• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close
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• 13. Climate action close
• 15. Life on land close
• 14. Life underwater close

Abstract With drastic fossil fuel depletion and environmental deterioration concerns, a move towards a more sustainable bioenergy-based economy is essential. Lately, the application of microwave (MW) irradiation for waste processing has been attracting interest globally. MW-assisted heating possesses several advantages such as the provision of high microwave energy into dielectric materials with deeper penetration for internal heat generation, showing beneficial features in improving the heating rate and reducing the reaction time. Consequently, the most recent literature regarding the applications of MW-assisted heating for biomass pretreatment as well as biofuel and bioenergy production was reviewed and consolidated in this study. An impressive increase in the product yield and improvement of the product properties are reported, with the use of MW-assisted heating in several conversion routes to produce biofuels. Despite being a promising technology for biofuel production, some major fundamental data of MW-assisted heating have not been comprehensively identified. Therefore, the feasibility of this technology for large-scale implementation is still subpar. Understanding the interaction between the feedstock and the microwave electromagnetic field, and the optimization of several operational and mechanical parameters are the two main keystones that would propel the industrialization of MW heating in the near future. This provides key insights leading to increased feasibility and more advanced application of MW heating.

Climate change has been widely recognised as one of the most urgent and growing threats to natural and cultural heritage in the twenty-first century, and the indelible impact of humanity has led to the definition of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by natural and human-induced changes to the environment. Their vulnerability is exacerbated by centuries of cultural and territorial disenfranchisement within settler-colonial nations. This dissertation aims at understanding Indigenous perceptions of heritage in the face of climate change and its intersection with the impacts of settler- colonialism. It analyses how these on-the-ground perceptions can, in turn, inform heritage organisations and contribute to safeguarding the many facets of tangible and intangible Indigenous heritage for future generations in the Anthropocene. This is accomplished through a comparative, transnational case study of two communities each from the Dehcho First Nations in the Northwest Territories, Canada, and the Aymara and Quechua peoples in northern Chile. I use a multi-method approach consisting of semi-structured interviews, oral histories and participant observation. The data is complemented by environmental and heritage legislation and grey literature at multiple organisational scales for both case studies. Three lines of enquiry are explored through an applied comparative thematic analysis: i) the perceptions of climate change and associated land loss/change among Indigenous groups and how this impacts each group’s notions of challenges to its cultural identity; ii) the intersection of the effects of post- colonialism, ongoing industrial activities and climate change on the intergenerational transmission of ancestral knowledge and notions of place attachment; and iii) how international, national and regional political and sociocultural rhetoric on environmental and heritage conservation affect local, grassroots considerations for safeguarding heritage. The similarities and contrasts of the Dehcho First Nations, Aymara and Quechua experiences of climate change across the North-South divide are related from the grassroots to arrive at redefining heritage practices in the Anthropocene. The results demonstrate that decolonising heritage is not only necessary, but that this decolonisation depends on building and actively engaging in intercultural empathy through the global threat of climate change. In order to understand how Indigenous practices, places, and items are valorised—attributed value—as heritage in the face of climate change, one must empathise with the cultural loss that exists in the temporal and cognitive spaces between Indigenous individuals’ moments of nostalgic reference and today.

Achievement of sustainable development in light of ongoing climate change and biodiversity pressures benefits from the deployment of innovations that foster engagement and uptake across all levels, mobilises finance flows commencement to the scale of the challenge, and enables the dissemination of transition solutions that support the low carbon economy. This research investigates the relationship between the legal architecture of market mechanisms under international law and the role of private actors, and how this contributes to sustainable development. Through an exploration of how market mechanisms under the climate change and biodiversity regimes have achieved environmentally sound outcomes, been advanced in sectoral approaches, and facilitated via bilateral and multilateral trade and investment relationships, important insights are identified regarding the composition of effective law and governance architectural approaches. Leveraging experiences derived from treaty practice viewed through an interactional account of international law, this assessment elucidates the important role played by alignment of legal regimes, robust transparency measures, and complementary schemes such as stakeholder-endorsed certifications in buttressing the established measures to ensure sustainable development outcomes and contributes to understanding the role of private actors in the operationalisation of environmental agreements. Research findings suggest it is the interaction of norms across the international legal architecture, informed by relationships within and across relevant treaty systems and the general corpus of international law, and actualised through engagement with private actors as a component of market mechanisms that provides the opportunity for congruence of practice, forging of shared understandings, and normative internalisation and ownership among communities of practice that stimulates both innovative solutions and ambitious action.

ABSTRACTIntraguild interactions among carnivores have long held the fascination of ecologists. Ranging from competition to facilitation and coexistence, these interactions and their complex interplay influence everything from species persistence to ecosystem functioning. Yet, the patterns and pathways of such interactions are far from understood in tropical forest systems, particularly across countries in the Global South. Here, we examined the determinants and consequences of competitive interactions between dholes Cuon alpinus and the two large felids (leopards Panthera pardus and tigers Panthera tigris) with which they most commonly co‐occur across Asia. Using a combination of traditional and novel data sources (N = 118), we integrate information from spatial, temporal, and dietary niche dimensions. These three species have faced catastrophic declines in their extent of co‐occurrence over the past century; most of their source populations are now confined to Protected Areas. Analysis of dyadic interactions between species pairs showed a clear social hierarchy. Tigers were dominant over dholes, although pack strength in dholes helped ameliorate some of these effects; leopards were subordinate to dholes. Population‐level spatio‐temporal interactions assessed at 25 locations across Asia did not show a clear pattern of overlap or avoidance between species pairs. Diet‐profile assessments indicated that wild ungulate biomass consumption by tigers was highest, while leopards consumed more primate and livestock prey as compared to their co‐predators. In terms of prey offtake (ratio of wild prey biomass consumed to biomass available), the three species together harvested 0.4–30.2% of available prey, with the highest offtake recorded from the location where the carnivores reach very high densities. When re‐examined in the context of prey availability and offtake, locations with low wild prey availability showed spatial avoidance and temporal overlap among the carnivore pairs, and locations with high wild prey availability showed spatial overlap and temporal segregation. Based on these observations, we make predictions for 40 Protected Areas in India where temporally synchronous estimates of predator and prey densities are available. We expect that low prey availability will lead to higher competition, and in extreme cases, to the complete exclusion of one or more species. In Protected Areas with high prey availability, we expect intraguild coexistence and conspecific competition among carnivores, with spill‐over to forest‐edge habitats and subsequent prey‐switching to livestock. We stress that dhole–leopard–tiger co‐occurrence across their range is facilitated through an intricate yet fragile balance between prey availability, and intraguild and conspecific competition. Data gaps and limitations notwithstanding, our study shows how insights from fundamental ecology can be of immense utility for applied aspects like large predator conservation and management of human–carnivore interactions. Our findings also highlight potential avenues for future research on tropical carnivores that can broaden current understanding of intraguild competition in forest systems of Asia and beyond.

Responses of soil water content, soil inorganic nitrogen, aboveground and belowground biomass, soil respiration, ecosystem respiration, net ecosystem production, and gross ecosystem production to precipitation variability from a 3-y manipulative experiment (2004-2016) and a 12-y model simulation (2000-2011).

The dataset is composed of the final energy consumption by sector (industry, passenger transport, freight transport, residential, services, and agriculture) and sub-sector/end-use (e.g., chemical industry, cars, truck and light vehicles, space heating, etc.) of Finland. In addition, data regarding passengers and goods traffic, the number of households, the stock of dwellings permanently occupied, the floor area of dwellings, and CO2 emissions are collected. The primary data source is the Odyssee database. The Odyssee data are complemented with data regarding the value added and energy dependence of Finland taken from the World Bank and Eurostat database, respectively. The data of Finland cover the period from 2005 to 2015.

AbstractMountain treelines are thought to be sensitive to climate change. However, how climate impacts mountain treelines is not yet fully understood as treelines may also be affected by other human activities. Here, we focus on “closed‐loop” mountain treelines (CLMT) that completely encircle a mountain and are less likely to have been influenced by human land‐use change. We detect a total length of ~916,425 km of CLMT across 243 mountain ranges globally and reveal a bimodal latitudinal distribution of treeline elevations with higher treeline elevations occurring at greater distances from the coast. Spatially, we find that temperature is the main climatic driver of treeline elevation in boreal and tropical regions, whereas precipitation drives CLMT position in temperate zones. Temporally, we show that 70% of CLMT have moved upward, with a mean shift rate of 1.2 m/year over the first decade of the 21st century. CLMT are shifting fastest in the tropics (mean of 3.1 m/year), but with greater variability. Our work provides a new mountain treeline database that isolates climate impacts from other anthropogenic pressures, and has important implications for biodiversity, natural resources, and ecosystem adaptation in a changing climate.

Over the past several years, online disinformation and misinformation concerning climate change have gained substantive attention within the scientific community. However, while the dynamics that drive the circulation of false online information have been analysed extensively, it remains unclear whether (and how) this phenomenon can be counteracted. This research project analyses the emerging role of bottom-up mobilisations as a form of noise-reduction, thereby examining how social movements may deploy peer-produced communication narra- tives to counteract the circulation of online disinformation and misinformation relating to climate change. To investigate this communication dynamic, this research applies techniques from computational social sciences to an original dataset of ≈ 250k Facebook posts produced by two movements that best embody this novel and innovative generation of radical envi- ronmental activism: Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future. The central thesis of this project forwards two original contributions to the fields of climate change communication and social movement studies. First, it analyses the emergence of a new generation of radical climate change movements and the significance of this new development in climate activism (Chapter II). Second, it offers interdisciplinary empirical evidence on how radical climate movements can act as a bottom-up force for what I term ‘epistemic activism’. It presents a theoretical framework where activist-led, peer-produced communication can provide a coun- tering force to both vertical disinformation and horizontal misinformation. It quantitatively analyses two channels through which these forms of false information can be opposed. For reducing vertical disinformation, this work assesses the use of naming and shaming against information polluters (Chapter III), while for horizontal misinformation, it evaluates the dissemination of scientific counter-narratives (Chapter IV). Ultimately, this thesis shows that the two movements under analysis engage extensively in epistemic activism, with great potential to influence the online climate change debate positively.