Climate change should be placed in wider contexts with respect to emergencies and sustainability:

(a) https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2017-0043

(b) https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-015-0046-5

(c) https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-015-0038-5

(d) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2294-0

(e) https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Disaster-Risk-Reduction-Including-Climate-Change/Kelman-Mercer-Gaillard/p/book/9781138924567

(f) http://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i4.729

In my opinion, the evidence of climate change are already with us and its impact are devastating locally, regionally and globally. Therefore declaring emergency on how best to preserve and protect our surroundings from total catastrophe may not be out of place.

A call on environmental protection from potentially toxic elements and other green house gases that are constantly been released on daily bases globally is a right step in the right direction.

All stakeholders in the environment sector should do the needful in securing and protecting our dear environment from further deterioration tendencies.

I agree that it should be declared as emergency as we are already facing lots of consequences and its negative impacts are enormous. Actions must come from giant nations with recommendations by researchers.

Thanks a lot for your immediate responses, Pema Tendar Ilan Kelman Akobundu Nwanosike Amadi . What do you think about the conditions that climate change actions (especially extreme ones, such as ecological resettlement) in conflict with other common/social good, like employment, people's livelihood and local economy (relying on farming or mining), or with other national benefits, like national security and domestic business benefits?

Hongzhang Xu

If people are able to live in a location, then forced resettlement might not be appropriate, while also being concerned about people surviving in some settlements with few opportunities. This is why there are legal battles over expropriation, eminent domain, and settlements without proper services or full planning. If people cannot live in a location, then by definition, their lives and/or livelihoods are threatened.

If the question is about climate change related migration, then we must be cautious of assumptions that climate change must lead to migration. We have been researching this topic a long time:

A summary commentary https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202007/can-climate-refugees-have-hope

A series of papers:

Frameworks

(1) https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8050131

(2) https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-09-2013-0152

(3) https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-05-2014-0058

(4) https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abb398

Islanders

(1) https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.52

(2) https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.120

(3) https://doi.org/10.1002/2014EF000278

(4) https://doi.org/10.1504/IJGW.2015.073056

Maldives

(1) https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12177

(2) and Lakshadweep https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2017.1353888

(3) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02376-y

(4) and St. Kitts https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9120459

Bangladesh

(1) Migration and climate change https://doi.org/10.3390/su8121223

(2) Migration to India https://doi.org/10.1111/apv.12156

Arctic

(1) https://doi.org/10.3390/cli7040047

Ilan Kelman

Heya Ilan. Thanks again for your reply. Impressive work!!!

What about the conditions that people are able to live in a location but governments force them to leave their homeland to restore forest and grassland? Most people's livelihoods have not been threatened but instead been threatened after resettlement.

For example,

Wilmsen, B., & Rogers, S. (2019). Planned resettlement to avoid climatic hazards: What prospects for just outcomes in China? Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 60(2), 118-131. doi:10.1111/apv.12232

Zhang, Q. (2018). Managing sandstorms through resettling pastoralists in China: how multiple forms of power govern the environment at/across scales. Journal of Political Ecology, 25, 364-380. doi:10.2458/v25i1.23045

Xia, L. (2012). Who are these people now? Governance & Law. Retrieved from https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4759--Who-are-these-people-now-

Wilmsen, B., & Webber, M. (2015). What can we learn from the practice of development-forced displacement and resettlement for organised resettlements in response to climate change? Geoforum, 58, 76-85. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.016

Xu, H., Peng, M., Pittock, J., & Xu, J. (2021). Managing rather than avoiding ‘difficulties’ in building landscape resilience. SUSTAINABILITY, 13(5), 2629. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052629

Typical cases are state-led authoritarian projects aiming for negative emissions.

Zastrow, M. (2019). China's tree-planting drive could falter in a warming world. Nature, 573(7775), 474-476.

Wang, L., & D’Odorico, P. (2019). Water limitations to large-scale desert agroforestry projects for carbon sequestration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(50), 24925-24926.

Hongzhang Xu

The situation you mentioned is covered by my initial words "If people are able to live in a location, then forced resettlement might not be appropriate...This is why there are legal battles over expropriation, eminent domain"--in addition to many other situations such as those which you cite.

Thank you Hongzhang Xu, to state everyone welcome to contribute.

My example is for my area, and somewhat focused on the problems for my people and ethnic group.

If there were any common sense an emergency should be declared.

The local average temperature rise have been said to be about +6 degrees in the news. While meteorological sources state +4C. My personal view based on when certain species mate and breed, and what temperature we've seen at a certain date for the last 40 years show a very worrying trend - and is closer to the former value.

Yes I am quite old, and remember an age when it were possible to drive a snowmobile for nearly 8 months a year. Nowadays we're happy to get it out of the garage once!

This is a result of a change from winters where the temperature could and often would drop to -45C.

To the current situation where we rarely experience a winter day of -20 for a few days in February at most, and for 16 winters during the 21 century we've seen winters entirely without any show. Replaced by near constant rainfall - and strong storms resembling the weather in late September and October through the winter season.

Climate change have a negative effect on business and industry, as the forest industry cannot move timber, though only a few bridges have been swept away from increased spring floods - such damages are predicted to get more common.

The main business of meat production - reindeers is severely affected.

A quick search on the Internet should provide anyone with a long list of alarming examples. This do not only affect food production, but also the culture and lifestyle of an entire people.

A small but very obvious example how far things have gone in middle Norway: Green fields and then a widespread grassfire in the middle of the winter - which became a bad threat to many homes.

Lastly the tourist industry is also affected in a quite dramatic way when we've had 20 winters straight with nearly no snow.

A lot of ski slopes had been running machinery to make artificial snow, those who could not afford the investment or cost for running the machinery that have simply closed.

The linked example from Finland but the same story is true for Sweden and parts of Norway.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-change-lapland-santa-claus-father-christmas-reindeer-global-warming-a8113041.html

Ilan Kelman

That's very clear now. Thanks. Do appreciate.

Hong

Anders Forsgren

No worries, Anders. Thanks a lot for your input and your story is very impressive and eye-opening. I quite like it and am inspired a lot by the examples you proposed, especially the reindeer and Sami people.

I guess I focused too much on Asia-Pacific and African countries and concern not enough about what is happening in the North. A lot of Australian farmers don't believe there is climate change happening.

Thanks again for your examples. I believe if we can offer more diverse cases like this, it would be possible to persuade more countries to treat climate change as a new national emergency.

All the best,

Hong

Ilan Kelman

Dear Ilan

Sorry to ask you too many questions but I have one more question to ask you.

Based on your brilliant and comprehensive expertise on population mobility and climate change, do you know any cases that manage conflicts between climate change mitigation/adaptation and other national security/benefits concerns properly or improperly?

If climate change mitigation/adaptation conflicts with national security concerns, which one should be prioritized? e.g., national business benefits vs climate change commitments OR carbon emissions reduction vs livelihood improvement

Resources are always limited and more on climate change means less on other social benefits probably. Definitely, I believe that there are many win-win cases but there are also a lot of trade-offs.

Or from another perspective, what is the possible opportunity cost for climate change mitigation/adaptation?

In addition, will requirements on accountability and transparency of militaries' performance on climate affecting national security? Article Aiding or undermining? The military as an emergent actor in ...

Looking forward to your answers again. Much appreciate your contribution to this question.

Hong

Hongzhang Xu

Thank you for your nice reply.

Yes we see a radical change here, so I have never met and cannot imagine that any of us would be a climate change denier.

The change is so radical that the local expression is 'climate tilt'.

Sadly I lack firm data for the time space I mentioned, as I did not take notes during the time I was a part time reindeer herder.

I am aware that there's deniers, and surprised of the example the Australian farmers provide in that respect, as they have been affected by a long lasting drought.

The problem is basically psychological, perhaps based on a thinking that 'We have enough problems already' or 'we finally have managed to get a business going and they are going to take it away from us.' Resulting in a reaction where they jump on to the easy solution of denying that the problem exist.

Anyway the main reason to add one reply here, is that I wished to make it clear that I do not question the temperature values presented by the meteorological scientists.

The discrepancy is only superficial, where some details got omitted: One is that we've seen unusually cold summers in a number of years. Which make the average plausible.

And the second part is actually something we've discussed in the last days where

I have provided examples for 2 professors on oddities where mating and other springtime activities have been ongoing in open water lakes for weeks already - while areas relatively nearby still got frozen lakes and snow.

Meaning that I happen to live in one area of the Sami territory where the local micro climate have given us an unusually dramatic change.

So I am in full agreement with Dr Lefrere in the Independent article of the risk of using personal observations. While I decided to leave the value above unedited - it should be understood that what have been reported locally and measured by myself is in one area with a somewhat different microclimate.

Anders Forsgren

Hey Anders,

You're welcome. The truth is that in the past decade, only around 1/3 of Australian farmers accept climate change was happening. The good news is that more of them are starting to accept. You can find more in this paper published by my colleagues:

Wheeler, S. A., Nauges, C., & Zuo, A. (2021). How stable are Australian farmers’ climate change risk perceptions? New evidence of the feedback loop between risk perceptions and behaviour. Global Environmental Change, 68, 102274. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102274

I quite agree with you about the epistemology behind climate change and the effectiveness of personal observations. the more people record changes as a routine, the more evidence we could have to inspire the deniers.

Hongzhang Xu

No problem at all. We are on ReseachGate to ask, answer, and exchange. These issues are important and need to be raised. The answers are fairly straightforward.

In particular, there are plenty of actions for addressing climate change which conflict with local, national, and international benefits. This is the point of not separating out climate change from other topics and not seeing mitigation or adaptation as their own silos, fields, or activities. Instead, action on climate change must be enfolded within other societal actions. In particular, to implement climate change mitigation easily, stop all energy use and all consumption, which has obvious disbenefits for society and we would not last long. Similarly, to implement climate change adaptation, remove all humans from weather-related hazards which means stop having kids, again with obvious disbenefits for society and we would not last long. Thus, prioritising climate change action over all other societal actions leads to significant disbenefits for society.

The key, instead, is to place climate change action in context, ensuring that we balance all forms of sustainability action simultaneously, without creating trade-offs. For example:

(i) Climate change mitigation sits within pollution prevention. We do not need to be concerned about climate change per se in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase their uptake--along with similar actions for other pollutants.

(ii) Climate change adaptation sits within disaster risk reduction. We do not need to be concerned about climate change per se in order to stop people dying in disasters and to create safer living conditions.

To large extent, climate change adaptation and mitigation become distractions for what we ought to be doing anyway. Even without being concerned about human-caused climate change, powerful arguments convince us to implement the same actions, but with wider and deeper scopes to ensure that conflicts and trade-offs do not occur. See https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2017-0043

Thus, your questions are effectively obviated. Within this conclusion:

(i) Framing the issue as national security, human security, or other forms of security leads to securitisation approaches which are shown to be counterproductive and often dangerous. Human security and climate change work has effectively pushed us several steps back. It is best to frame the question differently, with 'sustainability' having plenty of major limitations and misapprehensions, but at least moving us forward along a useful ethos and constructive discussion.

(ii) It is not "national business benefits vs climate change commitments". National (and local, regional, and international) business benefits accrue through dealing with climate change in context. It is not "carbon emissions reduction vs livelihood improvement". Livelihood improvements (and other benefits) occur due to greenhouse gas emissions reductions. It is not "more on climate change means less on other social benefits probably". Tackling climate change is a social benefit directly and accrues many others indirectly, while saving plenty of money (see below).

(iii) The opportunity costs for climate change mitigation/adaptation are bypassed by placing climate change action in context and not separating it out from other processes. Opportunity benefits are nonetheless massive.

Overall, there are no real major costs to tackling climate change due to the amount of money we will gain from it over multiple time-scales, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2014.08.004 Governments subsidise fossil fuel companies to about US$500 billion directly and perhaps ten times that amount indirectly. Remove those subsidies and apply half their value to subsidising sustainability actions. Then, we are supporting action on climate change and beyond while having so much cash remaining. Tackling climate change in context will leave us wondering how to spend all the money we suddenly have while enjoying all the societal benefits, livelihoods, jobs, and business opportunities.

Consequently, those who do not accept that human-caused climate change is happening can instead be offered the opportunities, the windfalls, the cleaner environment, the reduction in disaster risk, and the health benefits from implementing actions which are needed anyway--irrespective of how human activities change the climate. Sceptic or alarmist? We all gain together.

Climate change is a very important issue since it influences the surrounding environment. A national emergency is a national crisis or a situation where circumstances threaten the country and call for an immediate response. So require immediate actions.

Hi. Yes of course because it will affect badly different parts of our life. The action should be very soon.

Dear Muawya Ahmed Hussein

Thanks for your answer. Awesome.

It would be great if you can talk more and more specific about what is 'national emergy' and 'immediate response'. Also, how to cope with trade-offs and conflicts between one kind of national emergency and another one?

Cheers,

Hong

Most people agree already that climate change is an international emergency that is why we, in N.America, are following the Paris Accord recommendations about cutting down emissions, etc. Even the USA is changing now that Trump has gone.

Unofficially, the N. American people are changing their ways long before the politicians told them to do so.

The weather changes noted by Anders Forsgren above apply exactly to what is happening in Northern Canada. The changes are alarming and ought to have been addressed much sooner.

I am sure all Australians are already alarmed at the summer temperatures and don't want to have them above 50 degrees C (because they are going that way).

Those that receive hurricanes are dreading them now although in the past they were a welcome addition of precipitation for their crops. Today, they are a menace of flooding, landslides and wind damage, in other words, almost total destruction.

Dear Michael Issigonis

Thanks for your wonderful contribution to this question. Good to have more people confirming that climate change is affecting us and has caused significant changes. You and Anders Forsgren did really a good job.

As I thought last night, climate change is a good term for acquiring efforts from everyone to co-produce a better future. But it is also a 'tricky' and broad concept capturing too many concepts and make us be 'lazy' on acting. What we are supposed to do and not to do specifically? Also, too much greenwashing today makes many people against the concepts such as 'climate safe' or 'climate friendly'...

Some Pacific island states face the prospect of total submersion and "declaring national emergencies" won't do them any good. There are no domestic measures open to them. Security, business, and territorial sovereignity are irrelevant issues. It is doubtful that measures yet to be enacted by large states will save them. They will have to rely on the good will of large states for resettlement.

https://www.e-ir.info/2020/01/09/climate-change-and-the-sinking-island-states-in-the-pacific/

Yes, its urgent enough to rank as a national emergency in every country, but the possible and appropriate actions will be different for different countries. China, USA, EU, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and other countries making a substantial contribution to global emissions need to prioritize mitigation, as much of the EU is doing and China is starting to do, but for most smaller, developing countries, mitigation is out of their hands and the focus needs to be on adaptation. I don't know of any evidence that acting on climate change has damaged any country economically, socially, or militarily. There have been losers and winners within each country - coal vs. renewables in the UK, for example - but so far both mitigation and adaptation seem to have created as many economic and social opportunities as they have destroyed. Militarily, Russia has taken advantage of declining sea ice north of Siberia.

Climate change poses threats to water supply, agricultural production, and human health. It is a major security threat worth considering and should be treated as a new national emergency. The focus of the discussion should therefore, be more on the long-term irreversible consequences of climate change on the national business benefits.

Dear Emmanuel Amoah Boakye R. T. Corlett Karl Pfeifer

I do appreciate your opinions.

Be safe and healthy!

Warm regards,

Hong

Please refer to the link Preprint Formation of CO and CO2 molecules under the tree roof and th...

Yes, climate change should be considered a new crisis situation in the country and on a global scale and therefore requires immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to protect the biosphere and climate of the planet Earth.

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

The best strategy for a "green change" will come not from today's people who can't argue constructively, but from the next generations after we educate them very early.

Primary grades education is needed for quick action. Need more young Swedes for real action, no debates and arguments.

In a posthumously published opinion piece, climate researcher Saleemul Huq (along with water researcher Farhana Sultana) made a final plea for ‘loss-and-damage’ finance — in which the world’s historically high carbon emitters help to pay for the devastation wrought by climate change in low-emitting countries.

“Climate accountability is a shared duty. It’s an intricate web of actions, decisions and commitments. Rather than a buzzword, it’s the bedrock of our fight against the climate crisis.”

Huq, a leading voice in climate negotiations and the director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, has died, aged 71...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/01/climate-destruction-rich-countries-cop28

In June 2021 the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW) published Climate Risk Ready NSW Guide. The guide is designed to assist local government in developing a climate change risk assessment plan.

Climate risk is defined as “when a hazard creates the potential for negative consequence due to the exposure and vulnerability of human or ecological systems.”

This plan, consistent with the approach outlined in the NSW guide aligns with the International Organization for Standardization’s ERM guide ISO 31000.  As such, the Climate Change Risk Assessment and Adaption Action Plan will be integrated into the Council’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) plan, as well as the Net Zero Emissions and Water Efficiency Strategy and the Resilience Strategy...

https://insights.cermacademy.com/435-climate-change-risk-assessments-james-kline-ph-d/

CALIFORNIA AND FLORIDA LEAD THE COUNTRY IN CLIMATE CHANGE RISKS

"The vision of an “American Italy” captured hearts and imaginations across the U.S. In it, Florida and California promised a place in the sun for industrious Americans to live the good life, with the perfect climate.

But the very climates that made these semitropical playgrounds the American dream of the 20th century threaten to break their reputations in the 21st century.

In California, home owners now face dangerous heat waves, extended droughts that threaten the water supply, and uncontrollable wildfires. In Florida, sea level rise is worsening the risks of high-tide flooding and storm surge from hurricanes, in addition to turning up the thermostat on already humid heat. Global warming has put both Florida and California at the top of the list of states most at risk from climate change..."

https://insights.cermacademy.com/440-california-and-florida-lead-the-country-in-climate-change-risks-henry-knight-lozano-ph-d/

INSURANCE INDUSTRY MUST EVOLVE TO MEET GROWING RISKS OF OUR CLIMATE CRISIS

"About 40% of the US population lives in an area vulnerable to climate impacts including sea level rise, extreme weather and forest fires. How do we pay for the damages that occur and distribute the risk? This is a huge concern for the insurance industry in particular...

Society and governance must change to address risks that insurers can no longer cover on their own. Collaboration is key to meeting this challenge. A really important part of it, and a piece that can be difficult, is developing new partnerships across sectors. Can we get the public (local, state and federal government agencies), private (insurers and reinsurers), non-profits (charitable organizations designed to deliver aid after a catastrophe) sectors, and homeowners/insureds  working together to solve these problems?"

https://insights.cermacademy.com/444-insurance-industry-must-evolve-to-meet-growing-risks-of-our-climate-crisis-bob-leonard/

Climate change is making flights rougher

"In a rare incident, severe turbulence on a Singapore Airlines flight this week left one person dead and injured more than 70 people. “For anyone not wearing a seatbelt it would have been a bit like being on a rollercoaster without any restraint in place — it would have been terrifying,” says atmospheric researcher Paul Williams. Some scientists say that climate change is making clear-air turbulence more frequent and severe. “It is not that we’ll have to stop flying, or planes will start falling out of the sky,” says Williams. “I’m just saying that for every 10 minutes you’ve spent in severe turbulence in the past, it could be 20 or 30 minutes in the future.” A technology called LiDAR could let pilots identify cloudless turbulence that current radar systems miss, although it’s still expensive and bulky..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01542-2

Why role-playing games can spur climate action

"Solving problems in a safe, collaborative environment can help us think out of the box and build empathy — crucial skills in a warming world...

The urgency of the climate crisis is clear. Action is imperative. But how should we act, when the long-term impacts of our actions are difficult to grasp and the future is so uncertain?...

It is hard to anticipate the complexity of the decisions that we will all face as the world warms. But, as a game designer and education researcher, I know that games — and, in particular, role-playing games — can be an invaluable tool for helping us think through scenarios. By getting players to deal with situations in a simulated environment, games can help us to explore options in a risk-free way..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01466-x