Water consumption and biodiversity: Responses to global emergency events.

Given that it was a once-in-a-century emergency event, the confinement measures related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused diverse disruptions and changes in life and work patterns. These changes significantly affected water consumption both during and after the pandemic, with direct and indirect consequences on biodiversity. However, there has been a lack of holistic evaluation of these responses. Here, we propose a novel framework to study the impacts of this unique global emergency event by embedding an environmentally extended supply-constrained global multi-regional input-output model (MRIO) into the drivers-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework. This framework allowed us to develop scenarios related to COVID-19 confinement measures to quantify country-sector-specific changes in freshwater consumption and the associated changes in biodiversity for the period of 2020-2025. The results suggest progressively diminishing impacts due to the implementation of COVID-19 vaccines and the socio-economic system's self-adjustment to the new normal. In 2020, the confinement measures were estimated to decrease global water consumption by about 5.7% on average across all scenarios when compared with the baseline level with no confinement measures. Further, such a decrease is estimated to lead to a reduction of around 5% in the related pressure on biodiversity. Given the interdependencies and interactions across global supply chains, even those countries and sectors that were not directly affected by the COVID-19 shocks experienced significant impacts: Our results indicate that the supply chain propagations contributed to 79% of the total estimated decrease in water consumption and 84% of the reduction in biodiversity loss on average. Our study demonstrates that the MRIO-enhanced DSPIR framework can help quantify resource pressures and the resultant environmental impacts across supply chains when facing a global emergency event. Further, we recommend the development of more locally based water conservation measures-to mitigate the effects of trade disruptions-and the explicit inclusion of water resources in post-pandemic recovery schemes. In addition, innovations that help conserve natural resources are essential for maintaining environmental gains in the post-pandemic world.

Incorporating platinum circular economy into China's hydrogen pathways toward carbon neutrality.

Hydrogen is gaining tremendous traction in China as the fuel of the future to support the country's carbon neutrality ambition. Despite that hydrogen as fuel largely hinges on the supply of platinum (Pt), the dynamic interlinkage between Pt supply challenges, hydrogen development pathways, and climate targets in China has yet to be deeply analyzed. Here, we adopt an integrated assessment model to address this important concern and corresponding strategies for China. The results indicate that the booming hydrogen development would drive China's cumulative demand for Pt metal to reach 4,200-5,000 tons. Much of this demand, met through a limited supply pattern, is vulnerable to price volatility and heightened geopolitical risks, which can be mitigated through circular economy strategies. Consequently, a coordinated approach to leverage both global sustainable Pt sourcing and a robust domestic Pt circular economy is imperative for ensuring cost-effective hydrogen production, aligned with a climate-safe future.

Higher total energy costs strain the elderly, especially low-income, across 31 developed countries.

Addressing the total energy cost burden of elderly people is essential for designing equitable and effective energy policies, especially in responding to energy crisis in an aging society. It is due to the double impact of energy price hikes on households-through direct impact on fuel bills and indirect impact on the prices of goods and services consumed. However, while examining the household energy cost burden of the elderly, their indirect energy consumption and associated cost burden remain poorly understood. This study quantifies and compares the direct and indirect energy footprints and associated total energy cost burdens for different age groups across 31 developed countries. It reveals that the elderly have larger per capita energy footprints, resulting from higher levels of both direct and indirect energy consumption compared with the younger age groups. More importantly, the elderly, especially the low-income elderly, have a higher total energy cost burden rate. As the share of elderly in the total population rapidly grows in these countries, the larger per capita energy footprint and associated cost burden rate of elderly people would make these aging countries more vulnerable in times of energy crises. It is therefore crucial to develop policies that aim to reduce energy consumption and costs, improve energy efficiency, and support low-income elderly populations. Such policies are necessary to reduce the vulnerability of these aging countries to the energy crisis.

Does interstate trade of agricultural products in the U.S. alleviate land and water stress?

Interregional free-trade of agricultural products is expected to transfer embodied (virtual) water from more to less water-productive regions. However, irrigation in semi-arid to arid regions may significantly push up agricultural productivity but cause local water scarcity. This may result in a puzzle: inter-regional trade may save overall water consumption but lead to more severe local water scarcity. An analogous puzzle may exist for farmland, for instance, trade may save farmland but not address farmland scarcity. To test the existence of these two important puzzles, we applied environmentally extended multi-regional input-output models to obtain the inter-regional virtual agricultural water and land transfer across 48 states of the conterminous U.S. and estimated their agricultural land and water footprints in 2017. Such a detailed analysis showed that while the land-abundant Midwestern states exported a sizable amount of virtual farmland to other densely populated areas and foreign nations, the water-stressed Western U.S. and Southwestern U.S. states, like California, Arizona, and New Mexico, exported considerable amounts of water-intensive crops such as fruits, vegetables and tree nuts to the Eastern U.S. and overseas, thus worsen the local water scarcity of those water scarce states. Our analysis highlights a critical dilemma inherent in an economic productivity-focused incentive regime: It frequently leads to increased withdrawal of scarce water. Therefore, resource scarcity rents need to be reflected in inter-regional trade with the support of local environmental policies.

Implementation of carbon pricing in an aging world calls for targeted protection schemes.

Understanding the impact of climate fiscal policies on vulnerable groups is a prerequisite for equitable climate mitigation. However, there has been a lack of attention to the impacts of such policies on the elderly, especially the low-income elderly, in existing climate policy literature. Here, we quantify and compare the distributional impacts of carbon pricing on different age-income groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan and then on different age groups in other 28 developed countries. We find that the elderly are more vulnerable to carbon pricing than younger groups in the same income group. In particular, the low-income elderly and elderly in less wealthy countries face greater challenges because carbon pricing lead to both higher rate of increase in living cost among low-income elderly and greater income inequality within the same age group. In addition, the low-income elderly would benefit less than the younger groups within the same income group in the commonly proposed carbon revenues recycling schemes. The high vulnerability of the low-income elderly to carbon pricing calls for targeted social protection along with climate mitigation polices toward an aging world.

China's electric vehicle and climate ambitions jeopardized by surging critical material prices.

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale is crucial for meeting the desired climate commitments, where affordability plays a vital role. However, the expected surge in prices of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, four critical materials in EV batteries, could hinder EV uptake. To explore these impacts in the context of China, the world's largest EV market, we expand and enrich an integrated assessment model. We find that under a high material cost surge scenario, EVs would account for 35% (2030) and 51% (2060) of the total number of vehicles in China, significantly lower than 49% (2030) and 67% (2060) share in the base-line, leading to a 28% increase in cumulative carbon emissions (2020-2060) from road transportation. While material recycling and technical battery innovation are effective long-term countermeasures, securing the supply chains of critical materials through international cooperation is highly recommended, given geopolitical and environmental fragilities.

Increase in grain production potential of China under climate change.

The rapid growth of China's demand for grains is expected to continue in the coming decades, largely as a result of the increasing feed demand to produce protein-rich food. This leads to a great concern on future supply potentials of Chinese agriculture under climate change and the extent of China's dependence on world food markets. While the existing literature in both agronomy and climate economics indicates a dominance of the adverse impacts of climate change on rice, wheat, and maize yields, there is a lack of study to assess changes in multi-cropping opportunities induced by climate change. Multi-cropping benefits crop production by harvesting more than once per year from a given plot. To address this important gap, we established a procedure within the agro-ecological zones (AEZ) modeling framework to assess future spatial shifts of multi-cropping conditions. The assessment was based on an ensemble of five general circulation models under four representative concentration pathway scenarios in the phase five of coupled model inter-comparison project and accounted for the water scarcity constraints. The results show significant northward extensions of single-, double-, and triple-cropping zones in the future which would provide good opportunities for crop-rotation-based adaptation. The increasing multi-cropping opportunities would be able to boost the annual grain production potential by an average scale of 89(±49) Mt at the current irrigation efficiency and 143(±46) Mt at the modernized irrigation efficiency with improvement between the baseline (1981-2010) and the mid-21st century (2041-2070).

Multiscale Analysis of the Relationship between Toxic Chemical Hazard Risks and Racial/Ethnic and Socioeconomic Groups in Texas, USA.

Although quantitative environmental (in)justice research demonstrates a disproportionate burden of toxic chemical hazard risks among racial/ethnic minorities and people in low socioeconomic positions, limited knowledge exists on how racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups across geographic spaces experience toxic chemical hazards. This study analyzed the spatial non-stationarity in the associations between toxic chemical hazard risk and community characteristics of census block groups in Texas, USA, for 2017 using a multiscale geographically weighted regression. The results showed that the percentage of Black or Asian population has significant positive associations with toxic risk across block groups in Texas, meaning that racial minorities suffered more from toxic risk wherever they are located in the state. By contrast, the percentage of Hispanic or Latino has a positive relationship with toxic risk, and the relationship varies locally and is only significant in eastern areas of Texas. Statistical associations between toxic risk and socioeconomic variables are not stationary across the state, showing sub-state patterns of spatial variation in terms of the sign, significant level, and magnitude of the coefficient. Income has a significant negative association with toxic risk around the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington Metropolitan Statistical Area. Proportions of people without high school diploma and the unemployment rate both have positive relationships with toxic risk in the eastern area of Texas. Our findings highlight the importance of identifying the spatial patterns of the association between toxic chemical hazard risks and community characteristics at the census block group level for addressing environmental inequality.

Tracing toxic chemical releases embodied in U.S. interstate trade and their unequal distribution.

Toxic chemicals have severe impacts on ecosystem, climate change and human health, and the current toxic releases are inequitably distributed across regions. Investigating the toxic release embodied in final demand by states and income groups can reveal the responsibility transfer of different entities. In this paper, we extended the U.S. multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model with toxic chemical release data in 2017 to conduct the production- and consumption-based accounting of toxic release by each state, and the inter-regional transfer of embodied toxic release between states. In addition, this paper analyzed how the toxic releases and inter-state transfer of embodied toxic release have been driven by income groups across states. The results showed that the toxic release from production was highly concentrated on the central states and the Great Lakes Region, while the consumption-based accounting of toxic release was more equally distributed across regions in the US. The non-metallic and metallic products manufacturing sectors were the most important sectors for most states from both production and consumption-based perspectives and were also the most essential sectors for interregional flows of embodied toxic release from Great Lake Region to Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Our results also showed that the largest portion (41.88%) of embodied toxic releases were triggered by households' final demand, and that the consumption of the richest 35% of households contributed to more than 50% of the total toxic chemical releases triggered by total final demand of all households.

Satellite forecasting of crop harvest can trigger a cross-hemispheric production response and improve global food security.

Global food security is increasingly threatened by climate change and regional human conflicts. Abnormal fluctuations in crop production in major exporting countries can cause volatility in food prices and household consumption in importing countries. Here we show that timely forecasting of crop harvest from satellite data over major exporting regions can trigger production response in the opposite hemisphere to offset the short-term fluctuations and stabilize global food supply. Satellite forecasting can reduce the fluctuation extents of country-level prices by 1.1 to 12.5 percentage points for anticipated wheat shortage or surplus in Russia and Ukraine, and even reverse the price shock in importing countries for anticipated soybean shortage in Brazil. Our research demonstrates that by leveraging the seasonal lags in crop calendars between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, operational crop monitoring from satellite data can provide a mechanism to improve global food security.

Environmental implications of economic transformation in China's Pearl River Delta region: Dynamics at four nested geographical scales over 1987-2017.

Environmental pollution in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region is largely driven by socioeconomic forces outside the region as vast majority of manufacturing products produced in the region are destined to national and international markets. Given the remarkable economic transformation of the PRD in the past decades, this study investigates the impacts of local, provincial, national, and global socio-economic drivers on PRD's pollution dynamics under the background of significant economic restructuring and upgrading from 1987 to 2017. The results indicate that changes in pollution pattern were deeply shaped by the economic transformation. The share of PRD's emissions driven by international exports expanded significantly before 2007 as a result of the fast growth of international exports. The transformation of economic growth to domestic consumption driven model since the 2007-2008 global financial crisis had resulted in an increasing contribution share to the PRD's environmental pollution from local demand and trade with Rest of China (RoC). Similarly, as final demand structure evolving towards the high value-added manufacturing and services, the share of emissions driven by low value-added manufacturing (LVM) demand had decreased by an enlarged margin, while that driven by high value-added manufacturing (HVM) demand and services demand had moved in the opposite direction. The structural decomposition analysis shows that reduction in emission intensity remains the most effective way in pollution alleviation. The contribution of changes in production input structure also shifted from a strong impetus force before 2007 to a mitigating force afterwards due to significant technological progresses in the industrial sectors since the global financial crisis. With the marginal cost of reducing emission intensity becoming prohibitively expensive, the optimization of production structure and consumption pattern is likely to play more important role in future emission mitigation.

A global North-South division line for portraying urban development.

Rapid urbanization has tremendously changed the global landscape with profound impacts on our society. Nighttime light (NTL) data can provide valuable information about human activities and socioeconomic conditions thus has become an effective proxy to measure urban development. By using NTL-derived urban measures from 1992 to 2018, we analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns of global urban development from country to region to city scales, which presented a distinct North-South divergence characterized by the rising and declining patterns. A global North-South division line was identified to partition the globe into the Line-North and the Line-South geographically, which accorded with the socioeconomic difference from the aspects of urban population and economy. This line may keep a certain degree of stability deriving from the trends of population and economic information but also bears uncertainties in the long term.

Quantifying economic-social-environmental trade-offs and synergies of water-supply constraints: An application to the capital region of China.

Sustainable water management is one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and is characterized by a high level of interdependencies with other SDGs from regional to global scales. Many water assessment studies are restricted to silo thinking, mostly focusing on water-related consequences, while lacking a quantification of trade-offs and synergies of economic, social, and environmental dimensions. To fill this knowledge gap, we propose a "nexus" approach that integrates a water supply constrained multi-regional input-output (mixed MRIO) model, scenario analysis, and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to quantify the trade-offs and synergies at the sectoral level for the capital region of China, i.e. the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. A total of 120 industrial transition scenarios including nine major industries with high water-intensities and water consumption under current development pathways were developed to facilitate the trade-off and synergy analysis between economic loss, social goals (here, the number of jobs) and environmental protection (with grey water footprint representing water pollution) triggered by water conservation measures. Our simulation results show that an imposition of a tolerable water constraint (a necessary water consumption reduction for regional water stress level to move from severe to moderate) in the region would result in an average economic loss of 68.4 (± 16.0) billion Yuan (1 yuan ≈ 0.158 USD$ in 2012), or 1.3 % of regional GDP, a loss of 1.94 (± 0.18) million jobs (i.e. 3.5 % of the work force) and a reduction of 1.27 (± 0.40) billion m3 or about 2.2% of the regional grey water footprint. A tolerable water rationing in water-intensive sectors such as Agriculture, Food and tobacco processing, Electricity and heating power production and Chemicals would result in the lowest economic and job losses and the largest environmental benefits. Based on MCDA, we selected the 10 best scenarios with regard to their economic, social and environmental performances as references for guiding future water management and suggested industrial transition policies. This integrated approach could be a powerful policy support tool for 1) assessing trade-offs and synergies among multiple criteria and across multiple region-sectors under resource constraints; 2) quantifying the short-term supply-chain effects of different containment measures, and 3) facilitating more insightful evaluation of SDGs at the regional level so as to determine priorities for local governments and practitioners to achieve SDGs.

Shifts towards healthy diets in the US can reduce environmental impacts but would be unaffordable for poorer minorities.

Environmental implications of food choice are the focus of increasingly extensive research, but less is known about the impacts of dietary patterns of different socio-economic groups of a country, and the trade-offs between nutritional quality and environmental impacts of diet within those groups. We evaluate the impacts of US household dietary patterns on greenhouse gas emissions, blue water footprint, land use and energy consumption across supply chains using an environmentally extended input-output analysis. We compare the nutritional quality of these dietary patterns using healthy eating index scores across individuals' income and other socio-economic characteristics. Individuals with higher income or education levels are more likely to adopt healthier diets but are also responsible for larger environmental impacts of diet primarily due to a higher consumption of dairy and livestock products, seafood and items with lower energy density but higher nutrient density. Our optimization shows that a healthy diet with lower environmental impacts is achievable within current food budgets for almost 95% of people, and results in average decreases of 2% in food-related greenhouse gas emissions, 24% in land use and 4% in energy consumption, but a 28% increase in blue water consumption. However, such dietary patterns are unaffordable for 38% of Black and Hispanic individuals in the lowest income and education groups. Policies that affect income and food prices making nutritious food more affordable would be needed to achieve better nutrition and improved environmental outcomes simultaneously, particularly for more vulnerable socio-economic groups.

Quantifying stakeholder learning in climate change adaptation across multiple relational and participatory networks.

Responding to accelerating climate change impacts requires broad and effective engagement with stakeholders, at multiple geographic and governance levels. Stakeholder participation has been hailed as a facilitated approach in climate change adaptation that supports social learning, depolarization of perceptions, and fosters collective action. But stakeholder participation remains loosely interpreted and evaluating measures are limited. This study employs social network analysis (SNA) to investigate how social relations among stakeholders, which emerge as a result of participation, are associated with stakeholder learning, as changes in perceptions of climate change. We hypothesized that reciprocal ties of understanding, respect, and influence can predict changes in perceptions of climate change. This approach was applied to a case study in Deal Island Peninsula, Maryland (USA) where local residents, scientists, and government officials met from 2016 to 2018 to collaboratively manage the impacts of sea-level rise in their communities. We found that social relations based on mutual understanding, respect,and influence are positively associated with perceptions of climate change. We provide a detailed conceptualization and implementation of a network-based approach that may serve as a potential quantitative performance measure of stakeholder participation processes in climate change adaptation. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence of the role that emerging social relations have on enhancing or constraining social learning among stakeholders in the Deal Island Peninsula project.

Limiting rice and sugarcane residue burning in Thailand: Current status, challenges and strategies.

As population and consumption grow, so does crop production and its residue. Crop residue is traditionally burned in developing countries, which impacts environment, economy, society and health. Thailand faces similar challenges as it is among the largest producers of rice paddy and sugarcane in the world with 83% of its total burnt residue coming from these crops. To address this problem, the Government of Thailand has implemented some policies (e.g. Alternative Energy Development Plan (AEDP) and zero burning policy for sugarcane) targeting both, the use of residue, and the practice of burning. While these policies appear to control residue burning to some extent, there are still challenges, especially for poorer farmers, who rely on manual harvesting practices. The paper looks into the current status of rice and sugarcane residue burning, its impacts on the environment, existing policies, current challenges, and future solutions through sustainable management practices. To achieve reduction in residue burning, the best possible solution is to use residue for alternative purposes. Some sustainable management practices include use of residue for energy production, green harvesting to improve soil nutrients, biochar production and composting. Thailand can also learn from solutions implemented in other countries, to reduce some of the impacts of crop residue burning.

Household carbon and energy inequality in Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Reducing inequality, eradicating poverty and achieving a carbon-neutral society are recognized as important components of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. In this study, we focus on carbon and energy inequality between and within ten Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. Detailed carbon and energy footprint were estimated by combining the consumption profiles (2014) in ten LAC countries with environmental extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis. Our results show significant inequality of regional total and per capita carbon and energy footprint across the studied LAC countries in 2014. The top 10% income category was responsible for 29.1% and 26.3% of the regional total carbon and energy footprint, and their per capita carbon and energy footprint were 12.2 and 7.5 times of the bottom 10% earners in that region. The average carbon footprint of studied LAC countries varied between 0.53 and 2.21 t CO2e/cap (ton of CO2 equivalent, per capita), and the energy footprint ranged from 0.38 to 1.76 t SOE/cap (ton of Standard Oil Equivalent, per capita). The huge difference in total and per capita carbon emissions and energy consumption of different income groups suggests notable differences in climate change responsibility, and supports policies for achieving sustainable consumption in terms of carbon tax, renewable energy subsidy, and decarbonizing the consumption structure in different LAC countries.

Mitigating heat-related mortality risk in Shanghai, China: system dynamics modeling simulations.

Numerous studies in epidemiology, meteorology, and climate change research have demonstrated a significant association between abnormal ambient temperature and mortality. However, there is a shortage of research attention to a systematic assessment of potential mitigation measures which could effectively reduce the heat-related morbidity and mortality risks. This study first illustrates a conceptualization of a systems analysis version of urban framework for climate service (UFCS). It then constructs a system dynamics (SD) model for the UFCS and employs this model to quantify the impacts of heat waves on public health system in Shanghai and to evaluate the performances of two mitigation measures in the context of a real heat wave event in July 2013 in the city. Simulation results show that in comparison with the baseline without mitigation measures, if the hospital system could prepare 20% of beds available for emergency response to heat waves once receiving the warning in advance, the number of daily deaths could be reduced by 40-60 (15.8-19.5%) on the 2 days of day 7 and day 8; if increasing the minimum living allowance of 790 RMB/month in 2013 by 20%, the number of daily deaths could be reduced by 50-70 (17.7-21.9%) on the 2 days of day 8 and day 12. This tool can help policy makers systematically evaluate adaptation and mitigation options based on performance assessment, thus strengthening urban resilience to changing climate.

Agro-ecological suitability assessment of Chinese Medicinal Yam under future climate change.

Chinese Medicinal Yam (CMY) has been prescribed as medicinal food for thousand years in China by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners. Its medical benefits include nourishing the stomach and spleen to improve digestion, replenishing lung and kidney, etc., according to the TCM literature. As living standard rises and public health awareness improves in recent years, the potential medicinal benefits of CMY have attracted increasing attention in China. It has been found that the observed climate change in last several decades, together with the change in economic structure, has driven significant shift in the pattern of the traditional CMY planting areas. To identify suitable planting area for CMY in the near future is critical for ensuring the quality and supply quantity of CMY, guiding the layout of CMY industry, and safeguarding the sustainable development of CMY resources for public health. In this study, we first collect 30-year records of CMY varieties and their corresponding phenology and agro-meteorological observations. We then consolidate these data and use them to enrich and update the eco-physiological parameters of CMY in the agro-ecological zone (AEZ) model. The updated CMY varieties and AEZ model are validated using the historical planting area and production under observed climate conditions. After the successful validation, we use the updated AEZ model to simulate the potential yield of CMY and identify the suitable planting regions under future climate projections in China. This study shows that regions with high ecological similarity to the genuine and core producing areas of CMY mainly distribute in eastern Henan, southeastern Hebei, and western Shandong. The climate suitability of these areas will be improved due to global warming in the next 50 years, and therefore, they will continue to be the most suitable CMY planting regions.

Synthesized trade-off analysis of flood control solutions under future deep uncertainty: An application to the central business district of Shanghai.

Coastal mega-cities will face increasing flood risk under the current protection standard because of future climate change. Previous studies seldom evaluate the comparative effectiveness of alternative options in reducing flood risk under the uncertainty of future extreme rainfall. Long-term planning to manage flood risk is further challenged by uncertainty in socioeconomic factors and contested stakeholder priorities. In this study, we conducted a knowledge co-creation process together with infrastructure experts, policy makers, and other stakeholders to develop an integrated framework for flexible testing of multiple flood-risk mitigation strategies under the condition of deep uncertainties. We implemented this framework to the reoccurrence scenarios in the 2050s of a record-breaking extreme rainfall event in central Shanghai. Three uncertain factors, including precipitation, urban rain island effect and the decrease of urban drainage capacity caused by land subsidence and sea level rise, are selected to build future extreme inundation scenarios in the case study. The risk-reduction performance and cost-effectiveness of all possible solutions are examined across different scenarios. The results show that drainage capacity decrease caused by sea-level rise and land subsidence will contribute the most to the rise of future inundation risk in central Shanghai. The combination of increased green area, improved drainage system, and the deep tunnel with a runoff absorbing capacity of 30% comes out to be the most favorable and robust solution which can reduce the future inundation risk by 85% (±8%). This research indicates that to conduct a successful synthesized trade-off analysis of alternative flood control solutions under future deep uncertainty is bound to be a knowledge co-creation process of scientists, decision makers, field experts, and other stakeholders.