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This scenario set of consistent national and global low-carbon development pathways, developed as part of the CD-LINKS project, takes current national policies and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as an entry point for short-term climate action, then transitioning to the long-term temperature goals of 1.5 and 2°C as defined by the Paris Agreement. The scenarios explore the complex interplay between climate action and development, while simultaneously taking both global and national perspectives and thereby informing the design of complementary climate-development policies. The CD-LINKS consortium brought together national and global integrated assessment modeling teams from Europe, China, India, Brazil, Russia, Japan and the USA as well as domain experts in the areas of human development, climate adaptation, economics, energy geopolitics, atmospheric chemistry, human health, land use, agriculture, and water. The data is available for download at the CD-LINKS Scenario Explorer. The license permits use of the scenario ensemble for scientific research and science communication, but restricts redistribution of substantial parts of the data. Please refer to the FAQ and legal code for more information.

Genuine Savings (GS), also known as ‘net adjusted savings’, is a composite indicator of the sustainability of economic development. Genuine Savings reflects year-on-year changes in the total wealth or capital of a country, including net investment in produced capita, investment in human capital, depletion of natural resources, and damage caused by pollution. A negative Genuine Savings rate suggests that the stock of national wealth is declining and that future utility must be less than current utility, indicating that economic development is non-sustainable (Hamilton and Clemens, 1999). We make use of data over a 150 year period to examine the relationship between Genuine Savings and a number of indicators of well-being over time, and compare the relative changes in human, produced, and components of natural capital over the period. Overall, we find that the magnitude of genuine savings is positively related to changes in future consumption, with some evidence of a cointegrating relationship. However, the relationships between genuine savings and infant mortality or average heights are less clear.

ON 16 NOVEMBER 2000, the final report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was launched in London, in the presence of South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela. This represented a remarkable milestone in the history of dam policy and politics. During its two-year existence, WCD had conducted the most extensive review of research and evidence regarding the planning, impacts, and management of large dams. It had engaged with numerous stakeholders around the globe. It also made comprehensive recommendations about how to improve dam planning and management.

Responses to recent climatic changes in the sediment of subarctic Lake Saanajärvi in northwestern Finnish Lapland are studied by comparison of various biological and sedimentological proxies with the 200-year long climate record, specifically reconstructed for the site using a data-set of European-wide meteorological data. The multi-proxy evidence of simultaneously changing diatom, Cladocera, and chrysophyte assemblages along with the increased rates of organic matter accumulation and pigment concentrations suggest that the lake has undergone a distinct typological change starting from the turn of the 20th century. This change, indicating an increase in lake productivity, parallels a pronounced rise in the meteorologically reconstructed mean annual and summer temperatures in the region between ca. 1850 and 1930's. We postulate that, during the Little Ice Age, the lake was not, or was only weakly, thermally stratified during summer, whereas the subsequent increase in air and hence epilimnetic water temperatures resulted in the development of the present summer stratification. The increased thermal stability of the lake created more suitable conditions for the growth of phyto- and zooplankton and changed the overall primary production from benthos to plankton. Mineral magnetic and carbonaceous particle records suggest long-distance pollution, particularly since the 1920's, yet the observed changes in lake biota and productivity can hardly be explained by this very minor background pollution; the 20th century species configurations are typical of neutral waters and do not indicate any response to pollution.

This timely book critically examines the role played by international, regional and national legal frameworks in holding corporations operating in the natural resource sector accountable for human rights violations in the Global South, probing the effectiveness of the mechanisms available to aggrieved communities in pursuit of effective remedies and socio-ecological justice. The book brings together influential scholars from across the world addressing topical and relevant themes concerning the integration of business & human rights standards for better governance of natural resources and the transition towards net zero societies, especially in the context of extractive and multinational companies operating in the Global South. It also considers the application and implementation of transnational and domestic legal remedies for holding corporations accountable with references to case studies in natural resources governance in selected countries and regions, in particular Africa, Asia and Latin America. The book reviews proposals for an enforceable legal framework on the liability of corporations for human rights abuses and environmental damage, taking account of the existing initiatives such as the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, UN’s Draft Business & Human Rights Treaty and the European Commission’s 2022 proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence. The book is essential reading for academics and students working or researching in the fields of business law, human rights and natural resources law; as well as corporate and human rights lawyers and practitioners litigating in the energy and natural resources sectors.

Attempts by governments and NGOs to provide modern solutions to the management of local water resources, and to alleviate the hazards of flooding, often create unforeseen problems adversely affecting future water resources and leading to increased vulnerability to crises. The book outlines the need to develop an integrative approach. The Hydro-hazardscape concept draws upon the landscape school within cultural geography to make a case for awarding centrality to hazards in social life, that parallels the esthetic view in the landscape tradition. The approach furthermore, makes a case for apprehending power differentials inherent in social life by being attentive to the dissonance and conflict between the analytical view of hazardous environments by the powerful and technocrats and lived experience of those environments by the vulnerable populations. It is argued that by adopting the approach that is attentive to the multiple values of water in the communities affected, can one hope for any measure of success. Examples from South Asia, Central America, the Caucasus and the USA, illustrate how the approach will help achieve long-term sustainability in a future filled with climate change.

‘DRIVE4EU - Dandelion Rubber and Inulin Valorization and Exploitation for Europe’, a demonstration project, aims at the development of a value chain for natural rubber and inulin from Rubber dandelions. The objective of the project is to set up a new European chain for the production and processing of natural rubber. This will enable the EU to become less dependent on the import of natural rubber and at the same time to respond to the threat of a global rubber shortage. The viability of using Rubber dandelions for rubber and inulin production depends on the sustainability of this new value chain. The results of a general economic assessment shows that the total costs over the whole value chain are dominated by the costs for cultivation and harvesting and the cost for biorefining. The combination of natural rubber and inulin makes Rubber dandelion very interesting as a production platform. Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 1292-1293

Wind turbines are a proven source of clean energy with wind power energy harvesting technologies supplying about 3% of global electricity consumption. However there is an increasing demand on maintenance and operational improvements since turbines have been plagued with downtime problems of major components e.g. gearboxes and generators, especially with offshore turbines which are difficult to access. Reliability Centric Maintenance (RCM) is a way of capturing the potential causes of downtime and poor performance by preventing failures and having a proactive approach to operations and maintenance (O&M). However, for a large fleet of turbines, adopting the RCM approach becomes difficult due to the complexities that arise as a result of the interactions between individual elements that make up the system in the product lifecycle. This paper discusses how a systems thinking approach can be used to identify the relevant aspects and possible interactions between the RCM approach and wind turbine gearboxes and also how the gaps that exist within the system can be closed so as to add value to business. The outcome of the paper is a proposal for applying a systems approach to wind turbine gearbox operation and maintenance, optimising the asset value adding contribution at minimal total cost to the operator.