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1. How does gendered vulnerability shape the adoption and impact of sustainable livelihood interventions in an era of global climate change?

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2f57  

   Call, Maia ; Sellers, Samuel ( July 2019 , Environmental Research Letters)

   Background. Though many studies have long considered the broad social implications of climate change, researchers have only recently started to consider the gendered unevenness of the global landscape of vulnerability, exposure, and adaptive capacity to environmental stressors and shocks. Historically, policies and interventions addressing natural resource-based livelihoods have rarely considered underlying gender dynamics despite the global pervasiveness of gendered disparities in both economic opportunities and welfare outcomes.Methods/Design. Using two electronic databases, Web of Science and Scopus, we conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed academic literature describing livelihoods policies or interventions that included documentation of gendered impacts. We focused onmore »natural resource-based livelihoods most likely to be affected by climate change, centering on interventions targeting agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, and forestry.Review Results/Synthesis. We identified 131 relevant articles, most of which focus on adoption or participation in interventions rather than outcomes. In general, women are less likely than men to engage with sustainable livelihoods interventions. When women do engage, some researchers have documented income and food security gains as well as improvements in environmental indicators in the short-term. However, these initiatives have also been found to increase women’s labor burden without corresponding gains in income. Few studies measure longer-term effects of women’s engagement on welfare and environmental outcomes, a key gap in the literature. Additionally, relatively few studies explore the intersectional impacts of initiatives, such as the added burdens of ethnicity, class, education, or other differences that modify gender disparities.Discussion. Climate change has gendered impacts on natural resource-based livelihoods. In general, existing initiatives designed to increase livelihood resilience fail to reduce gender disparities and improve women’s livelihoods. Greater attention should be paid to gender when designing sustainable livelihoods policies and interventions in order to increase adoption and participation, negotiate trade-offs, improve environmental conditions, and promote broadly beneficial welfare outcomes.

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2. Evaluating sustainable development policies in rural coastal economies

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2017835117  

   Lindsay, Amanda R. ; Sanchirico, James N. ; Gilliland, Ted E. ; Ambo-Rappe, Rohani ; Taylor, J. Edward ; Krueck, Nils C. ; Mumby, Peter J. ( December 2020 , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Sustainable development (SD) policies targeting marine economic sectors, designed to alleviate poverty and conserve marine ecosystems, have proliferated in recent years. Many developing countries are providing poor fishing households with new fishing boats (fishing capital) that can be used further offshore as a means to improve incomes and relieve fishing pressure on nearshore fish stocks. These kinds of policies are a marine variant of traditional SD policies focused on agriculture. Here, we evaluate ex ante economic and environmental impacts of provisions of fishing and agricultural capital, with and without enforcement of fishing regulations that prohibit the use of larger vesselsmore »in nearshore habitats. Combining methods from development economics, natural resource economics, and marine ecology, we use a unique dataset and modeling framework to account for linkages between households, business sectors, markets, and local fish stocks. We show that the policies investing capital in local marine fisheries or agricultural sectors achieve income gains for targeted households, but knock-on effects lead to increased harvest of nearshore fish, making them unlikely to achieve conservation objectives in rural coastal economies. However, pairing an agriculture stimulus with increasing enforcement of existing fisheries’ regulations may lead to a win–win situation. While marine-based policies could be an important tool to achieve two of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (alleviate poverty and protect vulnerable marine resources), their success is by no means assured and requires consideration of land and marine socioeconomic linkages inherent in rural economies.« less
3. A coupled human–natural system analysis of freshwater security under climate and population change

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020431118  

   Yoon, Jim ; Klassert, Christian ; Selby, Philip ; Lachaut, Thibaut ; Knox, Stephen ; Avisse, Nicolas ; Harou, Julien ; Tilmant, Amaury ; Klauer, Bernd ; Mustafa, Daanish ; et al ( March 2021 , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Limited water availability, population growth, and climate change have resulted in freshwater crises in many countries. Jordan’s situation is emblematic, compounded by conflict-induced population shocks. Integrating knowledge across hydrology, climatology, agriculture, political science, geography, and economics, we present the Jordan Water Model, a nationwide coupled human–natural-engineered systems model that is used to evaluate Jordan’s freshwater security under climate and socioeconomic changes. The complex systems model simulates the trajectory of Jordan’s water system, representing dynamic interactions between a hierarchy of actors and the natural and engineered water environment. A multiagent modeling approach enables the quantification of impacts at the level ofmore »thousands of representative agents across sectors, allowing for the evaluation of both systemwide and distributional outcomes translated into a suite of water-security metrics (vulnerability, equity, shortage duration, and economic well-being). Model results indicate severe, potentially destabilizing, declines in freshwater security. Per capita water availability decreases by approximately 50% by the end of the century. Without intervening measures, >90% of the low-income household population experiences critical insecurity by the end of the century, receiving <40 L per capita per day. Widening disparity in freshwater use, lengthening shortage durations, and declining economic welfare are prevalent across narratives. To gain a foothold on its freshwater future, Jordan must enact a sweeping portfolio of ambitious interventions that include large-scale desalinization and comprehensive water sector reform, with model results revealing exponential improvements in water security through the coordination of supply- and demand-side measures.« less
4. Global Population Exposed to Extreme Events in the 150 Most Populated Cities of the World: Implications for Public Health

   https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031293  

   Li, Linze ; Jiang, Chengsheng ; Murtugudde, Raghu ; Liang, Xin-Zhong ; Sapkota, Amir ( February 2021 , International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)

   Climate change driven increases in the frequency of extreme heat events (EHE) and extreme precipitation events (EPE) are contributing to both infectious and non-infectious disease burden, particularly in urban city centers. While the share of urban populations continues to grow, a comprehensive assessment of populations impacted by these threats is lacking. Using data from weather stations, climate models, and urban population growth during 1980–2017, here, we show that the concurrent rise in the frequency of EHE, EPE, and urban populations has resulted in over 500% increases in individuals exposed to EHE and EPE in the 150 most populated cities ofmore »the world. Since most of the population increases over the next several decades are projected to take place in city centers within low- and middle-income countries, skillful early warnings and community specific response strategies are urgently needed to minimize public health impacts and associated costs to the global economy.« less
5. Heat stress on agricultural workers exacerbates crop impacts of climate change

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abeb9f  

   de Lima, Cicero Z. ; Buzan, Jonathan R. ; Moore, Frances C. ; Baldos, Uris Lantz C. ; Huber, Matthew ; Hertel, Thomas W. ( March 2021 , Environmental Research Letters)

   The direct impacts of climate change on crop yields and human health are individually well-studied, but the interaction between the two have received little attention. Here we analyze the consequences of global warming for agricultural workers and the crops they cultivate using a global economic model (GTAP) with explicit treatment of the physiological impacts of heat stress on humans’ ability to work. Based on two metrics of heat stress and two labor functions, combined with a meta-analysis of crop yields, we provide an analysis of climate, impacts both on agricultural labor force, as well as on staple crop yields,more »thereby accounting for the interacting effect of climate change on both land and labor. Here we analyze the two sets of impacts on staple crops, while also expanding the labor impacts to highlight the potential importance on non-staple crops. We find, worldwide, labor and yield impacts within staple grains are equally important at +3^∘C warming, relative to the 1986–2005 baseline. Furthermore, the widely overlooked labor impacts are dominant in two of the most vulnerable regions: sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In those regions, heat stress with 3^∘C global warming could reduce labor capacity in agriculture by 30%–50%, increasing food prices and requiring much higher levels of employment in the farm sector. The global welfare loss at this level of warming could reach $136 billion, with crop prices rising by 5%, relative to baseline.

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