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Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate.

ABSTRACT: Climate variability and natural hazards like floods and earthquakes can act as environmental shocks or socioecological stressors leading to instability and suffering throughout human history. Yet, societies experience a wide range of outcomes when facing such challenges: some suffer from social unrest, civil violence or complete collapse; others prove more resilient and maintain key social functions. We currently lack a clear, generally agreed-upon conceptual framework and evidentiary base to explore what causes these divergent outcomes. Here, we discuss efforts to develop such a framework through the Crisis Database (CrisisDB) programme. We illustrate that the impact of environmental stressors is mediated through extant cultural, political and economic structures that evolve over extended timescales (decades to centuries). These structures can generate high resilience to major shocks, facilitate positive adaptation, or, alternatively, undermine collective action and lead to unrest, violence and even societal collapse. By exposing the ways that different societies have reacted to crises over their lifetime, this framework can help identify the factors and complex social-ecological interactions that either bolster or undermine resilience to contemporary climate shocks. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture'.

SUBMITTER: Hoyer D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10505849 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate.

Hoyer Daniel D Bennett James S JS Reddish Jenny J Holder Samantha S Howard Robert R Benam Majid M Levine Jill J Ludlow Francis F Feinman Gary G Turchin Peter P

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 20230918 1889

Climate variability and natural hazards like floods and earthquakes can act as environmental shocks or socioecological stressors leading to instability and suffering throughout human history. Yet, societies experience a wide range of outcomes when facing such challenges: some suffer from social unrest, civil violence or complete collapse; others prove more resilient and maintain key social functions. We currently lack a clear, generally agreed-upon conceptual framework and evidentiary base to ex ...[more]

PMID: 37718603

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Project description:BackgroundThere is strong association between childhood rotavirus, diarrhoea, climate factors and malnutrition. Conversely, a significant nutritional transition (reduced under-nutrition) with a concurrent increasing trend of rotavirus infection in last decade was also observed among under 5 children, especially in developing countries including Bangladesh. Considering the pathophysiology of rotavirus, there might be an interaction of this nutrition transition which plays a pivotal role in increasing rotavirus infection in addition to climate and other man-made factors in urban areas such as Dhaka, Bangladesh.MethodsRelevant monthly data from 1993-2012 were extracted from the archive of the Diarrhoeal Disease Surveillance System of icddr, b and linked with data collected from the Dhaka station of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (mean temperature, rainfall, sea level pressure and humidity). Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average time series models were deployed to determine the association between the monthly proportion of rotavirus infection and underweight, stunting and wasting adjusting for climate, socio-demographic and sanitation factors.FindingThe proportion of rotavirus cases among all causes diarrhoea increased from 20% in 1993 to 43% in 2012 (Chi squared for trend p = 0.010). In contrast, underweight, stunting and wasting decreased from 59%-29% (p<0.001); 53%-21% (p<0.001) and 32%-22% (p<0.001) respectively over the same period. Mean ambient temperature increased from 25.76°C-26.62°C (p = 0.07); mean rainfall, sea level pressure and mean humidity decreased from 234.92-111.75 mm (p = 0.5), 1008.30-1006.61 mm of hg (p = 0.02) and 76.63%-70.26% (p<0.001), respectively. In the adjusted model, a decrease in monthly proportion of underweight [coef.: -0.189 (95% CI:-0.376, -0.003)] and wasting [-0.265 (-0.455, -0.075)] were significantly and inversely associated with rotavirus infection. However, an inverse but insignificant association was observed for stunting [-0.070 (-0.249, 0.109)].InterpretationThe reduction of acute childhood malnutrition is significantly associated with increasing rotavirus diarrhoea among under-5 children. Thus mass vaccination in addition to interventions directed at man-made modifiable predictors for prevention and control is warranted.

Project description:Climate warming is projected to affect forest water yields but the effects are expected to vary. We investigated how forest type and age affect water yield resilience to climate warming. To answer this question, we examined the variability in historical water yields at long-term experimental catchments across Canada and the United States over 5-year cool and warm periods. Using the theoretical framework of the Budyko curve, we calculated the effects of climate warming on the annual partitioning of precipitation (P) into evapotranspiration (ET) and water yield. Deviation (d) was defined as a catchment's change in actual ET divided by P [AET/P; evaporative index (EI)] coincident with a shift from a cool to a warm period - a positive d indicates an upward shift in EI and smaller than expected water yields, and a negative d indicates a downward shift in EI and larger than expected water yields. Elasticity was defined as the ratio of interannual variation in potential ET divided by P (PET/P; dryness index) to interannual variation in the EI - high elasticity indicates low d despite large range in drying index (i.e., resilient water yields), low elasticity indicates high d despite small range in drying index (i.e., nonresilient water yields). Although the data needed to fully evaluate ecosystems based on these metrics are limited, we were able to identify some characteristics of response among forest types. Alpine sites showed the greatest sensitivity to climate warming with any warming leading to increased water yields. Conifer forests included catchments with lowest elasticity and stable to larger water yields. Deciduous forests included catchments with intermediate elasticity and stable to smaller water yields. Mixed coniferous/deciduous forests included catchments with highest elasticity and stable water yields. Forest type appeared to influence the resilience of catchment water yields to climate warming, with conifer and deciduous catchments more susceptible to climate warming than the more diverse mixed forest catchments.

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Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate.

Publications

Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate.

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