Sustainability and Climate Change

The main sources of information about climate change cited in this article are characterized by a close to unanimous agreement about their contents not only within the international scientific community but also within the community of the nations whose political representatives have to approve them together with scientists. These sources are accessible both by scientists who have a background in natural and applied science, and by policy makers—professionals whose expertise is in fields other than natural and applied sciences. These sources are a good starting point for everyone wishing to be reliably informed about the reported subjects. The main issues related to the changing climate system are summarized with comments that underline the known feedback, their consequences, and the growing discussions about them inside the international scientific community. Also discussed are scientists' efforts to properly and effectively inform policy makers and to help to design feasible mitigation strategies that make sense, could be accepted by the public, and could achieve results. The main sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases emission are briefly described and the importance of the transition to an economy based on renewable energies and recycling is underlined. Two cases are included to show how the humanities, social sciences, and the arts could proactively work with natural and applied sciences, local communities, and society at large to imagine, plan, and build effective solutions. This article aims to be a primer on communication among different disciplines that have different competencies and roles and which could be an effective way to enlist citizen participation and commitment to build a sustainable future.

This study utilized secondary data sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI), International Labour Organisation (ILO), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) econometric technique was used to analyze the data. Sustainable Development Goal 1, a proxy for poverty, was used as the dependent variable, while agriculture value added, employment in the agricultural sector, inequality, literacy rate, population growth rate, and gross domestic savings were the explanatory variables. The study found that both agriculture value added and employment in the agricultural sector were statistically significant in explaining poverty and negatively related to poverty in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) subregion. Therefore, based on the findings, the study recommends that the governments of ECOWAS countries should focus more on agriculture in order to become exporters of cash crops to boost their economies and increase savings that can be used to alleviate and eliminate poverty among the people.

With a projected increase in extreme weather events through the duration of the 21st century, coastal communities will face a host of challenges. An underexamined component of future threats is the mobilization of pollutants, which can be dispersed by disruptive weather phenomena. This research examines extreme weather threats along multiple U.S. coastal counties. With nearly 40 percent of all Americans living in shoreline and coastal counties, along with the ubiquity of legacy pollutants within these regions, the research is relevant to inhabitants of coastal communities and those beyond. This study introduces the Toxics Mobility Inventory (TMI) in order to inform more programmatic processes for: 1.) coastal planning and management, 2.) the remediation of toxic sites, and 3.) community resiliency. Furthermore, it is an impetus for emergency and disaster response officials to recognize threats and inform response and mitigation procedures.