The recent rise in climate concern among citizens worldwide is coinciding with a rising interest in agricultural climate solutions. The future scaling-up of these solutions, however, requires more knowledge about the mitigation potential, costs and financing options, including crowdfunding (CF). Our objective is to explore the driving factors behind the public’s willingness to pay for crowdfunded climate mitigation projects at the farm level. In this study, four mitigation options from the perspective of farmers were identified: solar panels on the barn roof, biogas from animal manure, drag hoses for improved manure dispersal, and the addition of biochar to soils. The study investigates the optimal characteristics of crowdfunding campaigns to finance such mitigation measures. The most influential factors on the respondents’ WTP is neither climate concern nor proximity, but instead the knowledge regarding CF, combined with how comprehensible and salient the suggested measure is. The main implications are that future projects that aim to achieve broad participation in CF campaigns need to communicate well, to improve both public knowledge of the funding mechanism (CF) itself and the comprehensibility and salience of the agricultural measure.
How can wellbeing for all be improved while reducing risks of destabilising the biosphere? This ambition underlies the 2030 Agenda but analysing whether it is possible in the long-term requires linking global socioeconomic developments with life-supporting Earth systems and incorporating feedbacks between them. The Earth4All initiative explores integrated developments of human wellbeing and environmental pressures up to 2100 based on expert elicitation and an integrated global systems model. The relatively simple Earth4All model focuses on quantifying and capturing some high-level feedback between socioeconomic and environmental domains. It analyses economic transformations to increase wellbeing worldwide and increase social cohesion to create conditions that are more likely to reduce pressures on planetary boundaries. The model includes two key novelties: a social tension index and a wellbeing index, to track societal progress this century. The scenarios suggest that today's dominant economic policies are likely to lead to rising social tensions, worsening environmental pressures, and declining wellbeing. In the coming decades, unchecked rising social tensions, we hypothesise, will make it more difficult to build a large consensus around long-term industrial policy and behavioural changes needed to respect planetary boundaries. We propose five extraordinary turnarounds around poverty, inequality, empowerment, energy and food that in the model world can shift the economy off the current trajectory, improve human wellbeing at a global scale, reduce social tensions and ease environmental pressures. The model, the five (exogenous) turnarounds and the resulting two scenarios can be used as science-policy boundary objects in discussions on future trajectories. Non-technical summary: Our world is facing a convergence of environmental, health, security, and social crises. These issues demand urgent, systemic solutions now that address not only environmental but also social dimensions. Weak political responses have stalled progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. We have developed scenarios that explore interconnections between possible climate futures, rising living costs, and increasing inequalities that fuel populism and undermine democracy to the year 2100. We propose five turnaround solutions – energy, food and land systems, inequality, poverty, and gender equality – that if enacted are likely to provide wellbeing for a majority of people plus greater social cohesion. This will support long-term industrial policies and behavioural change to reduce emissions and protect the biosphere toward a long-term goal of living on a relatively stable planet. Social Media summary: Our dominant economic model is destabilising societies and the planet. Earth4All found 5 turnarounds for real system change.
Hvordan står det egentlig til med klimaregnskapene i norske bedrifter? Artikkelen gir en kort status på dagens utbredelse og drøfter formål, metoder og praksis for klimaregnskap og klimamål med henblikk på konkurransefortrinn. I denne artikkelen anvender vi en sammenfattende kvalitativ tilnærming som baserer seg på en kombinasjon av mange ulike typer data, datakilder, internasjonale veiledere og standarder, og reflekterer over egne erfaringer på feltet i Norge. På den bakgrunn drøfter vi hvilke utfordringer selskaper står overfor fremover med hensyn til rapportering, klimamålsettinger og strategier for grønn vekst.