Companies and organisations are making significant efforts to reduce their emissions and manage the effects of climate change, yet many organisations are not efficiently contributing to global climate targets due to disparities between national ambitions, Government guidance and available abatement options researchers at Newcastle University have shown.

This is the first study to give comprehensive analysis, capturing research and industry perspectives and insights. The study suggests introducing a carbon measurement and management process alongside a dynamic framework following a ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’ process. This would align climate targets, climate actions, monitoring and reporting.

Author of the study, which is published in The Business Strategy and the Environment journal, Anna Christy, PhD candidate in School of Engineering, Newcastle University said: “Best practice is not universal, and companies are trying to balance conflicting standards whilst trying to improve their environmental performance. Governing bodies should enable effective reporting by harmonising international regulatory frameworks, empowering organisations to effectively assess, manage, and reduce their carbon footprints.”

Ensuring robust assessments of their climate impact

The study found that high-level data sources and guidance are not always sufficient to define accurate accounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and that prescribing to well-known accounting standards can require inefficient interventions or suboptimal reduction strategies.

The researchers are calling on government agencies to put in place regulations and guidelines that ensure they make robust assessments of their climate impact and implement abatement technologies that materially reduce their emissions rather than relying on offsets and offshoring.

This collaborative study has bought together Newcastle University and industry partner to focus on the urgent subject of carbon accounting and measurements. The study received data and support from Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) which already manages and reports its emissions in line with industry best practice and international standards. The research will inform the development of a new emissions inventory and reduction framework that is suitable for a regulated utility — balancing the urgency of climate action with needs of customers and stakeholders.

Currently, over 4,000 companies worldwide are setting climate targets using for example the Science Based Target initiative to be in line with the United Nations Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. However, this study reveals that differences are seen when it comes to guidance and action when companies report on avoided emissions or want to offset emissions.

The study discusses that conflicting demands of regulators, shareholders and customers are often overlooked. This presents challenges when selecting the best abatement options and can lead to inefficient decarbonisation strategies.

The study was conducted by experts in the School of Engineering and the Business School, in collaboration with Northumbrian Water. The English Water sector is a leader in Net Zero with the first sector-wide NetZero commitment, however, the researchers found that this commitment is not fully aligned with government policy and or the economic regulation for the sector.

In response to the challenge of meeting its affordability and decarbonisation priorities, Northumbrian Water engaged with Newcastle University to help ensure that they get the balance right.

Study co-author, Professor Marwa Elnahass, Professor of Accounting & Finance, Newcastle University Business School added: “Following the conclusion of the COP28 summit, it is crucial to address climate change policy. The study integrates innovative insights related to the carbon accounting methodology of Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) and offers valuable findings that resonate not only within the English water sector but also carry broader implications for climate policy. This includes recent regulatory changes by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) concerning global sustainability and climate disclosure standards.”

Using the water sector as an example, the authors recommend a more dynamic approach that considers the multiple demands on businesses, particularly prioritising the efficient use of customer money. The study argues that companies should be encouraged to invest sufficient resource into developing their carbon accounting methods to ensure their management strategy is attainable and aligned with global climate commitments.

The team’s analysis showed that along with the policy, the Japanese government must simultaneously work to increase production of clean energy, decarbonize the manufacturing process, and extend vehicle lifetime.

In the effort to combat the climate crisis most countries in the world have implemented policies that reduce their production of greenhouse gases such as CO₂, and Japan is no different. One such policy is a ban on the new sale of fossil fuel powered vehicles. The country is working to ban the sale of new gas vehicles by 2035, and move to only sell EVs, HVs, and FCVs, electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles respectively.

While this is a move in the right direction, Professor Shigemi Kagawa from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Economics reports in his new paper, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, that banning new gas vehicles may not be enough to reach Japan’s decarbonization goals.

“Our team focused on how much CO₂ is produced during a car’s entire lifetime, from the first resource extracted from the earth to when it gets destroyed. Looking at the lifecycle CO₂, or LC-CO₂, of a car allow us to take a larger view on a car’s emissions,” explains Kagawa.

The team found a number of policy points that need to be addressed, including decarbonizing the supply chain, improving the country’s energy mix, and extending vehicle lifetime.

“Just building a car is energy intensive. All the building materials need to be mined, processed, shipped, and constructed. Every part of that process produces CO₂,” Kagawa continues. “Construction of an EV can produce 1.5 to 2 times more emissions compared to a gas car. If car manufacturers increase their production of EVs without decarbonizing the supply chain, then emissions reduction will stagnate.”

Moving Japan’s energy mix to more renewable sources is also a vital step in this process. A country’s energy mix is the ratio of fuel sources it uses to make electricity. In 2020, Japan’s energy mix was 76% fossil fuels and 20% renewables. So, even if everybody switched to EVs the energy required to charge such vehicles still results in fossil fuel emissions.

“Japan’s planned 2030 energy mix is 50% fossil fuels and 28% renewable energy. That will not adequately reduce LC-CO₂. The EV policy starting in 2035 aims to contribute to a 10% reduction or 2.9 Mt (million tons) of CO₂ in vehicle emissions in 2050. This reduction level falls far short of achieving a carbon-neutral vehicle society,” explains Kagawa. “Japan needs to aim toward the International Energy Agency (IEA) mix of 10% fossil fuels and 88% renewables by 2050. Our models show a reduction of an additional 10%, a potential of 3.4 Mt of CO₂, in vehicle emissions in 2050 if Japan follows the IEA policy mix.”

Finally, extending a car’s lifetime, for both EVs or gas vehicles, can go a long way to reduce LC-CO₂. The average lifespan of a car in Japan is 13 years. The research team’s models found that the if a car registered between 1993 and 2050 has its average lifetime extended by even one year it could reduce up to 90 Mt of overall CO₂ emissions for the country. Conversely, if a vehicle’s lifespan is reduced by one year, within the same time frame, CO₂ emissions increase by roughly the same amount.

“When we expanded our model to extending the lifespan of a vehicle by 10 years, the potential reduction in CO₂ emissions can be more than 600 Mt,” Kagawa states.

The team hopes that their analysis will encourage Japan to implement these policies so it can continue to effectively combat the climate crisis and make their goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 a reality.

“We can make efforts ourselves by trying to drive our cars less and for a few years longer, and even consider buying used vehicles instead of new ones,” concludes Kagawa. “But the government needs to provide attractive subsidies for those programs, and manufactures should work to encourage vehicle repair and parts replacement. The climate crisis is a complex issue, and the right policies can go a long way in providing us a better future.”

Chance Cutrano is director of programs at the Resource Renewal Institute in Fairfax, California. He and his team are experimenting with blending two activities, rice and fish farming, to reduce the emissions from rice fields while creating additional income for farmers. It’s a practice recovered from antiquity that led to the launch of the Fish in the Fields program, which lowers carbon equivalent emissions created by rice farming by as much as 66% while improving biodiversity. Fish in the Fields recently won the 2023 JMK Innovation Prize from the JM Kaplan Institute.

Nature does an amazing trick: it uses everything. Wherever there is an untapped source of energy, nature facilitates the differentiation of species to evolve a creature, large or small, that will consume that energy. Human industry went the other way, dumping every leftover item of waste instead of finding a way to use it — the consequence is a society that cannot live within the planet’s ability to provide enough resources each year. Farming is an excellent testing ground for integrating previously disconnected industries. For example, last year, we talked with Lundberg Family Farms’s Bryce Lundberg, who embraced a regenerative approach to growing rice that supports migratory birds during winter when fields are flooded.

Farming, which can be closely tied to nature when it breaks with industrial thinking, is a natural incubator of complex systems that minimize or reduce waste while contributing to the restoration of biodiversity. It might be the place where businesses will learn regenerative practices. The transition to a green, carbon, and resource-neutral economy will see many companies, communities, and nations begin to tear down the arbitrary silos in which they operate today to create circular flows of materials and energy at levels of efficiency we cannot dream of from the confines of the take-make-waste worldview.

You can learn more about the Resource Renewal Institute at https://www.rri.org/fish-in-the-fields

Findings from the study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution show tree seedlings planted next to the decoy smell solution were 20 times less likely to be eaten by animals.

“This is equivalent to the seedlings being surrounded by actual plants that are unpalatable to the herbivore. In most cases it does trick the animals into leaving the plants alone,” said PhD student Patrick Finnerty, the study’s lead author from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences Behavioural Ecology and Conservation Lab.

“Herbivores cause significant damage to valuable plants in ecological and economically sensitive areas worldwide, but killing the animals to protect the plants can be unethical,” he said.

“So, we created artificial odours that mimicked the smell of plant species they naturally avoid, and this gently nudged problematic herbivores away from areas we didn’t want them to be.

“Given that many herbivores use plant odour as their primary sense to forage, this method provides a new approach that could be used to help protect valued plants globally, either in conservation work or protecting agricultural crops.”

The experiment, conducted in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in Sydney, used the swamp wallaby as model herbivore. The researchers selected an unpalatable shrub in the citrus family, Boronia pinnata, and a palatable canopy species, Eucalyptus punctata, to test the concept.

The study compared using B. pinnata solution and the real plant and found both were equally successful at protecting eucalyptseedlings from being eaten by wallabies.

As part of his doctoral research, Mr Finnerty has also tested the method successfully with African elephants, but that fieldwork does not form part of this research paper.

Previous attempts to use repellent substances, such as chilli oil or motor oil, to control animal consumption of plants have inherent limitations, Mr Finnerty said.

“Animals tend to habituate to these unnatural cues and so deterrent effects are only temporary,” he said. “By contrast, by mimicking the smell of plants herbivore naturally encounter, and avoid in day-to-day foraging, our approach works with the natural motivators of these animals, with herbivores less likely to habituate to these smells.”

Researchers took this idea and used solutions that produce these undesired aromas.

“As a management tool to protect palatable plants, our technique offers many advantages over real plants as a repellent,” Mr Finnerty said. “Real plants compete for water and resources, which can outweigh protective effects in providing browsing refuge.

“Our approach should be transferable to any mammalian, or potentially invertebrate, herbivore that relies primarily on plant odour information to forage and could protect valued plants globally, such as threatened species.”

Current solutions to herbivore-related problems often involve costly and environmentally impactful measures such as lethal control or fencing.

The new research introduces an alternative low-cost, humane strategy based on understanding herbivores’ foraging cues, motivations and decisions.

“Plant browsing damage caused by mammalian herbivore populations like deer, elephants and wallabies is a growing global concern,” said senior study author Professor Clare McArthur.

“This damage is one of the greatest limiting factors in areas of post-fire recovery and revegetation, destroying more than half the seedlings in these areas. It also threatens endangered plants and causes billions of dollars of damage in forestry and agriculture globally.

“Current methods to protect plants are expensive and increasingly limited by concerns over animal welfare, so alternate approaches are needed.”

Africa’s Greater Virunga Landscape (GVL) is a 15,700-square-kilometer area of savannas, mountains and lakes in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is home to the largest land animals in Africa, with seven national parks, three tropical high-forest reserves and three wildlife reserves, three of which are world heritage sites, covering 88% of the area. It is also home to a population of African elephants whose numbers have dropped so precipitously over the past century that they are now listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation’s Red List.

Elephants play a key role in modifying and sustaining their landscapes by dispersing the seeds of the plants they feed upon, felling trees and enriching soil fertility with their dung. They also play an important role in many African cultures.

To date, few studies have focused on the dynamics of the environment, climate change, elephant demography and how the changing habitat influences elephants over long periods. To get a clearer picture of what the elephants’ future might look like and what we can do to best ensure their survival, lead author Simon Nampindo, who completed this research as part of his Ph.D. in environmental conservation for UMass Amherst and who is now country director for WCS Uganda, and Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, built a systems dynamic model. “This model,” says Nampindo, “can look at all the different environmental and population dynamics within a system. For the first time, we’re able to get a comprehensive vision of what the future might look like for African elephants in the face of climate change.”

Nampindo and Randhir built their model using data on the numbers of elephants, historical changes in the landscape and different future climate-change scenarios representing 1.6 º, 2.8º and 4.3º Celsius of warming over the next 80 years. Finally, they charted the effect each of the climate scenarios would have on five elephant age brackets: under 10 years old, 11 — 30, 31 — 40, 41 — 50, and more than 50 years old, because, as Randhir puts it “any impact on one age class has a community effect throughout the entire population.”

“We found that the older elephants will be massively affected by warming under every scenario,” says Nampindo. “Elephants are matriarchal — their leaders are the older cows, and the herds depend on their wisdom, long memories and ability to outsmart prey, and if they are lost to changing climate, it will wreak havoc on the surviving, younger herds, as well as change the genetic profiles and structures of the herd. There will also be ripple effects through the GVL’s landscape.”

“But,” says Randhir, “this model not only tells us what the threats are, we can also use it to tell us which policy possibilities will be most effective in helping African elephants to survive.”

In the case of a species like the elephant, which migrates widely across national boundaries, it is especially important to also understand how differing policies could affect future herds so that management agencies can coordinate their responses.

In particular, Nampindo and Randhir find that a coordinated GVL management strategy at the national, regional and local levels is needed to address poaching threats. Well-funded anti-poaching efforts are essential, but they also point to the importance of community-led programs and education in the front-line towns and villages where human-elephant interaction is common. The GVL landscape must also be managed appropriately to reduce the impact of habitat fragmentation, fire and invasive species.

“These results are very important to WCS,” says Nampindo. “If we can do a good job at protecting elephants, our efforts will reverberate to other species, such as lions and mountain gorillas.”

“More broadly,” says Randhir, “the most exciting thing about this systems dynamic modeling is that it can be adapted to any migratory species that move across political boundaries, from fish to birds to lions.”

The study also found that nearly one-third of deaths from extreme air pollution exposure days could be prevented if pollution events were reduced by as little as 5 per cent.

Lead researcher Dr Lucas Hertzog from Curtin’s World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Climate Change and Health Impact Assessment said the findings highlighted the urgent need for effective strategies to manage air quality, particularly during extreme weather events like bushfires and dust storms, which are becoming more common due to climate change.

“Using data from 2001 to 2020 from air pollution monitoring sites, combined with a range of satellite and land use-related data, we modelled the exposure to exceptional levels of particulate matter air pollution (PM2.5) for each extreme pollution exposure day,” Dr Hertzog said.

“Despite relatively low daily PM2.5 levels generally (compared to global averages), Australian cities experience days with extreme pollution levels where PM2.5 concentrations exceed the WHO Air Quality Guideline standard.

“Sydney and Melbourne reported the highest number of deaths attributable to extreme air pollution events, with 541 and 438 deaths respectively, followed by Brisbane and Perth with 171 and 132 deaths.”

“Adelaide and Hobart were the cities that showed, across the 20-year period, fewer days exceeding WHO air quality exposure recommendations, with Adelaide recording only five days and Hobart 11 days above the threshold.

“Darwin, despite its relatively low number of deaths due to PM2.5 exposure events, experienced a high number of days exceeding WHO recommendations, ten times more than cities like Melbourne.”

Dr Hertzog said the findings show how extreme air pollution events could seriously affect health in urban areas, and understanding this link was crucial, as climate change may increase the frequency and intensity of such pollution events.

“Diseases associated with particulate matter air pollution include asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) as well as cardiovascular disorders,” Dr Hertzog said.

“Our study’s insights can aid in protecting public health by helping to inform policy development and actions to reduce impacts from extreme air pollution events.

“While responding to bushfires and dust storms is an increasingly challenging task, authorities have a crucial role in land use management. They also regulate energy policy and control wood heater regulations. Additional strategies to reduce emissions from industrial accidents or road transport-related smog events could enhance the control of sources of air pollution and improve well-being.

“It is also possible to reduce the burden of mortality by improving public health warnings and increasing community awareness of smoke avoidance behaviours.”

The research was supported by funding from the Healthy Environments and Lives Network — National Health and Medical Research Council Special Initiative in Human Health and Environmental Change, the Centre for Safe Air and the Australian Research Data Commons Air Health Data Bridges project.

The rise of fast fashion resulted in a tidal wave of clothing in the world’s landfills. Even traditional fashion choices can increase your environmental footprint if not selected using sustainable criteria, cared for and washed correctly, and worn until you donate or recycle it. Meet Erin Houston, cofounder of Wearwell, a woman-owned company that helps customers choose sustainable clothing, accessories, and shoes, as well as resell used items they no longer want to wear. Erin and her team carefully design the Wearwell catalog to feature responsibly manufactured fashion, clothing from certified B Corporations that mix profit with social impact, as well as from women- and block-owned fashion lines for women of all sizes. The company also offers a recommerce option, Wearwellagain, that provides customers free shipping of pre-loved clothing, shoes, and accessories and awards between 5% and 15% off their next purchase.

The question is whether humanity can find satisfaction in making the clothing we buy last longer. Much of the problem is due to the focus on shopping rather than wearing and caring for clothing. The change we need to make is to place the emphasis not on how many clothing pieces we acquire but instead on making them last. Recommerce, selling used items that others can wear, is a potential source of satisfaction for the shopper craving change. Wearwellagain and similar services could enable the constant exchange of clothing to satisfy the need for novelty — but limiting shipping and other recommerce-related environmental impacts will be a challenge until we achieve a carbon-neutral transportation infrastructure. There are many changes to make and myriad opportunities for new businesses. You can learn more about Wearwell at https://www.shopwearwell.com/

Editor’s Note: This podcast was originally published on November 17, 2023.

Making climate policies acceptable to the public is crucial to make them effective and to avoid resistance and protests. Research has, until now, focused on high-income countries. This new study, however, is based on a survey with 4,766 respondents in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. It turns out that there are both similarities and differences compared to previous studies.

Important inform how revenues will be used

The researchers focused on educated individuals in urban areas since they are likely to influence policy processes. This also means that the sample does not fully represent the total East African population.

One conclusion, that aligns with previous studies, is that a higher level of education and climate change concern are linked to a higher acceptance of policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel consumption.

If you specify how the revenue from a climate tax or subsidy removal would be used, the support for these policy instruments almost doubled.

Social programs more important than environmental

In contrast to earlier studies, the researchers found that investments in social programs, not environmental programs, increased the acceptability the most.

“One possible explanation would be that in a country where poverty is prevalent, social issues are more urgent to people,” says Daniel Slunge, one of the study’s authors.

Trust in government didn’t seem to play a big role for the acceptance. There were also significant differences between the countries.

The main conclusions from the study are:

• It’s important to specify how the revenue from a climate tax will be used — clear information more than doubles the acceptance.
• Investing the revenues in social programs leads to better acceptance of the policies than if they are invested in environmental programs.
• Investing in education and information can increase the acceptance of climate policies.
• Further studies are needed to tailor policies for each country.