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As climate change increasingly affects the world, much is said about the rising amounts of aid required to support emergency response, long-term development to adapt, and peacebuilding to ensure that conflict does not undermine these efforts. Bringing these ideas together, some advocate for the addition of a separate climate change stream into the humanitarian, development, and peace/peacebuilding nexus (or triple nexus). Based on a critical literature review and synthesis, this article articulates and conceptualizes how climate change perspectives and actions should be integrated into the existing streams of the humanitarian, development, and peace/peacebuilding nexus, rather than being added as a separate stream. The analysis shows the risks of adding climate change as a stand-alone stream and advocates for developing long-term strategies that integrate climate change actions into humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts to better serve all three.

Protected areas (PAs) represent a key global strategy in biodiversity conservation. In tropical developing countries, the management of PAs is a great challenge as many contain resources on which local communities rely. Collection and trading of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) is a well-established forest-based livelihood strategy, which has been promoted as a potential means for enhanced conservation and improved rural livelihoods in recent years, even though the sustainability or ecological implications have rarely been tested. We conducted an exploratory survey to understand the role and stakeholder views on conservation prospects and perceived ecological feasibility of NTFPs and harvesting schemes in a northeastern PA of Bangladesh, namely the Satchari National Park. Households (n = 101) were interviewed from three different forest dependency categories, adopting a stratified random sampling approach and using a semi-structured questionnaire. The study identified 13 locally important NTFPs, with fi...

Abstract This paper describes the World Bank's technical assistance and lending efforts in support of developing countries facing power shortages. The paper reviews the World Bank's experience in helping governments to mitigate power shortages in Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America regions. The paper stresses the need to consider each power “crunch” on an individual basis, and describes the process used in diagnosing a shortage situation and prescribing mitigation strategies. Several brief case studies are presented, including Botswana, Brazil, Uganda, and South Africa. The political and customer-centric dimensions of power shortage mitigation are briefly described, with suggestions for minimizing the socio-economic impacts of power shortages on the urban and rural poors. The paper concludes that an integrated supply–demand portfolio approach works best, and within the portfolio a mix of market-based rationing, emergency mobilization of customer-owned generation, interruptible rates, load control, and energy efficient lighting should be sought. Although the best formulation will vary according to market structure, demand composition, and nature of the crisis, World Bank practitioners have found one program that works almost everywhere to produce fast and effective results – mass market Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) replacement programs.

The overarching goal of this work is to develop and demonstrate methods that support effective agro-pastoral risk management in a changing climate. Disaster mitigation strategies, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), emphasize the need to address underlying causes of disaster risk and to prevent the emergence of new risks. Such assessments can be difficult, because they require transforming changes in meteorological outcomes into sector-specific impact. While it is common to examine trends in seasonal precipitation and precipitation extremes, it is much less common to study how these trends interact with crop and pasture water needs. Here, we show that the Water Requirement (WR) component of the widely used Water Requirement Satisfaction Index (WRSI) can be used to enhance the interpretation of precipitation changes. The WR helps answer a key question: was the amount of rainfall received in a given season enough to satisfy a crop or pasture's water needs? Our first results section focuses on analyzing spatial patterns of climate change. We show how WR values can be used to translate east African rainfall declines into estimates of crop and rangeland water deficits. We also show that increases in WR, during recent droughts, has intensified aridity in arid regions. In addition, using the PWB, we also show that precipitation increases in humid areas of western east Africa have been producing increasingly frequent excessive rainfall seasons. The second portion of our paper focuses on assessing temporal outcomes for a fixed location (Kenya) to support drought-management scenario development. Kenyan rainfall is decreasing and population is increasing. How can we translate this data into actionable information? The United Nations and World Meteorological Organization advise nations to proactively plan for agro-hydrologic shocks by setting aside sufficient grain and financial resources to help buffer inevitable low-crop production years. We show how precipitation, WR, crop statistics, and population data can be used to help guide 1-in-10 and 1-in-25-year low crop yield scenarios, which could be used to guide Kenya's drought management planning and development. The first and second research components share a common objective: using the PWB to translate rainfall data into more actionable information that can inform disaster risk management and development planning.

The ways in which we travel—by what mode, for how long, and for what purpose—can affect our sense of happiness and well-being. This paper assesses the relationships between measures of the sustainability of transportation systems in U.S. metropolitan areas and subjective well-being. Associations between self-reported happiness levels from the Gallup Healthways Well-being Index and commute data were examined for 187 core-based statistical areas (CBSA). We also supplement this quantitative analysis through brief case studies of high- and low-performing happiness cities. Our quantitative results indicate that regions with higher commute mode shares by non-automobile modes generally had higher well-being scores, even when controlling for important economic predictors of happiness. We also find that pro-sustainable transportation policies can have implications for population-wide happiness and well-being. Our case studies indicate that both high and low scoring happiness cities demonstrate a dedicated commitment to improving sustainable transportation infrastructure. Our study suggests that cities that provide incentives for residents to use more sustainable commute modes may offer greater opportunity for happiness than those that do not.

Abstract(Agro) pastoral communities who reside in the arid and semi-arid environments of Ethiopia are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and variability specifically to the recurrent drought, floods and conflicts. From their long years of rich experiences of how to survive on such environmental pressures, (agro) pastoralists have also developed various forms of adaptation as well as coping strategies to the impacts of climate change and variability. Such strategies are closely guided and supervised by their customary institutions which have rich experiences in addressing the socio-economic/ cultural, political and environmental/ecological aspects. To mention some of the adaptation mechanisms in the study area are pastoral mobility; relying on traditional early warning mechanisms; area enclosures and preparing of hays/forage; diversifying livestock and selection of their species; the shift from pure form of pastoral to agropastoral production systems; and among others. Some of the coping strategies employed by the (agro) pastoralists are also their engagement in charcoal production and fire wood collections; the sell of their livestock, government support in the form of safety net and MERET project and their indigenous social support mechanisms; petty trading especially by women; brokering on livestock trade; engagement in contraband trade; searching for daily labor, and among others. The paper also tried to assess the roles of customary institutions in social support mechanisms to the problems posed by the impacts of climate change and variability to their age old traditional ways of livelihood mechanisms.

This paper provides a meta-analysis of a broad set of recent studies of the economic impacts of climate change mitigation policies. It evaluates the influences of the impacts of causal factors, key economic assumptions and macroeconomic linkages on the outcome of these studies. A quantile regression analysis is also performed on the meta sample, to evaluate the robustness of those key factors throughout the full range of macro findings. Results of these analyses suggest that study results are strongly driven by data inputs, economic assumptions and modeling approaches. However, they are sometimes affected in counterintuitive ways.

Climate change, rapid urbanization, war, and economic recession are key drivers of the current food systems’ disruption, which has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Local, regional, and global food systems are unable to provide consumers with nutritious and affordable diets. Suboptimal diets exacerbate the triple burden of malnutrition, with micronutrient deficiencies affecting more than two billion people, two billion people suffering from overweight, and more than 140 million children who are stunted. The unaffordability of nutritious diets represents an obstacle for many, especially in low- and middle-income countries where healthy diets are five times more expensive than starchy staple diets. Food system transformations are urgently required to provide consumers with more affordable and nutritious diets that are capable of meeting social and environmental challenges. In this review, we underline the critical role of innovation within the food system transformation discourse. We aim to define principles for implementing evidence-based and long-term food system innovations that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable and, above all, aimed at improving diets and public health. We begin by defining and describing the role of innovation in the transformation of food systems and uncover the major barriers to implementing these innovations. Lastly, we explore case studies that demonstrate successful innovations for healthier diets.