Anna J. Turbelin , Emma J. Hudgins , Jane A. Catford , Ross N. Cuthbert , Christophe Diagne , Melina Kourantidou , David Roiz , Franck Courchamp
{"title":"Biological invasions as burdens to primary economic sectors","authors":"Anna J. Turbelin , Emma J. Hudgins , Jane A. Catford , Ross N. Cuthbert , Christophe Diagne , Melina Kourantidou , David Roiz , Franck Courchamp","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102858","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Many human-introduced alien species economically impact industries worldwide. Management prioritisation and coordination efforts towards biological invasions are hampered by a lack of comprehensive quantification of costs to key economic sectors. Here, we quantify and estimate global invasion costs to seven major sectors and unravel the introduction pathways of species causing these costs — focusing mainly on primary economic sectors: agriculture, fisheries and forestry. From 1970 to 2020, costs reported in the InvaCost database as pertaining to <em>Agriculture, Fisheries</em>, and <em>Forestry</em> totaled $509 bn, $1.3 bn, and $134 bn, respectively (in 2017 United States dollars). Pathways of costly species were diverse, arising predominantly from cultural and agricultural activities, through unintentional contaminants with trade, and often impacted different sectors than those for which species were initially introduced. Costs to <em>Agriculture</em> were pervasive and greatest in at least 37 % (n = 46/123) of the countries assessed, with the United States accumulating the greatest costs for primary sectors ($365 bn), followed by China ($101 bn), and Australia ($36 bn). We further identified 19 countries highly economically reliant on <em>Agriculture</em>, <em>Fisheries</em>, and <em>Forestry</em> that are experiencing massive economic impacts from biological invasions, especially in the Global South. Based on an extrapolation to fill cost data gaps, we estimated total global costs ranging from at least $517–1,400 bn for <em>Agriculture</em>, $5.7–6.5 bn for <em>Fisheries</em>, and $142–768 bn for <em>Forestry</em>, evidencing substantial underreporting in the <em>Forestry</em> sector in particular. Burgeoning global invasion costs challenge sustainable development and highlight the need for improved management action to reduce future impacts on industry.</p></div><div><h3>Significance</h3><p>With rapidly rising biological invasion rates, efficient management is critical for economic and environmental impact mitigation. Specifically, improved quantification of the economic cost of biological invasions to the world’s primary economic sectors could provide crucial information for policymakers who must prioritise actions to limit ongoing and future impacts. We show that since 1970, over $600 bn in impacts has been incurred across <em>Agriculture</em>, <em>Fisheries</em> and <em>Forestry</em>, with the largest share reported in <em>Agriculture</em>. We further identify 19 countries, which rely heavily on primary sectors, facing comparatively high impacts from invasions, requiring urgent action. However, gaps in cost reporting across invasive taxa and countries suggest that these impacts are grossly underestimated. Proactive prioritisation by policymakers is needed to mitigate future impacts to primary sectors.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"87 ","pages":"Article 102858"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141315400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From grey to green? Tipping a coal region incrementally","authors":"Franziska Mey , Arno Weik , Johan Lilliestam","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102862","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A rapid and full decarbonisation of both energy and industry is essential to meet the targets in the Paris agreement, which brings coal- and carbon-intensive regions under significant pressure. Some regions have advanced in their transition and can provide insights in the system change processes. In this paper, we investigate the socio-economic transition processes of Essen and Duisburg as part of the wider structural change in the Ruhr Region/ Germany. We explore causes and effects of their trajectories in the last 30 + years and identify differences in outcome as a function of the interventions and/or contextual differences, while investigating whether either city crossed a tipping point in their transition process (yet). Therefore, we specifically evaluate the cities’ development trajectories by seeking evidence for “no”, “incremental” or “radical or tipping” changes in sets of qualitative and quantitative indicators.</p><p>Our analysis shows that both cities experienced incremental changes in their demographic, economic and political trajectories but we found no evidence for either city to have crossed a tipping point in their transition process yet. However, distinct developments in the cities’ policy narratives and visions indicate qualitative changes while putting them on different development trajectories potentially leading to tipping points in the future. Our study shows that the sequence of interventions and timing are important factors for the trajectory of a region determining the quality of societal change. It also suggests that radical change and tipping are the exception rather than the rule, especially in the highly complex social systems of cities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"87 ","pages":"Article 102862"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000669/pdfft?md5=06d530ef305c637f7680cac599389e43&pid=1-s2.0-S0959378024000669-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141315399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thales A.P. West , Barbara Bomfim , Barbara K. Haya
{"title":"Methodological issues with deforestation baselines compromise the integrity of carbon offsets from REDD+","authors":"Thales A.P. West , Barbara Bomfim , Barbara K. Haya","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102863","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The number of voluntary interventions seeking to generate carbon offsets by reducing deforestation and forest degradation, generally known as REDD+ projects, has increased significantly over the past decade. Offsets are issued based on project performance in comparison to a baseline scenario representing the expected deforestation in a project area in the absence of REDD+. Baselines from most ongoing REDD+ projects were established following four methodologies approved by the largest voluntary carbon offset certification scheme worldwide, the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) from Verra. These methodologies often rely on oversimplified assumptions about deforestation that remain overlooked by project developers, certification bodies, and buyers. Here, we explore what these methodological assumptions are and their implications. We then construct alternative deforestation baselines for four ongoing VCS-certified projects using the four VCS-REDD+ methodologies and examine how they differ. Overall, we observe large discrepancies among the project baselines. On average, the highest baseline value we calculate for each project is more than 14 times greater than the lowest value across the four projects studied. This illustrates the lack of robustness and consistency across the VCS-REDD+ methodologies. The results also call into question the additionality of carbon offsets issued based on these methodologies. New baseline methods need to be urgently developed if voluntary REDD+ projects are to reliably estimate their additional contribution to climate change mitigation. The incorporation of causal inference methods represents current best practices in measuring the efficacy of REDD+ interventions. Regrettably, these methods remain largely overlooked by project developers, certification standards, and governmental and international bodies. Dynamic baselines developed by independent analysts could potentially enable project developers to distinguish the impacts of the REDD+ intervention from confounding factors and properly estimate additionality.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"87 ","pages":"Article 102863"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000670/pdfft?md5=f9ab68170469412f6219f5074f7efe3e&pid=1-s2.0-S0959378024000670-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141303377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rafael Van der Borght, Montserrat Pallares-Barbera
{"title":"Greening to shield: The impacts of extreme rainfall on economic activity in Latin American cities","authors":"Rafael Van der Borght, Montserrat Pallares-Barbera","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102857","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Latin American cities are increasingly impacted by floods and this trend is likely to be further exacerbated under the combined effects of climate change and urbanisation. To reduce urban flood risk, green infrastructure and the ability to preserve and rehabilitate green spaces is often mentioned as an option to improve the hydraulic response of cities. Yet, little empirical evidence exists about the degree to which a greener city land cover can reduce the impacts of extreme rainfall on urban economic activity. Using earth observations from 630 cities across Latin America, this paper shows that extreme rainfall has a negative impact on urban economic activity, as proxied by cities’ night lights. Importantly, it finds that this negative impact diminishes as city’s land cover becomes greener: for cities where dense vegetation represents more than 20 % of total city area, the marginal impact of extreme rainfall is broadly halved vis-a-vis cities below this threshold. A counterfactual analysis for the year 2015 suggests that increasing the greenness of 25 % of the cities in our sample could have reduced losses by US$ 6,500 million -equivalent to a 19 % reduction of total estimated losses. These results evidence the benefits that a greener city land cover that makes room for green infrastructure can provide to adapt to more erratic rainfall patterns.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"87 ","pages":"Article 102857"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802400061X/pdfft?md5=cfb400f49c1d9729e05b00fb7b40a830&pid=1-s2.0-S095937802400061X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141291876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tracking the global anthropogenic gallium cycle during 2000–2020: A trade-linked multiregional material flow analysis","authors":"Ziyan Gao , Yong Geng , Meng Li , Jing-Jing Liang , Khaoula Houssini","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102859","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Byproduct metals are essential to global low carbon transition since they are irreplaceable in modern renewable energy technologies. Gallium (Ga) is classified as one critical byproduct metal due to its extensive use in electronic applications and low carbon technologies, as well as its limited resource endowment. It is urgent to uncover the global and regional Ga stocks and flows so that the potential supply risks can be mitigated. This study maps the global and regional Ga cycles for the period of 2000–2020 by employing a trade-linked multiregional material flow analysis (MFA) method. Our results show that 79% of the global Ga co-mined from bauxite ended up in red mud or entered the aluminum cycle as an impurity, indicating a significant recycling potential. Different involved regions have different but complementary roles in the global Ga supply chain. China dominates the global primary Ga production, accounting for 97% of the global total in 2020. Japan and the United States are key players in high-purity Ga refining and rely on Ga to support their electronic devices manufacturing. Unfortunately, Ga recycling practices are still not occurring due to the low Ga concentrations in major applications. Since the global demand for Ga will continue to grow in the near future, it is urgent to initiate collaborative efforts so that Ga recycling can be enhanced. These efforts are critical to ensure the sustainable Ga supply and facilitate the global transition toward low carbon development.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"87 ","pages":"Article 102859"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141291875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Julian Helfenstein , Samuel Hepner , Amelie Kreuzer , Gregor Achermann , Tim Williams , Matthias Bürgi , Niels Debonne , Thymios Dimopoulos , Vasco Diogo , Wendy Fjellstad , Maria Garcia-Martin , Józef Hernik , Thanasis Kizos , Angela Lausch , Christian Levers , Jaan Liira , Franziska Mohr , Gerardo Moreno , Robert Pazur , Tomasz Salata , Felix Herzog
{"title":"Divergent agricultural development pathways across farm and landscape scales in Europe: Implications for sustainability and farmer satisfaction","authors":"Julian Helfenstein , Samuel Hepner , Amelie Kreuzer , Gregor Achermann , Tim Williams , Matthias Bürgi , Niels Debonne , Thymios Dimopoulos , Vasco Diogo , Wendy Fjellstad , Maria Garcia-Martin , Józef Hernik , Thanasis Kizos , Angela Lausch , Christian Levers , Jaan Liira , Franziska Mohr , Gerardo Moreno , Robert Pazur , Tomasz Salata , Felix Herzog","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102855","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Current agricultural practices in Europe are increasingly aggravating societal and environmental safety concerns. This creates social and regulatory pressures on farmers, which can lead to declining material and social status of farmers, farmer discontent, and anti-regulation protests. These tensions are rooted in conflicting value systems for agricultural development, which can range from productivist pathways (i.e. valuing production above all else) to increasing multifunctionality pathways (i.e. valuing agriculture for its contribution to multiple economic, environmental and societal needs). It is largely unknown to what degree individual farms and agricultural landscapes are transitioning towards increasing productivism or multifunctionality in practice. Here, we mapped landscape changes and interviewed farmers (n = 274) to examine the diversity of agricultural development pathways in 17 study sites across Europe over the last 20 years (2000–2020). We also assessed the associations between the development pathways and farmers’ perceptions of socio-economic outcomes, namely job satisfaction, societal valuation, and economic performance. Farm-level development was largely aligned with productivist pathways, while landscape-level changes aligned more closely with an increasing multifunctionality pathway. Farmers on pathways of increasing multifunctionality did not perceive improved outcomes on livelihood indicators as compared to productivist farmers. Furthermore, farms on increasing multifunctionality pathways were concentrated in sites with very high management intensities that face strong pressure from environmental regulations, as well as low-intensity, mountainous sites, where opportunities for intensification are limited. These results suggest that current pathways that increase multifunctionality arise mostly by necessity. Successful agricultural transformation will therefore require policy to create enabling environments that provide socioeconomic benefits for farmers to increase multifunctionality, and a civil society and market conditions that value sustainable agriculture.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 102855"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000591/pdfft?md5=bf87064751fc94665ae8b9d5c78a23e6&pid=1-s2.0-S0959378024000591-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141084235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anne G. Hoekstra, Kjell Noordzij, Willem de Koster, Jeroen van der Waal
{"title":"The educational divide in climate change attitudes: Understanding the role of scientific knowledge and subjective social status","authors":"Anne G. Hoekstra, Kjell Noordzij, Willem de Koster, Jeroen van der Waal","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102851","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Research has frequently found that less-educated citizens are more skeptical about climate change and show less trust in climate science than their more-educated counterparts. We advance insights on why this educational divide exists by: 1) scrutinizing the relevance of the dominant knowledge-deficit explanation by uniquely using an objective measure of scientific knowledge; and 2) theorizing and empirically testing a novel explanation on the importance of subjective social status. Building on recent sociological insights, we theorize that less-educated citizens have a lower subjective social status and feel misrecognized by more-educated citizens, inciting frustration and opposition toward the attitudes and lifestyle of the latter. Because belief in and concern about climate change are predominantly embraced by more-educated citizens and have strong status connotations, less-educated citizens’ opposition to the lifestyle of more-educated citizens is likely also directed at the issue of climate change. We test hypotheses derived from both approaches by analyzing unique survey data gathered among members of a high-quality panel representative of the Dutch population. We focus on two outcome measures: climate change skepticism and distrust in climate science. We find that both the knowledge-deficit approach and the novel explanation involving subjective social status contribute to understanding the educational divide in climate change attitudes, in addition to other approaches covered by control variables such as income and political ideology. Our study concludes with a reflection on the theoretical implications of these findings and their practical implications for information campaigns, which our study suggests should be careful not to prime less-educated citizens’ perceived lower social standing.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 102851"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000554/pdfft?md5=152732bb953b237795168406ed80be67&pid=1-s2.0-S0959378024000554-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141090653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Quan Wen , Shipian Shao , Yaopeng Wang , Jingke Hong , Ke Lu , Qingyue Zhao , Heran Zheng , Li Ma
{"title":"Does creation-oriented culture promote ESG activities? Evidence from the Chinese market","authors":"Quan Wen , Shipian Shao , Yaopeng Wang , Jingke Hong , Ke Lu , Qingyue Zhao , Heran Zheng , Li Ma","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102852","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates the relationship between a creation-oriented culture and environmental, social, and governance activities in Chinese listed companies between 2008 and 2022. We conduct a textual analysis of firms’ annual reports to quantify the creation-oriented culture and environmental, social, and governance levels. The results reveal that a creation-oriented culture positively affects environmental, social, and governance activities. The findings also show that creation-oriented culture can positively affect environmental, social, and governance activities through the channels of corporate green innovation and chief executive officers’ career horizons. The findings of this study have implications for stakeholders and policymakers aiming to enhance environmental, social, and governance activities at the corporate level.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 102852"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141067691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Common property regimes in participatory guarantee systems (PGS): Sharing responsibility in the collective management of organic labels","authors":"Philippe Ninnin , Sylvaine Lemeilleur","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102856","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102856","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are certification schemes, which offer a guarantee that labelled products comply with a related quality standard. They differ from the prevailing Third-Party Certification (TPC) because in a PGS, food system stakeholders are involved in the decision to award a label. With TPC, a single certification body takes the decision and certification costs may be too high to be borne by smallholder producers. According to PGS guidelines (<span>IFOAM, 2019</span>), shared rights to actively contribute to the inspections, participate in exclusion decisions for certification and to manage the contents of the standard are key features of a PGS. Producers have significantly more rights on the label in a PGS than in TPC. Each PGS has a specific governance structure, which reflects how they have adapted to their respective institutional environments. In this paper, we compare the distribution of power in TPC for the European organic label and four PGS, Nature & Progrès (N&P) in France; Ecovida Agroecology Network (EAN) in Brazil; Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) in the US; and Kilimo Hai (KH) in Tanzania. Drawing on the bundle of rights concept developed by <span>Schlager and Ostrom (1992)</span>, we discuss how the common property regimes in PGS have potential for bridging the gap between organic labels and their users. We describe each governance structure, by drawing on data from in-depth interviews with key informants and on the analysis of framework documents and regulatory texts specific to each initiative. We show that the distribution of stakeholders’ rights varies considerably between the different PGS. Similar to the commons, these differences can impact the label’s legitimacy, the PGS members’ involvement and mobilization, and the effectiveness of the rules relating to implementation and compliance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 102856"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000608/pdfft?md5=7de1a1e7dd35f387f3cff1d0228c03b0&pid=1-s2.0-S0959378024000608-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141159549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Raphaela Maier , Timo Gerres , Andreas Tuerk , Franziska Mey
{"title":"Finding tipping points in the global steel sector: A comparison of companies in Australia, Austria, South Korea and the USA","authors":"Raphaela Maier , Timo Gerres , Andreas Tuerk , Franziska Mey","doi":"10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102846","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The global steel sector is responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, highlighting the need for significant changes in production practices and the adoption of low-carbon breakthrough technologies to achieve net-zero emissions. This study was conducted to explore positive tipping points at the company level, taking into account socio-political, economic and industry pressures that initiate the tipping process. The study operationalizes tipping points using the Triple Embededdness Framework, which incorporates indicators from the socio-political and economic environment, as well as the industry regime of companies. An analysis is performed of secondary data from four steel companies: BlueScope (Australia), POSCO (South Korea), voestalpine (Austria), and U.S. Steel (USA). The findings indicate that voestalpine is on the verge of reaching a positive tipping point, and POSCO is also on a promising track. In contrast, both BlueScope and U.S. Steel are lagging behind. In the tipping process, national policies play a critical role in expediting the transition to low-carbon steel production for frontrunners, while global climate policy has a greater leverage by influencing producers who operate in a less stringent national policy context. Additionally, the customer demand for low-carbon steel serves as a driving force for innovation and can incentivize steelmakers to produce low-carbon products.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":328,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 102846"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000505/pdfft?md5=145e4420be2de8d4d7c18db34a03de65&pid=1-s2.0-S0959378024000505-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140820076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}