, France and Italy. According to the statistics of the International Monetary Fund for 2020, the data on the GDP of these countries is the highest. Compared to other member states, the selected countries have the largest population. Moreover, the leaders of the three states have repeatedly expressed their concern about the problem of climate change. The paper provides a brief analysis of the most important international conferences devoted to the climate problem, as well as a comparison of the main approaches in relation to anthropological factors causing climate change. Unfortunately, the climate agenda is still viewed by some industrialists, government elites and energy sector businessmen as less significant than economic benefits. Academic circles are also divided and many believe that the transition to "green rails” is not feasible at the moment and the climate issue can be postponed. Thus, economic reforms, compliance with environmental recommendations, the introduction of legal and institutional mechanisms and methods remain under the responsibility of each state separately. The avoidance and reluctance of transformations allows us to speak about the initial stage of the formation of awareness of the climate threat. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Sustainable Development Challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean

Development pathways for Latin American and the Caribbean countries have been the subject of debates, analyses and controversies. For several decades, countries in this region have struggled with structural barriers to development associated with social inequalities, political turmoil, colonialism, corruption and a dependence on exploiting natural resources, among others. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened some of those obstacles, which when added to the global climate crisis and its environmental impact, leaves the region in a highly stressed situation, with many of its countries on the edge of a deep economic depression. This chapter discusses some of the socioeconomic challenges that Latin America and the Caribbean currently face;the roles of COVID-19 and climate crises on these challenges and some opportunities for recovery. © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited.

Finance for Climate Action: Postcovid-19 Recovery Challenges

This paper is oriented to explore the new developments in climate action financing within the framework of Just Transition. This discourse is linked to the post COVID-19 recovery and the sustainable finance agenda. The study is done through extensive literature review, combining aspects PRISMA guidelines and the Recursive Content ion (RCA) analytical approach. After presenting the Just Transition framework, we analyze the provisions on financing of the Paris Agreement. Next, the financing gaps are identified with the COVID-19 impact. We pay a special attention on the debt service, the related developing countries difficulties, and the challenges for sub-national governments. Then we analyze the efficient market theory and its distortion in the time of COVID-19 crisis. Based on the topics discussed, at the end the paper presents some final remarks. © 2022 Instituto Mexicano de Ejecutivos de Finanzas. All rights reserved.