Industrial ecology in support of climate change adaptation

Abstract

Industrial ecology in support of climate change adaptation"This special issue was developed to advance thinking on how industrial ecology can support climate adaptation. The articles show ways in which established industrial ecology approaches can shift from the mitigation to adaptation realms." TOWARD CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCEThere appears to have been a recent tipping of the scales in terms of how we discuss climate change. Whereas in the past the conversation seemed to largely focus on greenhouse gas mitigation, recently climate adaptation has become a major part of the discussion (Wang, Zhao, & Wang, 2018). Making sense of climate adaptation is now common discourse among cities, infrastructure agencies, private industry, and the military. What caused the increased emphasis on climate adaptation is an important question. Global climate is changing rapidly compared to natural variation that has occurred throughout Earth's history, and extreme events such as hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, and heatwaves appear to be exacerbated by a warming world (USGCRP, 2018). Or maybe it is pessimism about our inability to quickly and significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions, despite decades of research showing us how decreases can happen (Ge, Lebling, Levin, & Friedrich, 2019). Whatever the cause, what is clear is that the global community is rightfully trying to figure out how climate impacts, big or small, should be prepared for, and what they mean for the future of the planet.As the scale, scope and complexity of climate change becomes clearer, concepts around resilience have also come to the forefront of discourse.Whether climate adaptation and resilience are synonymous, or partially overlapping, remains a subject of debate (Nelson, 2011). Resilience principles have been studied for many topics beyond climate adaptation and often have a commonality of capabilities for adaptive capacity and transformation under foreseen and unforeseen conditions (Béné et al., 2018;Meerow, Newell, & Stults, 2016;Woods, 2017). Adaptive capacity is a function of many variables related to sociological, ecological, and technological systems and the relationships between those systems. Resilience frameworks describe a system's ability to thrive when confronted by hazards that it was designed to address and, maybe more importantly, hazards that were not considered (Woods, 2017). The current interest in climate adaptation and resilience is likely not coincidental and transcends climate change concerns. Resilience is becoming a popular concept in many fields at a time when the acceleration and uncertainty of human and natural systems is growing, producing complexities that we are just beginning to recognize (

Climate variability and extractivism exposures: Understanding household perspectives on livelihood resilience in rural Ghana

“…Progressively, concepts and tools of industrial ecology, such as life cycle assessment and industrial metabolism, have been applied to assess impacts of industrial activities on surrounding systems from an inside-out perspective (Busch, 2019;Chester, 2020). For instance, literature establishes the usefulness of industrial ecology tools to implement corporate responsibility strategies within the mining and building construction industries (Kay, 2003;McKinley, 2008) in a bid to manage the social and environmental problems of the industries.…”

“…Corporate adaptation is well established in management and organization studies (Lewin et al, 2004) since organizations such as mining companies must constantly respond and adapt to pressures from both internal and external proccesses. However, the focus on corporate adaptation to climate change has come strongly in recent times (Averchenkova et al, 2016;Busch, 2019;Chester, 2020;Goldstein et al, 2019;Hoffmann et al, 2009;Linnenluecke et al, 2013Linnenluecke et al, , 2015.…”

Održivost organizacije u doba krize kao rezultat strateškog finansijskog upravljanja

“…Ekološki i socijalni uticaji su dalje vezani za kriterijume stvaranja dugoročnih konkurentnih finansijskih povraćaja i pozitivan društveni uticaj (često vidljiv uticaj rizika od oscilacija cena sirovina koji može biti pogoršan ekološkim uzrokom, kao što su poplave ili suše koje organizacije ranije nisu razmatrale). Šire, pitanja same održivosti uključuju rizike životne sredine, klimatskih promena, prirodnih resursa, zagađenja, otpada, ali i društvenog i ljudskog kapitala, poslovnog modela, inovacija, vođstva i upravljanja (Cester, 2020; Riznić i dr., 2020; Ković, Miškić, 2018; Despotović i dr., 2017). Ovde se s aspekta preduzeća razmatra njegovo upravljanje rizicima u korist doprinosa smanjenju pretnji od strane okruženja i pretnji preduzeća po okruženje, obnovljivost resursa i energije, energetsku efikasnost, emisije štetnih gasova i drugo.…”