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Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: Climate Change and SDGs

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Air, Climate Change and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2024) | Viewed by 6351

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Pollution Management Research Group, Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Interests: mitigation of air pollution and greenhouse gases; non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions; short-lived climate forcers; integrated assessment modelling
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Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Interests: biogeochemistry; climate downscaling; ecological climatology
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Guest Editor
Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Interests: impacts and adaptation of climate change; risk of natural disasters; pattern and processes of land surface

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Among all SDG goals, SDG13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. However, as climate change presents the single biggest threat to humans, its widespread and unprecedented impacts make it extend far beyond SDG 13, and be closely connected to all other SDGs. More precisely, according to WMO, seven climate indicators (CO2 concentration, ocean acidification, GMST, OHC, sea-ice extent, glacier mass balance, and sea-level rise) pose direct risks to sustainable development (WMO-No. 1271).

More evidently, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, floods and tropical cyclones, aggravating water management problems, reducing agricultural production and food security, increasing health risks, damaging critical infrastructure, and interrupting the provision of basic services, such as water and sanitation, education, energy, and transport.

To hold warming below 1.5 °C and avoid the worst impacts of climate change, science demands that greenhouse gas emissions must urgently peak and achieve carbon neutral by 2050. At the same time, scientists are intensely working on various climate-related projects to combat climate risks. To collect work on this topic, we are establishing this series that aims to further raise the awareness of climate scientists and promote academic communication in this field. The work that we welcome includes, but is not limited to, climate projection, climate dynamics, climate modeling, extreme weather, climate change governance, climate adaptation and mitigation, climate economics, renewable energy, and GHG emission reduction. Interdisciplinary work on the above topics is particularly welcome.

Dr. Pallav Purohit
Prof. Dr. Xiaodong Yan
Dr. Shaohong Wu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • climate change
  • climate projection
  • climate dynamics
  • climate modeling
  • extreme weather
  • climate change risk
  • risk assessment
  • natural disasters
  • climate adaptation and mitigation
  • climate change policy and governance
  • climate economics
  • renewable energy
  • GHG emission
  • climate-sensitive ecosystem
  • air pollution
  • climate-related health impacts
  • SDGs

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 14390 KiB  
Article
Prediction of Adaptability of Typical Vegetation Species in Flood Storage Areas under Future Climate Change: A Case in Hongze Lake FDZ, China
by Liang Wang, Jilin Cheng, Yushan Jiang, Nian Liu and Kai Wang
Sustainability 2024, 16(15), 6331; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156331 - 24 Jul 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1125
Abstract
China experiences frequent heavy rainfall and flooding events, which have particularly increased in recent years. As flood storage zones (FDZs) play an important role in reducing disaster losses, their ecological restoration has been receiving widespread attention. Hongze Lake is an important flood discharge [...] Read more.
China experiences frequent heavy rainfall and flooding events, which have particularly increased in recent years. As flood storage zones (FDZs) play an important role in reducing disaster losses, their ecological restoration has been receiving widespread attention. Hongze Lake is an important flood discharge area in the Huaihe River Basin of China. Previous studies have preliminarily analyzed the protection of vegetation zones in the FDZ of this lake, but the future growth trend of typical vegetation in the area has not been considered as a basis for the precise protection of vegetation diversity and introductory cultivation of suitable species in the area. Taking the FDZ of Hongze Lake as an example, this study investigated the change trend of the suitability of typical vegetation species in the Hongze Lake FDZ based on future climate change and the distribution pattern of the suitable areas. To this end, the distribution of potentially suitable habitats of 20 typical vegetation species in the 2040s was predicted under the SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5 climate scenarios using the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project CMIP6. The predicted distribution was compared with the current distribution of potentially suitable habitats. The results showed that the model integrating high-performance random forest, generalized linear model, boosted tree model, flexible discriminant analysis model, and generalized additive model had significantly higher TSS and AUC values than the individual models, and could effectively improve model accuracy. The high sensitivity of these 20 typical vegetation species to temperature and rainfall related factors reflects the climatic characteristics of the study area at the junction of subtropical monsoon climate and temperate monsoon climate. Under future climate scenarios, with reference to the current scenario of the 20 typical species, the suitability for Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn decreased, that for Iris pseudacorus L. increased in the western part of the study area but decreased in the eastern wetland and floodplain, and the suitability of the remaining 18 species increased. This study identified the trend of potential suitable habitat distribution and the shift in the suitability of various typical vegetation species in the floodplain of Hongze Lake. The findings are important for the future enhancement of vegetation habitat conservation and suitable planting in the study area, and have implications for the restoration and conservation of vegetation diversity in most typical floodplain areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: Climate Change and SDGs)
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17 pages, 1115 KiB  
Article
The SDGs and Non-Financial Disclosures of Energy Companies: The Italian Experience
by Giuseppe Scandurra and Antonio Thomas
Sustainability 2023, 15(17), 12882; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151712882 - 25 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1851
Abstract
For some years, energy companies (ECs) have been increasingly pressured to address a broader set of social and environmental responsibilities that respond adequately to citizens’ expectations, local and international regulatory frameworks, and transnational initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, ECs [...] Read more.
For some years, energy companies (ECs) have been increasingly pressured to address a broader set of social and environmental responsibilities that respond adequately to citizens’ expectations, local and international regulatory frameworks, and transnational initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, ECs have invested considerable resources to reduce the environmental and social impact in their activities. This study aims to verify the measures that ECs have actually adopted by analyzing their social and sustainability reports. These reports constitute an official tool, and they are also supported by specific mandatory regulations such as EU Directive 2014/95, in which companies provide a non-financial disclosure aimed at demonstrating how their pursuit of the conditions of economic and financial equilibrium is increasingly and closely linked with the ability to assure sustainable development. This study considers eight major ECs operating in the Italian market. It compares the findings with two important foreign ECs that draw up a very structured and innovative report: the integrated report. The outcomes confirm that these ECs are making significant progress in the environmental and social spheres, although the path to full sustainable development is still unreached. The policy implications emerging from this study can contribute to this direction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: Climate Change and SDGs)
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17 pages, 15422 KiB  
Article
Assessment of the Future Changes in the Socio-Economic Vulnerability of China’s Coastal Areas
by Cuihua Li, Rongshuo Cai and Xiuhua Yan
Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 5794; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15075794 - 27 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2125
Abstract
China’s coastal areas are under serious threat of continued sea-level rise, and sustainable coastal development is closely linked to changes in socio-economic vulnerability. To this end, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change framework of shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs), this study constructed [...] Read more.
China’s coastal areas are under serious threat of continued sea-level rise, and sustainable coastal development is closely linked to changes in socio-economic vulnerability. To this end, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change framework of shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs), this study constructed a system of indicators to assess the socio-economic vulnerability of China’s coastal areas in 2030, 2050, and 2100 under low, medium, and high greenhouse gas emission scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5, respectively). The results showed the following: (1) the vulnerability of China’s coastal provinces, cities, and counties shows an upward trend (ranked SSP5-8.5 > SSP2-4.5 > SSP1-2.6), which is mainly attributed to a continued increase in the exposure of socio-economic systems to sea-level rise and differences in the age structure of the population within the study regions; and (2) areas with higher vulnerability are concentrated in economically developed coastal areas, such as the Bohai Bay Rim and the Yangtze River Delta, Jiangsu, and Pearl River Delta regions, owing to their high proportions of low-lying land, long coastlines, and dense residential areas associated with economic development. Based on these results, climate-resilient solutions are needed to improve socio-economic adaptations for ongoing climate change in China’s coastal areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: Climate Change and SDGs)
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