Pamela McElwee

Bio: Pamela McElwee is an academic researcher from Rutgers University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Climate change & Ecosystem services. The author has an hindex of 22, co-authored 55 publications receiving 1537 citations. Previous affiliations of Pamela McElwee include Yale University & World Bank.

Which practices co‐deliver food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and combat land degradation and desertification?

Abstract: There is a clear need for transformative change in the land management and food production sectors to address the global land challenges of climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, combatting land degradation and desertification, and delivering food security (referred to hereafter as "land challenges"). We assess the potential for 40 practices to address these land challenges and find that: Nine options deliver medium to large benefits for all four land challenges. A further two options have no global estimates for adaptation, but have medium to large benefits for all other land challenges. Five options have large mitigation potential (>3 Gt CO2 eq/year) without adverse impacts on the other land challenges. Five options have moderate mitigation potential, with no adverse impacts on the other land challenges. Sixteen practices have large adaptation potential (>25 million people benefit), without adverse side effects on other land challenges. Most practices can be applied without competing for available land. However, seven options could result in competition for land. A large number of practices do not require dedicated land, including several land management options, all value chain options, and all risk management options. Four options could greatly increase competition for land if applied at a large scale, though the impact is scale and context specific, highlighting the need for safeguards to ensure that expansion of land for mitigation does not impact natural systems and food security. A number of practices, such as increased food productivity, dietary change and reduced food loss and waste, can reduce demand for land conversion, thereby potentially freeing-up land and creating opportunities for enhanced implementation of other practices, making them important components of portfolios of practices to address the combined land challenges.

Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change

Abstract: Understanding the challenge that climate change poses and crafting appropriate adaptation and mitigation mechanisms requires input from the breadth of the natural and social sciences. Anthropology's in-depth fieldwork methodology, long engagement in questions of society-environment interactions and broad, holistic view of society yields valuable insights into the science, impacts and policy of climate change. Yet the discipline's voice in climate change debates has remained a relatively marginal one until now. Here, we identify three key ways that anthropological research can enrich and deepen contemporary understandings of climate change.

You Say Illegal, I Say Legal

Abstract: Vietnam is estimated to have lost more than half of its forest cover in the past 50 years, with a number of contributing causes. The state nationalization of all forest resources during socialist rule from 1954 to the opening of the economy in the 1980s contributed significantly to illegal logging, as any locally-used forest was considered to be national property. During this period, there was a generalized ‘free-for-all’ on the forests, contributing to a massive breakdown of local tenure rules and resource allocation. Despite the dissolution of many of the state-owned logging reserves and distribution of this land to local communities, which began in the late 1980s, deforestation has continued. During the 1990s, an export ban on raw logs from Vietnam was enacted to halt the continued deforestation, with generally ineffective results. While the state continues to blame local people for illegal logging and attendant deforestation, this paper will show that perceived criminal and corrupt actions by...

The contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ecological restoration

Abstract: Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLC) are affected by global environmental change because they directly rely on their immediate environment for meeting basic livelihood needs. Therefore, safeguarding and restoring ecosystem resilience is critical to support their well‐being. Based on examples from the literature, we illustrate how IPLC participate in restoration activities maintaining traditional practices, restoring land degraded by outsiders, and joining outside groups seeking to restore ecosystems. Our review also provides examples of how Indigenous and Local Knowledge can be incorporated in the planning, execution, and monitoring of restoration activities. However, not all restoration initiatives engaging IPLC are beneficial or successful, and the factors that lead to success are not fully known. While local involvement in restoration projects is often mentioned as an element of success, this is primarily associated to projects that actively involve IPLC in codesigning restoration activities affecting their territories, ensure both short‐term direct benefits to IPLC and long‐term support of the maintenance of restored areas, and recognize IPLC local traditions and customary institutions. Based on these examples, we argue that IPLC should be a more important focus in any post‐2020 CBD agenda on restoration.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

Abstract: The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

闡釋《社會成本問題》[The Problem of Social Cost]

Abstract: THIS paper is concerned with those actions of business firms which have harmful effects on others. The standard example is that of a factory the smoke from which has harmful effects on those occupying neighbouring properties. The economic analysis of such a situation has usually proceeded in terms of a divergence between the private and social product of the far' ory, in which economists have largely followed the treatment of Pigou in The Economics of Welfare. The conclusions to which this kind of analyris seems to have led most economists is that it would be desirable to make the owner of the factory liable for the damage caused to those injured by the smoke, or alternatively, to place a tax on the factory owner varying with the amount of smoke produced and equivalent in money terms to the damage it would cause, or finally, to exclude the factory from residential districts (and presumably from other

Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change

Abstract: The human impact on life on Earth has increased sharply since the 1970s, driven by the demands of a growing population with rising average per capita income. Nature is currently supplying more materials than ever before, but this has come at the high cost of unprecedented global declines in the extent and integrity of ecosystems, distinctness of local ecological communities, abundance and number of wild species, and the number of local domesticated varieties. Such changes reduce vital benefits that people receive from nature and threaten the quality of life of future generations. Both the benefits of an expanding economy and the costs of reducing nature's benefits are unequally distributed. The fabric of life on which we all depend-nature and its contributions to people-is unravelling rapidly. Despite the severity of the threats and lack of enough progress in tackling them to date, opportunities exist to change future trajectories through transformative action. Such action must begin immediately, however, and address the root economic, social, and technological causes of nature's deterioration.