Spencer, T. orcid.org/0000-0003-2610-6201, Magnan, A.K. orcid.org/0000-0001-7421-5184, Donner, S. orcid.org/0000-0003-0600-7388 et al. (4 more authors) (2024) Habitability of low-lying socio-ecological systems under a changing climate. Climatic Change, 177 (1). 14. ISSN 0165-0009
Abstract
Climate change will push the planet worryingly close to its boundaries, across all latitudes and levels of development. One question therefore is the extent to which climate change does (and will) severely affect societies’ livelihoods, health, well-being, and cultures. This paper discusses the “severe climate risks” concept developed under Working Group II’s contribution to the Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, AR5, and AR6). Focusing on low-lying coastal socio-ecological systems (LCS) and acknowledging that attempts to define “severe” climate risk have been problematic at the level of global syntheses, we argue for a more place- and people-based framing relating to “habitability under a changing climate.” We summarize habitability in terms of five habitability pillars: land, freshwater, food, settlement and infrastructure, and economic and subsistence activities; we acknowledge social and cultural factors (including perceptions, values, governance arrangements, human agency, power structures) as critical underlying factors rather than as separate pillars. We further develop the habitability framing and examine climate risk to future human health and habitability for three climate “hotspot” archetypes (arctic coasts, atoll islands, densely populated urban areas). Building on the IPCC AR6 framing of severe climate risks, we discuss three key parameters describing severe climate risks in LCS: the point of irreversibility of changes, physical and socio-ecological thresholds, and cascading effects across various habitability dimensions. We also highlight the variability of severe risk conditions both between coastal archetypes and within each of them. Further work should consist of refining the case study framing to find the right balance between capturing context-specificities through real-world local case studies and commonalities derived from more generic archetypes. In addition, there is a need to identify appropriate methods to assess irreversibility, thresholds, and cascading effects, and thus severe climate risks to habitability.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Severe climate risks; Coastal adaptation; Social-ecological systems; Settlement archetypes (arctic, atoll, cities) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jan 2024 16:06 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2024 16:06 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03675-1 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10584-023-03675-1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207410 |