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Edited by David C. Holmes and Lucy M. Richardson
Edited by Anu Valtonen, Outi Rantala and Paolo D. Farah
Edited by James Meadowcroft, David Banister, Erling Holden, Oluf Langhelle, Kristin Linnerud and Geoffrey Gilpin
What Next for Sustainable Development?
Our Common Future at Thirty
Edited by James Meadowcroft, David Banister, Erling Holden, Oluf Langhelle, Kristin Linnerud and Geoffrey Gilpin
Edited by Kathleen E. Halvorsen, Chelsea Schelly, Robert M. Handler, Erin C. Pischke and Jessie L. Knowlton
Edited by Kathleen E. Halvorsen, Chelsea Schelly, Robert M. Handler, Erin C. Pischke and Jessie L. Knowlton
Edited by Kathleen E. Halvorsen, Chelsea Schelly, Robert M. Handler, Erin C. Pischke and Jessie L. Knowlton
Konar Mutafoglu, Patrick ten Brink, Sabrina Dekker, Jamie Woollard and Jean-Pierre Schweitzer
Nature plays an important role in addressing the risks posed by climate change. In this chapter, the authors explore nature’s contribution to improving micro-climatic conditions in cities and mitigating urban heat stress, thereby helping cities become climate resilient. Green infrastructure, such as parks and tree-lined streets, can contribute to climate resilience and the health of urban populations by reducing heat stress, as well as hospitalisations and mortality. Today, with more than half of the global population urbanised, population densities and the heat island effect amplify heat-related risks in cities and necessitate appropriate solutions. The chapter presents a range of examples illustrating the benefits of nature, building mainly on insights from Europe. It also details how stakeholders collaborate to invest in urban and suburban green infrastructure and use a variety of tools, measures, processes and financing sources. The chapter then outlines a road map for moving forward.
Architesh Panda, Upasna Sharma, K.N. Ninan and Anthony Patt
It is important to identify the factors influencing adaptive capacity among households within a community, as doing so will enable effective targeting of government interventions to address the risks posed by climate change. In this chapter the authors study such factors using household survey data collected from a drought prone region of Orissa, India. In the survey respondents were asked about the adaptations that they had engaged in to deal with the risk of drought, as well as a number of indicators for adaptive capacity taken from the literature. The study found many indicators to correlate with one or more adaptations taken. However, many of these indicators, while increasing the likelihood that one adaptation would be taken, also decreased the likelihood that another would be taken, and hence were not unambiguous determinants of greater adaptive capacity in general. Access to crop insurance was found to be particularly effective: it correlated with an increased likelihood of engaging in two separate yield-raising adaptations. The results suggest that further attention to crop insurance may be warranted, as well as further research to determine if the other indicators may be effective in other contextual settings.