sample research paper on environmental issues

2019 Best Papers published in the Environmental Science journals of the Royal Society of Chemistry

In 2019, the Royal Society of Chemistry published 180, 196 and 293 papers in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts , Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology , and Environmental Science: Nano , respectively. These papers covered a wide range of topics in environmental science, from biogeochemical cycling to water reuse to nanomaterial toxicity. And, yes, we also published papers on the topic of the environmental fate, behavior, and inactivation of viruses. 1–10 We are extremely grateful that so many authors have chosen our journals as outlets for publishing their research and are equally delighted at the high quality of the papers that we have had the privilege to publish.

Our Associate Editors, Editorial Boards, and Advisory Boards were enlisted to nominate and select the best papers from 2019. From this list, the three Editors-in-Chief selected an overall best paper from the entire Environmental Science portfolio. It is our pleasure to present the winners of the Best Papers in 2019 to you, our readers.

Overall Best Paper

In this paper, Johansson et al. examine sea spray aerosol as a potential transport vehicle for perfluoroalkyl carboxylic and sulfonic acids. The surfactant properties of these compounds are well known and, in fact, key to many of the technical applications for which they are used. The fact that these compounds are enriched at the air–water interface makes enrichment in sea spray aerosols seem reasonable. Johansson et al. systematically tested various perfluoroalkyl acids enrichment in aerosols under conditions relevant to sea spray formation, finding that longer chain lengths lead to higher aerosol enrichment factors. They augmented their experimental work with a global model, which further bolstered the conclusion that global transport of perfluoroalkyl acids by sea spray aerosol is and will continue to be an important process in determining the global distribution of these compounds.

Journal Best Papers

Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts

First Runner-up Best Paper: Yamakawa, Takami, Takeda, Kato, Kajii, Emerging investigator series: investigation of mercury emission sources using Hg isotopic compositions of atmospheric mercury at the Cape Hedo Atmosphere and Aerosol Monitoring Station (CHAAMS), Japan , Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 809–818, DOI: 10.1039/C8EM00590G .

Second Runner-up Best Paper: Avery, Waring, DeCarlo, Seasonal variation in aerosol composition and concentration upon transport from the outdoor to indoor environment , Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 528–547, DOI: 10.1039/C8EM00471D .

Best Review Article: Cousins, Ng, Wang, Scheringer, Why is high persistence alone a major cause of concern? Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 781–792, DOI: 10.1039/C8EM00515J .

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology

First Runner-up Best Paper: Yang, Lin, Tse, Dong, Yu, Hoffmann, Membrane-separated electrochemical latrine wastewater treatment , Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 51–59, DOI: 10.1039/C8EW00698A .

Second Runner-up Best Paper: Genter, Marks, Clair-Caliot, Mugume, Johnston, Bain, Julian, Evaluation of the novel substrate RUG™ for the detection of Escherichia coli in water from temperate (Zurich, Switzerland) and tropical (Bushenyi, Uganda) field sites , Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1082–1091, DOI: 10.1039/C9EW00138G .

Best Review Article: Okoffo, O’Brien, O’Brien, Tscharke, Thomas, Wastewater treatment plants as a source of plastics in the environment: a review of occurrence, methods for identification, quantification and fate , Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1908–1931, DOI: 10.1039/C9EW00428A .

Environmental Science: Nano

First Runner-up Best Paper: Janković, Plata, Engineered nanomaterials in the context of global element cycles , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 2697–2711, DOI: 10.1039/C9EN00322C .

Second Runner-up Best Paper: González-Pleiter, Tamayo-Belda, Pulido-Reyes, Amariei, Leganés, Rosal, Fernández-Piñas, Secondary nanoplastics released from a biodegradable microplastic severely impact freshwater environments , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 1382–1392, DOI: 10.1039/C8EN01427B .

Best Review Article: Lv, Christie, Zhang, Uptake, translocation, and transformation of metal-based nanoparticles in plants: recent advances and methodological challenges , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 41–59, DOI: 10.1039/C8EN00645H .

Congratulations to the authors of these papers and a hearty thanks to all of our authors. As one can clearly see from the papers listed above, environmental science is a global effort and we are thrilled to have contributions from around the world. In these challenging times, we are proud to publish research that is not only great science, but also relevant to the health of the environment and the public. Finally, we also wish to extend our thanks to our community of editors, reviewers, and readers. We look forward to another outstanding year of Environmental Science , reading the work generated not just from our offices at home, but also from back in our laboratories and the field.

Kris McNeill, Editor-in-Chief

Paige Novak, Editor-in-Chief

Peter Vikesland, Editor-in-Chief

• A. B Boehm, Risk-based water quality thresholds for coliphages in surface waters: effect of temperature and contamination aging, Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 2031–2041,   10.1039/C9EM00376B .
• L. Cai, C. Liu, G. Fan, C Liu and X. Sun, Preventing viral disease by ZnONPs through directly deactivating TMV and activating plant immunity in Nicotiana benthamiana , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 3653–3669,   10.1039/C9EN00850K .
• L. W. Gassie, J. D. Englehardt, N. E. Brinkman, J. Garland and M. K. Perera, Ozone-UV net-zero water wash station for remote emergency response healthcare units: design, operation, and results, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1971–1984,   10.1039/C9EW00126C .
• L. M. Hornstra, T. Rodrigues da Silva, B. Blankert, L. Heijnen, E. Beerendonk, E. R. Cornelissen and G. Medema, Monitoring the integrity of reverse osmosis membranes using novel indigenous freshwater viruses and bacteriophages, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1535–1544,   10.1039/C9EW00318E .
• A. H. Hassaballah, J. Nyitrai, C. H. Hart, N. Dai and L. M. Sassoubre, A pilot-scale study of peracetic acid and ultraviolet light for wastewater disinfection, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1453–1463,   10.1039/C9EW00341J .
• W. Khan, J.-Y. Nam, H. Woo, H. Ryu, S. Kim, S. K. Maeng and H.-C. Kim, A proof of concept study for wastewater reuse using bioelectrochemical processes combined with complementary post-treatment technologies, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1489–1498,   10.1039/C9EW00358D .
• J. Heffron, B. McDermid and B. K. Mayer, Bacteriophage inactivation as a function of ferrous iron oxidation, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1309–1317,   10.1039/C9EW00190E .
• S. Torii, T. Hashimoto, A. T. Do, H. Furumai and H. Katayama, Impact of repeated pressurization on virus removal by reverse osmosis membranes for household water treatment, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 910–919,   10.1039/C8EW00944A .
• J. Miao, H.-J. Jiang, Z.-W. Yang, D.-y. Shi, D. Yang, Z.-Q. Shen, J. Yin, Z.-G. Qiu, H.-R. Wang, J.-W. Li and M. Jin, Assessment of an electropositive granule media filter for concentrating viruses from large volumes of coastal water, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 325–333,   10.1039/C8EW00699G .
• K. L. Nelson, A. B. Boehm, R. J. Davies-Colley, M. C. Dodd, T. Kohn, K. G. Linden, Y. Liu, P. A. Maraccini, K. McNeill, W. A. Mitch, T. H. Nguyen, K. M. Parker, R. A. Rodriguez, L. M. Sassoubre, A. I. Silverman, K. R. Wigginton and R. G. Zepp, Sunlight mediated inactivation of health relevant microorganisms in water: a review of mechanisms and modeling approaches, Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2018, 20 , 1089–1122,   10.1039/C8EM00047F .

Environmental Issues Research Paper Topics

Designed to serve as a comprehensive guide for students, this page provides a wide array of environmental issues research paper topics . Whether you are just starting your course or are looking for a unique topic for your final project, you will find a wealth of ideas here. The topics are divided into ten categories, each featuring ten distinct research ideas, offering a diverse range of issues to explore. Additionally, you will find expert advice on how to select a suitable topic and how to write an impactful research paper on environmental issues. The page also introduces iResearchNet’s professional writing services, which can assist students in creating high-quality, custom research papers on any environmental issue.

100 Environmental Issues Research Paper Topics

The field of environmental science is vast and interrelated to so many other academic disciplines like civil engineering, law, and even healthcare. That is why it is imperative to create a comprehensive and engaging list of environmental issues research paper topics. These topics are not only necessary for your academic career, but they also provide valuable insights into the current state of our planet and the steps we can take to mitigate the adverse effects of human activities.

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Climate Change

• The Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity
• Climate Change and Agriculture
• The Role of Renewable Energy in Mitigating Climate Change
• Climate Change and Public Health
• Climate Change and Migration
• Climate Change and Natural Disasters
• Climate Change and Water Resources
• Climate Change and Food Security
• Climate Change and Urbanization
• Climate Change and Marine Life

Air Pollution

• The Effects of Air Pollution on Human Health
• Air Pollution and Climate Change
• The Role of Transportation in Air Pollution
• Air Pollution and Ecosystems
• Indoor Air Pollution
• Air Pollution and Policy
• Air Pollution and Energy Production
• Air Pollution and Urban Planning
• Air Pollution and Agriculture
• Air Pollution and Waste Management

Water Pollution

• The Impact of Water Pollution on Marine Life
• Water Pollution and Human Health
• Industrial Waste and Water Pollution
• Water Pollution and Agriculture
• Water Pollution and Policy
• Water Pollution and Waste Management
• Water Pollution and Climate Change
• Water Pollution and Urbanization
• Water Pollution and Food Security
• Water Pollution and Biodiversity

Soil Erosion

• The Impact of Soil Erosion on Agriculture
• Soil Erosion and Climate Change
• Soil Erosion and Deforestation
• Soil Erosion and Urbanization
• Soil Erosion and Water Pollution
• Soil Erosion and Desertification
• Soil Erosion and Biodiversity
• Soil Erosion and Policy
• Soil Erosion and Land Management
• Soil Erosion and Food Security

Deforestation

• The Impact of Deforestation on Biodiversity
• Deforestation and Climate Change
• Deforestation and Soil Erosion
• Deforestation and Urbanization
• Deforestation and Agriculture
• Deforestation and Policy
• Deforestation and Land Management
• Deforestation and Indigenous Rights
• Deforestation and Water Cycle
• Deforestation and Carbon Cycle

Biodiversity Loss

• The Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Ecosystem Services
• Biodiversity Loss and Climate Change
• Biodiversity Loss and Agriculture
• Biodiversity Loss and Deforestation
• Biodiversity Loss and Urbanization
• Biodiversity Loss and Policy
• Biodiversity Loss and Invasive Species
• Biodiversity Loss and Extinction
• Biodiversity Loss and Conservation
• Biodiversity Loss and Genetic Diversity

Waste Management

• The Impact of Waste Management on Public Health
• Waste Management and Climate Change
• Waste Management and Policy
• Waste Management and Urbanization
• Waste Management and Water Pollution
• Waste Management and Soil Pollution
• Waste Management and Air Pollution
• Waste Management and Recycling
• Waste Management and Landfills
• Waste Management and Plastic Pollution

Energy Consumption

• The Impact of Energy Consumption on Climate Change
• Energy Consumption and Air Pollution
• Energy Consumption and Policy
• Energy Consumption and Urbanization
• Energy Consumption and Transportation
• Energy Consumption and Renewable Energy
• Energy Consumption and Fossil Fuels
• Energy Consumption and Energy Efficiency
• Energy Consumption and Economic Growth
• Energy Consumption and Lifestyle

Overpopulation

• The Impact of Overpopulation on Natural Resources
• Overpopulation and Climate Change
• Overpopulation and Urbanization
• Overpopulation and Food Security
• Overpopulation and Water Scarcity
• Overpopulation and Biodiversity Loss
• Overpopulation and Policy
• Overpopulation and Public Health
• Overpopulation and Migration
• Overpopulation and Social Inequality

Ozone Layer Depletion

• The Impact of Ozone Layer Depletion on Human Health
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Climate Change
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Marine Life
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Policy
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Air Pollution
• Ozone Layer Depletion and UV Radiation
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Agriculture
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Skin Cancer
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Eye Diseases
• Ozone Layer Depletion and Ecosystems

This comprehensive list of environmental issues research paper topics provides a wide range of areas to choose from for your research. The topics cover major environmental issues, from climate change and air pollution to biodiversity loss and overpopulation. Each of these topics can be explored from various angles, providing a rich source of ideas for your research paper. Remember, the key to a successful research paper is a well-defined topic and a clear focus.

Environmental Issues Research Guide

Welcome to the world of environmental science, a discipline that focuses on understanding and addressing the complex challenges our planet faces today. As our society becomes increasingly aware of the critical importance of environmental sustainability, the study of environmental science has gained immense significance. In this page, we delve into the realm of environmental issues research paper topics, providing students like you with a wealth of ideas, guidance, and resources to embark on impactful research journeys.

Environmental issues, ranging from climate change to biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, and resource depletion, pose serious threats to our planet’s well-being. The need for in-depth research, innovative solutions, and informed decision-making has never been more urgent. As students of environmental science, you have a unique opportunity to contribute to this field of study by conducting research papers that explore various aspects of environmental issues. These research papers serve as a platform for understanding the complexities of environmental problems and proposing viable solutions.

The purpose of this page is to empower you in your research endeavors by providing a comprehensive list of environmental issues research paper topics. We recognize that choosing a suitable research topic is a critical step in the research process, and it can significantly impact the outcome and relevance of your work. Moreover, we understand the challenges students face when trying to navigate the vast landscape of environmental issues and find a research topic that aligns with their interests and goals. That’s why we are here to offer expert advice and guidance to help you make informed decisions.

Whether you are a novice researcher exploring the world of environmental science or an experienced student seeking new avenues to expand your knowledge, this page is designed to cater to your needs. Our curated list of environmental issues research paper topics spans a wide range of categories, ensuring that you can find a topic that aligns with your specific interests and academic goals. Each topic has been carefully selected to reflect the current and pressing environmental challenges we face today, allowing you to delve into the intricacies and complexities of these issues.

Moreover, we understand that writing a research paper can be a daunting task, especially for students who are new to the process or grappling with time constraints. In addition to providing you with a comprehensive list of research paper topics, we also offer writing services that allow you to order a custom environmental issues research paper tailored to your unique requirements. Our team of expert degree-holding writers is well-versed in environmental science and has extensive experience in conducting research and crafting high-quality papers.

By availing our writing services, you can benefit from the expertise of our writers, who will ensure that your research paper is meticulously researched, well-written, and aligned with the highest academic standards. We value the importance of in-depth research, customized solutions, and timely delivery. Our team is available 24/7 to provide support and address any queries or concerns you may have throughout the process. With our easy order tracking system, absolute privacy, and a money-back guarantee, you can trust us to deliver a top-quality research paper that meets your expectations.

Choosing an Environmental Issues Topic

Choosing the right environmental issues research paper topic is crucial for conducting meaningful and impactful research. With such a broad and diverse field, it can be challenging to narrow down your focus and select a topic that aligns with your interests, academic goals, and the current state of environmental science. In this section, we provide expert advice and guidance to help you navigate the process of selecting environmental issues research paper topics. Here are ten valuable tips to consider:

• Identify your areas of interest : Begin by reflecting on your personal interests within the field of environmental science. Consider the environmental issues that resonate with you the most and align with your long-term career goals. Are you passionate about climate change, water pollution, biodiversity conservation, or sustainable energy? Identifying your areas of interest will guide you towards topics that you genuinely care about.
• Stay updated on current environmental challenges : Stay informed about the current environmental challenges and emerging issues. Environmental science is a dynamic field, constantly evolving as new research and discoveries emerge. Subscribe to reputable environmental journals, attend conferences, and follow reputable sources to stay up-to-date with the latest environmental issues and debates. This will help you choose topics that are relevant and address the pressing concerns of the time.
• Consider the scope and depth of research : Evaluate the scope and depth of research required for each potential topic. Some topics may require extensive data collection, fieldwork, or laboratory experiments, while others may rely more on literature review and theoretical analysis. Consider your available resources, time constraints, and access to relevant data or research materials when selecting a topic that is feasible within the given parameters.
• Explore interdisciplinary approaches : Environmental issues are often complex and interconnected, requiring interdisciplinary perspectives. Consider topics that allow you to explore the intersections of environmental science with other disciplines such as economics, sociology, policy studies, or public health. Interdisciplinary research can provide a comprehensive understanding of environmental challenges and offer innovative solutions.
• Assess the significance and impact : Evaluate the significance and potential impact of each research topic. Ask yourself: Does the topic address a critical environmental issue? Does it have the potential to contribute to the existing body of knowledge or influence environmental policy and decision-making? Choosing a topic with significant implications can enhance the relevance and importance of your research.
• Consider local and global contexts : Environmental issues can vary in their local and global contexts. Consider topics that have relevance and implications at both scales. Local environmental issues may involve studying the impact of pollution on a specific ecosystem or analyzing the effectiveness of local environmental policies. Global topics could encompass climate change, deforestation, or biodiversity loss and their implications on a global scale.
• Seek guidance from faculty and experts : Consult with your faculty members, advisors, or experts in the field of environmental science. They can provide valuable insights, suggest potential research topics, and guide you towards relevant literature and resources. Their expertise and experience can help you refine your research focus and identify unique research angles.
• Conduct a preliminary literature review : Before finalizing your topic, conduct a preliminary literature review to familiarize yourself with existing research and identify research gaps. This will enable you to identify topics that have not been extensively explored or provide new perspectives on existing issues. A thorough literature review will also help you develop a solid research question and methodology.
• Consider the ethical implications : Environmental research often raises ethical considerations. Reflect on the potential ethical implications associated with your research topic. Consider how your research may impact communities, ecosystems, or vulnerable populations. Ensure that your research design and methodology prioritize ethical standards and promote the well-being of the environment and human communities.
• Stay flexible and open to refinement : Lastly, remain flexible and open to refining your research topic throughout the research process. As you delve deeper into your research, new insights and perspectives may emerge, leading you to adjust your focus or narrow down your research question. Embrace the iterative nature of research and allow yourself the freedom to adapt and refine your topic as needed.

By considering these ten expert tips, you can choose environmental issues research paper topics that align with your interests, contribute to the field of environmental science, and make a meaningful impact. Remember, selecting the right topic is the first step towards conducting a successful and rewarding research study.

How to Write an Environmental Issues Research Paper

Writing an environmental issues research paper requires careful planning, organization, and attention to detail. It involves conducting thorough research, analyzing data, and presenting your findings in a clear and compelling manner. In this section, we provide expert advice and ten valuable tips to guide you through the process of writing an environmental issues research paper.

• Understand the research question and objectives : Begin by thoroughly understanding the research question and objectives of your paper. Clearly define the scope and purpose of your study, ensuring that it aligns with the overall theme of environmental issues. This clarity will help you stay focused and maintain a logical flow throughout your paper.
• Conduct comprehensive literature review : Before diving into your research, conduct a comprehensive literature review. Familiarize yourself with existing studies, theories, and methodologies related to your chosen environmental issue. This will provide a foundation of knowledge and help you identify research gaps or areas where your study can contribute.
• Develop a solid research methodology : Design a robust research methodology that aligns with your research question and objectives. Determine the appropriate data collection methods, such as surveys, interviews, field observations, or laboratory experiments. Consider the ethical implications of your research and ensure compliance with ethical guidelines.
• Collect and analyze data : Collect relevant data using your chosen research methods. Ensure data integrity and accuracy by using standardized data collection techniques. Analyze the data using appropriate statistical or qualitative analysis methods, depending on the nature of your research.
• Organize your paper effectively : Create a clear and logical structure for your research paper. Organize it into sections such as introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. Use headings and subheadings to guide the reader and make the paper easy to navigate.
• Write a compelling introduction : Begin your paper with an engaging introduction that provides background information on the environmental issue and highlights the significance of your research. Clearly state your research question or hypothesis and provide an overview of your methodology and key findings.
• Present your findings objectively : Present your research findings objectively, using appropriate data visualization techniques such as tables, graphs, or charts. Clearly interpret the results and explain their implications for the environmental issue you’re studying. Support your findings with references to relevant literature.
• Engage in critical analysis and discussion : Engage in critical analysis and discussion of your findings. Compare your results with existing research, highlight similarities, differences, or inconsistencies, and discuss possible reasons for these variations. Evaluate the strengths and limitations of your study and suggest areas for future research.
• Use clear and concise language : Communicate your ideas clearly and concisely. Avoid jargon and use plain language that is accessible to a wide audience. Define technical terms if necessary and ensure that your arguments and explanations are easy to follow.
• Craft a compelling conclusion : End your research paper with a strong conclusion that summarizes your key findings, reinforces the significance of your research, and suggests avenues for further exploration. Emphasize the implications of your study for addressing the environmental issue and provide recommendations for future actions or policies.

By following these ten expert tips, you can effectively write an environmental issues research paper that is well-structured, supported by solid evidence, and contributes to the field of environmental science. Remember to revise and proofread your paper for clarity, coherence, and grammar before submitting it for review.

Custom Research Paper Writing Services

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• Expert Degree-Holding Writers : Our writing team consists of expert degree-holding writers with extensive knowledge and experience in the field of environmental science. They possess the expertise to tackle complex environmental issues and deliver high-quality research papers.
• Custom Written Works : We understand that every research paper is unique. Our writers will tailor your paper to your specific requirements, ensuring that it is customized and meets your academic standards.
• In-Depth Research : Our writers conduct thorough research to gather relevant and up-to-date information on the chosen environmental issue. They delve deep into scholarly resources, scientific journals, and credible databases to provide you with well-researched content.
• Custom Formatting : We adhere to various formatting styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and Harvard. Our writers are well-versed in these formatting guidelines and will ensure that your research paper is formatted correctly.
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• Short Deadlines : We recognize that students often face tight deadlines. Our writers are equipped to handle urgent orders, offering short turnaround times of up to 3 hours while maintaining the quality of the research paper.
• Timely Delivery : We value punctuality and understand the importance of submitting your research paper on time. Our writers work diligently to ensure timely delivery, allowing you to meet your academic deadlines without stress.
• 24/7 Support : Our customer support team is available 24/7 to address your queries, provide updates on your order, and assist you throughout the writing process. We prioritize effective communication and timely responses to ensure a smooth and satisfactory experience.
• Absolute Privacy : We prioritize the privacy and confidentiality of our clients. Rest assured that all personal and order-related information will be handled securely and kept confidential.
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Original research article, perceptions of local environmental issues and the relevance of climate change in nepal's terai: perspectives from two communities.

• 1 Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
• 2 Research Department, Institute for Social and Environmental Research Nepal (ISER-N), Bharatpur, Nepal

The direct and indirect impacts of global climate change entail serious consequences for global biophysical and social systems, including the health, well-being and sustainability of communities. These impacts are especially serious for vulnerable groups in economically developing societies. While climate change is a global phenomenon, it is at the local level that impacts are most felt, and from where responses to climate change are enacted. It is increasingly urgent that communities possess the capacity to respond to climate change, now and in the future. Community representations of climate-relevant issues are critical to underpinning responses. Environmental representations do not directly reflect actual physical conditions but are interpreted through social and cultural layers of understanding that shape environmental issues. This paper investigates environmental and climate-relevant perceptions within two communities in the Terai region of Nepal; the city of Bharatpur and the village of Kumroj in Chitwan Province. Following mixed findings on levels of climate change awareness in Nepal, we set out to explore perspectives on the environment and climate change awareness by conducting 30 qualitative interviews with local people. The study found that issues linked to sanitation and cleanliness were most important in both communities, while reports of temperature and weather changes were less common and typically linked to local causes rather than climate change. Imagined futures were also closely related to current environmental issues affecting communities and did not discuss climate change, though temperature and weather changes were anticipated. However, when talk of climate change was deliberately elicited, participants displayed their awareness, though this was rarely linked to local conditions. We conclude that, in light of other pressing local issues, climate change is yet to penetrate the environmental representations of some communities and there is a need to address the disconnect between local issues and global climate change. Making climate change relevant at the local level by connecting to salient local issues and co-benefits comprises an important step in bridging the gap between more global awareness and its relevance more locally, particularly for communities at risk.

Introduction

Climate change impacts are set to profoundly change global ecological and social systems, bringing about fundamental changes to human behavior ( Evans, 2019 ). The complexity of global climate systems makes it difficult to accurately predict the nature of climate change impacts, though a degree of certainty rests in knowing that fundamental lifestyle shifts commensurate with the scale of climate change will be required if we are to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C by 2100 ( Rogelj et al., 2018 ). In addition to average temperature increase, societies also face increases in the frequency of extreme weather events, air pollution and sea level rise, posing an array of physical threats to human health and well-being, both directly and indirectly ( Watts et al., 2018 ).

Consequently, the impacts of sudden natural disasters (such as shock, emotional distress and post-traumatic stress), and cumulative stresses over time (for example, changes to livelihoods, economic opportunities and social support) from climate change carry serious psychological impacts for those affected ( Clayton et al., 2015 ). These impacts are especially pronounced for citizens living in economically developing countries, particularly for those within developing countries who rely on natural resources to sustain their livelihoods ( Aryal et al., 2014 ).

In addition to continued mitigation, societies will be required to adapt to current and future environmental change. Adaptation in this context refers to a community's capacity to deal with changes, reduce vulnerability to risks, and improve the well-being of communities ( Bhatta et al., 2015 ). While action on climate change maintains a crucial global imperative ( Gupta, 2010 ), variability in environmental impacts and sociocultural differences at the local level also highlight the need to better understand the contexts within which responses to climate-relevant issues occur ( Adger, 2003 ). While global environmental issues such climate change are constructed in top–down ways through scientific, political and other cultural narratives ( Adger et al., 2013 ), they are also blended with and filtered through more vernacular, localized forms of understanding ( Byg and Salick, 2009 ).

In this paper we investigate environmental and climate-relevant perceptions in the context of two rural communities in the Terai (lowland) region of Nepal. Nepal is an economically developing country in South Asia that faces serious impacts from climate change including a predicted temperature increase of 2.8°C by 2060 and up to 4°C by 2090, snowpack melt, glacier retreat, shifting climatic zones, increased extreme weather events, increased periods of drought and erratic precipitation ( Becken et al., 2013 ). In a country where agriculture is the principle industry for 80% of citizens ( Paudel et al., 2019 ) and widespread poverty exists, many of Nepal's citizens are precariously positioned by climate change threats ( Leichenko and Silva, 2014 ).

Following Smit and Wandel (2006) , we take a bottom-up approach to environmental and climate-relevant perceptions at the community level. We discuss the findings from 30 qualitative interviews with community members, focusing on the role of subjective environmental perceptions relating to current and future environmental issues, including community perspectives on climate change, with a focus on the impacts for human well-being. While scientific measurement of ecological impacts provides the foundation for mitigation and adaptation, community perceptions are also critical to ensuring that policy interventions fit community understandings and avoid being misinterpreted or rejected by the community ( Leiserowitz, 2007 ). The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also stipulated that local knowledge should be used to inform climate adaptation planning ( Carter, 2019 ).

In addition to comprising physical phenomena, environmental issues, including climate change, comprise important social, cultural, and political dimensions that mediate perceptions of the physical ( Hulme, 2009 ; Whitmarsh, 2011 ). These are both facilitated and constrained by cultural knowledge, expressed through social norms, practices, institutional structures and prescribed roles and ways of living. The extent to which climate-relevant communications, interventions and policy are received, understood and enacted by local communities therefore depends on the degree to which top-down standardized scientific narratives converge with, or diverge from the micro-contexts of localized forms of knowledge ( Zinn, 2004 ). Culturally-filtered observations and experiences of environmental conditions are a crucial way in which citizens understand environmental conditions and processes of change ( Bickerstaff, 2004 ; Hulme, 2012 ). Human cognitive biases also influence and distort environmental perceptions. For example, more unusual or memorable weather events tend to exert a stronger influence on perceptions ( Trenberth et al., 2015 ).

Furthermore, perspectives of global climate change may be constrained due to being beyond human perceptual capacity. This means that other locally-salient issues may be perceived as more immediate ( Weber, 2010 ). While people may attribute extreme weather events to global climate change, such interpretations depend on culturally-available narratives that construct such issues, whereas physical climate change is, arguably, only discernible over long time periods. Essentially, a single event cannot unequivocally be attributed directly to climate change, though an individual may or may interpret it as such, depending on their perspective ( Hulme, 2014 ). Similarly, interpretations of local environmental conditions have been found to influence more global climate-relevant understandings. For example, in one study, local perceptions of deforestation, urbanization and air pollution framed explanations of climate change ( Maharjan and Joshi, 2012 ). This suggests that people look for proximate and visible causes in the absence of wider understanding.

Nonetheless, studies have demonstrated evidence that communities who are more in touch with their surroundings are able to accurately detect environmental changes, such as seasonal temperature and weather fluctuations ( Gurung, 1989 ; Tiwari et al., 2010 ; Poudel and Duex, 2017 ; Uprety et al., 2017 ). Other research has found that while community members are accurate in their perceptions of some seasonal and weather-related changes, they are less accurate at perceiving others ( Myers et al., 2013 ). Environmental impacts also affect different groups within a country or region differently, and not always uniformly ( Gentle et al., 2014 ) and may even be experienced differently by different members of the same community ( Maharjan and Joshi, 2012 ).

Climate change awareness has been reported to be higher in economically developed countries than in economically developing nations, a pattern also found for countries within Asia ( Maharjan and Joshi, 2012 ). Other research has found educational attainment to be the strongest predictor of awareness ( Lee et al., 2015 ). Cultural differences are also evident in terms of climate change risk perceptions; in Latin America and Europe, comprehension of the anthropogenic origin of climate change has been found to be the strongest predictor, while in several Asian and African countries, perception of temperature increase locally was most influential ( Lee et al., 2015 ). Perceptions of temperature and weather change are widespread. Savo et al. (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of 10,660 change observations reported across 2,230 localities in 137 countries, which showed increases in temperature, and changes in seasons and rainfall patterns in 70% of localities in 122 countries.

Nepal is particularly susceptible to climate change, with change in the Himalaya accelerating beyond the global average ( Zomer et al., 2014 ). In the Terai agriculture is the principle economic activity, with around 80% of the population dependent on farming for their livelihoods. Therefore, climate change carries significant risks for the economy, which indirectly affect food production and security. The situation is exacerbated by widespread poverty; in 2010 over 25% of the population subsisted below the national poverty line ( Adhikari, 2018 ). Poorer groups within society are more likely to be exposed to climate stresses and possess fewer resources to adapt ( Gentle et al., 2014 ; Leichenko and Silva, 2014 ). Nepal is divided into three ecological regions comprising the Terai (lowland), hill and mountain regions, each of which is characterized by different ecological and climatic conditions. The Terai forms a fertile plain located in the south of the country where the majority of food production takes place, and is also the most densely populated region ( Paudel, 2012 ). Of relevance within Nepal, food shortages due to seasonal changes, infestations of new crop pests and a decline in soil productivity have been recorded ( Paudel, 2012 ).

Public awareness is seen as a major limitation to climate change adaptation within Nepal ( Withana and Auch, 2014 ). While some studies have found high levels of climate change awareness amongst Nepalese citizens ( Becken et al., 2013 ), other research has found awareness to be low ( Gallup, 2009 ). In a cross-national study of 5,060 households, Tanner et al. (2018) report that climate change awareness was low (<50% were aware of the phenomenon even if they had been aware of changes in the weather). Awareness in urban areas was lower than in rural areas (56% v 46%), and very low in mountain areas (63% had not heard of climate change). There were also significant proportions of citizens who did not perceive that the climate was changing. Maharjan and Joshi (2012) report that among the Chepang community only 11.8% of respondents had heard of climate change; of those, only 4.8% were able to relate the phenomenon to changes in weather patterns, temperature, rainfall, wind, floods, landslides, and environmental change.

Research on community perceptions of environmental and climate-relevant change in Nepal has recorded perceptions of warmer summers ( Tiwari et al., 2010 ; Uprety et al., 2017 ); milder winters ( Dahal, 2005 ; Maharjan and Joshi, 2012 ; Becken et al., 2013 ); more erratic rainfall ( Chapagain et al., 2009 ; Paudel, 2012 ; Becken et al., 2013 ; Devkota and Bhattarai, 2018 ); increased periods of drought ( Tanner et al., 2018 ); and more frequent foggy days ( Shrestha et al., 2018 ). However, community perceptions are not consensual. Maharjan and Joshi (2012) report that while 47.5% believed that summers were getting warmer, nearly 10% reported that summers were becoming cooler and 38% perceived no change. In addition, 21% believed that winters were getting colder while 22% believed that winters were becoming milder. Furthermore, 37% believed that there was less rain overall, while 13–17% perceived no change in rainfall. They attribute this to differences in “visual salience”; whereby rainfall is more conspicuous and facilitates perception, whereas temperature change is less directly observable.

With specific reference to the Terai region, Maharjan et al. (2011) interviewed farmers in the Western Terai, with 90% of respondents reporting increases in climate-related risks (erratic rainfall, flooding, droughts, riverbank erosion, windstorms, hailstorms, insect infestations). Tiwari et al. (2010) surveyed Terai communities in which over 75% of participants reported delayed onset of the monsoon and changes in flowering and fruiting time for some plant species. Meanwhile, Manandhar et al. (2011) found that more than two-thirds of farmers in the Terai claimed to have personally experienced evidence of climatic change.

As a result of perceived environmental change in the Terai, and in other regions livelihoods and lifestyles are adapting to changing conditions. Khanal et al. (2018) surveyed farming households in Nepal to gauge adaptation practices across the three ecological regions of Nepal, reporting that 91% of households had adopted at least one practice to minimize impacts of climate change. Adaptation may be more anticipatory or reactive and distinguished by duration, scale of implementation (i.e., more local or more widespread) and focus (e.g., behavioral, institutional, economic, technological, informational) ( Smit et al., 2000 ). In a study of climate change adaptation in the rural hill region of Nepal, Gentle et al. (2018) examined household responses in four villages. Adaptive responses to climate change in rural communities were found to be less coordinated and more reactive and unplanned rather than anticipated and coordinated.

Changes to agricultural practices constitute a primary focal point for adaptation and change. These have included changes in the times crops are sown and harvested ( Maharjan et al., 2011 ), switching to more climate resilient crop varieties and tree and plant species ( Maharjan et al., 2011 ; Paudel, 2016 ; Gahatraj et al., 2018 ), as well as increased use of pesticides, and income diversification ( Gentle et al., 2018 ). Climate change is also perceived as benefiting some crop species ( Rawal and Bharti, 2015 ). For example, mangos are being grown at higher altitudes than was possible in the past ( Chapagain et al., 2009 ).

Within villages, water practices were changing to conserve water resources ( Tiwari et al., 2010 ), and changes to diets have also been identified ( Tanner et al., 2018 ), with less rice being consumed due to the effects of climate on rice productivity ( Maharjan and Joshi, 2013 ). Two-story houses are increasingly being constructed for food storage and as refuge from flooding ( Maharjan and Joshi, 2013 ), while buildings are being oriented to withstand windstorms, incorporating single rather than double doors ( Maharjan and Joshi, 2013 ). Seasonal migration and resettlement becoming more common ( Prasain, 2018 ). People are also reported to be planting more trees and grasses on their own land as well as on communal land to protect communities from flooding, wind and dust ( Tiwari et al., 2010 ; Maharjan et al., 2017 ). Withana and Auch (2014) report that afforestation is viewed as the most effective climate change adaptation strategy by communities.

In summary, perceptions of environmental conditions are key to informing behavior, including the need to adapt to a changing climate. In the context of Nepal, adaptation is particularly salient and it is critical that communities respond to environmental risks in ways that ensure the well-being and futurity of those communities. Given that studies of climate-relevant perceptions have reported mixed findings in terms of awareness, we seek to clarify how Nepalese communities view environmental issues now and in the future. Such perceptions act as important indicators of how local communities make sense of what is happening in their surroundings.

Following our review of the literature, the following questions guide the study approach:

• How do communities in Nepal's Terai perceive their environment?

• How do they see that environment changing in the future?

• To what degree are local communities aware of climate change?

• What is the relative importance of climate change compared to other issues environmental affecting the community?

Materials and Methods

The following subsections describe the study design and procedure. Broadly, this comprised a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with residents in two communities in the Terai region of Nepal. Thirty interviews were conducted in total. 15 interviews were conducted with residents of the village of Kumroj, a small rural community bordering Chitwan National Park. Another 15 interviews were conducted with residents of Bharatpur, an urban community approximately 12 miles (20 km) away. For each group, we were interested in gauging perceptions of salient environmental issues, including climate change. We selected two different communities to explore the degree to which locally salient issues varied and informed discussions. Before commencing fieldwork, the study design was scrutinized and approved by the Research Ethics Committee in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University.

Participants

Fieldwork was conducted in January and February 2016. A purposive sampling strategy ( Silverman, 2015 ) was used to try to generate a range of different sociodemographic profiles within each community in terms of age, gender and ethnicity. All participants were aged 18+ and resided in either Bharatpur or Kumroj, both in the Chitwan district. Bharatpur has a population of 280,000 and is one of the largest and fastest growing cities in Nepal. While it is home to a number of small-scale processing industries, agriculture remains the biggest industry. Kumroj is a small town with a population of 8,000. Kumroj borders Chitwan National Park, the first National Park created in Nepal (in 1973). In recent years in-migration has increased pressure on land for settlement and agriculture. Increasing tourism has put additional pressure on the landscape. A number of community development initiatives have attempted to confer Kumroj as an ecological exemplar, with the creation of a community forest initiative and grant funding to encourage domestic biogas installation to reduce deforestation, launched on World Environment Day, 2013. Around 80% of households within Kumroj have installed bio-gas converters to reduce reliance on the forest for fuel.

To arrange fieldwork with local people in Kumroj, we contacted the offices of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) in Kathmandu, who had been involved in community development projects in Kumroj. Through WWF, we were able to negotiate access through local community leaders who helped us to recruit participants. Prior to our arrival, the study was advertised by word-of-mouth by community leaders, who identified potential members of the community willing to be interviewed. Extra care had to be taken in gaining access to participants, establishing contact and opening communicative spaces with the community, which could be damaged if pushed too quickly ( Wicks and Reason, 2009 ). The study was promoted as a “ lifestyle and behavior ” project and avoided making reference to the environment, as we wished to avoid recruiting only those members of the community whose motivations and values were strongly pro-environmental. At recruitment, a brief screening procedure was applied; individuals were screened to ensure that they were 18+ and aware of the broad purpose of the study and what would be required in terms of participation. We also purposefully recruited individuals to ensure that we had a roughly equal split in terms of gender, as well as diversity in terms of age, ethnicity, occupation, and income. See Table 1 for subsample demographics.

Table 1 . Subsample demographics.

To recruit our Bharatpur subsample, we collaborated with the Institute for Social and Environmental Research Nepal (ISER-N). ISER-N is a research and development institute that conducts applied research to inform policy-making and effective sustainable development initiatives across local communities. Using a similar method to the above, ISER-N acted as our guide and point of access to the local community and advertised and recruited a subsample of local people who had expressed an interest in discussing their lifestyles and behaviors.

Once participants had been identified, screened, and given further information about the study, they were invited to take part in an interview to discuss aspects of their day-to-day lifestyles and behaviors with the research team. Interviews were scheduled to take approximately one-and-a-half hours, but varied from 45 min to 2 h. A semi-structured interview method ( Galletta, 2013 ) was chosen in which a standard set of questions was covered while also allowing flexibility for follow-up questions and exploration of other issues of relevance to participants. Such flexibility is an advantage in cross-cultural settings as this allows for greater exploration of cultural factors underpinning issues of interest ( McIntosh and Morse, 2015 ; Hagaman and Wutich, 2017 ). All participants were required to give written informed consent prior to participation.

Questions in the interview protocol sought to contextualize environmental perspectives within people's wider everyday lives as far as possible. Questions broadly covered perceptions of the environment and the importance of environmental issues environmental problems (including climate change), engagement in environmentally-friendly behavior, the character, motivations for and consequences of behaviors, and comparisons with others in terms of acting in environmentally-friendly ways (see Supplementary Information ).

The majority of interviews took place at participants' homes. Discussions took place on seats or woven mats in the front yards of houses rather than inside the building itself. A small number of interviews were conducted in other locations, such as a local café, or community building in the case where the home could not be used. We relied heavily on our collaborators and local community leaders to manage interview arrangements in line with our concerns about accessing members of an unfamiliar culture and wishing not to transgress social boundaries. Because people's yards are the area of the home where a lot of day-to-day interaction takes place, providing socially appropriate spaces for interaction.

One of the disadvantages of holding interviews outside was that on some occasions the research team's presence would attract the curiosity of other family members, neighbors and other locals. The sudden presence of others could occasionally alter the dynamic of the interview interaction, particularly if the others who were present began talking or offering their own perspectives. On one or two occasions the research team had to ask bystanders to limit their contribution so as to allow the participant to speak. To a cultural outsider this would appear potentially problematic and non-conducive to an appropriate interview context, which led us to consider this and other ethical considerations in conducting interview research in different cultures.

Ethical Considerations in Conducting Interviews in Different Cultures

Researchers typically assume that the communities in which they work will be aware of the concept of research and its value, though for many communities research is something abstract, distanced and difficult to make sense of in relation to their ordinary lived experience. This came across clearly in working with each subsample. In Bharatpur, participants were familiar with ISER-N and, owing to participating in other cross-cultural research, were more comfortable with the researcher's presence than participants in Kumroj, who had not been so exposed to researchers and the research process. Further to this, bridging communicative spaces is not confined merely to issues of translation and word equivalence, but of more conceptual differences in terms of the ways that different cultures define reality and categorize their experience ( Fong, 2012 ). Language and culture are woven together in ways that require not only the translation of speech, but the translation of cultural meanings that are often concealed from those outside of that culture. In designing the interview protocol, we worked closely with our collaborators not only to ensure that questions were understandable, but that any cultural assumptions (for example, about the lifestyles, values, and practices of the community) were identified and addressed appropriately. All interview materials were double-translated.

Qualitative methods including interviews, also carry particular ethical implications in terms of power imbalance, where the discussion is primarily directed by the researcher ( King et al., 2018 ). Assumptions about the identity of the western researcher (typically white, middle-class, and educated) on the part of the research participant construct interactional dynamics before a word has been spoken. Similarly, the reflexive researcher will not only consider how their own identity might influence communication, but how their assumptions about the community they are researching enter into framing interactions. While researchers may seek to embark on research practices that are non-exploitative and non-oppressive, researchers are nonetheless complicit in systems of oppression and should be aware of their own privileges.

The interview team comprised a male researcher (lead author) and a female translator to minimize any gender imbalance that might affect trust and participant disclosure, especially for female participants ( Campbell and Wasco, 2000 ; Sikes, 2018 ). The translator also played an active role in facilitating each interview, asking additional questions and clarifying understanding, as opposed to simply translating questions and responses. It was felt that a combination of cultural insider and cultural outsider benefited the discussion; while the former helped to increase trust and disclosure, the latter encouraged more detailed exploration of issues that might otherwise be taken for granted by those familiar with those issues ( Dwyer and Buckle, 2009 ).

Conducting qualitative fieldwork in collaboration with translators can also compromise the quality and accuracy of the material generated. In an interview context, the translator adds an additional layer to the interaction. For example, the translator is likely to be more acquainted with the cultural nuances of the interaction than the researcher. Therefore, both the researcher and translator can affect the fieldwork process, as well as disrupting the flow of talk to allow for translation ( Van Teijlingen et al., 2011 ). When fully transcribed, interviews can also show disparity between participant responses and translated responses. van Teijlingen et al. suggest that a way round this is to allow the translator to conduct the interview and only relay main points to the researcher, though this can be impractical, as well as excluding the researcher.

Prior to the interviews, considerable time was spent in developing and pre-testing interview questions. After constructing an initial set of interview questions in English, these were double-translated and then reviewed by our collaborators in Nepal. This was invaluable in not only identifying significant weaknesses in conceptual equivalence between Nepali and English versions of the questions ( Larkin et al., 2007 ), but also in highlighting researchers' cultural assumptions inherent in questions relating to everyday life in “other” places. That is, while a translated question may be conceptually equivalent to the original, it still may not be understandable in another culture (e.g., where researchers from one culture assume that all participants in another culture will have the same access to resources, such as running water). Even when all care is taken with translation, translators may be unfamiliar with a particular geographical region or cultural group. Therefore, it is recommended that questions are pre-tested in the specific cultural contexts in which they will be used.

With reference to interview locations, our decision to hold interviews outside and not in a more private location was primarily guided by social conventions as well as pragmatism, though we acknowledge the active influence of the nature of the space within which such interactions take place ( Gagnon et al., 2015 ). As mentioned at the end of the previous section, on occasion others were present at interviews in ways that influenced participant responses and could have constrained disclosure or breached informal assumptions about confidentiality (though interview questions were not considered to cover personally sensitive topics). Conversely, in discussing lifestyle and behavior issues, the home sometimes served as an exemplar in which participants described their activities in the context of the physical surroundings, which enhanced disclosure. In addition, conducting interviews in familiar environments can reduce the power imbalance between researcher and research participant ( Gagnon et al., 2015 ).

Ethical considerations do not end at the point at which the interview concludes but influence ongoing reflections following the interview (such as translation, analysis, writing-up and dissemination) ( Hoover et al., 2018 ). Acknowledging that translation imposes an additional level of interpretation on the spoken word ( Caretta, 2015 ), we have tried insofar as possible to contextualize accounts based on participants' direct speech rather than translators' interpretations of what was said. At the end of each interview, participants were provided with a verbal and written debrief in Nepali, in which they were given the opportunity to get in touch with the research team through appointed members of the local community and in-country collaborators should they have any further questions or concerns once participation had ended.

Analytic Approach

All interviews were digitally audio-recorded and translated and transcribed at ISER-N. Written field notes were also taken throughout each interview relating to points of interest and things that might not be captured by the recorder. An “ in-interview ” system of translation was used whereby questions and responses were translated between English and Nepali by the translator. This method of translation was primarily used to aid communication within the interview itself. When the interview recordings were translated, the translators re-translated participants' responses, which appear alongside the in-interview translations in the transcripts. This was done as the task of translating what at times were lengthy utterances in the moment, could have led to omissions and gaps, whereas in translating participant responses from the recordings utterances could be replayed and listened to repeatedly for clarity, thus better capturing what was said.

An episodic narrative approach was used as an analytic framework by which to explore participants' accounts of environmentally-friendly perceptions and behaviors. This approach treats perceptions and experiences as lived narratives situated within the wider society and culture ( Flick, 2000 ; Jovchelovitch and Bauer, 2000 ). Narrative interviewing is interested in eliciting particular episodes or features of participants' lives and how they make sense of the world as embodied, culturally and spatially situated individuals ( Raulet-Croset and Borzeix, 2014 ). Interview audio files and transcripts were analyzed using NVivo 11, supplemented by written field notes.

Our analysis combined several methods, which we outline here. In line with the early stages of a grounded theory approach ( Timmermans and Tavory, 2012 ) we began by reading through transcripts to identify examples of talk that involved themes relating to health and well-being in the context of environmental issues. As much as possible, given inevitable researcher preconceptions and positions ( Caelli et al., 2003 ) we sought to identify general themes and provisional topics of interest, without imposing a predetermined framework. This manner of bottom-up or inductive analytic reading of the data allows for the broadest possible range of salient themes to be identified. Once we familiarized ourselves with the material through repeated readings, we then developed a system of codes to more precisely categorize these themes. In order to do so, we used a version of template analysis, which is suitable for identifying themes in research data that is commensurate with both essentialist and constructionist perspectives, and which enables a hybrid approach that utilizes both inductive and deductive techniques ( Brooks et al., 2015 ). Template analysis is a form of thematic analysis applied to qualitative data, that is sensitive both to emergent themes that are grounded in the data (i.e., not anticipated or predetermined by the researcher) as well as permitting predetermined codes or categories to be applied (i.e., in line with the researcher's interests and the existing literature). The coding framework was developed through an iterative process: through multiple readings of the research data and refinement of initial codes until further changes to the framework did not enhance it further. A further feature of template analysis is the development and application of a hierarchical coding approach, designed to shed light on the structure across the set of codes. In the case of the present study, this for example has led to higher-level codes such as “behavioral responses” beneath which we identify sub-codes such as “cleanliness” and “waste disposal.”

In the analysis that follows, we present extracts from interviews in both communities comprising perceptions of environmental issues. Where considering the themes identified within the data, we have illustrated this using a single typical extract and alluded to its occurrence in other participants' accounts within the text.

Community Perceptions of Current Environmental Conditions

We began by asking participants about the importance of environmental issues in their day-to-day lives and what the surrounding environment was like. Responses comprised both positive and negative evaluations of environmental conditions, though there was a greater range of issues forming the latter. To get some sense of the kinds of terms used to describe the local environment in each community, we created two word clouds using NVivo, which display the most frequently used words in discussing issues. The results of these are displayed in Figures 1 , 2 .

Figure 1 . Word cloud of the 75 most common words associated with present environmental conditions (Bharatpur participants).

Figure 2 . Word cloud of the 75 most common words associated with present environmental conditions (Kumroj participants).

Both communities used the same terms in discussing the environment, such as “ people ” and “ good .” In Bharatpur, “ better ” was also commonly used in talking about the environment, which may reflect the dominance of the issue of sanitation (see section Sanitation and Hygiene below). Negative words such as “ pollution,” “ smoke,” “ problem,” and “ dust” also came up relatively regularly, as did the word “ plastic .” Terms relating to hygiene and sanitation were also notable. These included “ cleanliness,” “ toilet ,” “ healthy,” and “ clean .” Meanwhile, in Kumroj, commonly used terms appeared congruent with the community's rural position. These included “ animals ,” “ jungle ,” “ wild ,” and “ forest .” Words such as “ polluted ,” “ concerned,” and “ worried” were also used. We now move on to discuss responses in more detail.

Sanitation and Hygiene

The primary way issue through which the environment was assessed in both communities, though particularly in Bharatpur, related to sanitation and the need to maintain a clean environment to reduce the risks of disease:

“ Previously, like ten to fifteen years ago people used to smoke, and there was open defecation everywhere, there weren't any toilets, so people used to get sick and the death rate also used to be very high, people used to be suffering by many kinds of disease, skin problems, allergies. Now currently almost every household has a toilet, and many organizations have been working on cleanliness. They have been providing various training and awareness programs regarding the clean environment. So now I would say, the environment is not so bad around here .” (Bharatpur, Interview A3).

In the above account, a positive assessment of environmental conditions is formulated by drawing a comparison between past and present sanitation and sanitary practices. Whereas, in the past, communities were affected by diseases resulting from unsanitary conditions, this had now changed, providing a positive indicator of the local environment as a whole.

In addition to health risks from open defecation, providing proper toilets in rural communities such as Kumroj also minimized other risks from wildlife, and the discomfort of adverse weather conditions:

“ If we don't have a toilet, then we may have to face many difficulties such as while going outside for toilet then we might get attacked from snake or when raining it would be hard to go the toilet. And if we openly defecate then it will pollute the environment and as result we may have to suffer from different diseases, so environment is the most important thing to survive for everyone and we can't imagine life without environment .” Kumroj, Interview B11).

For rural communities, development of sanitation was considered not only key to well-being, but also, implicitly, key to a good environment. Talk of sanitation in the context of evaluating the local environment also rested heavily on community awareness. What contributed to a lack of environmental quality in the past was not only that proper sanitation was unavailable, but that in the past, communities were less aware of the risks to health and well-being from poor sanitation. Risky sanitary practices were thus maintained as people did not know any better. In contrast, nowadays, communities were more aware of risks from inadequate sanitation and knew how to overcome issues such as contaminated drinking water. In this way, community awareness also contributed to positive judgements of environmental quality:

“ The e nvironment here is better in comparison to the past…These facilities didn't exist. There had been problems of drinking water taps. The same tap was used. It wasn't enough. In society, people had to drink water from wells. They had germs, smoke and dust .” (Bharatpur, Interview A10).

Similar to the accounts of the shift to a better environment through the development of toilet facilities and reduction in the practice of open defecation, an overall positive evaluation of the environment is constructed through comparisons of past and present. For many participants, issues of health, sanitation and hygiene formed the yardstick by which the overall environment was evaluated positively.

Waste and Pollution

While improvements in sanitation and hygiene across both communities provided a positive indicator of environmental quality, there was more ambivalence where participants discussed other issues indicative of environmental quality in their respective communities. For participants in both Bharatpur and Kumroj, distance from industrial development and proximity to green spaces were important factors associated with positive environmental assessments:

“ The environment around here is ok, there is no industry and factory so it is not that much polluted here and we are nearby jungle so we have greenery, yeah, it's good, it's fine .” (Kumroj, Interview B5).

As illustrated in the above account, environmental quality was implicitly understood as relating to human well-being, in terms of risks from pollution. Such a location for the community, close to the jungle and away from factories, led to evaluations that the environment was good. Conversely, accounts of pollution from other sources within the community itself, suggested a rather different environmental evaluation. At the same time as some participants positively evaluated the environment being relatively pollution-free, others constructed it as a polluted space due to the way that plastic waste was managed. The problem of plastic waste disposal came up most frequently in Bharatpur:

“… looking at increasing population, there can be very dangerous pollution. I feel that it will increase, yes, increasing. The use of plastics is increasing and there is no awareness regarding how to maintain cleanliness, how to save us from the problem. They have no such idea. Due to increasing population density, such symptoms are evident .” (Bharatpur, Interview A14).

Concerns about plastic waste were tied to other concerns about local population increase and the perception that there was a lack of awareness amongst the community in addressing the issue. Such accounts implied that there were no alternatives to using plastic, therefore the problem was in disposing of plastic waste that littered the environment and did not decompose. The main problem causing the pollution was not the presence of plastic waste, but the method used to manage and deal with waste plastic. This chiefly involved collecting the plastic and burning it in open fires. While this resolved the problem of plastic waste littering the community, participants were concerned that the smoke polluted the air and posed risks to health:

“ There is plastic around here and there. To dispose plastic, we need to burn it, and if we burn plastic it makes huge air pollution and affects people's health. The other day I argued with one person not to throw plastic. We must use firewood for cooking and because of that there is again smoke in the air, because of a lack of cooking gas. That's why it has been a very bad environment .” (Bharatpur; Interview A2).

In contrast to the previous extract constructing the local environment in positive ways as being relatively pollution-free, alternative perspectives such as the above led to very different evaluations of the local environment, with concomitant consequences for the health of the community. While the local community was aware of the contribution of existing informal plastic waste management practices to air pollution, it was nonetheless positioned as being powerless to change in ways that address air pollution as people are locked in to environmentally-damaging practices in order to manage waste and address basic needs. Similar to the need to use firewood for cooking due to shortages of cleaner alternatives, there were no alternatives and burning plastic waste was viewed as unavoidable. Essentially, such accounts lead to a very different evaluation of local environmental conditions.

Conversely, in Kumroj, a municipal system for collecting plastic waste had been in place for some time, therefore the community's method of dealing with plastic waste was not considered to threaten local environmental quality as much as problems such as poor sanitation:

“ People defecate wherever they want around the city area, there are toilets in here no toilets, so people openly defecated. So, I'm concerned about it…Otherwise, there is a facility to collect the waste from municipalities, the van comes and takes away waste. People collect the wastage plastic in sacks, then when the municipality van comes, then they take it away .” (Kumroj, Interview B6).

The account begins by constructing open defecation as the main issue threatening the environment in nearby Bharatpur, implying a negative assessment of the surroundings. This is contrasted with a more positive assessment where the speaker switches to talk about plastic waste management in Kumroj. Therefore, while plastic waste was a problem in both communities, in evaluating the local environment, the different ways in which plastic waste was managed were used to formulate contrasting assessments of environmental quality overall. These contrasting assessments may also connect to the wider importance of health and well-being, in which potential risks are offset by waste management practices in one community, but raised by plastic waste management practices in another.

Deforestation

While plastic waste did not negatively influence environmental assessments in Kumroj as it did in Bharatpur, there were, nonetheless, other issues affecting the community leading to negative environmental evaluations that were not reported in Bharatpur. For people in rural Kumroj, there was a closer felt connection to the neighboring forest as a source of environmental concerns. That is, forest conditions were more commonly invoked in environmental assessments by participants in Kumroj than in Bharatpur. The forest was seen as a valuable community resource, primarily as a source of firewood. Such talk occurred against a context of strikes and fuel shortages, further highlighting the importance of the forest as a source of firewood for local communities, which was being rapidly diminished due to increased demand:

“ We restored the forest with a lot of hard work. The strikes have already led to twenty-five percent of the forest to deforest and if this goes on, the forest will be completely deforested in a year or two. There is a new facility called biogas, we have that facility but, we have seventy-five percent biogas but people are poor and some bring the firewood from the forest, steal it and sell it… People have to survive. Having to die today and struggling for it tomorrow isn't going to work. If you have to survive today, you'll have to work for it today. And if they don't have any other way they'll go to the forest and steal the firewood .” (Kumroj, Interview B10).

Despite attempts to increase forest cover and reduce reliance on firewood by providing biogas converters within local communities, this did not address the wider problem of sustaining local people's livelihoods, which caused further deforestation and the potential loss of the forest altogether. From this perspective, the amount of forest cover formed an indicator of environmental quality. Furthermore, for participants in Kumroj, the environment was also judged based upon perceived changes in the amount of wildlife that could be observed locally:

“ I think the current environment is worse than the previous environment. I have noticed that the current environment is going down every day instead of going up. Because, previously when I used to go to the jungle I could see the wild animals very near, even sometimes outside of the jungle, but these days we have to go very deep into the jungle to search for the animals .” (Kumroj, Interview B14).

While the need for wood to sustain people's lives were commonly acknowledged within accounts of the pressures on forest resources in Kumroj, deforestation remained a significant concern.

Climate and Weather

While it was not foremost in terms of locally significant issues, participants in Bharatpur and Kumroj also referred to changes in climate and weather conditions in formulating their assessments of the local environment. These changes did not form the basis for positive evaluations of the local environment but appeared in negative or neutral assessments. Talk referred to a narrow range of changes. These mainly involved observations of temperature extremes in which summers were perceived to be increasingly hot, and winters increasingly cold. However, while these observations of climatic change were described causal factors were hardly mentioned. Furthermore, the phenomenon of global climate change was not spontaneously invoked in accounts:

“ I would say it's okay, so far Chitwan's environment is fine, although here is not much forest and plants. In winter it's very cold and summer is getting hotter .” (Bharatpur, Interview A6).

What appears initially as a positive assessment of the local environment is tempered by a perceived lack of forest cover and greenery in Bharatpur. In addition, the speaker adds the casual observation that winter and summer are increasingly subject to extreme temperatures, though no reason is offered as to why.

In addition to temperature changes, the other way in which the environment was judged was based on fluctuations in precipitation. In such accounts, there was consensus that rainfall was becoming more erratic and less predictable, and that rainfall overall was decreasing, including at the wettest times of the year. Again, no specific reasons were ventured as to why this was happening:

“ Yeah, I think sometimes, I think there's not enough or little rainfall during the rainy season .” (Bharatpur, Interview A1)

While changes in climate in terms of global averages cannot readily be detected by individuals ( Hulme, 2009 ), participants' observations appeared to reflect general climate trends. However, there was little concern expressed about temperature and precipitation changes, in comparison to other issues linked to health, cleanliness and well-being. Very occasionally, this type of issue was also linked to other perceived environmental problems. For example, one participant associated reductions in the amount of rain that fell to changes in forest cover:

“… we shouldn't be cutting down trees like we have been doing. We wouldn't get any rain if there weren't any trees .” (Kumroj, Interview B6).

The above account provides an isolated example of causation in relation to weather related changes. Even so, the role of climate change is not mentioned and rainfall change is attributed solely to the local problem of deforestation. While discussions of weather and climate were almost exclusively focused on the local area, an isolated reference was made to climate change in discussing the environment on a larger scale. One speaker spontaneously referred to broader patterns of global warming observed in changes beyond the local environment:

“… as you know because of the international global warming, now these days we have maximum cold, maximum hot, and impacts on ice and the change of snow fall trends…now there is very little snow fall in the mountains. If there is snow it melts so fast. These days we can see there are big storms, rainfall, everything has changed now. I think all the weather patterns have changed because of global warming. So, all those things make me concerned about the environment .” (Kumroj, Interview B13).

While an isolated example, the extract illustrates that climate change did arise in discussions of more local environmental conditions. Broader weather and temperature changes in Nepal corroborated observations at the local level, including temperature extremes and changes in rainfall.

In summary, assessments of the local environment were framed in different ways, leading to differences in the way that environment environmental conditions were evaluated. Assessments were framed based upon locally significant issues, which were both shared by, and individual to each community. Moreover, the most significant concerns were related to health and wellbeing. Next, we consider responses to the question of future environmental change.

Community Perceptions of Future Environmental Change

Following discussions over present environmental conditions, we then asked participants how the local environment might change in the future. Responses again comprised both positive and negative impressions, with a higher proportion of responses focused on the latter.

As previously, we created word clouds to get a sense of the sorts of terms that were used in imagining the future, and how these terms varied across communities. The results are shown in Figures 3 , 4 .

Figure 3 . Word cloud of the 75 most common words associated with future environmental conditions (Bharatpur participants).

Figure 4 . Word cloud of the 75 most common words associated with future environmental conditions (Kumroj participants).

Among participants in Bharatpur, the words “ waste ,” “ population,” and “ increasing ” came up most frequently in responses about future change. References to negative terms, such as “ pollution ” appeared less than in talk about existing conditions, though it appeared to be used relatively more frequently by participants in Kumroj. With reference to the latter community, the two most prominent words used in talking about the future were “ forest ” and “ people .” Other terms referred to environmental concerns looking to the future, including “ live ,”, “ less ,” “ important,” “ survive,” and “ disappear.” We now move on to discuss responses in more detail.

Future Deforestation

Across both communities, the most commonly reported issue in the future was that of population increase and its consequences, especially for those in Kumroj. As can be read from the analysis so far, population increase influenced environmental perceptions; and was something that was set to continue into the future. Population increase was not viewed in positive ways in either community. Instead, environmental impacts were predicted to increase as more people came to live in the Terai. Of these impacts, the pressure on local forests was most often mentioned. This tapped into the idea that the forest existed as a resource for local communities and that, as a resource, the forest was already being overused:

“ Well, um…I think, the population will increase, they may need more homes, more food, etcetera. For that, the increased population might destroy the green forest for their homes and for cultivating land. There might not be good management of the increased population. There may come disorder in the environment. There might be less wild animals, less trees and plants .” (Bharatpur, Interview A7).

In addition to providing raw materials in terms of firewood, as mentioned above, the need for land clearance to build settlements and provide food for newcomers compounded deforestation. If not well-managed, there were fears that this would eventually lead to the complete loss of the forest, both as a resource, and as a habitat for local flora and fauna. Such accounts appeared to be grounded in existing concerns about the exploitation of forest resources and served as a warning against continuing unchecked exploitation. In addition to its construction as a community resource and as a habitat for wildlife, in one or two discussions of future population increase, the forest was constructed as a safeguard against preventing other environmental impacts. For example, the forest protected the landscape from flooding and erosion:

“ Since the population and settlements are increasing, the forest is being cut down and people are settling in areas that were forest. More trees are being cut down to meet demand and brick factories are setting up and their chimneys pollute the air with lots of smoke. Because of less forest there could be floods and landslides, so this is the way the environment will be affected in future .” (Kumroj, Interview B11).

Further to the above, while participants were asked about environmental change in the future, discussions were typically grounded in perceptions of the present. Within the above extract, indications of future conditions linked to increased population and natural disasters are connected with conditions in the here and now, which are projected into an imagined future. It is assumed that present conditions will remain stable and consistent, with little expectation of change. As such, these accounts of the future highlight anxieties linked to present conditions, along with a sense of futility and helplessness that little will change. Conversely, issues such as sanitation did not really come up as future concerns, which likely reflects perceptions of sanitation improvements in the present, compared to the past.

Future Temperature Increases and Reduced Precipitation

Of relevance to climate change, rising temperatures, reduced rainfall and the loss of water resources also came up as potential future conditions locally. As found previously in accounts of present conditions, such talk tended to report conditions without elaborating on reasons as to what might contribute to causing them, or by offering opaque references to some unspoken (or non-understood) conditions or circumstances as “ having changed ”:

“ Yes, I think the environment might change. We even hear in the news that the heat or temperature has risen…we also have heard that because of some things the amount of rainfall has also decreased.” (Bharatpur, Interview A1).

The above narrative hints at climate change, though without any formal acknowledgment of the phenomenon. First of all, the speaker does not refer to direct experience of rising temperatures but formulates this information as something gathered from the media. Likewise, due to a set of unnamed causal factors labeled as “ some things ,” rainfall has also decreased, hinting at complexity. Furthermore, while the speaker begins by stating the belief that the environment could possibly change, the following discussion of climate-relevant change is grounded in changes that have already occurred, rather than changes that could happen in the future. As above, perceptions of future change are intimately connected to changes in the present. This is also confirmed in the next extract, in which a response to the question over future change is also constructed as an account of a present in which the environment locally had shifted from a state of stability to one of flux:

“ When it used to rain in Chure…that is in the mid hills, if we put some grains in the sun to dry then we wouldn't have time to collect them and bring them inside so quickly. The rain would have come, it used to rain quickly. But five to seven years after that there were floods and then other floods, and after that the climate started getting worse and worse. Nowadays what happens is we can see it raining in Chure but here is doesn't rain. So that is a very definite thing that I have noticed .” (Kumroj, Interview B13).

In this extract, rather than merely hearing about weather and temperature-related changes from secondary sources, evidence of environmental change could be found in the course of changes to practices that were arranged in line with previously stable and consistent weather patterns. As weather patterns had become less predictable, community practices had undergone changes, highlighting the impact of weather-related changes on the local community.

Local Community Perceptions of Climate Change

The previous sections have shown that while participants in both communities spoke about issues related to changes to temperature and weather, both now in the future, these issues were typically unelaborated beyond the reporting of changes when unelicited, and only rarely connected to wider global climate change. Yet these perceptions often paralleled broader climate change trends. In order to gauge the extent to which participants were aware of climate change, we then asked directly whether participants had heard of climate change or global warming.

Using NVivo, we began by mapping climate change themes from participants' accounts in both communities., which then formed basic nodes through which to understand the various ways in which participants in both communities talked about climate change. The conceptual map is shown in Figure 5 . We then looked at responses in more detail.

Figure 5 . Conceptual map of themes arising in participants' talk about climate change across both communities.

Changes in Temperature

Of the participants who were directly asked whether they had heard of climate change, only one or two had not, though nobody claimed to know more than a little. Responses were very similar across both communities. Nearly all participants in both communities referred to changes in temperature and/or weather locally. Extreme temperatures were the most commonly cited indicator, most often connected to hotter summers, but also less frequently linked to colder winters, as detailed above in the section on Climate and Weather. Generally, little was said beyond simply noticing change, though one important impact of temperature change in the Terai concerned the direct consequences for plant life:

“ Well…hmm…actually I don't know the reason of global warming. I have heard that the snow of the mountains is melting these days. If it melts it will be hotter. The vegetation will be dry and can't survive, I heard this. It means the temperature increase may affect every living thing on the earth .” (Bharatpur; Interview A7).

Such talk reflects the importance of agriculture for many communities in what is Nepal's primary agricultural region; while the direct impact on plants was highlighted, other impacts of temperature change were not. The speaker also claims to be unaware of the causes of global warming. However, they construct a link between snowmelt on the distant mountains and temperature rise more locally, with potential impacts for the planet.

Links between climate change and health were rare, however, one speaker explained that hotter temperatures brought new disease risks to humans:

“ What is there is that the rays of the sun, the layer between sun and the earth is what people call depleting nowadays, isn't it? This leads to an increase in heat. This heat has brought about different diseases. Like, mosquito bites cause various diseases. I have heard from the radio that climate change has adversely affected human beings .” (Bharatpur; Interview A14).

In explaining the causes of temperature rise that bring about health risks from flying insects, the speaker combines elements of ozone layer depletion and global warming. This reflects the way that lay understandings of climate change do not map neatly onto expert definitions, but often overlap with other environmental problems ( Rudiak-Gould, 2012 ).

Changes in Precipitation

Following changes in temperature, particularly in the summer months, changes in precipitation were the other main symptom linked to climate change in both communities. An example of this type of perception is provided in Section 3.1.3, though talk of erratic or reduced rainfall was framed locally and very nearly always unconnected with global climate change. However, when the issue of climate change was deliberately elicited by the interviewer, a greater degree of acknowledgment was given to the influence of the phenomenon on local changes particularly in relation to agriculture:

“ Because of global warming, there is not timely rainfall, nothing happens according to the growing seasons. For example, no rain in the rainy reason but it is (rainy) in winter time. Nothing occurring at the right time, I guess this is all the impact of climate change .” (Kumroj, Interview B13).

Because of global warming, regular patterns of precipitation and the seasons had been thrown into disarray. This was of particular importance in the Terai in terms of agriculture, and was the primary way in which such changes to established patterns were recognized. For others, while erratic weather had recently been observed, it was of little concern as the weather tended not to be consistent but changeable day-to-day:

“ Few years back there was heavy rain, but now there is very little rain, and the summer heat has increased since last year…I think it's not really concerning me because every day is different and going on in its own way, so I don't feel really concerned about it .” (Kumroj, Interview B12).

In general, accounts of changing temperature and weather were constructed in ways that assumed a transition from the stable and consistent natural patterns of the past, to a present in which established patterns had been disrupted. However, for those less concerned, changes were viewed as part of natural variability. Ultimately, when thinking about local conditions, climate change typically did not form a part of community perspectives unless introduced by the interviewer. The final section summarizes individual climate-relevant behavioral responses to the issues raised in talking about the environment.

Health and Well-Being Motivates Engagement in Climate-Relevant Behaviors

Because participants in Bharatpur and Kumroj often did not associate local issues with climate change, there was little talk of the need to adopt specific mitigation or adaptation behaviors. However, within each community one or two climate-relevant behaviors were raised in the course of discussing engagement in more general environmentally-relevant actions. For example, planting trees was widely practiced in both communities. Primarily, this was done to provide wood, create shade around homes and provide fruit. Trees were also considered important in preventing drought (see section on Climate and Weather) and other natural disasters such as flooding and erosion (see section Future Deforestation). In addition, a few participants framed climate-relevant behaviors as motivated by the need to safeguard health and well-being:

“ Trees I plant in the rainy season, so I plant yearly. Once I cut the old, then I plant new…Trees keep the environment clean and healthier. Trees inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen” (Bharatpur, Interview A6).

While there was no clear link made to climate change, participants acknowledged the value of reducing atmospheric carbon, which was understood as maintaining a “ clean and healthier ” environment. Essentially, such climate-relevant practices were understood not in accordance with received scientific conceptualisations of climate change, but through more pragmatic perspectives linked to health and well-being.

In Kumroj, the Nepalese government had tried to maintain forest stocks by encouraging villagers to purchase biogas converters through grant schemes. Several participants, mainly from Kumroj, had biogas converters. These were seen as advantageous as organic waste could be utilized for producing fuel and then used as a fertilizer. Food could also be cooked quicker without the need to light a fire, and it reduced the need to collect wood. While participants did not mention the link between biogas practices and climate change, one of the most important benefits of biogas was that it did not pollute the air and so reduced health risks linked to inhaling wood smoke:

“ It (biogas) is clean and the air is also clean. The utensils are also not black. Biogas is more hygienic. People can be safe from colds and coughs and smoke-related diseases .” (Kumroj; Interview B13).

Cleanliness is paramount to the importance of biogas in the above extract. The pollution emitted by burnt wood is illustrated with reference to the condition of cooking utensils, with the implication that the wider environment is being affected in a similar way. In contrast, biogas does not discolor cooking utensils, which illustrates the fuel's superiority in terms of minimizing health risks caused by woodsmoke.

This study set out to investigate community perceptions of environmental and climate-relevant issues within two communities in the Terai region of Nepal. Specifically, we sought to address 4 related research questions; (1) How do community members perceive their environment? (2) How do they see that environment changing in future? (3) To what degree are communities aware of climate change? (4) How important is climate change in comparison to other issues? A range of environmental and climate-relevant issues emerged within current and future perspectives. Perspectives were focused primarily on local issues rather than wider environmental conditions. Issues linked to health and well-being were of paramount importance, while climate change was hardly mentioned in either community, either as a current or future problem. However, there was common awareness of temperature and weather changes in the local climate, though the vast majority did not link these changes to climate change. We now move on to discuss the results of our analyses in more detail.

For participants in both communities, assessments of the local environment were commonly based on evaluations of a single locally-salient issue. Positive issues, such as improvements in sanitation over time, invariably resulted in positive overall evaluations of the environment overall. Conversely, pollution resulted in more negative overall assessments. This highlights the highly subjective nature of environmental perceptions and the way in which specific issues can achieve heightened significance in judgements of environmental quality.

Many of the environmental issues raised in both communities were related to health and well-being, including cleanliness, pollution, and deforestation. It may be the relative proximity of each community contributed to this overlapping of issues. It may also be because they represent basic environmental concerns common to many communities—keeping the environment clean, healthy, and pollution free. Similarities between communities may also be partly attributable to our sampling method (see section Study Limitations and Future Research) There were also some differences in issues between communities. While plastic waste was more of an issue in Bharatpur, deforestation came up more often in Kumroj—though neither issue was exclusive to each community.

Climate change as an issue came up only once spontaneously, implying that other local issues were more salient. However, temperature and weather changes analogous to climate change did come up in several interviews across both communities, though without attribution to climate change. There was also little consideration of causal factors beyond immediate local causes such as deforestation affecting precipitation, flooding, and land erosion. In line with Leichenko and Silva (2014) , it appeared that temperature and weather changes allied to global climate change were already being experienced, though such issues were more atomized and vernacular and sometimes merged with other environmental problems ( Rudiak-Gould, 2012 ). In line with previous work, community perspectives often drew on different issues without attempting to clearly categorize or explain them ( Lorenzoni et al., 2007 ). Xiao and Dunlap (2007) note how particular environmental cognitions can constrain others; it is therefore possible that, when issues are framed locally, wider frameworks of understanding are overlooked.

Perceptions of Future Environmental Change

Perceptions of future environmental change were closely linked to mental representations of current conditions and issues of anxiety and concern. This could be seen in the way that participants rarely spoke about sanitation with reference to environmental change in the future, as sanitation had improved within communities. However, concerns about issues linked to current population increase were projected into the future and anticipated to continue unabated. Previous work has found that existing perceptions of self and other can be elicited through projections of “possible selves” in the future ( Harrison, 2018 ). In the same way, communities' imagined environmental futures highlight salient issues within existing relationships between communities and their physical surroundings.

The Terai region has witnessed large increases in population over recent decades ( Population Reference Bureau, 2002 ), and this was linked to pollution, deforestation and pressure on natural resources. While predictions of temperature and weather emerged from the interviews, such impacts were less frequently mentioned than concerns over population growth, as found in other research (e.g., Butler et al., 2014 ). Before communities can interpret and respond to climate-relevant issues, it may therefore be necessary to address existing concerns characterized by visions of the present and the future. In addition, the analysis highlights the relevance of sociocultural arrangements and cultural practices that contribute to community perspectives. For example, tree-felling was understood sympathetically within wider contexts of survival and economic struggle, as well as fuel shortages that left no alternative but to take wood from the forest. Such perspectives serve to highlight the complex nature and wider structural relations sustaining environmentally damaging practices.

Awareness of Climate Change

Climate awareness was relatively unmentioned in discussing the local environment, echoing previous studies ( Gallup, 2009 ; Withana and Auch, 2014 ). We found little difference between awareness in Bharatpur and Kumroj. A potential reason for this is that the changes observed suggest broader shifts in temperature and weather affecting the wider region, rather than localized effects or micro-climates that might affect one community and not another. Other studies have also reported lower awareness in rural communities ( Tanner et al., 2018 ), though a lack of difference may be due to the higher levels of environmental awareness from NGO engagement in Kumroj. However, while most participants did not spontaneously discuss the issue of climate change, when directly questioned, all had at least heard of climate change and many were able to eloquently demonstrate a good degree of knowledge. Therefore, it may not have been that participants were unaware of climate change, but simply did not consider it a locally salient issue. Tanner et al. (2018) also found that climate change awareness was low, despite respondents observing changes to local weather and climate. It may be that communities look to more local explanations for climate-relevant issues, as was found in some discussions. Therefore, if received knowledge teaches that the lack of rain is due to local forests being depleted, why would communities look to wider, more nebulous phenomena as explanations? The kinds of issues that came up in talk of climate change broadly reflects other research on community perceptions of climate change in the Terai (e.g., Tiwari et al., 2010 ; Maharjan et al., 2011 ). The apparent disjuncture between local experience and climate change suggests that the latter may lack relevance for local communities as long as environmental changes can be attributed to more local causal factors. It also suggests two kinds of climate change; a distanced, abstract climate change, and a more experiential, locally-grounded one. Within communities facing such impacts there is a need for a nuanced understanding that blends both. Howe et al. (2013) remark that local perceptions, such as temperature change, can positively bias perceptions of more abstract global climate change, which in turn can generate greater awareness and the capacity to respond to reduce risks to communities. As communities appear to be aware that the local climate is changing in a variety of ways, it is necessary to translate this awareness beyond the local. Reciprocally, more global perspectives need to connect with the concerns and interests of communities at the local level to make climate change more relevant to people's everyday lives. Bain et al. (2016) discuss evidence for initiatives promoting public engagement designed to generate support on the basis of considerations that are independent of climate change, including health and the creation of benevolent communities.

Study Limitations and Future Research

The use of a single qualitative methodological approach utilizing a small sample can only provide a partial insight into climate-relevant and environmental issues confronting the communities studied. Qualitative interview methods rely heavily on participants being able to recall and clearly convey their thoughts in the limited context of the interview interaction. Managing interview interactions in a cross-cultural setting remains a significant challenge and it is possible that the framing of questions could have influenced responses, such as precluding the discussion of global climate change by not deliberately eliciting the topic early in the interviews. Triangulation using other methods and larger samples might help to clarify these qualitative findings. Convergence in perspectives between communities may be attributable to our sampling method. While we categorized Bharatpur as the urban counterpart to rural Kumroj, most participants lived on the edges of the city close to the countryside, which may have generated perceptions that were more aligned with a rural, rather than an urban perspective. Future research might further investigate the apparent disparity between awareness of climate change more generally, and a lack of acknowledgment of climate change in discussions of environmental conditions at the local level. Drawing attention to this gap might also serve to elicit more comprehensive community perspectives and rule out potential shortcomings of a single methodological approach.

Data Availability

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this manuscript will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

Ethics Statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Ethics Policy, Cardiff University School of Psychology. The protocol was approved by the Cardiff University School of Psychology Ethics Committee. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Author Contributions

NN, IC, and RM conducted fieldwork with the assistance and guidance of LW and SC. NN was primarily responsible for analysis and authorship of the paper, with significant contributions in both areas from the other authors. All authors agree to be accountable for the content of the work.

This project was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the CASPI Project (no. 336665).

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Ugan Manandhar of WWF Nepal and the staff of ISER-Nepal for their valued collaboration on this project. Thanks also to Jyotsna Shrestha (independent translator) for help in designing the study and assisting with the translation of interviews in Kumroj, and Bishnu Adhikari, who assisted with fieldwork translation in Bharatpur. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Krishnan Ghimire of ISER-Nepal, who was instrumental in supporting the research.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00060/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: climate change, environment, perception, community, local, Nepal, culture

Citation: Nash N, Capstick S, Whitmarsh L, Chaudhary I and Manandhar R (2019) Perceptions of Local Environmental Issues and the Relevance of Climate Change in Nepal's Terai: Perspectives From Two Communities. Front. Sociol. 4:60. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2019.00060

Received: 11 March 2019; Accepted: 22 July 2019; Published: 20 August 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Nash, Capstick, Whitmarsh, Chaudhary and Manandhar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Nick Nash, nashn1@cardiff.ac.uk

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Every 2 years, the environmental, chemical, and health research communities meet in Costa de Caparica, Portugal to showcase the latest technologies, methodologies and research advances in pollution detection, contamination control, remediation, and related health issues. Since its inception in 2015, the International Caparica Conference on Pollution Metal Ions and Molecules (PTIM) has become a biennial global forum to hear from those who protect the land, the water, and the air at all environmental scales. During past PTIM editions, we have learned about numerous efforts to develop new recovery and clean-up processes to restore the natural equilibria of our planet. Soil, land, water, and air are the key focus of efforts that will require deeper understanding and better control.

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Every 2 years, the environmental, chemical, and health research communities meet in Costa de Caparica, Portugal to showcase the latest technologies, methodologies and research advances in pollution detection, contamination control, remediation, and related health issues. Since its inception in 2015, the International Caparica Conference on Pollution Metal Ions and Molecules (PTIM) has become a biennial global forum to hear from those who protect the land, the water, and the air at all environmental scales. During past PTIM editions, we have learned about numerous efforts to develop new recovery and clean-up processes to restore the natural equilibria of our planet. Soil, land, water, and air are the key focus of efforts that will require deeper understanding and better control. We have also become aware of more and more cases of spill contamination, degradation of land and water, destruction of marine environments, misconduct by cities and enterprises, and the general disrespect of the environment shown by humans.

In 2019 and 2020, we have witnessed once again how deeply health is connected with the environment. Our world is currently experiencing an extreme, yet predictable, health crisis linked to poor stewardship of the planet. Outbreaks of zoonoses, diseases that are transmissible between animals and humans, particularly those caused by coronaviruses, have led scientists to raise repeated alerts since 2002. Indeed, it is a problem followed daily by the environment program of the United Nations (UN 2020 ) and the World Health Organization (WHO 2020 ). The global pandemic produced by the dangerous, previously unknown virus SARS-CoV-2, has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths across five continents, with equally widespread economic and social repercussions. This problem resonates all too pertinently with the title of the third Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR) special issue dedicated to the 3rd PTIM 2019—Impacts of Environmental Issues on Health and Well-being—a global pollution challenge.

A surprising upside of the COVID-19 global pandemic has been the real-time observations of the numerous environmental effects of lockdown with the world becoming visibly greener and more habitable. Unusual benefits such as cleaner air and water, lower CO 2 emissions, and sudden relief from constant physical disturbance and noise were behind many beautiful pictures of wildlife on land and in the oceans. Now, the question is whether humans can consolidate these positive effects.

The degradation of our blue planet is not just an environmental problem, because it presents serious global economic and health risks too. Trade, employment, and well-being all rely on nature, starting with the quality of the food we consume, the stability of our climate and weather, the purity of the air we breathe, the control of emergent and circulating disease, and as we have discovered from the various quarantine measures around the world, essential spaces for human contact, leisure, and relaxation. Without our natural environment, there would be no life and society. The appearance of COVID-19 helped nature send us an important message: our planet is able to restore itself in the absence of persistent pressure from human activities on the land, air, and water.

The PTIM conference series is already a well-established international scientific forum in the field of environmental, chemistry, health, and well-being sciences, all hot fields in these COVID-19 times. The previous two editions in 2015 and 2017 were devoted to “New toxic emerging contaminants: beyond the toxicological effects”, (Lodeiro et al. 2019 ) and “Global pollution problems, trends in detection and protection” (Lodeiro et al. 2016 ). Now, the central theme is health. In November 2019, the third edition of this superb conference took place once again in Costa de Caparica, Portugal, keeping to our tradition of collegiality and scientific endeavor to help the environment. We listened to amazing plenary talks by Joanna Burger (USA) on the temporal trends in heavy metals in the US Atlantic Coast Estuaries (Ostrom et al. 1999 ; Burger 2019 ) and by Elena Rodica Ionescu (France) on toxicity and biosensing of environmental pollutants (Ionescu et al. 2006 ; Zhou et al. 2019 ). Jia-Qian Jiang (UK) spoke about water and wastewater treatments using double hydroxide materials (Wang et al. 2019 ; Jiang and Lloyd 2002 ), Shin Takahashi (Japan) delighted us with a presentation about the persistence of organic pollutants in the Asia Pacific Region (Monirith et al. 2003 ; Anh et al. 2019 ), and Jose Luis Gomez-Ariza (Spain) captivated us with a talk combining analysis and health problems in relation to metallomics and metabolomics in environmental metal toxicity assessment (Rodriguez-Moro et al. 2020 ; Gómez-Ariza et al. 2000 ). Making this edition even more extraordinary was the presence of outstanding keynote speakers, namely Ana Luisa Fernando (Portugal) (Souza and Fernando 2016 ), Erika Kothe (Germany) (Haferburg and Kothe 2007 ), Binoy Sarkar (UK) (Sarkar et al. 2010 ), Yongchun Zhao (China) (Xin et al. 2020 ), Jerzy Jozef Zajac (France) (Muller et al. 2019 ), Tamara Garcia Barrera (Spain) (Callejón-Leblic et al. 2020 ), Michael Gochfield (USA) (Gochfeld 2003 ; Burger et al. 2020 ), and Elisabete Oliveira (Portugal) (Marcelo et al. 2020 ; Oliveira et al. 2018 ), who explained their research covering topics as diverse as nanoparticles and food, antibiotic resistance and heavy metals, environmental clean-up applications of clay minerals, power plant wastewater metal analysis, metabolomics and the role of selenium, mechanisms of mercury and selenium toxicity, and the use of mesoporous nanomaterials and chemosensors for removing toxic agents and emerging contaminants. The picture was completed by the participation of close to 170 research fellows from five continents, contributing 70 oral talks, 20 “shotgun” presentations by young researchers, and more than 40 poster communications.

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Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank all our fellows who have contributed to this special issue of the ESPR journal published by Springer Editorial. We thank the ESPR Editor-in-Chief Prof. Philippe Garrigues who agreed to publish this special issue, and to the editorial assistants Ms. Fanny Creusot, Ms. Joanne Berbon, and Ms. Florence Delavaud. Thanks for the acceptance to publish this special issue dedicated to the Third International Caparica Congress on Pollutant Toxic Ions and Molecules, PTIM2019 edition, allowing us to act as Guest Editors. The chairs of the 3rd PTIM 2019 conference, and the Guest Editors Jose Luis Capelo-Martínez, Carlos Lodeiro, Hugo Miguel Santos, and Elisabete Oliveira thank the PROTEOMASS Scientific Society (Portugal) (General Funding Grant) as the main organizer, partners LAQV-REQUIMTE, Green Chemistry Associated Laboratory, NOVA School of Science and Technology, and NOVA University Lisbon.

This work is funded by the supporters and sponsors Bruker, Paralab, Norleq, Labor Spirit, Sciex, Castelbel, Turismo de Portugal, TAP Air Portugal, Turismo de Lisboa, IATA, Springer (ESPR journal), Chemosensors MDPI journal, Edinburgh Instruments, Nanoarts, Royal Society of Chemistry through the Environmental Sustainability and Energy Division, and the Portuguese Chemical Society (SPQ).

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Lodeiro, C., Capelo-Martínez, J.L., Santos, H.M. et al. Impacts of environmental issues on health and well-being: a global pollution challenge. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28 , 18309–18313 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10265-6

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Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade (1999)

Chapter: 1 introduction and background, introduction and background.

During its first 10 years of operation, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has advanced our understanding of the Earth's ever-changing physical, chemical, and biological systems and the growing human influences on these systems. On the basis of this knowledge we can now focus attention on the critical unanswered scientific questions that must be resolved to fully understand and usefully predict global change. Such capability is increasingly important for developing our economy, protecting our environment, safeguarding our health, and negotiating international agreements to ensure the sustainable development of the United States and the global community of nations. There are now compelling reasons for scientific knowledge to guide and respond to policy options, both current and future. Clearly, we must delineate research pathways that will enlarge our understanding of changes in the global environment, including climate change. At the same time we need to reduce uncertainties in the projections that shape our decisions for the future. For all these reasons it is essential that the USGCRP continue to receive strong financial support and continue to provide continuing strong scientific leadership. To be effective the USGCRP must be based on a sound scientific strategy, focused on key unanswered scientific questions, using a correspondingly balanced strategy for supporting observational, data management, and analysis activities.

On the basis of the continuing reviews of the Committee on Global Change Research (CGCR) and those of its collaborating bodies, the committee reaffirms the achievements and significance of the USGCRP while finding that the Program must now be revitalized, focusing its use of funds more effectively on the

principal unanswered scientific questions about global environmental change. This goal demands that funding and efforts be directed toward a coherent and coordinated suite of research activities and supporting observational, data management, and modeling capabilities, all aimed at imperative research objectives and clearly defined scientific questions. A sharply focused scientific strategy and a coherent programmatic structure are both critically needed. This report seeks to provide a framework for such a strategy and structure. The elaboration and implementation of this scientific strategy and programmatic structure will be the principal challenge for global change research over the course of the next decade.

Long before the industrial revolution, human activity began to alter the Earth's environment. However, only in this century has the scale of such alterations become global in scope; moreover, the rate of these recent changes is enormously high compared with the historical record. Today, on the threshold of a new millennium, it is clear that humans are inducing environmental changes in the planet as a whole. In fact, the human fingerprint is abundantly seen on the global atmosphere, the world oceans, and the land of all continents. This insight has brought about profound changes in the goals, priorities, and processes of both science and government.

Programmatic Development

Recognition that humans are causing global changes in the biology, physics, and chemistry of the environment—changes with immense significance for human society and economy—has prompted the U.S. government, and other national governments, to act. In 1990, Congress established the USGCRP to carry out an organized, coherent attack on the scientific issues posed by global environmental change.

The USGCRP had its principal roots in the 1980s, as both scientists and the public became increasingly aware of the links among human activities, current and future states of the global environment, and human welfare. The most immediate concerns were human-induced climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion from industrial emissions, and emerging evidence that the Earth's biogeochemical system was being perturbed by a broad range of human actions.

Some of the many antecedents of the USGCRP were seen still earlier. In the 1970s a convergence of long-standing scientific concerns (see below) and a series of climatic events led to the first World Climate Conference and to the establishment of the U.S. National Climate Program and the World Climate Program. 1 In parallel, beginning in the mid-1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) organized a major research program to assess the consequences of fossil-based energy production. Workshops chaired by the late Roger Revelle outlined a broad

multidisciplinary research agenda closely congruent with today's USGCRP, including a strong emphasis on the carbon cycle, the role of ecosystems, and human dimensions research. 2

The immediate precursor of the USGCRP, however, was a workshop sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1982 on global habitability, which was led by Richard Goody. 3 This workshop emphasized the fact that in many critical respects the ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere function together on long timescales as a single integrated system, a system requiring interdisciplinary research and observing programs of global scope and decadal duration. The stage had been set for encouraging similar fully integrated, long-term research by the Global Atmospheric Research Program, a program that itself arose from a seminal study by the National Research Council (NRC) 4 and laid the groundwork for the World Climate Research Program. The shaping of such comprehensive endeavors, which arose by recognizing the importance of chemical and biological as well as physical factors in the global system, also led to the establishment of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program of the International Council of Scientific Unions (subsequently renamed the International Council for Science). The priorities and nature of this program, from a U.S. perspective, were laid out in a sequence of NRC reports. 5 Most recently, human components in global environmental change have been given wider recognition in the creation of the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change.

Still other precursors to the USGCRP include two reports in the 1980s by the NASA-sponsored Earth System Sciences Committee (ESSC), 6 which sought to define a new and revolutionary scientific discipline of Earth system science. In keeping with the Goody report 7 and the 1986 NRC report, Global Change in the Geosphere-Biosphere, 8 this new discipline would be dedicated to study of the Earth as an integrated system of interacting components. Its goal would be to obtain “a scientific understanding of the entire Earth system on a global scale.” 9 The emergence of a science of the Earth system, moreover, offered a promise of knowledge that would be valuable to decision makers addressing global habitability.

Prominent in the ESSC documents was a recommendation for an Earth Observing System to provide long-term global observations, with an emphasis on the long-term continuity of observations, both satellite and in situ. The importance of long-term records reflected the audience for these reports and portended a multiagency endeavor: the recommendations were made to several concerned agencies—to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)—in addition to the sponsoring agency, NASA.

Late 1986 brought the beginnings of a coordinated government response. NASA, NOAA, and NSF had been developing parallel global change programs, but in 1987 a joint letter from the three agencies to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed the idea of a budget presentation coordinated across the agencies. From this point on, OMB was instrumental in developing the USGCRP. Later that year a consortium of eight agencies formed the federal interagency Committee on Earth Sciences (later the Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences, now the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources). The first funding for the USGCRP per se came in fiscal year 1989, and the first related descriptive document that accompanied the president 's budget was produced for the fiscal year 1990 submission. Joint submission of agency budgets was a novel concept, at least in the Earth sciences. The process produced new initiatives that were coordinated if not necessarily integrated. Thus, the USGCRP was initiated and first presented in the federal budget by President Reagan, was codified into law in 1990 (see Appendix A ), and was implemented by President Bush; today it is being carried forward under President Clinton.

Scientific Roots of Global Climate Research

The intellectual crucible in which the USGCRP was formed, however, was itself forged far earlier. The possibility of global changes in the biological, physical, and chemical environment had been recognized in the nineteenth century and became a widely accepted idea by the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1957, Revelle and Suess 10 pointed out that most of the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel combustion would remain in the atmosphere for many years and

drew on emerging climate modeling capabilities to suggest possibly alarming impacts on climate. In the early 1960s two major international conferences, known by the acronyms SMIC and SCEP, 11 put the issue on the international agenda. At the same time, convincing observational evidence emerged that human activities were in fact changing the chemical composition of the global atmosphere. Measurements first taken by Charles David Keeling in 1957 revealed that carbon dioxide was indeed increasing in the atmosphere at the planetary scale. In 1964 the President's Science Advisory Council brought the issue to the attention of the U.S. government. Subsequently, beginning in the late 1960s, early computer model simulations started to explore the possible changes in temperature and precipitation that could occur from increasing human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, an important set of environmental topics was closely considered by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Foremost among these issues were potential changes in climate and losses in stratospheric ozone. The NAS convened several panels and committees under leading scientists such as the late Roger Revelle 12 and Jule Charney. 13 The resulting reports projected that energy production from fossil fuels would continue to increase atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and estimated that a doubling of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide concentration could potentially raise global average temperature by 1.5 to 4.5°C (about 2.7 to 8°F) and produce a complex pattern of worldwide climate changes. Charney and his colleagues concluded that if carbon dioxide continued to increase there was “no reason to doubt that climate changes would result and no reason to believe that these changes would be negligible.” 14 The Revelle group saw a clear need for two kinds of action in response: “organization of a comprehensive worldwide research program and new institutional arrangements.” In the same period, ecologists also recognized that massive changes in ecosystems caused by land-use changes and other stresses could affect the carbon cycle. In this juncture of scientific findings, then, are the beginnings of the partnerships among the life and Earth sciences that have become the hallmark of global change science.

Still other studies addressed a widening range of potential global change impacts and their policy implications. 15 In 1979 and 1989 major World Climate Conferences 16 were convened by the World Meteorological Organization and other international bodies. International meetings 17 converged on the conclusion that the implications of changing climate should be assessed for development policy. In 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of hundreds of scientists from more than 50 countries, assumed responsibility for conducting periodic international assessments on climate change and its onsequences. The latest of these 18 affirms the validity of scientific concerns and concludes that human influences on climate are becoming discernible.

Thus, throughout the past two decades the NAS/NRC and their international counterparts have continued to examine the science of climate change and vari-

ability and the associated policy implications for the United States and other nations. Additionally, the NAS/NRC have simultaneously considered climate change and variability within the broader context of global change. The CGCR, author of this report, and CGCR's predecessor, the Board on Global Change, have been charged with providing continuing guidance to national and international global change efforts. In 1995, CGCR undertook an initial assessment of the scientific programs of the USGCRP, reviewed the specific role of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth/Earth Observing System, and issued a report with recommendations (the “La Jolla” report) 19 and a follow-up report on the government response. 20 The present study significantly expands that effort.

Scientific Roots of Stratospheric Ozone Research

A related history of research concerns another pressing environmental issue—depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer that shields us from damaging ultraviolet radiation. In the early 1970s, proposals to build a fleet of supersonic transports raised questions about possible damage to the ozone layer from engine emissions in the stratosphere. A major U.S. research and assessment program was launched, and the NRC was commissioned to conduct a series of studies. 21 But soon Rowland and Molina a made the startling discovery that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), not airplanes, were the frightening threat to our ozone shield. Eventually, an international assessment was conducted under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and other international bodies. 22

The discovery by Rowland and Molina reminds us that studies and reports often do not adequately address the complexities of the real world. Indeed, they can even significantly miss the mark. Studies of ozone depletion had focused on slow incremental changes and had sought incremental improvements through corresponding models and parametric analyses. Meanwhile, observations extending back to the 1950s had been tracking the amount of ozone over the Antarctic each year through its seasonal cycle. In the late 1970s an anomalous deficit was observed in the total amount of ozone over the southern hemisphere in late winter observations. Then in 1985 the British Antarctic Survey reported dramatic—and rapidly worsening—ozone losses in springtime ozone concentrations over Halley Bay.

Theories about the cause of this unprecedented and unexpected loss blossomed. Explanations ranged from the hypothesis of the simple redistribution of stratospheric ozone by atmospheric motion to proposed chemical reactions initi-

ated by the magnetic field focusing of solar electrons and protons. More complete information was clearly needed. In 1986, NASA began planning an airborne expedition using the ER-2 aircraft to penetrate the region of the stratosphere where ozone was disappearing. The mission, executed in August and September 1987 from Punta Arenas, Chile, demonstrated that ozone was being destroyed by chlorine and bromine radicals. The role of CFCs—molecules that transport chlorine to the stratosphere—in the destruction of Antarctic ozone was unequivocally confirmed. Shortly thereafter, laboratory and theoretical work pinned down other essential mechanisms of the process—mechanisms involving cloud particles, which had been overlooked in earlier studies.

With such overwhelming evidence in hand, the nations of the world moved with remarkable alacrity to mitigate the threat. International meetings developed strategies to control emissions of ozone-destroying substances, while the chemical industry worked to devise substitutes for CFCs. Within a few short years a comprehensive framework for controlling worldwide emissions had been put in place in the form of the justly admired Montreal Protocol. 23

A number of lessons relevant to the broader field of global change research may be drawn from the case of research on Antarctic ozone depletion. The severity of the ozone phenomenon demonstrates that environmental changes are not always incremental or slight. Moreover, the severity of ozone loss came as a total surprise, even though the topic had been carefully considered by the scientific community. Finally, however, the problem was assessed in remarkably short order and effective remedial measures were rapidly instituted— because a solid base of related scientific understanding had been developed through decades of focused observation and research.

An additional critical point to make in this context is that many issues in global environmental change, such as climate change, are far more complex than even the difficult ozone story. The chemical, physical, and biological aspects of the greenhouse problem are extraordinarily daunting to study, and yet an additional and more difficult challenge probably lies in understanding the human dimensions of global change phenomena.

THE ROAD AHEAD

What surprises are in store in the future? By definition, surprises cannot be fully anticipated; at best they can be acknowledged as possibilities. As such they pose a special challenge to science. Science must formulate specific questions to set about obtaining the critical observations and performing the analyses needed to answer them. It is hard to ask questions that will anticipate all possible surprises before a surprise occurs.

Preparing science for surprise is, in part, the challenge that the CGCR faced in developing this report. Scientists believe strongly that unfocused research on the complex and varied Earth system is unlikely to be productive. On the other

hand, scientists who view the world through pinholes are likely to bump into trees and fall off cliffs. How can needed focus be given to the USGCRP while still casting the research net sufficiently wide to catch the unexpected? In this report the CGCR has sought to define a framework for this endeavor, identifying a set of coherent domains of research that are likely to provide efficient and productive progress for science and to encompass the range of scientific and social issues implicit in global environmental change. This framework builds on the initial set of guiding principles defined by the committee in its La Jolla report and on the issues of great scientific and practical importance in mature areas of Earth system science that are identified in this report.

THE PATHWAYS FRAMEWORK

This report outlines a research framework across the wide scope of global environmental change in terms of the following primary topical areas:

changes in the biology and biogeochemistry of ecosystems,

changes in the climate system on seasonal-to-interannual timescales,

changes in the climate system on decadal-to-century timescales,

changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere,

paleoclimate, and

human dimensions of global environmental change.

Pathways begins with biology and biogeochemistry because of our intimate dependence on biological systems, because of the sensitivity of these systems to changes in the physical and chemical environments, and because of the pivotal role of biology in the changing biogeochemical cycles of the planet. These biogeochemical cycles are, in a sense, the metabolic chart for the planet; they provide particularly useful benchmarks of global change.

We look next into the climate system, focusing initially on climate variability on seasonal to interannual timescales and then on climate change on decadal-to-century timescales. We find that we also must consider climate variability and change on the intermediate timescale of a human generation.

Changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere drive many global changes; the atmosphere quickly transports chemical inputs from whatever source, and the chemical loadings are of sufficient scale that they can no longer be ignored. Testing ideas about global change on longer timescales is not like research to improve weather forecasts, in which feedback and correction are almost immediate. The paleoclimate record offers a unique opportunity to assess ideas about the dynamics and causes of global environmental change and variability. This record also tells us that large departures from simple expectations have occurred in the past, forcing the recognition that any program addressing global change must be

sufficiently broad in scope to ensure that surprises are caught early. This consideration is particularly important for devising observational strategies.

The human dimensions of global environmental change—that is, humans and their institutions as both agents and recipients of change—are integrated where possible into the other topical chapters of this report and are also the subject of a separate treatment. Many concerns about the changing environment are tied directly to concerns about human and ecosystem health and welfare.

The discussion of each of the six primary topical areas is structured in terms of Research Imperatives —central issues posed to the corresponding scientific community by the challenge of global environmental change. Four to six Research Imperatives are identified for each topical area. Sometimes these imperatives closely interconnect. The Research Imperatives provide guideposts for the research “pathway.”

Each Research Imperative is addressed by a set of Scientific Questions. The limbs of the research strategy begin to branch and spread. If surprises are in the wind, we hope that this broadly spreading canopy of topics, Research Imperatives, and Scientific Questions will catch the signal.

The Scientific Questions are posed at a level of detail from which an observational program, space-based and in situ, can be defined, refined, and realized. The observational strategy also consciously recognizes that surprises might well be in store. For this and other scientific reasons, an essential requirement of the observational strategy is to establish long-term, scientifically valid, consistent records for global change studies. It is fortunate that the paleoclimate community has provided extremely detailed histories of climate and environmental change that can underpin the instrumental records, establishing some basis for the assessment of future monitoring. Long-term monitoring is a central scientific challenge for global change research. It is also a difficult challenge to meet in a social environment that so often values or wants something new.

Observations are essential to test hypotheses from which models can be developed. Models are essential if prediction and synthesis are sought. Observations are useless, however, if the data are inaccessible to users (e.g., because of the problem of data recorded in “write-only ” memory). Data systems have been a constant challenge to all scientific investigations; they are particularly problematic when large amounts of data are involved, as in global change studies. Fortunately, through a unique confluence of satellite and computer technology, science stands on the threshold of a greatly enhanced ability to exploit such masses of data and hence is well positioned to monitor and predict changes in the global climate and environment. Satellites orbiting the Earth can monitor changes in sea height, wind velocity, atmospheric water vapor, snow cover, and a wide variety of other parameters. Satellite data can be merged with ground-based measurement networks in a matter of minutes through a series of telecommunications satellites, microwave links, and fiber. Data derived from these sources serve as

inputs to large computer-based models, which in turn provide predictions about future environmental trends and variability. The existing and future Internet and associated services give the USGCRP an opportunity to manage this stream of data successfully and at reasonable cost.

A data strategy is needed that emphasizes flexible and innovative ystems—systems that are less costly than the current EOS core system, that appropriately reflect focused responsibility for data character, that provide open access to the scientific community and the public, and that rapidly track technological developments.

REVIEW OF THE USGCRP

As mandated in the legislation establishing the USGCRP (see Appendix A ), the NRC has provided continuing oversight and review of the program (see References ). Oversight has been the responsibility of a consortium of NRC groups, coordinated through the former Board on Global Change (now the Board on Sustainable Development and its Committee on Global Change Research, CGCR) and other predecessors. For example, the Climate Research Committee and its panels (operating under the NRC's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate) have overseen climate-related elements of the USGCRP, with particular attention to international programs such as the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program. The NRC's Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change has carried out seminal studies to define social science aspects of the USGCRP. The CGCR and other NRC units receive regular updates on program status at their meetings. With participation by these and other NRC boards, committees, and panels, the CGCR carried out a comprehensive review of the program in the summer of 1995, 24 followed in 1996 by a review of government actions taken in response to the 1995 report. 25 In November 1996 the approach to the Pathways report was determined at a CGCR meeting, which for the first time convened representatives from each of the USGCRP agencies and chairpersons and staff of each NRC committee involved in global change research. The findings and recommendations of the present report are based on this continuing stream of review and assessment.

The central purposes of the USGCRP areas are as follows:

to observe and document changes in the Earth system;

to understand why these changes are occurring;

to improve predictions of future global changes;

to analyze the environmental, socioeconomic, and health consequences of global change; and

to support state-of-the-science assessments of global environmental change issues. 26

These “central purposes” of the USGCRP set a clear, appropriate, overarching vision for the Program. Moreover, during the past decade, the USGCRP has realized an impressive array of scientific accomplishments. Progress has been made in understanding the loss of stratospheric ozone, and amendments and adjustments to the Montreal Protocol have benefited from research flowing from the USGCRP. Ice cores have provided evidence of past changes in the Earth's environment, and human-induced environmental changes have been documented. There is a much better understanding, including the development of large-scale models, of the important roles of terrestrial and marine ecosystems in the overall carbon cycle, including knowledge of how such systems might shift under a changing climate. The success in providing predictive and useful information about El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena is a significant step in providing scientific information for natural resource management and for improving human welfare, and it offers encouragement that the broader issues of climate variability and human-induced climate change can also be successfully attacked. Finally, some accomplishments in observations are noteworthy. The precise measurements from space of sea surface height by the U.S.-French Topex-Poseidon mission have advanced our knowledge of sea surface change and ocean circulation. The Mission to Planet Earth Pathfinder datasets have advanced our insights across a wide array of global change issues.

The inherent challenges in achieving the central purposes of the USGCRP, however, will be ongoing; to ensure our well-being for the foreseeable future, it is essential to meet these challenges. They also set a formidable and difficult agenda for science, and this conclusion carries with it the need to do better. We must find ways of advancing the scientific attack on the problems of global environmental change more effectively. Fortunately, with 10 years of experience of successes and setbacks, we are in a far better position to meet the scientific challenges in the coming decade. There is, in fact, a rich body of information, in the form of lessons learned, to be gleaned from the past decade.

Lessons Learned

What are the lessons of the past 10 years? The reviews carried out over the Program's first decade have in fact identified a key set of “lessons learned”—attributes that the Program must maintain and precepts it must observe to achieve greater and needed successes in attacking the difficult issues of global environmental change.

Need for Programmatic Focus

Where research communities have been given resources based on collaboratively established priorities to implement critical activities, maintain and distribute datasets, and synthesize the information, rapid and impressive progress

has been made. Such successes have occurred primarily within the framework of formal programs (e.g., the TOGA studies of El Niño and the Upper Atmosphere Research Program studies of ozone destruction that led to the Montreal Protocol) and sometimes through grassroots initiatives (e.g., carbon cycle modeling). Many global change projects are currently on a positive trajectory and success is likely. However, many critical global change questions are not receiving the level of support needed to make similar progress; the sum of support for the current “focused” b programs, according to the USGCRP specifications, represents an inadequate fraction of what is needed to accomplish its goals. For example, of the total fiscal year 1998 budget request for the USGCRP, 61 percent supports space-based observation programs and 39 percent supports scientific research. 27

In part this problem has arisen because of disaggregation of the national effort across multiple agencies. The agencies have neither an enforceable mandate to cooperate in a manner necessary to be successful nor a system that requires accountability of expenditures. The Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) was designed to improve the coordination of both the USGCRP agencies and the budget crosscuts with OMB in presenting a national program. Unfortunately, the management framework has not had the expected effect. The desired “virtual agency” c has been quite far from reality.

The fact that a principal component d of the nation's global ocean-carbon cycle research program fell victim to budget reductions during 1996 to 1997 at DOE and required a last-ditch ad hoc rescue by NOAA is a clear statement of programmatic failure, not programmatic success. The tradeoffs between carbon sources and sinks were considered issues of immense economic significance in the recent Kyoto climate negotiations. Better understanding of the carbon cycle will be of great value in the ongoing negotiations. On the positive side, there are new and encouraging signs of focus and priority emerging from the NSTC/CENR structure and process.

Need for Program Balance

It can also be argued that there is currently an imbalance within the program among its major components: observing systems, data systems, and research and

analysis. For instance, in the fiscal year 1996 USGCRP budget breakout, Our Changing Planet, 28 of the $1.83 billion allotted to the global change program, $1.19 billion (65 percent) was allocated to “Observing the Earth System ” ($845 million) and “Managing and Archiving Data and Information” ($343 million). Of the remainder, $434 million was allocated to “Understanding Global Change” (24 percent). As indicated above, this distribution of resources essentially continued in the fiscal year 1998 budget. It can be argued that the large investment required to develop and deploy the space observation component of the USGCRP has comprised perhaps too large a fraction of the program's “focused” budget. Nevertheless, the space missions designed to facilitate global change research, such as sea surface altimetry and scatterometry and the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, have been great successes. Moreover, after an 11-year hiatus, the capability to obtain ocean color data has recently been restored with great scientific reward.

NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) polar platforms—EOS AM-1, EOS PM-1, and EOS CHEM-1—were conceived as broadly scoped data-gathering systems. This foundation will be central for needed future missions and will set the baseline for a long-term operational environmental monitoring program that must be built on the operational weather and ozone-observing system of NOAA, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and their international partners. However, while the EOS should begin to pay dividends with the scheduled 1998 launch of the AM-1 observatory followed by the late 2000 launch of the PM-1 mission, the initial focus of the USGCRP on EOS set a near-term timescale (and a cost) that made rapid response to scientific and technical challenges difficult.

The question of balance is further complicated by the realities of federal funding. Savings that might be obtained by trimming costs at NASA from space-based observations would be unlikely to flow within the agency to in situ observational activities, let alone to the research and analysis (R&A) component (or even to other space-based missions). Still more unlikely is the transfer of such funds to other agencies within the USGCRP. These are political and institutional realities. Nevertheless, there remains the question of balance within the overall

USGCRP observational system between space-based and in situ systems. (In fiscal year 1996 only 11 percent of USGCRP observations were devoted to in situ measurements.) Finally, although major breakthroughs have emerged from the R&A component of the national effort, it is just this part of the effort that continues to receive serious cuts within several agencies in the USGCRP.

Several lessons about Program balance can thus be extracted from the past 10 years. First, space-based observations are essential yet costly. We need to find ways to lower their cost while also making the space-based systems more budgetarily robust and flexible. We applaud NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinders and its rethinking of the EOS mission structure as steps in the right direction. Still another lesson is that in situ observations are critical (e.g., the TOGA ocean buoy array for ENSO prediction); yet in situ observational systems such as radiosonde and ozone networks continue to degrade around the world. We need to find ways to implement new in situ observing systems while restoring and maintaining key existing systems. Finally, in recent years the scientific community has gone through a difficult experience: R&A budgets in critical areas have continued to decline, and science is simultaneously being asked for answers to increasingly difficult and important questions. We must find ways to reverse this declining trend (NSF's proposed fiscal year 1999 budget is a welcome change).

Need to Maintain Critical Observations

During the past 10 years, the value of critical combinations of models and observations has been repeatedly demonstrated in providing the nation and the world with critical information about specific issues of global environmental change. The observing system that proved so valuable in the early detection of the 1997 to 1998 El Niño is a case in point. The research-based observing system and coupled atmosphere-ocean models developed under the auspices of the TOGA program to study ENSO phenomena made it possible as early as spring 1997 to detect and predict the 1997 to 1998 El Niño and its potential magnitude. Many social and economic systems are profoundly affected by weather events and climate patterns linked to ENSO; people in locations as distant as central Africa, southeast Asia, Australia, and North America are all benefiting from this scientific work, as agricultural, flood management, relief assistance, and market practices are adjusted.

Establishing an operational capability to maintain this initial ENSO observing system and training practitioners in the use of the data are large challenges, but there can no longer be any doubt that the investment has brought results of scientific interest as well as practical concern for natural resource management. This is an example of a crucial tenet of the Earth System Sciences Committee's strategy for studying global change: the institutionalization of critical measurement systems in an operational mode once their efficacy in documenting information valuable to policy makers is demonstrated in the course of a research

program. This requirement will continue to be challenging for ENSO research, but more broadly the past 10 years have shown clearly that correctly transferring other key aspects of the observing program for USGCRP to operational programs will be very difficult.

This lesson also emerges clearly from negotiations on the polar platforms of NASA, NOAA, and DOD over the past 10 years. To date, the process is not a story of success for the USGCRP. For example, regarding coordination of the next generation of NOAA/DOD operational polar platforms and NASA EOS AM-1 and PM-1 satellites, if current plans proceed, there will be a significant gap between the conclusion of the flight of EOS PM-1 and the first NPOESS-1 (nominally planned for an afternoon crossing). e This gap will be significant because it will make coordination and calibration of the measurements taken by EOS PM-1 and NPOESS-1 extremely difficult. f Beyond this specific issue and the continuing problem of adequately sequencing observations, there is a more general lesson to be learned: it is difficult for an operational program (e.g., NPOESS) to incorporate an adequate level of scientific advice, review, and essential oversight to ensure that the scientific needs of global change science will be addressed. This difficulty has been exacerbated until quite recently by NASA's distance from the NPOESS planning process; moreover, NPOESS itself is driven by two operational agencies (NOAA and DOD) with somewhat different demands on the data and data calibration and accuracy requirements, and it is understandable (but problematic) that global change issues are not high on the priority list.

The connectivity between EOS AM-1 and the future midmorning operational polar platform, EUMETSAT's METOP-2/3, is even more confused. This general issue brings to mind the additional difficulty of ensuring adequate coordination internationally, as possibilities are explored to transfer scientifically motivated observations to operational programs.

Other examples of problems are beginning to arise as research programs dependent on global observations of ocean, land surface, and atmospheric properties are concluding their intensive field campaigns. No provision is in place to make the necessary commitments for systematic acquisition of operational climate and global change in situ data to continue the key time series started by these programs. These are precisely the types of problems that the USGCRP was charged to resolve.

Need for Well-Calibrated Observations

During the past 10 years, we have been reminded again and again of the painful consequences of attempting to use inadequately calibrated observations

to answer important questions about global environmental change. On a more positive note, great scientific advancements have been made when it is possible to use long-term, highly calibrated, rigorously maintained scientific observations. For example, precise measurements of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have yielded valuable information about the annual cycle of the biosphere and the distribution of carbon dioxide sources and sinks. Precise measurements of CFCs have also enabled the tracing of atmospheric and oceanic circulations and improved our understanding of stratospheric ozone loss. Precise measurements of solar radiance have helped us distinguish between natural and human influences on global mean temperature. The general lesson here, then, is that high-quality data are an immensely powerful lever to obtain scientific insights on global change.

Need for a Focused Scientific Strategy

The NRC's reviews of the USGCRP over the past decade (see References ), notably the intensive community-based review conducted at La Jolla in the summer of 1995, 29 have consistently emphasized the need for the program to focus on critical scientific issues and the unresolved questions that are most relevant to pressing national policy issues. This document strongly reiterates that view. The nation and the world are beginning to make momentous decisions about development, technology, and the environment; at the same time, economic and political factors place severe constraints on budgets for research and infrastructure. A sharp focus on the truly essential investments in research and supporting infrastructure is thus more important than ever. A more sharply focused scientific strategy for the USGCRP is urgently required.

Charting and understanding the course of change in the Earth's physical, chemical, and biological systems, and their connections with human activities, are fundamental to the nation's welfare in the coming decades. Economic decisions, international negotiations, preservation of public health, and educational development demand this understanding. For example, without trusted knowledge about changes in the carbon and hydrological cycles, ecological systems, temperature structure, storm systems, ultraviolet intensity, nutrient deposition, and oxidant patterns, defensible positions for international measures to protect the environment cannot be established and sustained.

Development of this urgently required knowledge will demand concerted efforts and continuing scientific leadership. As the world's leading scientific nation, the United States, working with the international community, must recognize the importance of providing scientific leadership in defining and diagnosing changes in the state of the Earth system in the context of national needs and scientific interests. Strategic decisions on scientific goals, research programs, and supporting infrastructure are critical elements of this leadership, and it is the committee's view that a new strategic approach is needed. We thus present our findings and recom-

mendations here with the full sense of responsibility that accompanies the strong belief that the challenges posed to people by global environmental change will not go away. The challenges will not be legislated out of existence; they will be faced by our children's children, and they must be faced by us.

1. WMO (1979).

2. DOE (1977, 1980).

3. Goody (1982).

4. NRC (1966), Fein et al. (1983).

5. There have been dozens of NRC reports addressing this topic; the References contain many examples.

6. ESSC (1986, 1988).

7. Goody (1982).

8. NRC (1986).

9. ESSC (1986, 1988).

10. Revelle and Suess (1957).

11. MIT (1970, 1971).

12. NRC (1982a).

13. NRC (1979).

15. NRC (1982b, 1991).

16. WMO (1979, 1990).

17. WMO (1984, 1986).

18. IPCC (1995).

19. NRC (1995).

20. NRC (1996).

21. For example, NRC (1982c).

22. A recent update is contained in UNEP (1994).

23. Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987).

24. NRC (1995).

25. NRC (1996).

26. USGCRP (1997, p. 3).

27. Ibid., p. 78.

28. USGCRP (1995, p. 109).

29. NRC (1995).

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goody, R. 1982. Global Change: Impacts on Habitability . Report by the executive committee of a workshop held at Woods Hole, Mass., June 16-21. JPL D-95. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Earth System Sciences Committee (ESSC). 1986. Earth System Science. Overview .Advisory Council, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, D.C.

Earth System Sciences Committee (ESSC). 1988. Earth System Science. A Closer View . Advisory Council, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, D.C.

Fein, J.S., P.L. Stephens, and K.S. Loughran. 1983. The Global Atmospheric Research Program: 1979-1982. Reviews of Geophysical and Space Physics 21:1076-1096.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 1995. Climate Change 1995: IPCC Second Assessment Report Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). 1996. Understanding Our Planet .ICSU Press, Paris, France.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 1970. Man's Impact on the Global Environment. Report of the Study of Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP) .MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 1971. Inadvertent Climate Modification. Report of the Study of Man's Impact on Climate (SMIC) .MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

National Research Council (NRC), Committee on Atmospheric Sciences. 1966. The Feasibility of a Global Observation and Analysis Experiment . National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate. 1979. Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Geophysics Study Committee. 1982a. Energy and Climate .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), CO 2 /Climate Review Panel. 1982b. Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Second Assessment .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. 1982c. Causes and Effects of Stratospheric Ozone Reduction: An Update .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC). 1983a. Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. 1983b. Changing Climate .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. 1983c. El Niño and the Southern Oscillation: A Scientific Plan . National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), U.S. Committee for an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. 1986. Global Change in the Geosphere-Biosphere. Initial Priorities for an IGBP .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. 1991. Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming .National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Committee on Global Change Research and Board on Sustainable Development. 1995. A Review of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and NASA's Mission to Planet Earth/Earth Observing System (La Jolla report). National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council (NRC), Committee on Global Change Research. 1996. A Review of the U.S. Global Change Research Program . Letter report. National Research Council, Washington, D.C.

Revelle, R., and H.E. Suess. 1957. Carbon dioxide exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO 2 during the past decades. Tellus 9:18.

United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). 1994. Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 1994 .United Nations Environment Program, Geneva.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 1977. Workshop on the Global Effects of Carbon Dioxide from Fossil Fuel, W. P. Elliot and L. Machta, eds. DOE, Washington, D.C.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), 1980. Workshop on Environmental and Societal Consequences of a Possible CO 2 -Induced Climate Change. Conducted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 2-6, 1979, Annapolis, Md. DOE, Washington, D.C.

USGCRP. 1992. Our Changing Planet: The FY 1993 U.S. Global Change Research Program A Supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1993 Budget. U.S. Global Change Research Program Office, Washington, D.C.

USGCRP. 1995. Our Changing Planet: The FY 1996 U.S. Global Change Research Program A Supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1996 Budget. U.S. Global Change Research Program Office, Washington, D.C.

USGCRP. 1997. Our Changing Planet: The FY 1998 U.S. Global Change Research Program A Supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1998 Budget. U.S. Global Change Research Program Office, Washington, D.C.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 1979. Proceedings of the World Climate Conference .WMO, Geneva.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 1984. Report of the Study Conference on Sensitivity of Ecosystems and Society to Climate Change . WMO Publication 83. WMO, Geneva.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 1986. Report of the International Conference on the Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts .WMO, Geneva.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 1990. Proceedings of the Second World Climate Conference .WMO, Geneva.

How can we understand and rise to the environmental challenges of global change? One clear answer is to understand the science of global change, not solely in terms of the processes that control changes in climate and the composition of the atmosphere, but in how ecosystems and human society interact with these changes. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a number of such research efforts—supported by computer and satellite technology—have been launched. Yet many opportunities for integration remain unexploited, and many fundamental questions remain about the earth's capacity to support a growing human population.

This volume encourages a renewed commitment to understanding global change and sets a direction for research in the decade ahead. Through case studies the book explores what can be learned from the lessons of the past 20 years and what are the outstanding scientific questions. Highlights include:

• Research imperatives and strategies for investigators in the areas of atmospheric chemistry, climate, ecosystem studies, and human dimensions of global change.
• The context of climate change, including lessons to be gleaned from paleoclimatology.
• Human responses to—and forcing of—projected global change.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of global change research to date and provides a framework for answering urgent questions.

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Writing a Paper about an Environmental Issue

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Are you a student tasked with writing a research paper on an environmental issue? These few tips, along with some hard and focused work, should get you most of the way there.

Find a Topic

Look for a topic that speaks to you, that grabs your attention. Alternatively, choose a topic about which you are genuinely interested in learning more. It will be a lot easier to spend time working on something of interest to you.

Here are some places you can find ideas for a paper:

• Global warming
• Biodiversity
• Deforestation
• Fossil fuels
• Water Pollution
• The science or environment sections of major newspapers and news organizations will feature articles about current environmental news and events.
• Environmental news websites like Grist or Environmental News Network .

Conduct Research

Are you using internet resources? Make sure you can assess the quality of the information you find. This article from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab is useful to help with assessing the quality of your sources.

Print resources are not to be neglected. Visit your school or city library, learn how to use their search engine, and talk to your librarian about accessing the resources available.

Are you expected to constrain your sources to primary literature? That body of knowledge consists of peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals. Consult your librarian for help with accessing the proper databases to reach those articles.

Follow Instructions

Carefully read the handout or prompt given to you and which contains instructions about the assignment. Early in the process, make sure you choose a topic that will satisfy the assigned requirements. Once half-way through the paper, and once when it’s done, check it against the instructions to make sure you didn’t drift away from what was required.

Start With a Solid Structure

First craft a paper outline with your main ideas organized, and a thesis statement . A logical outline will make it easy to gradually flesh out ideas and eventually produce complete paragraphs with good transitions between them. Make sure all the sections serve the purpose of the paper outlined in the thesis statement.

After you have a good draft produced, put the paper down, and don’t pick it up until the next day. It’s due tomorrow? Next time, start working on it earlier. This break will help you with the editing stage: you need fresh eyes to read, and re-read your draft for flow, typos, and a myriad other little problems.

Pay Attention to Formatting

Along the way, check that you are following your teacher’s formatting instructions: font size, line spacing, margins, length, page numbers, title page, etc. A poorly formatted paper will suggest to your teacher that not only the form, but the content is of low quality as well.

Avoid Plagiarism

First, make sure you know what plagiarism is , you can then more easily avoid it. Pay especially close attention to properly attributing the work you cite.

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Research in Environmental Economics - NCEE Working Paper Series

EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) publishes a working paper series on research in environmental economics. Paper topics include environmental management, resources and conservation, agriculture, global issues, institutional issues, and other topics. These papers are either authored by NCEE economists or produced with funding from NCEE.

The working papers are distributed for purposes of information and discussion. The opinions and findings expressed in these papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of EPA or NCEE. NCEE is committed to maintaining a high standard of quality in the NCEE Working Paper Series, and each paper must receive a favorable peer review prior to publication in the series. See Working Paper Series Instructions .

Any questions regarding the NCEE Working Paper Series can be addressed to the Managing Editor, Cynthia Morgan ( [email protected] ).

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Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Environment Problems — Environmental Issues

Essays on Environmental Issues

Environmental issues are a crucial topic for essays, as they address some of the most pressing challenges facing our planet today. When choosing an environmental issues essay topic, it's important to consider the significance of the subject matter and the potential for impactful discussions. This article will offer advice on selecting a compelling topic and provide a diverse list of recommended essay topics, divided by category.

The Importance of Environmental Issues Essay Topics

Environmental issues encompass a wide range of challenges, including climate change, pollution, deforestation, and endangered species. These topics are critical because they directly impact the health of our planet and all its inhabitants. By addressing environmental issues in essays, students can raise awareness, promote solutions, and contribute to the global conversation about sustainability and conservation.

When choosing a topic for an environmental issues essay, it's essential to consider your interests, the current relevance of the issue, and the potential for generating thought-provoking discussions. You should also take into account the availability of credible sources and data to support your arguments. Additionally, choosing a specific aspect of a broader environmental issue can help narrow the focus of your essay and make your arguments more compelling.

Recommended Environmental Issues Essay Topics

• Climate Change
• The impact of climate change on global food security
• Policy responses to climate change in developing countries
• The role of renewable energy in mitigating climate change
• Climate change adaptation strategies for vulnerable communities
• Carbon pricing and its effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• The impact of climate change on wildlife
• Strategies to mitigate climate change
• The role of renewable energy in combating climate change
• Climate change and its effect on agriculture
• The importance of international cooperation in addressing climate change
• Plastic pollution in the world's oceans
• The health effects of air pollution in urban areas
• Regulatory approaches to controlling industrial pollution
• The impact of electronic waste on the environment
• Strategies for reducing water pollution in agricultural areas
• The effects of air pollution on human health
• Ways to reduce water pollution
• The role of government regulations in controlling pollution
• The impact of industrial pollution on the environment
• Deforestation
• The effects of deforestation on biodiversity in tropical rainforests
• Community-based forest management as a solution to deforestation
• The role of corporate responsibility in combating deforestation
• The impact of deforestation on indigenous communities
• Reforestation efforts and their impact on climate change mitigation

Endangered Species

• The ethical implications of captive breeding for endangered species conservation
• The impact of illegal wildlife trade on endangered species populations
• Conservation strategies for protecting endangered marine species
• The role of ecotourism in supporting endangered species conservation
• The potential for de-extinction in preserving endangered species

Sustainable Development

• Challenges and opportunities for sustainable urban development
• The role of sustainable agriculture in addressing food insecurity
• The impact of consumer behavior on sustainable development goals
• Corporate sustainability initiatives and their impact on the environment
• The role of education in promoting sustainable development practices

Environmental Policy

• The effectiveness of international agreements in addressing environmental issues
• The role of government regulation in promoting environmental conservation
• The impact of environmental lobbying on policy-making decisions
• The potential for market-based solutions in environmental policy
• The influence of public opinion on environmental policy development

Water Scarcity

• The causes of water scarcity in developing countries
• Technological solutions to address water scarcity
• The impact of water scarcity on agriculture
• Strategies for sustainable water management
• The role of government policies in addressing water scarcity

Biodiversity Loss

• The importance of preserving biodiversity
• The impact of habitat destruction on biodiversity
• Strategies for conserving endangered species
• The role of ecotourism in promoting biodiversity conservation
• The ethical implications of biodiversity loss

Waste Management

• The challenges of e-waste disposal
• Strategies for promoting recycling and composting
• The impact of waste management on public health
• The role of circular economy in reducing waste
• The economic benefits of effective waste management

These environmental issues essay topics provide a wide range of options for students to explore and analyze. By choosing a compelling environmental issues essay topic, students can engage in meaningful discussions and contribute to the ongoing efforts to address the challenges facing our planet. It's climate change, pollution, deforestation, endangered species, sustainable development, or environmental policy - there are countless opportunities to explore and raise awareness about important environmental issues through essays.

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Research Topics & Ideas: Environment

100+ Environmental Science Research Topics & Ideas

Finding and choosing a strong research topic is the critical first step when it comes to crafting a high-quality dissertation, thesis or research project. Here, we’ll explore a variety research ideas and topic thought-starters related to various environmental science disciplines, including ecology, oceanography, hydrology, geology, soil science, environmental chemistry, environmental economics, and environmental ethics.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps . In this post, we’ll kickstart the process by sharing some research topic ideas within the environmental sciences. This is the starting point though. To develop a well-defined research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , along with a well-justified plan of action to fill that gap.

If you’re new to the oftentimes perplexing world of research, or if this is your first time undertaking a formal academic research project, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course. Also be sure to also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to develop a high-quality research topic from scratch.

Overview: Environmental Topics

• Ecology /ecological science
• Atmospheric science
• Oceanography
• Soil science
• Environmental chemistry
• Environmental economics
• Environmental ethics
• Examples  of dissertations and theses

Topics & Ideas: Ecological Science

• The impact of land-use change on species diversity and ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes
• The role of disturbances such as fire and drought in shaping arid ecosystems
• The impact of climate change on the distribution of migratory marine species
• Investigating the role of mutualistic plant-insect relationships in maintaining ecosystem stability
• The effects of invasive plant species on ecosystem structure and function
• The impact of habitat fragmentation caused by road construction on species diversity and population dynamics in the tropics
• The role of ecosystem services in urban areas and their economic value to a developing nation
• The effectiveness of different grassland restoration techniques in degraded ecosystems
• The impact of land-use change through agriculture and urbanisation on soil microbial communities in a temperate environment
• The role of microbial diversity in ecosystem health and nutrient cycling in an African savannah

Topics & Ideas: Atmospheric Science

• The impact of climate change on atmospheric circulation patterns above tropical rainforests
• The role of atmospheric aerosols in cloud formation and precipitation above cities with high pollution levels
• The impact of agricultural land-use change on global atmospheric composition
• Investigating the role of atmospheric convection in severe weather events in the tropics
• The impact of urbanisation on regional and global atmospheric ozone levels
• The impact of sea surface temperature on atmospheric circulation and tropical cyclones
• The impact of solar flares on the Earth’s atmospheric composition
• The impact of climate change on atmospheric turbulence and air transportation safety
• The impact of stratospheric ozone depletion on atmospheric circulation and climate change
• The role of atmospheric rivers in global water supply and sea-ice formation

Topics & Ideas: Oceanography

• The impact of ocean acidification on kelp forests and biogeochemical cycles
• The role of ocean currents in distributing heat and regulating desert rain
• The impact of carbon monoxide pollution on ocean chemistry and biogeochemical cycles
• Investigating the role of ocean mixing in regulating coastal climates
• The impact of sea level rise on the resource availability of low-income coastal communities
• The impact of ocean warming on the distribution and migration patterns of marine mammals
• The impact of ocean deoxygenation on biogeochemical cycles in the arctic
• The role of ocean-atmosphere interactions in regulating rainfall in arid regions
• The impact of ocean eddies on global ocean circulation and plankton distribution
• The role of ocean-ice interactions in regulating the Earth’s climate and sea level

Tops & Ideas: Hydrology

• The impact of agricultural land-use change on water resources and hydrologic cycles in temperate regions
• The impact of agricultural groundwater availability on irrigation practices in the global south
• The impact of rising sea-surface temperatures on global precipitation patterns and water availability
• Investigating the role of wetlands in regulating water resources for riparian forests
• The impact of tropical ranches on river and stream ecosystems and water quality
• The impact of urbanisation on regional and local hydrologic cycles and water resources for agriculture
• The role of snow cover and mountain hydrology in regulating regional agricultural water resources
• The impact of drought on food security in arid and semi-arid regions
• The role of groundwater recharge in sustaining water resources in arid and semi-arid environments
• The impact of sea level rise on coastal hydrology and the quality of water resources

Topics & Ideas: Geology

• The impact of tectonic activity on the East African rift valley
• The role of mineral deposits in shaping ancient human societies
• The impact of sea-level rise on coastal geomorphology and shoreline evolution
• Investigating the role of erosion in shaping the landscape and impacting desertification
• The impact of mining on soil stability and landslide potential
• The impact of volcanic activity on incoming solar radiation and climate
• The role of geothermal energy in decarbonising the energy mix of megacities
• The impact of Earth’s magnetic field on geological processes and solar wind
• The impact of plate tectonics on the evolution of mammals
• The role of the distribution of mineral resources in shaping human societies and economies, with emphasis on sustainability

Topics & Ideas: Soil Science

• The impact of dam building on soil quality and fertility
• The role of soil organic matter in regulating nutrient cycles in agricultural land
• The impact of climate change on soil erosion and soil organic carbon storage in peatlands
• Investigating the role of above-below-ground interactions in nutrient cycling and soil health
• The impact of deforestation on soil degradation and soil fertility
• The role of soil texture and structure in regulating water and nutrient availability in boreal forests
• The impact of sustainable land management practices on soil health and soil organic matter
• The impact of wetland modification on soil structure and function
• The role of soil-atmosphere exchange and carbon sequestration in regulating regional and global climate
• The impact of salinization on soil health and crop productivity in coastal communities

Topics & Ideas: Environmental Chemistry

• The impact of cobalt mining on water quality and the fate of contaminants in the environment
• The role of atmospheric chemistry in shaping air quality and climate change
• The impact of soil chemistry on nutrient availability and plant growth in wheat monoculture
• Investigating the fate and transport of heavy metal contaminants in the environment
• The impact of climate change on biochemical cycling in tropical rainforests
• The impact of various types of land-use change on biochemical cycling
• The role of soil microbes in mediating contaminant degradation in the environment
• The impact of chemical and oil spills on freshwater and soil chemistry
• The role of atmospheric nitrogen deposition in shaping water and soil chemistry
• The impact of over-irrigation on the cycling and fate of persistent organic pollutants in the environment

Topics & Ideas: Environmental Economics

• The impact of climate change on the economies of developing nations
• The role of market-based mechanisms in promoting sustainable use of forest resources
• The impact of environmental regulations on economic growth and competitiveness
• Investigating the economic benefits and costs of ecosystem services for African countries
• The impact of renewable energy policies on regional and global energy markets
• The role of water markets in promoting sustainable water use in southern Africa
• The impact of land-use change in rural areas on regional and global economies
• The impact of environmental disasters on local and national economies
• The role of green technologies and innovation in shaping the zero-carbon transition and the knock-on effects for local economies
• The impact of environmental and natural resource policies on income distribution and poverty of rural communities

Topics & Ideas: Environmental Ethics

• The ethical foundations of environmentalism and the environmental movement regarding renewable energy
• The role of values and ethics in shaping environmental policy and decision-making in the mining industry
• The impact of cultural and religious beliefs on environmental attitudes and behaviours in first world countries
• Investigating the ethics of biodiversity conservation and the protection of endangered species in palm oil plantations
• The ethical implications of sea-level rise for future generations and vulnerable coastal populations
• The role of ethical considerations in shaping sustainable use of natural forest resources
• The impact of environmental justice on marginalized communities and environmental policies in Asia
• The ethical implications of environmental risks and decision-making under uncertainty
• The role of ethics in shaping the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable future for the construction industry
• The impact of environmental values on consumer behaviour and the marketplace: a case study of the ‘bring your own shopping bag’ policy

Examples: Real Dissertation & Thesis Topics

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various environmental science-related degree programs to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• The physiology of microorganisms in enhanced biological phosphorous removal (Saunders, 2014)
• The influence of the coastal front on heavy rainfall events along the east coast (Henson, 2019)
• Forage production and diversification for climate-smart tropical and temperate silvopastures (Dibala, 2019)
• Advancing spectral induced polarization for near surface geophysical characterization (Wang, 2021)
• Assessment of Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter and Thamnocephalus platyurus as Tools to Monitor Cyanobacterial Bloom Development and Toxicity (Hipsher, 2019)
• Evaluating the Removal of Microcystin Variants with Powdered Activated Carbon (Juang, 2020)
• The effect of hydrological restoration on nutrient concentrations, macroinvertebrate communities, and amphibian populations in Lake Erie coastal wetlands (Berg, 2019)
• Utilizing hydrologic soil grouping to estimate corn nitrogen rate recommendations (Bean, 2019)
• Fungal Function in House Dust and Dust from the International Space Station (Bope, 2021)
• Assessing Vulnerability and the Potential for Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) in Sudan’s Blue Nile Basin (Mohamed, 2022)
• A Microbial Water Quality Analysis of the Recreational Zones in the Los Angeles River of Elysian Valley, CA (Nguyen, 2019)
• Dry Season Water Quality Study on Three Recreational Sites in the San Gabriel Mountains (Vallejo, 2019)
• Wastewater Treatment Plan for Unix Packaging Adjustment of the Potential Hydrogen (PH) Evaluation of Enzymatic Activity After the Addition of Cycle Disgestase Enzyme (Miessi, 2020)
• Laying the Genetic Foundation for the Conservation of Longhorn Fairy Shrimp (Kyle, 2021).

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are quite specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. To create a top-notch research topic, you will need to be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you’ll need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Need more help?

If you’re still feeling a bit unsure about how to find a research topic for your environmental science dissertation or research project, be sure to check out our private coaching services below, as well as our Research Topic Kickstarter .

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10 Comments

research topics on climate change and environment

I wish to learn things in a more advanced but simple way and with the hopes that I am in the right place.

Thank so much for the research topics. It really helped

the guides were really helpful

Research topics on environmental geology

Thanks for the research topics….I need a research topic on Geography

hi I need research questions ideas

I want the research on environmental planning and management

I want a topic on environmental sustainability

It good coaching

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79 Environmental Issues Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best environmental issues topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on environmental issues, 📌 most interesting environmental issues topics to write about.

• Human Impact to the Environment – Cuba Deforestation Issue One of the most significant aspects during the political eras in the nation that characterized the political development was the fluctuation in deforestation.
• Reflection on Global Issues: Globalization of the Environment The global conflicts, managing the post-pandemic world, and the need to navigate the social injustices to ensure equality for all are among the most pressing ones.
• Honda Motor Company Environmental Policies and Issues It was also ranked at position six among the world’s top motor vehicle manufacturers and was the second Japanese exporter to the USA and the rest of the world trailing behind behind the Toyota motor […]
• The Aral Sea’s Environmental Issues Prior to its destruction, the Sea was one of the biggest water bodies, rich in different species of flora and fauna; a case that is opposite today, as the sea is almost becoming extinct.
• Organic Food Is Not a Cure for Environmental and Health Issues For instance, the same group of scientists claims that the moderate use of pesticides in organic agriculture is particularly important to consider while purchasing food.
• “The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental Issues”. Summary In situations both large-scale and small, from the location of a building project or the wholesale extermination of pests, to the daily consumption of meat for our pleasure, he notes that we ignore the pain […]
• Datasets and Environmental Issues The date set on the level of nitrogen dioxide in the air is one of the most frequently used information and its analysis can show determine the change in air pollution, its sources, and the […]
• Brazil Environmental Issues Brazil is one of the countries located in Southern America and is one of the emerging economies in the world given its economic performance.
• Quality Issues in Ford Motors Asia Pacific: Environmental and Other Factors In the Asia Pacific region, Ford Motors has made its mark by addressing the demands of the riding public or the growing interest of customers to Ford products, including parts and servies. Social Imperative Quality […]
• Environmental Issues, Psychology, and Economics This is the basis of the dynamic interaction between man and the environment. The learning process is primarily determined by the conformity or inconsistency of the environment of such activities.
• Environmental Issues of Rwanda Extensive farming, as well as animal husbandry, is a common phenomenon in the country, hence leading to serious environmental degradation on the land. Deteriorating quality of water and extinction threat to wetlands in the country […]
• The International Relations Theories in Addressing of Environmental Issues The political dimension of the green theory has led to the emergence of “environmental justice, environmental democracy, environmental activism and the green states”.
• Environmental Issues in Asia This paper is going to have a look at the key environmental issues in Asian countries as well as the policies put in place by various agencies to address the issues.
• Industrial Meat Business and Environmental Issues According to Goodman, it is essential to consider the ethical implications of our food choices and their impact on animals, the environment, and society. By choosing to consume meat, individuals are complicit in the perpetuation […]
• Thermodynamics: Application to Environmental Issues Cyclists would use at least 250 kWh per hour of energy walking, which is about 70% more efficient than the energy required for a car.
• Exploring Environmental Issues: Marine Ecotourism For marine ecotourism to succeed, it must thrive in a manner that accommodates the needs of both the current and future generations and safeguards the natural environment.
• Environmental and Global Health Issues: Measles Measles is among the most contagious disease in the world and is highly frequent and densely distributed in poor developing nations of Africa and Asia.
• Avocado Production and Socio-Environmental Issues The thesis presents information regarding the situation with the sustainability of the forest of Cheran in Mexico. This article draws a connection between the increased export of avocados and the subsequent deforestation and claims the […]
• Pope Francis’s Recommendations on Environmental Issues Pope Francis argues that the modern focus on consumerism is harmful and unethical as it leads to irresponsible use of resources.
• Challenges in Integrating Environmental Issues Into Operations Management The idea of sustainability: managers are expected to integrate environmental practices into operations management.
• Major Communication Issues in a Multicultural Environment For effective communication among staff, students and amongst themselves, there is a need to have cultural intelligence, however, there are numerous challenges that hinder effective communication, they include: Carroll is of the view that even […]
• Paper Recycling: Environmental and Business Issues In order for paper to be properly recycled, the several types of paper must be separated because the different types of paper must be used for different types of products. This is the most common […]
• Eco-Labels: Environmental Issues in Business Overall, it is possible to argue that they can certainly lead to the improvement of environmental practices in many industries; however, this goal can be achieved only if these certificates are given by independent and […]
• Sustainable Environmental Policy: Fight the Emerging Issues The emergence of green cities, which a sustainable environment has spawned, is a major breakthrough; however, despite the fact that the creation of green cities seems to be the solution to the current environmental issues, […]
• Health, Internal, Environmental Issues Affecting Dewa.gov Due to the increased related issues in the water and electricity sector in the whole world, it found it right to relate the worldwide issues together with the related factors in the DEWA industry.
• Environmental Law: Strategies and Issue of Standing The law cases related to environmental dispute that occurred over the smelter in the City of Riverside proposed by RRE International and legal standing of the organization Citizens for a Clean Future if the case […]
• Safety, Health and Environmental Issues in Liquefying Methane From Algerian Natural Gas As one of the leading producers of liquefied natural gas in the world, the demand for this natural resource from Algeria is growing by the day.
• The Information Context and the Formation of Public Response on Environmental Issues The lack of knowledge about the interaction of natural factors and the influence of humans on them, as well as the inverse effect of nature on the health of society interfere with the building of […]
• Environmental Health Issue: Air Quality To the surprise of many people, other channels of hazardous chemicals are tobacco smoking and the beauty industry that makes use of a variety of heavy metals in its products.
• Environmental Issue by Rachel Louise Carson Her article is insightful and full of sound reasons that people should learn to see beyond their quest to control the environment.
• Sheffield Flooding and Environmental Issues Involved The agencies that were involved in the rescue mission such as the Environmental agency and the government were also concerned over the impact of the calamity on people’s lives in particular and resources in general.
• Global Warming Issues Review and Environmental Sustainability Whether it is the melt down of Arctic ice, the damage of the Ozone layer, extra pollution in developing countries; all sums up to one thing in common and that is global warming.
• Noise Pollution: Environmental Issue in Lagos, Nigeria The aim of the study would be to understand and evaluate the amount of noise pollution in Lagos, Nigeria and its affects on public health.
• Environmental Issue: Whaling In the case of the Whales, their yearly migration habits are based upon the circumstances of the body of water where they reside.
• “Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Environmental Issues” by Easton The Issue Introduction is very important as it provides the students with a proper historical background and context to each of the issues or debates before the two contrasting viewpoints are given.
• Environmental Issue in Canada: Kyoto Protocol The ultimate name is the Kyoto Protocol, instead of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The main cause of global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases that accumulate in the atmosphere.
• Environmental Issues in Hamilton Harbor As a result, a better option would be to side with the government and contain the toxins in a landfill in the region by capping them.
• Aboriginal Environmental Issues in Canada The main task of the global community is to persuade the global South to join in environmental protection regimes and reduce pollution.
• Supply Chain Management’s Influence on Environmental Issues Both external factors and environmental performance have the highest Cronbach’s alpha values of 0.79. 38 was with external factors, and the lowest correlation of 0.
• Challenges in Integrating Environmental Issues Into Operations Management Despite the fact that sustainability, the process of greening supply chains and other environmental issues are actively discussed in the context of operations management, there is still little research on challenges faced by managers on […]
• Environmental Issues and Food Efficiency In the article under consideration, the results of the investigations organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the International Water Management Institute, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization helps to clarify that more […]
• Biology and Environment Issues Species diversity refers to the abundance of organisms within a certain area. Ecology refers to the study of the relationship between organisms and organisms’ environments.
• Indonesia: Environmental and Indigenous Issues It is also noted that Indonesian officials have different views on the future of indigenous people. It is stated that the experience of indigenous people should be integrated into Western culture.
• Environmental Perils: Climate Change Issue Many people have been lamenting over the issue of the climate crisis, For instance, Mindy Lubber, a former regional administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, delivered a speech in October 2008 at a […]
• Environmental Issues in Urban Systems One factor that we may want to underline is that the question of man’s demand and use of natural resources can be addressed about the ability of nature to produce these resources as well as […]
• Various Aspects of Environmental Issues A variety of assignments prepared over the course of the class allowed for a better understanding of important environmental issues and improved many of my skills.
• Environmental Issues in Business Regulation Business regulation refers to the measures that the government imposes on businesses in order to control the activities that they undertake.
• Environmental Issue: Hunting on Whales The case study at hand presents an environmental issue involving the Makah tribe that had hunted whales over two thousand years until the 1920s when this practice had to be discontinued due to the decline […]
• Environmental Issues: Radiological Dispersion Device First of all, it is paramount to determine a place to serve as a shelter in case of an emergency. This is a mix of dynamite and radioactive particles.
• Environmental Issues: The Use of Biofuel The use of biofuel can be viewed as one of the safest and the cleanest ways of improving the current environmental issues and promoting the concept of sustainability as the foundation for the change on […]
• Hunting, Its Moral and Environmental Issues The first fact refers to the idea that there is nothing more natural than hunting, and that is why it is normal.
• Environmental Issues: The US Aiding for Other Countries The United States has been at the forefront in supporting the activities of the CSD as a primary agency for tackling environmental issues throughput the world.
• Port Hastings Expansion: Environmental Issues This paper analyses the issues surrounding the expansion of the Port of Hastings. The government-appointed the PDHA to act as the proponent of the project.
• Environmental Issues of Energy Innovations This leaves much of the world disconnected from the rest of the globe, and handicapped in terms of engaging in banking or business above the most basic level.
• Maori Health Development and Environmental Issue The problem is in the fact that the focus on farming during the 19th century and on industry during the 20th century affected the aspects of the land development, and today, Maori land resources are […]
• Environmental Issues for Managers: UK’s Current Strategy on Renewable Energy & Technologies The renewable energy strategy of the UK entails escalating the utilization of micro-generation and lessening energy wastage. Barriers to Adoption of Renewable Energy and Technologies The main barriers to adoption of renewable technology in the […]
• The Environmental Issues and Unsustainable Tourism Williams and Shaw allege that the growth of tourism in the developing countries has led to the countries experiencing immense environmental problems.
• Health Issues: Designing Senior Environments In addition, the number of utilities within the facility influences the behaviour and health of seniors. This will boost their level of significance in the society.
• Environmental Issue – Climate Change If the right measures are put in place, our environment will be regenerated and the continued alterations to the climate will eventually stop.
• Environmental Issues in Business It is necessary to define the difference between the two types of businesses to understand major peculiarities of ‘green’ products.’Green’ marketing is different from the conventional form of marketing as environmental issues are brought to […]
• Modern State as an Impediment to Environmental Issues This created a lot of hype around the purchase of the product and thus perpetuated the growth of other industries that were insignificant. The greater the consumption levels, the higher the amount of waste produced […]
• Environmental Issues and Management An organisation is able to evaluate the impact of its practices on the environment in a consistent manner. The standard encourages organisations to implement appropriate practices which improve the awareness of the employees of the […]
• Environmental Issue in China Given the influence of the Chinese government on the public, it is proposed that a network of influence should be created as a public diplomacy strategy to influence the government to take action on air […]
• Evaluate Human Resource Issues in Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department Apart from training it is necessary to make personnel aware of their impact of the organization’s development. In conclusion, it is possible to state that Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department has certain problems […]
• Silent Spring and Environmental Issues Despite the credibility for both sides of the argument, this paper agrees with the message of Silent Spring by arguing that although the use of DDT has declined in modern times, the environmental destruction of […]
• Mercury International: Macro and Micro Environmental Issues The issues of concern for the company include mainly its products and services due to the need for innovation, the value discipline based on the recommendable organizational structure, concern for the drop in the quarterly […]
• Environmental Issue raised in the “Weather Extremes Leave Parts of U.S. Grid Buckling” In addition, the article indicated that the nuclear power plant in Illinois affects the natural attributes of the environment due to the consequences of reacting components.
• Current Environmental Health Issues Considering the effects these bacteria may result in the following consequences should be remembered, the production of the lethal toxins in the intestine, the development of the clinical disease and succumb to the infection, the […]
• Thailand Issues: Environment, Child Prostitution, and HIV/AIDS The intensification of child prostitution is largely associated with the growing industry in Thailand, the relegated position of women in the Thai society due to Thai Buddhism and the culture of recreational sex.
• Environmental Issues of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Storage Facility in Nevada This Nuclear Policy Act gave the U,S Department of Defense the responsibility of finding a site and to build and operate a nuclear waste facility in the subsurface.
• The Issue of Images and Perceptions in Corporate Environment The Rigas family is well known to be amongst the biggest violators of ethics in corporate America, these executives are a symbol of poor ethical leadership and gross incompetence.
• Environmental Justice Issues Affecting African Americans: Water Pollution Water pollution in the 1960s occurred due to poor sewage systems in the urban and rural areas. Unlike in the 1960s, there are reduced cases of water pollution today.
• The Issue of Conserving the Environment in the US The United States, just like other countries in the world, is being faced with the issue of conserving the environment in order to resolve the issue of global warming.
• Southeast Asia Human-Environment Issue Most of the gold that is mined in Indonesia is exported to other countries. This has made gold to be one of the most sought out natural resources in the country.
• Arguing on Planet Earth – Environmental issues: Outline The concept of overpopulation is not limited to the number of people on the earths’ surface, or the size of the earth’s surface alone; it is also subject to the availability of resources that support […]
• Impact of Environmental Issues and Laws in the Aviation Industry Limited growth Although the industry appreciates, the efforts of environmental movements like Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and Friends of the Earth, the industry feel that the requirements of the set policies limit its […]
• Bio Desertification and Environmental Issues in Eritrea The paper singles out the issue of desertification, among the many environmental issues in Eritrea, expounding on the Eritrean flora, the reason behind its desertification and further pointing out the major strategies that the government […]
• Political Environment Case: Inmate Programs Issue As the director of the prison, I am charged with the responsibility of the prison’s management and providing information to the governor and the department of corrections. Response to the governor will require accurate information […]
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• Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue
• 3. Local impact of climate change, environmental problems

Table of Contents

• 1. Climate engagement and activism
• 2. Climate, energy and environmental policy
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix: Detailed charts and tables

A majority of Americans say climate change is having at least some impact on their local community, and half say their area has experienced extreme weather over the past year, particularly those living in South Central states such as Texas and Alabama. On a related policy question, a large majority of Americans favor the idea of revising building standards so new construction can better withstand extreme weather events.

At the local level, experience with environmental problems – such as air and water pollution – varies across groups. Black and Hispanic adults are particularly likely to say they experience environmental problems in their local community, as are those with lower family incomes.

And when it comes to climate policy considerations, large majorities of Black and Hispanic adults – across income levels – say it’s very important to ensure that lower-income communities benefit from proposals aimed at reducing the effects of climate change.

More than half of U.S. adults say they have seen at least some local effects of climate change

Overall, 57% of U.S. adults say climate change is affecting their own community either a great deal (17%) or some (40%). Smaller shares say climate change is affecting their community not too much (27%) or not at all (15%).

Most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say human activity plays at least some role in climate change

Most Americans (77%) say human activity contributes either a great deal (44%) or some (33%) to global climate change. Far fewer (22%) say human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels contribute not too much or not at all to climate change. 

Republicans continue to be less likely to believe that human activity plays at least some part in global climate change. Still, 59% of this group says human activity contributes at least some, while 40% say human activity has not too much of a role or no role in climate change. 

Democrats across generations are in broad agreement that human activity has at least some effect on climate change. Among Republicans, Gen Zers and Millennials are more likely than Gen X and Baby Boomer and older adults to see human activity as playing a role in global climate change. See the Appendix for details. 

The overall share of Americans who say their area is affected a great deal by climate change is down 7 percentage points, from 24% a year ago to 17% today.

Americans’ beliefs about local impact of climate change are more closely linked to their partisanship than to where they live. Perceptions of local climate impact vary modestly across census regions. The regions that are relatively likely to say climate change is impacting their communities, such as New England and the Pacific, tend to be places that lean Democratic in their political affiliation. There are also modest differences by generation in beliefs about its local impact.

A separate question in the survey finds that half of Americans say their local area experienced an extreme weather event in the past 12 months.

A large majority (84%) in the West South Central region say they have experienced extreme weather in the last 12 months. The region was impacted by a severe winter storm in February that led to a power crisis in Texas. In contrast to the overall partisan differences seen on this question, comparable majorities of Republicans and Democrats in the West South Central region report their communities have experienced extreme weather in the past year.

Wide public support for revised building standards to protect against extreme weather

Climate change is thought to be a key factor in the occurrence of more frequent and intense or extreme weather events. When asked about a federal government proposal to change building standards so that new construction will better withstand extreme weather events, 75% of U.S. adults responded in favor of this proposal, while 23% said it is a bad idea because it could increase costs and cause delays in important projects.

There is near consensus among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (90%) that revising building standards so construction better withstands extreme weather is a good idea. A 57% majority of Republicans and GOP leaners agree, although support is considerably higher among moderate and liberal Republicans (71%) than conservative Republicans (50%).

People who report direct experience with extreme weather in the past year are particularly likely to consider this a good idea (81% vs. 69% of those who do not report recent experience with extreme weather).

Black, Hispanic and lower-income adults more likely to report living in areas with big problems when it comes to air pollution, other environmental concerns

Overall, about six-in-ten Americans say they see at least moderate problems where they live when it comes to an excess of garbage (62%) and water pollution in lakes, rivers and streams (60%). About half (52%) say the same about local air pollution, and about four-in-ten say safe drinking water (41%) or a lack of greenspace (39%) are at least moderate problems.

Past research has found that Black, Hispanic and Asian American communities are more likely to be exposed to air pollution and other environmental hazards in their local area.

The Center survey finds Black and Hispanic adults particularly likely to say their local communities are having problems across this set of five environmental issues, and they stand out for the large share who consider these to be “big problems” where they live. About four-in-ten Black (41%) and Hispanic (37%) adults say the amount of garbage, waste and landfills in their community is a big problem. Black and Hispanic adults are also more likely than White adults to report that their community has big problems with air and water pollution, drinking water safety and a lack of greenspace and parks. A majority of Black (57%) and about half of Hispanic adults (53%) consider at least one of these five issues a big problem in their local area.

Lower-income Americans are also more likely to report that their area has big problems with these environmental issues. For example, about three-in-ten lower-income adults say their local community has a big problem with air pollution. About half as many upper-income adults (16%) say the same about their community. Half of those with lower family incomes say their local communities are having a big problem with at least one of these five environmental issues.

The Biden administration has brought a new focus to environmental justice concerns underlying climate and energy policy. Biden has called for $1.4 billion in his recent budget proposal for initiatives aimed at helping communities address racial, ethnic and income inequalities in pollution and other environmental hazards.

As Americans think about proposals to address climate change, Black (68%) and Hispanic adults (55%) stand out for the high shares who say it is very important to them that such proposals help lower-income communities.

More than half of lower-income Americans (54%) say this is very important to them, compared with 36% of upper-income adults.

Middle- and upper-income Black adults (70%) are about as likely as lower-income Black adults (66%) to say this is very important to them, however. Similarly, there are no differences on this question between middle/upper income Hispanic adults and those with lower incomes (54% vs. 57%, respectively).

A majority of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (59%) say it is very important to them that climate change proposals help lower-income communities; far fewer Republicans and Republican leaners (27%) say this.

Older Americans are more likely to say they regularly try to live in ways that help the environment

A large majority of Americans (86%) say they try to live in ways that help protect the environment all the time (22%) or some of the time (64%). Just 14% say they never or rarely make such an effort. These findings are largely unchanged since the question was last asked in October 2019 .

In contrast to views and behaviors related to climate change, Baby Boomer and older adults are more likely than those in younger generations to say they try to live in environmentally conscious ways all the time (29%, vs. 21% in Gen X, 16% of Millennials and 15% in Gen Z).

And, unlike views on many policy issues related to the environment, similar shares of Democrats (88%) and Republicans (84%) say they make an effort to do this at least some of the time.

Majorities of U.S. adults say they take some everyday actions in order to help protect the environment, including reducing their food waste (81%), using fewer plastics that cannot be reused such as plastic bags, straws or cups (72%) or reducing the amount of water they use (67%). More than half of Americans (54%) say they drive less or carpool to help the environment, and 40% say they eat less meat.

About one-in-five adults (18%) say they do all five of these activities to help the environment, a similar share to when these questions were last asked in October 2019. On average, Americans do 3.3 of these activities.

People who say they try to be environmentally conscious all the time are much more likely to say they are doing specific things to protect the environment. For instance, a large majority (89%) of people who make an effort to live in ways that help protect the environment all the time say they use fewer single-use plastics such as bags and straws in order to protect the environment. This compares with 35% of those who say they do not or don’t often make an effort to protect the environment.

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