Frances Moore

The fingerprint of climate trends on European crop yields.

Significance Agriculture is one of the economic sectors most exposed to climate change impacts, but few studies have statistically connected long-term changes in temperature and rainfall with yields. Doing so in Europe is particularly important because yields of wheat and barley have plateaued since the early 1990s and climate change has been suggested as a cause of this stagnation. Here, we show that the impact of climate trends can be detected in the pattern of long-term yield trends in Europe. Although impacts have been large in some areas, the aggregate effect across the continent has been modest. Climate trends can explain 10% of the slowdown in wheat and barley yields, with changes in agriculture and environmental policies possibly responsible for the remainder. Europe has experienced a stagnation of some crop yields since the early 1990s as well as statistically significant warming during the growing season. Although it has been argued that these two are causally connected, no previous studies have formally attributed long-term yield trends to a changing climate. Here, we present two statistical tests based on the distinctive spatial pattern of climate change impacts and adaptation, and explore their power under a range of parameter values. We show that statistical power for the identification of climate change impacts is high in many settings, but that power for identifying adaptation is almost always low. Applying these tests to European agriculture, we find evidence that long-term temperature and precipitation trends since 1989 have reduced continent-wide wheat and barley yields by 2.5% and 3.8%, respectively, and have slightly increased maize and sugar beet yields. These averages disguise large heterogeneity across the continent, with regions around the Mediterranean experiencing significant adverse impacts on most crops. This result means that climate trends can account for ∼10% of the stagnation in European wheat and barley yields, with likely explanations for the remainder including changes in agriculture and environmental policies.

1 -tetrahydrocannabinol, synhexyl and marijuana extract administered orally in man: catecholamine excretion, plasma cortisol levels and platelet serotonin content.

Measurements of catecholamine excretion, plasma cortisol and platelet serotonin concentration were done in the course of experiments in which human volunteers were given sizable oral doses of Δ′-tetrahydrocannabinol, synhexyl or marijuana extracts. A transient rise in epinephrine excretion was observed following THC but seemed best explained by the anticipatory stress of the experiment or the rapid onset of unfamiliar symptoms. A decreased turnover of catecholamines or a shift in the degradative pathways of catecholamines from the oxidative to the reductive route was suggested by the decrease in VMA excretion following synhexyl. Plasma cortisol was unchanged except in the presence of clinically obvious psychological distress on the part of the patient. Platelet serotonin was unchanged.The lack of major effects of marijuana-like drugs on these and other clinical measurement of stress corroborates the clinical observation that drugs of this type seem to be less stressful than the usual psychotomimetics. The pronounced euphoriant and sedative effect of marijunana may ameliorate the stress of the psychotomimetic experience.

Negotiating Adaptation: Norm Selection and Hybridization in International Climate Negotiations

Adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change is a rapidly developing area of policy and the subject of active negotiation at the international level under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This article applies theories of norm evolution to the adaptation negotiations. It proposes that the history of these negotiations can best be understood as a contest between two proposed framings that can be roughly characterized as “adaptation as development” and “adaptation as restitution.” These two framings have some similar and some contradictory implications for policy. The article shows that the major areas of consensus and controversy around adaptation in the UNFCCC negotiations map closely to these areas of similarity and contradiction, respectively. Though the “adaptation as restitution” norm is relatively disadvantaged on many measures of norm-fitness suggested by previous authors, it nevertheless appears to help explain the development of adaptation institutions both within and outside the UNFCCC. A hybridized norm that can be described roughly as “like development but different” is coming to characterize international adaptation institutions.

Toppling the Tripod: Sustainable Development, Constructive Ambiguity and the Environmental Challenge

Discussions of global environmental governance seem to have gotten nowhere in the last thirty years despite environmental problems that continue to grow in scope and magnitude. Here, the role of sustainable development in that failure is examined, particularly the constructively ambiguous nature of the paradigm. It is suggested that an emphasis on the shifting, contextualized and relative term ―needs‖ in the definition of sustainable development has led to paralysis at the international level in addressing environmental problems, particularly climate change. Contradictions that emerge when sustainable development is formalized in economic models as weak and strong sustainability are discussed. Finally, promising future pathways for environmental actions are explored.

Costing Adaptation: Revealing Tensions in the Normative Basis of Adaptation Policy in Adaptation Cost Estimates

Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is a rapidly emerging, new area of knowledge and policy that is coevolving with political negotiations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As such, it offers the opportunity to study the coproduction of knowledge and social order within the climate change regime. A subset of adaptation knowledge relates to cost estimates of adaptation policy. Here the methodology of the adaptation cost studies are reviewed and compared to economic theory. Although presented as technical and apolitical applications of economic theory, this analysis shows that these studies in fact differ significantly and consistently from theory in that they largely ignore autonomous adaptation and almost universally cost complete adaptation rather than an efficient level of adaptation. It is suggested that these differences are related to the political nature of adaptation cost estimates, which are closely connected with normative claims for both adaptation funding for developing countries and compensation for the unavoidable climate change impacts. As such, adaptation cost estimates are an example of boundary objects, used to manage normative and highly politicized claims for restitution using scientific and therefore apolitical language and framings.

Reply to Gonsamo and Chen: Yield findings independent of cause of climate trends

Gonsamo and Chen (1) point out that phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Scandinavia Pattern (SCA) can affect growing-season climate in Europe and therefore crop productivity. However, it is unclear how this observation relates to our paper, which connects the observed long-term trends in climate with changes in yield (2). We state repeatedly in the paper (pp. 2672 and 2674) that attribution of long-term climate trends in Europe to greenhouse gas emissions is beyond the scope of the analysis. The long-term warming over Europe, wetting over northern Europe, and drying over southern Europe that we use to identify impacts on crop yields may be consistent either with anthropogenic climate change or multidecadal patterns of natural climate variability. A formal analysis to attribute long-term climate trends to greenhouse gas emissions requires the use of climate model output to characterize both the distinctive signal of anthropogenic climate change and the magnitude of internal variability (3, 4). Such an analysis is beyond the scope of our paper, and therefore we make no claims regarding the cause of the observed long-term climate trends in Europe, which is the focus of the letter by Gonsamo and Chen.