International Journal of Environment and Climate Change

In the framework of the community participation in conservation in Rwanda, a women handcraft cooperative was established in 2011 in the surrounding of Nyungwe National Park in Kitabi sector and Nyamagabe District. It aimed to empower economically and socially wives of former hunters who were themselves relying on natural resources and involved in harvesting different resources in park for making handcraft products. The empowerment was intended to reduce the reliance to natural resources and to contribute to the protection of the park. The objective of the study was to investigate and examine women’s experiences about their empowerment through environmental justice, in terms of distributive and procedural justice and challenges faced by women. In doing so, participants were purposively selected in women handicraft cooperative and in administration bodies. With regards to data collection and analysis, semi-structured interviews and content analysis were used. The findings showed that women are socially and economically empowered. In terms of economic empowerment, access to financial loans, savings, employment and income generating projects are the major indicators of the empowerment. Improved capacity building and family relations are major concerns of social handcraft cooperative members. Regarding the participation of women in decision-making process, the findings are controversial. However, it is still limited because of the dominance of top-down approach that does not consider enough women’s voices and suggestions in decision making.  Cooperative women members perceive and consider the process of communication and decision-making as passive because they are almost absent in the monitoring and evaluation processes. The participation of the community members including women only appears through meetings with or without elected representatives. The process of women empowerment is still limited by some challenges such as crop raiding, complicated and slow compensation process, high interest rate and slow process of loan and inadequate communication. The partnership approach is then recommended so as to consider women’s needs and voices in the implementation of natural resources conservation policies.

The study examined Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Land Surface Emissivity (LSE) in a tropical coastal city of Port Harcourt and its environs. Satellite remote sensing of multiple-wavelength origin was employed to derive data from the Landsat Enhance Thematic Mapper (ETM+). Statistical mean and range were used to show pattern of LST and LSE. The study established the relationship and characteristics of land use land cover, built-up area and influence of population on land surfaces. With population of over 3,095,342 persons occupying surface area of approximately 458,28 Km², rapid vegetal and water body lost have put the city area under pressure of 4.7°C heat bias at the interval of 15 years. From rural fringes to the city center, LST varies with 9.3°C in wet season and 4.8°C in the dry season. During the dry season, LSE is severe in the southern part of the city contributed by water bodies, more vegetal cover and urban pavement materials. Emissivity in the wet season varied with 0.0136 and 0.0006 during the dry season but differs with 0.0165 between the two seasons. One critical finding is that LSE decreases from the rural fringes to the city center and LST increases from the rural fringes to the city center. It is recommended that urban greening at the city center should be practiced and the rural fringes should be explored by decongesting activities at the city center to the outskirts in order to ameliorate the effects of urban heat bias without further delay.

Globally, addressing poverty levels and inequality remained one of the topmost priorities and has been accorded the first position in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although Ghana as a whole is faring well in poverty reduction over the past decades, poverty levels and inequalities remains high in the northern parts. This study analysed the gendered welfare gap and the effects of climate change and livelihood diversification on the welfare gap. Through multistage sampling, 432 households were selected and interviewed using a questionnaire. A selectivity bias corrected Oaxaca Blinder model was estimated using household per capita consumption expenditure as a measure of households’ welfare. The result shows that there is a significant welfare gap of $45.85 (GH₵211.85), an equivalent of 11.4% between male headed and female headed households. Controlling for selectivity bias revealed that the observed gender welfare gap was underestimated. Livelihood diversification had positive significant effect on the explained component of gender welfare gap. Climate change/variability had positive significant effect on welfare gap through the explained component and a negative significant effect through the unexplained component. Therefore, observed climate change and variability led to an increase in gender welfare gap by 64.62%, while the unobservable returns from climate factors contributed to a reduction in gender welfare gap by 193.26%. Since addressing unobservable climate factors is limited, there is the need to improve the climate characteristics of women. Although livelihood diversification is a necessary condition, policies such as training and education that would ensure that females also have higher returns from such strategies are sufficient to address gender welfare gaps. To improve the welfare of farmers in the midst of climate change, animal rearing should be promoted among maize crop farmers. Similarly, government’s policy of one district one factory should consider improving agro-processing opportunities in the region into commercial activities.

Climate change poses significant threats to global food security and water resources. In a present study, a Global Climate Model HAD GEM2-ES under RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 was used for climate prediction study. The study spanned 46 years of baseline (1970-2015) as well as two future periods’ mid-century (MC) (2020-2050) and end century EC (2060-2090). The results showed that the temperature would increase by 1.56°C and rainfall would decrease by 98 mm in MC (2020-2050); and 3.11°C and 90 mm in EC (2060-2090), respectively under RCP 4.5. In RCP 8.5 the increase in temperature and rainfall was 2.75°C and 153 mm, respectively in MC and the corresponding values in EC was 5.46°C and 251 mm, respectively.

The aims of the current paper are to provide an extensive review of the theoretical and empirical evidence on which current climate change mitigation efforts are based and to advance a new model of the determinants of mitigation behavior. The study was based on the review of relevant literature. The model specifically demonstrates the interplay between human values, attitude, knowledge, emotions and social norms as determinants of broad and greater levels of mitigation behaviours. The model is complemented by adding age and sex as confounders. It indicates the possible interrelationships between these factors with their joint effects being emphasized.

The model addresses a concern that most business-level climate change policies ought to be integrative, but are unfortunately, not. Detailed knowledge of psychological determinants is useful for policy makers to provide favorable conditions in support of business level climate change mitigation measures and how it can be used to measure and compare the impacts of the determinants so as to generate more applicable mitigation measures in  optimizing climate change policies now and in the future.