Search Results (33)

Youth make up a fifth of the world’s population and will suffer the consequences of the climate catastrophe to differing extents depending on their social and geographical locations. The climate crisis is thus a matter of both intergenerational and racial/imperial injustice. Intersectional and interdisciplinary climate justice approaches are growing in the field of youth climate activism and, more often, these are necessarily engaging with collaborative methods to platform the voices of marginalised youth and those who live the colonial difference. Our paper provides early reflections from a youth climate activism artistic research project titled ‘Theatre of Climate Action: Amplifying Youth Voices for Climate Justice in Guadeloupe and South Africa’ (ToCA). In this project, sixteen young people aged 18-30 from South Africa and Guadeloupe collaborate to design, produce, and create theatre performances that reflect their exploration of climate justice through their lived experiences using artistic research methods. Specifically, we examine the opportunities and challenges in using the framework of Safe(r), Brave(r), and Riskier Spaces to support collaborative and emancipatory art-making practices that allow youth to become co-creators in this project. Insights revealed that an intentional embrace of safety, bravery, and risk as an ethico-political basis for art making was critical to cultivate a sense of community, trust, and belonging for youth co-creators. Full article

Despite the climate crisis, a significant barrier to sustainability is limitations to the current accounting and reporting system. These deficiencies, mean the global financial system continues to invest trillions of dollars annually in environmentally sub-optimal projects. To catalyze the economic transition away from fossil-fuel and plastic configurations to more sustainable ones, sustainability accounting and reporting (SAR) is imperative. However, theoretical contention, pragmatic concerns, and costs stoke strong resistance to SAR. The research used ablative thematic analysis to apply hermeneutic phenomenology. First, it scanned the backdrop to the SAR problem and identified a corpus of recent literature from key associated institutions. The initial interpretation of the texts disentangled SAR’s conflicting threads and generated three themes of ‘climate crisis’ and ‘conservative’ or more ‘radical’ SAR reform paradigms. Iteratively harnessing these thematic lenses, the investigation re-examined the SAR literature corpus. The textual ‘dialogue’ generated understanding of the fragmented SAR responses to the climate crisis. Accordingly, the research reformulated its first theme to ‘dystopic climate crisis fragmentation’ and refined the other themes to take account of materiality and the split between Anglo-Saxon (IFRS, SSAB) or global (UN) and continental European accounting institutions (EU, GRI). Conservatives retain a single materiality investor-focus and concede only incremental standard improvements. Radicals seek to implement double materiality with a broader spectrum of stakeholders in mind. Both approaches have theoretical as well as pragmatic advantages and disadvantages, so the SAR contention rumbles on. Whilst the standard-setting landscape is evolving, disagreements remain. Its roots of contention are philosophical and pragmatic. Philosophically, radicals strive to temper libertarian anarcho-capitalist proclivities and broaden firm responsibility. Pragmatically, social, or environmental externalities are problematic to assign or measure. Given vested interests in the destructive status quo, it would be naïve to expect a harmonious SAR Ithaca to emerge anytime soon. Yet the challenges impel an intensification of SAR dialogue and concrete actions. Rather than a scientifically nomothetic contribution, the paper provides a qualitative, artful interpretation of a complex, contentious but crucial field. Full article

In the face of the growing challenges of the Anthropocene—marked by climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasing rates of disease and despair—this paper explores the need for holistic solutions that integrate cultural and spiritual transformation as essential dimensions of change. Recognizing that the interconnected challenges to planetary health stem from destructive socio-political agendas and unhealthy economic structures, we underscore the importance of worldviews and value systems as root causes of social and ecological injustices. Solutions require an understanding of the complex interdependence of systems, fostering mutualistic mindsets, and healing the ‘relationship crisis’ between humans and the natural world by cultivating a deeper level of consciousness. In response to these urgent needs, we describe Earthrise—a community of engaged contemplative practice led by the Nova Institute for Health in collaboration with the Planetary Health Alliance—dedicated to spiritual and cultural transformation in the face of today’s complex crises. Through intentional spiritual relationships—with ourselves, each other, and the natural world—our community emphasizes the power of narrative co-creation in building social cohesion and collective action for environmental stewardship. Our work is not solely contemplative, but also relational and integrative—embodying values through lived practice, community, and ecological engagement. Our activities focus on developing cultural capacities and self-awareness as essential foundations for fair and sustainable social transformation. By integrating diverse perspectives, including ancestral wisdom and Indigenous knowledge systems, we enrich worldviews and deepen our connection to the planet. The Earthrise community seeks to cultivate a sense of belonging, nurturing the meaningful relationships that foster compassion and care. Central to our approach is the use of creative emergence, leveraging the arts to inspire change and catalyze new paradigms. Through this exploration of interconnected themes, we contend that spiritual and cultural transformation is vital to advancing a thriving future, where human flourishing and planetary health are understood as inseparable and interconnected goals. Full article

With the consequences of climate change becoming more urgent, there has never been a more pressing need for technologies that can help to reduce the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of the most polluting sectors, such as power generation, steel, cement, and the chemical industry. This review summarizes the state-of-the-art technologies for carbon capture, for instance, post-combustion, pre-combustion, oxy-fuel combustion, chemical looping, and direct air capture. Moreover, already established carbon capture technologies, such as absorption, adsorption, and membrane-based separation, and emerging technologies like calcium looping or cryogenic separation are presented. Beyond carbon capture technologies, this review also discusses how captured CO₂ can be securely stored (CCS) physically in deep saline aquifers or depleted gas and oil reservoirs, stored chemically via mineralization, or used in enhanced oil recovery. The concept of utilizing the captured CO₂ (CCU) for producing value-added products, including formic acid, methanol, urea, or methane, towards a circular carbon economy will also be shortly discussed. Real-life applications, e.g., already pilot-scale continuous methane (CH₄) production from flue gas CO₂, are shown. Actual deployment of the most crucial technologies for the future will be explored in real-life applications. This review aims to provide a compact view of the most crucial technologies that should be considered when choosing to capture, store, or convert CO₂, informing future researchers with efforts aimed at mitigating CO₂ emissions and tackling the climate crisis. Full article

The contemporary American university largely operates as an agent of domestication, tasked more with enforcing the social and economic order than with expanding the horizons of possibility. The dawn of the Anthropocene, however, demands that we reconceive of the humanities not as self-sufficient, hierarchical, or divided away from other modes of seeking knowledge but as core to what human being and responsibility ought to mean in the more-than-human world. The present essay makes a case for reworking—and rethinking—the American university along the lines of Mark C. Taylor’s prompt to reconceive of the academy as a multidisciplinary forum for the “comparative analysis of common problems”. I suggest that religious teachings—and religious traditions themselves—can offer models for the intertwining of the humanities (literature, poetry, philosophy, the expressive and applied arts), the social sciences (the study of governance, political thought, the study and formulation of law), and the natural sciences as well as mathematics and engineering. Further, I argue that when faced with radical and unprecedented changes in technological, social, economic, and environmental structures, we must, I believe, engage with these traditional texts in order to enrich and critique the liberal mindset that has neither the values nor the vocabulary to deal with the climate crisis. We must begin to sow new and expansive ways of thinking, and I am calling this work the “rewilding” of our universities. Parallel to the three Cs of rewilding as a conservation paradigm, I suggest the following three core principles for the rewilding of higher education: creativity, curriculum, and collaboration. Though I focus on the interface of religion, ecology, and the study of the environmental, social, and moral challenges of climate change, I suggest that these categories of activity should impact all domains of inquiry to which a university is home. Full article

Climate change effects are a warning of the planetary crises threatening our collective future. This is a topic largely considered in the context of the environmental crisis, but we are now aware that climate change represents an increasingly alarming threat also in terms of the conservation of cultural heritage sites. Cultural heritage preservation should aim to an active environmental and societal strategy built on a renewed ethics of responsibility on long-term effects. This work provides a review of the current state of the art on the damage functions used for assessing the impacts of climate change on stone heritage surfaces. Within this framework, it introduces new concepts such as (i) the Loss of Details (LoD), in terms of the readability reduction of decorative elements and, subsequently, (ii) the Future Cultural Value (FCV), as the capacity of a cultural heritage to transmit its cultural message in its future appearance. The valorization of the historical legacy is a win–win solution to fix new planning tools and to achieve multiple goals oriented to a sustainable development for future generations. From this point of view, plaster cast galleries and museums play a crucial role in preserving cultural identity since they report a careful documentation of the original artifacts and monuments over the time. Full article

While only a minimal fraction of global water resources is accessible for drinking water production, their uneven distribution combined with the climate crisis impacts leads to challenges in water availability. Leakage in water distribution networks compounds these issues, resulting in significant economic losses and environmental risks. A coherent review of (a) the most widely applied water loss estimation techniques, (b) factors influencing them, and (c) strategies for their resilient reduction provides a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge and practices in leakage management. This work aims towards covering the most important leakage estimation methodologies, while also unveiling the factors that critically affect them, both internally and externally. Finally, a thorough discussion is provided regarding the current state-of-the-art technics for leakage reduction at the municipal-wide level. Full article

Among the challenges generated by the global climate crisis, a significant concern is the constant increase in energy demand. This leads to the need to ensure that any novel energy systems are not only renewable but also reliable in their performance. A viable solution to increase the available renewable energy mix involves tapping into the potential available in ocean waves and harvesting it via so-called wave energy converters (WECs). In this context, a relevant engineering problem relates to finding WEC design solutions that are not only optimal in terms of energy extraction but also exhibit robust behavior in spite of the harsh marine environment. Indeed, the vast majority of design optimization studies available in the state-of-the-art consider only perfect knowledge of nominal (idealized) conditions, neglecting the impact of uncertainties. This study aims to investigate the information that different robustness metrics can provide to designers regarding optimal WEC design solutions under uncertainty. The applied methodology is based on stochastic uncertainty propagation via a Monte Carlo simulation, exploiting a meta-model to reduce the computational burden. The analysis is conducted over a dataset obtained with a genetic algorithm-based optimization process for nominal WEC design. The results reveal a significant deviation in terms of robustness between the nominal Pareto set and those generated by setting different thresholds for robustness metrics, as well as between devices belonging to the same nominal Pareto frontier. This study elucidates the intrinsic need for incorporating robust optimization processes in WEC design. Full article

The climate crisis, the need for a circular economy, and the large financial losses after earthquakes have promoted the concept of the sustainable and resilient design of societies, and more specifically, of lifelines and building environments. Focused on building facilities, it is imperative to prescribe, within the aforementioned framework, the components that characterize earthquake resilient near zero energy buildings (ERnZEBs). Through a conceptual analysis, the goal is to discuss the attributes and perspectives of ERnZEBs within the framework of the view of a designer engaged in practice. This fact introduces an additional factor recognizing that not all projects have the same technical and financial values; the difference in budget, the type of owner, and the investment (private or public, company or private person) play important roles in creating an ERnZE building. In this direction, this paper reviews the basic principles of ERnZEBs, providing a combination of pragmatic considerations while also exploiting the state of the art and practice of current engineering knowledge. Full article

This article delves into the underexplored intersection of Jewish identities and feminist art. It critically examines artworks by Judit Hersko and Susan Hiller, aligning with evolving identity constructs in contemporary aesthetics. Concepts like “postmemory” link second-generation Jewish artists to past experiences and unveil the erasure of Jewish women’s memory of Jewish genocide. Analyzing Hersko and Hiller’s diverse works, from landscape photography and sculpture to performance art, it underscores their shared pursuit: illuminating lingering “ghosts” of the Holocaust in modern landscapes. Susan Hiller’s The J Street Project represents an ongoing exploration of loss and trauma beyond the Holocaust in Germany, using archives as a dynamic, evolving phenomenon. Judit Hersko’s art calls for bearing witness to a potential climate catastrophe in Antarctica. The article culminates in the exploration of “The Memorial” (2017), an art project by the activist collective Center for Political Beauty that focuses on the resurgence of overt anti-Semitism in Germany. In essence, Hiller and Hersko confront erasures in history and nature, emphasizing justice and repair. Their art, intertwined with a project addressing contemporary anti-Semitism, serves as a testament to the enduring power of feminist art, reflecting, mourning, and transforming a world marked by historical traumas and war. Full article

After decades of rising awareness and undertaken actions, climate change is still one of several focal global challenges. Additionally, the latest report by researchers at the International Panel for Climate Change indicates that the crisis has deepened. With its comprehensive nature, spatial planning is one of the management tools responsible for dealing with climate change and combating its effects. Land use definition is the foundation on which we build mitigation and adaptation systems. It is a complex process that involves (or should involve) a range of stakeholders—experts, politicians, the civil sector, and citizens—in which the clear transmission of messages to stakeholders regarding the state of the art and planned actions is significant. The use of visualisation tools is one of the important ways to achieve this. This research aims to present a set of visualisation tools, applying them in analysis and decision making in the field of spatial planning with regard to climate change. We combined content analysis, colour-graded classification, and the spider method applied to the example of Serbia. The results showed that application of the suggested visualisation methods in combination with regular planning tools (maps) facilitates an understanding of the problem and its presentation to other stakeholders. In the case of Serbia, visualisation tools have shown that adaptation measures prevail over mitigation measures and that the effects of climate change addressed in spatial-planning documents do not significantly match the most challenging effects as perceived from the citizens’ perspective. These are aspects that should be corrected in the next generation of planning documents. The suggested visualisation tools are replicable, with slight adjustments to a specific case, to any other region in the world. Full article

Collectors are major actors in the global art market as they often spend large sums of money fostering the business. Concerning sustainable collecting practices—i.e., the balance between what is the best for people and for the environment—collectors’ actions seem contradictory. Firstly, ontologically, to collect is to accumulate artworks; secondly, art—the object of the collectors’ desire—and the global art world are not closely aligned with the climate crisis. The art ecosystem encourages trips to participate in art events worldwide, increasing the carbon footprint impact, and rarely uses recycled materials, causing waste. The economic model of the art market lacks sustainability, raising the question: how can we promote a sustainable collecting attitude? In this exploratory study, we will observe art market players, especially the Iberian Peninsula collectors’ actions, in terms of their contribution to reducing the environmental impact of purchases. Based on data, reports, interviews, and published sources, we will investigate collectors’ awareness of the subject and evaluate their adopted actions. As, to date, no analysis has been carried out on the trends of Iberian collecting in the field of climate sustainability, we have focused our study on finding data from the primary source par excellence: the collectors themselves. The aim is to fuel the need for a paradigm shift, concluding on a slow collecting attitude. Full article

As the global climate crisis escalates, reductions in CO₂ emissions and the efficient utilization of carbon waste resources have become a crucial consensus. Among the various carbon mitigation technologies, the concept of power-to-liquid (PTL) has gained significant attention in recent years. Considering the lack of a timely review of the state-of-the-art progress of this PTL process, this work aims to provide a systematic summary of the advanced PTL progress. In a CO₂ capture unit, we compared the process performances of chemical absorption, physical absorption, pressure swing adsorption, and membrane separation technologies. In a water electrolysis unit, the research progress of alkaline water electrolysis, proton exchange membrane water electrolysis, and solid oxide water electrolysis technologies was summarized, and the strategies for improving the electrolysis efficiency were proposed. In a CO₂ hydrogenation unit, we compared the differences of high-temperature and low-temperature Fischer–Tropsch synthesis processes, and summarized the advanced technologies for promoting the conversion of CO₂ into high value-added hydrocarbons and achieving the efficient utilization of C₁–C₄ hydrocarbons. In addition, we critically reviewed the technical and economic performances of the PTL process. By shedding light on the current state of research and identifying its crucial factors, this work is conducive to enhancing the understanding of the PTL process and providing reliable suggestions for its future industrial application. By offering valuable insights into the PTL process, this work also contributes to paving the way for the development of more efficient and sustainable solutions to address the pressing challenges of CO₂ emissions and climate change. Full article

As the climate crisis worsens, power grids are gradually transforming into a more sustainable state through renewable energy sources (RESs), energy storage systems (ESSs), and smart loads. Virtual power plants (VPP) are an emerging concept that can flexibly integrate distributed energy resources (DERs), managing manage the power output of each DER unit, as well as the power consumption of loads, to balance electricity supply and demand in real time. VPPs can participate in energy markets, enable self-scheduling of RESs, facilitate energy trading and sharing, and provide demand-side frequency control ancillary services (D-FCAS) to enhance the stability of the system frequency. As a result, studies considering VPPs have become the focus of recent energy research, with the purpose of reducing the uncertainty resulting from RESs distributed in the power grid and improving technology related to energy management system (EMS). However, comprehensive reviews of VPPs considering their formation, control techniques, and D-FCAS are still lacking in the literature. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a thorough overview of state-of-the-art VPP technologies for building sustainable power grids in the future. The review mainly considers the development of VPPs, the information transmission and control methods among DERs and loads in VPPs, as well as the relevant technologies for providing D-FCAS from VPPs. This review paper describes the significant economic, social, and environmental benefits of VPPs, as well as the technological advancements, challenges, and possible future research directions in VPP research. Full article

The fastest growing regional crisis is happening in West Africa today, with over 8 million people considered persons of concern. A culmination of identity politics, climate-driven disasters, and extreme poverty has led to this humanitarian crisis in the region and is exacerbated by a lack of political will and misplaced media attention. The current state of the art does not present sufficient investigations of the thematic and spatial coverage of news media of this crisis in this region. This paper studies the spatial coverage of this crisis as reported in the media, and the themes associated with those locations, based on a curated dataset. For the time frame 12 March to 15 September 2021, 2017 news articles related to the refugee crisis in West Africa were examined and manually coded based on (1) the geographical locations mentioned in each article; (2) the themes found in the articles in reference to a location (e.g., Relocation of people in Abuja). The dataset introduces a thematic dimension, as never achieved before, to the conflict-ridden areas in West Africa. A comparative analysis with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) data showed that 96.8% of refugee-related locations in West Africa were not covered by news during the considered time frame. Contrastingly, 80.4% of locations mentioned in the news do not appear in the UNHCR repository. Most news articles published during this time frame reported on Development aid or Political statements. Linear multiple regression analysis showed GDP per capita and political stability to be among the most influential determinants of news coverage. Full article