Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Policies in Local Communities

About this Research Topic

Background

Implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation policies is an urgent issue all over the world. The role of the local governments is essential as the impacts of climate change, energy supply, and consumption could vary depending on the local context. Although new information on climate change projections and climate risk assessments on a detailed scale of the local communities has been developed, the local governments continue to face multiple barriers in the policy-making processes. Moreover, integrated resource management is needed among water, energy, and food because they are connected directly and indirectly as a resource nexus in the socio-economic system and usually act as synergies and tradeoffs that require consensus building. We, therefore, need to share state-of-the-art knowledge on implementing local climate change policy to overcome the challenges.

In this Research Topic, we will discuss the various issues regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation policies at a local scale. In climate science, new projections and risk assessments of local communities have been developed but these scientific findings tend not to be utilized enough in policymaking due to mismatch to administrative needs, such as the challenges in evidence-based policymaking. When implementing policy, local officials need to pay attention to synergies and tradeoffs among water, energy, and food nexus, e.g. in a hot spring resort, the utilization of hot spring as geothermal power generation may cause ¬¬tradeoffs between water and energy where some kind of consensus building is required. Meanwhile, transdisciplinary approaches with scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders collaboration are needed to raise awareness and gain the understanding of stakeholders and citizens for effective policy implementation. At the same time, it is indispensable to understand the mechanism of stakeholders’ and citizens’ attitudes and behavior change toward climate change risk.

We invite research that studies climate change mitigation and adaptation policy in a local community by a variety of approaches, from social sciences and humanities to natural sciences. Submitted articles may seek to follow themes such as:

• Policy process and institutional analysis of climate change mitigation and/or adaptation in multi-level governments

• Climate change impact projection and risk assessment including cost-benefit analysis in each sector such as agriculture, disaster prevention, and human health on a local scale

• Carbon neutral scenario analysis including potential evaluation of various renewable energy sources, energy saving, and social transformation (transition management)

• Tradeoff and/or synergy between water-energy-food nexus in resource management

• Transdisciplinary approaches such as citizen conferences, policy dialogue, and co-design workshops to build consensus on climate policy

• Stakeholders’ and citizens’ attitudes and behavior change toward climate change risk

Keywords: Climate change mitigation and adaptation, climate change policy, disaster prevention

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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