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The potential impacts of climate change on human health in sub-Saharan Africa are wide-ranging, complex, and largely adverse. The region's Indigenous peoples are considered to be at heightened risk given their relatively poor health outcomes, marginal social status, and resource-based livelihoods; however, little attention has been given to these most vulnerable of the vulnerable. This paper contributes to addressing this gap by taking a bottom-up approach to assessing health vulnerabilities to climate change in two Batwa Pygmy communities in rural Uganda. Rapid Rural Appraisal and PhotoVoice field methods complemented by qualitative data analysis were used to identify key climate-sensitive, community-identified health outcomes, describe determinants of sensitivity at multiple scales, and characterize adaptive capacity of Batwa health systems. The findings stress the importance of human drivers of vulnerability and adaptive capacity and the need to address social determinants of health in order to reduce the potential disease burden of climate change.

Svrha ovog rada jest iznijeti pregled klime i klimatskih promjena u Republici Hrvatskoj te vidjeti na koji način su one utjecale na turizam i gospodarstvo u zadnjih desetak godina. Klima predstavlja vremenske uvjete koji prevladaju duže vrijeme na nekom području. Tematika kojom se rad bavi bazira se na globalnom zatopljenju kao najvećem faktoru koji utječe na prirodu, čovječanstvo i industrije te sve aktivnosti u gospodarstvu. Globalno zatopljenje predstavlja ozbiljan problem kojemu se treba što brže pristupiti te pronaći efektivne načine smanjenja utjecaja globalnog zatopljenja na sve gospodarske i prirodne aspekte. Da bi se došlo do podataka i odgovorilo na temu napravljeno je istraživanje gdje se uspoređuju broj dolazaka i noćenja u Republici Hrvatskoj sa brojem padalina i insolacijom. Istraživanje je pokazalo kako globalno zatopljenje i povećanje temperature pogoduju turizmu i dolasku ljudi jer se brojke kroz godine povećavaju zajedno sa temperaturom, dok je zimski turizam nešto slabiji jer zimske sezone traju kraće iz razloga što više nema toliko prirodnog snijega. Za gospodarstvo, poljoprivredu i ribarstvo drukčija je priča. Tamo su utjecaji klimatskih promjena znatno veći te postoji opasnost da će se u budućnosti ribolov smanjiti jer ribe neće moći podnijeti toplije temperature. Također i gospodarstvo odnosno poljoprivreda će osjetiti negativan učinak klimatskih promjena iz razloga što neke vrste voća i povrća se neće moći više kvalitetno uzgajati na Hrvatskom području, što može dovesti do poskupljenja ili čak nestašice vode te će se radi tog razloga morati tražiti alternativne metode navodnjavanja što će rezultirati poskupljenjem i tako direktno utjecati i na sveukupno gospodarstvo. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the climate and climate change in the Republic of Croatia and see how they have been affecting tourism and the economy in the last ten years. Climate can be explained as the weather conditions that prevail in an area over a long period of time. This paper focuses on the global warming as the most influential factor when it comes to changes in nature, humanity, industry, and activities in general. Global warming is the gradual increase in temperature in the Earth's atmosphere, generally due to the greenhouse effect, which was caused by pollution in the environment. In order to get the data and answer the questions posed by this paper, this case study was written in a way that compares the number of arrivals and overnight stays in the Republic of Croatia to the likes of precipitation, isolation, and temperature. The case study shows that the global warming and increase in temperature favor tourism and people's arrivals as numbers increase over time with temperatures, while winter tourism is somewhat weaker because winter seasons are shorter due to the lack of natural snow as of late. It’s a completely different story for the economy, agriculture, and fishing. The impact of climate change is considerably higher in those fields, as is the danger of a decrease in fishing activity in the future as the fish will not be able to withstand the warmer temperatures.

As it becomes clear that climate change is not easily within the boundaries of the 1990's, society needs to be prepared and needs to anticipate future changes due to the uncertain changes in climate. So far, extensive research has been carried out on several issues including the coastal defence or shifting ecozones. However, the role spatial design and planning can play in adapting to climate change has not yet been focussed on.This book illuminates the way adaptation to climate change is tackled in water management, ecology, coastal defence, the urban environment and energy. The question posed is how each sector can anticipate climate change by creating spatial designs and plans. The main message of this book is that spatial design and planning are a very useful tool in adapting to climate change. It offers an integral view on the issue, it is capable in dealing with uncertainties and it opens the way to creative and anticipative solutions. Dealing with adaptation to climate change requires a shift in mindset; from a technical rational way of thinking towards an integral proactive one. A new era in spatial design and planning looms on the horizon. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

The potential for global forest cover The restoration of forested land at a global scale could help capture atmospheric carbon and mitigate climate change. Bastin et al. used direct measurements of forest cover to generate a model of forest restoration potential across the globe (see the Perspective by Chazdon and Brancalion). Their spatially explicit maps show how much additional tree cover could exist outside of existing forests and agricultural and urban land. Ecosystems could support an additional 0.9 billion hectares of continuous forest. This would represent a greater than 25% increase in forested area, including more than 200 gigatonnes of additional carbon at maturity.Such a change has the potential to store an equivalent of 25% of the current atmospheric carbon pool. Science , this issue p. 76 ; see also p. 24

Abstract In the last years, electric vehicles (EVs) are getting significant consideration as an environmental-sustainable and cost-effective alternative over conventional vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICEs), for the mitigation of the dependence from fossil fuels and for reduction of Green-House Gasses (GHGs) emission. However, many challenges are still ongoing to their large scale implementation. Among them, the negative impact on the electrical grid operation in case of an uncoordinated contemporary charging of a huge number of EVs. In the recent literature different solutions are proposed for handling the peak demand of EVs and the related problems. One answer is offered by the implementation of EV charging strategies, through aggregation agents, for containing the impact on the grid, guaranteeing the quality of the service. The implementation of a real charging strategy is strictly related to a deployment of smart-grid technologies, such as smart meters, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and energy storage systems (ESSs). In particular ESSs are playing a fundamental role in the general smart grid paradigm, and can become fundamental for the integration in the new power systems of EV fast charging stations of the last generation: in this case the storage can have peak shaving and power quality functions and also to make the charge time shorter. In the present paper, an overview on the different types of EVs charging stations, in reference to the present international European standards, and on the storage technologies for the integration of EV charging stations in smart grid is reported. Then a real implementation of EVs fast charging station equipped with an ESS is deeply described. The system is a prototype, designed, implemented and now available at ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) labs. A wide experimental activity has been performed on the prototype system in order to test its functionalities in the integration in a smart grid available at the same ENEA lab, including a smart metering system. The integration has been possible thanks to the use of a customized communication protocol, developed by the researchers and here described. The results of the experimental tests show that the system has a good performance in the implementation of peak shaving functions, in respect of the main distribution grid, making the prototype like a network nearly zero-impact system.

Domestic heating represents the most dominant energy function in Dutch households nowadays. Using district heat from CHP (combined heat and power) by means of a NGCC (natural gas-fired combined cycle) plants is generally acknowledged as an effective option to reduce primary energy consumption for heating. However, methods to calculate energy savings from CHP differ widely. This paper compares a number of different methods, including the method from the EU CHP Directive, to estimate primary energy savings in comparison with the typically used domestic gas-fired condensing boiler. Real hourly CHP plant performance data is used. An estimation of the CO2 mitigation cost of delivering district heat to Dutch dwellings is made. We find that supplying dwellings with district heat from an NGCC-CHP saves energy, regardless of the calculation method and for a rather wide range of reference efficiencies. CO2 mitigation costs are acceptable from a social perspective (at discount rates up to 4%, excluding fuel taxes) and negative from a private perspective (at discount rates up to 10%, including fuel taxes).

AbstractClimate change and land‐use change are two major drivers of biome shifts causing habitat and biodiversity loss. What is missing is a continental‐scale future projection of the estimated relative impacts of both drivers on biome shifts over the course of this century. Here, we provide such a projection for the biodiverse region of Latin America under four socio‐economic development scenarios. We find that across all scenarios 5–6% of the total area will undergo biome shifts that can be attributed to climate change until 2099. The relative impact of climate change on biome shifts may overtake land‐use change even under an optimistic climate scenario, if land‐use expansion is halted by the mid‐century. We suggest that constraining land‐use change and preserving the remaining natural vegetation early during this century creates opportunities to mitigate climate‐change impacts during the second half of this century. Our results may guide the evaluation of socio‐economic scenarios in terms of their potential for biome conservation under global change.

Capítulos en libros This paper assesses the scalability and replicability of smart grid projects, by means of the identification of limitations and barriers faced by these projects. Factors have been identified that impact a project s scalability and replicability by means of a review of demonstration projects. The factors are of technical, economic, regulatory and social acceptance nature, and they describe requirements for scalability and replicability. Data was collected from ongoing European smart grid demonstration projects through the use of an elaborated questionnaire on the identified factors. Which allowed to quantify the status quo to what extent projects have taken these factors into account. Dew to their nature the derived factors can be categorized in technical, economic and regulatory & stakeholder related factor areas The obtained results allowed the identification of barriers, i.e. limitations regarding the scalability and replicability of smart grid projects. In particular projects face barriers regarding the absence of standards, the physical limits of the existing infrastructure, the absence of cost-benefit analyses, the neglect of varying macro-economic factors, stakeholder involvement and from the dependency of projects on regional or national regulatory frameworks and market designs. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion