Many households in developing and developed countries will face increased extreme weather events due to climate change. Insurance could be a key coping strategy against the associated impacts of extreme weather. There is value in better understanding the characteristics that make insurance an appropriate means of coping for some sub-groups over others. The framework for household decisions to insure used in this research focuses on four factors: 1. economic, 2. social and cultural, 3. structural, and 4. personal and demographic. This thesis considers two case studies: agricultural index-based microinsurance in rural Uganda and home flood insurance in the USA It seeks to understand intended demand and the related drivers for insurance in these settings through the use of large-N surveys, field games, and on-line simulations. The rural Ugandan survey tool was implemented using innovative smart-phone technology and yielded 3000+ observations of expressed willingness-to-join (WTJ) and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for agricultural microinsurance. This tool also obtained information concerning propensity to engage with alternative coping strategies, both formal and informal. It also obtained household indicators of the factor classesnoted above. A separate field game in Uganda investigated attitudes towards basis risk arising from index insurance using a novel, iterative game involving farmers allocating their wealth between insurance and crop production. The game is played in partner sets to gauge the relative influence of others’ decisions and outcomes on one’s choice to insure. The USA study compares propensity to purchase flood insurance between those affected and unaffected by Hurricane Sandy in the same geographic areas. We obtained 800 observations from an online survey tool, combining survey questions and a flood insurance purchase simulation. In the simulation we include as a treatment a more extensive (graphical) presentation of expected losses to assess the effect oninsurance uptake rates. In the Ugandan case, WTJ is over 95% and the average WTP is moderate relative to household wealth. For our sample there is evidence that microinsurance and loans are substitutes and the most frequently chosen traditional coping strategy is selling cattle. In the American study, respondents insure in just over 50% of the presented simulations and over 60% have a positive stated WTJ. Notably, there is little insurance demand difference between cohorts affected and unaffected by Hurricane Sandy. In both studies, a significant proportion of respondents with disparate personal characteristics chose to always or never insure, regardless of the details of the simulation scenarios, though WTJ varies positively with expected losses; this behaviour may be related to affect from the feeling of insurance. In the Ugandan study, occurrence of basis risk reduces WTJ in the following period and respondents clearly are affected by the choices made by their partners. In the American study, insurance adoption is greater for the cohort exposed to the more extensive (graphical) presentation of expected losses. In both cases we find that of the four factor classes social and cultural as well as structural factors are frequently significant in regression models for intended insurance demand. As weather-related covariate risks increase in the future, households need coping mechanisms that are culturally viable and conform to individuals’ preferences. This thesis demonstrates methods by which to determine intended demand for extreme weather insurance in the developing and developed country contexts. Such information can inform the development of insurance tools consistent with consumer preferences and help identify households that may be the best candidates for use of insurance.

Biodiversity offsetting is a mechanism for providing physical compensation to redress losses to species and habitats caused by development projects. As offsetting becomes more widespread, so has the evolution and development of frameworks, tools and methodological approaches for assessing biodiversity and implementing offsets. In this context and with a specific focus on assessment methodology this research takes a scientific and pragmatic approach to bridge the gap between empirical approaches to biodiversity assessment and the practical, often subjective, methods used by practitioners. Although commonalities among methodologies exist, systematically reviewing the state of the art, revealed a complicated situation which would benefit from methodological standardisation. The challenge of determining which components of biodiversity should be assessed by a standardised approach was informed with data gained through a survey that questioned biodiversity practitioners on which criteria and attributes they considered the most important indicators of biodiversity value. Results of an extensive field study of three habitat types are reported and the new data are employed; (a) to examine the sensitivity of a metric proposed for pilot offsets in England, and (b) to develop a novel multi-metric index with potential for wide use in biodiversity offsetting. From an array of forty five metrics a reduced index was produced which conveys information from measurements pertaining to four important biodiversity components. The new index is objective, relatively quick to produce, replicable and scientifically defensible. Compatible with existing frameworks the new index comprises information practitioners would expect to see i.e. biodiversity data (beta-diversity), temporal risk, (time to maturity) habitat rarity and structural connectivity. It can reliably provide a measure of value to biodiversity, inform spatial planning decisions, generate data for monitoring and aid the comparison of two or more sites of similar habitat. In concluding, the thesis discusses practical limitations of the index and, more generally, limitations for biodiversity offsetting.

There is increased concern regarding the effect of traffic related pollution on public heath. As the number of vehicles on the roads continues to rise, it is becoming increasingly more important to identify areas where the population may be at a greater risk to raised levels of pollution and areas where the implementation of policy to control and monitor levels of pollution would be beneficial. Traditionally, levels of air pollution have been established through dispersion modelling or monitoring. However, for modelling traffic related pollution for large populations, these methods have proved inappropriate. Three new approaches have been developed to model traffic related air pollution and are reported in this thesis. The approaches have been developed in a Geographical Information System (GIS) and involve generating detailed maps of the pollution surface from monitored data and information about the pollution sources. The new methods are compared against the geostatistical technique kriging. The first approach combines spatial interpolation from monitoring sites and dispersion modelling, linking the dispersion model to the GIS, the second combines GIS techniques for filtering data and spatial interpolation, and the third uses a combination of GIS techniques for filtering and statistical techniques. The three approaches are tested and validated by predicting levels of pollution at monitoring sites not used to develop the models. It was found that the new approaches provided more reliable estimates of pollution at unsampled locations than kriging, with the last of these proving to be the most effective. The adjusted r2 values for kriging, interpolation and dispersion, interpolation and filtering, and filtering and statistics were found to be 0.44, 0.63, 0.67 and 0.82 respectively. The approaches therefore have clear potential in the areas of air pollution management and epidemiology, where the maps can be used to help identify locations where levels of pollution exceed air quality standards, assess the relationship between air pollution and health outcome and examine the risk of exposure to raised levels of pollution.

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Understanding climate change as a knowledge controversy, this thesis provides new insights into the form, value and impact of the climate change debate on science and policy processes. Based on 99 interviews in New Zealand and the United Kingdom as well as social network analysis, it provides an original contribution to knowledge by identifying previously unknown sites of knowledge contestation within the climate change debate, in addition to contributory factors, and potential solutions to, debate polarisation. It also addresses a fundamental gap in the literature regarding the impact of controversy on the production of scientific knowledge and policy decision-making. This thesis comprises five standalone papers (Chapters 2-6) which together explore climate change as a knowledge controversy using frameworks from science and technology studies, sociology and geography. Chapter 2 finds that the most central blogs within the climate sceptical blogosphere predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate. It argues that by acting as an alternative public site of expertise, the blogosphere may be playing a central role in perpetuating doubt regarding the scientific basis for climate change policymaking. Chapter 3 suggests that the binary and dualistic format of labels used within the climate debate such as “denier” or “alarmist” contribute towards polarisation by reducing possibilities for constructive dialogue. Chapter 4 investigates rationales for debate participation and argues that identifying and emphasising commonalities between previously polarised individuals may serve to reduce antagonism within the climate change debate. Chapter 5 investigates the impact of controversy on the production of scientific knowledge and finds that climate scientists identify substantial impacts on their agency as scientists, but not on scientific practice. It argues that this distinction indicates that boundarymaking may be understood as a more active and explicit process under conditions of controversy. Finally, Chapter 6 introduces the concept of post-decisional logics of inaction, emphasising the role of place in determining the influence of controversial knowledge claims on climate change policymaking. These findings make explicit the underlying politics of knowledge inherent within the climate change debate, and emphasise the need for a more attentive consideration of the role of knowledge, place and performativity in contested science and policy environments.

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This thesis comprises of four essays that seek to advance understanding of the role that climatic constraints have on agricultural productivity in India and Pakistan. This work emphasises that the constraints posed to agricultural production must be understood within the context of an evolving set of environmental and technological conditions. The thesis employs empirical methods to understand these relationships, where particular emphasis is placed on methods suitable for learning about the challenges agriculture will face in the future. The first chapter studies the impact of climate change on rice yields in India by modelling the inter-annual distribution of yield conditional on projected temperature increases. The results suggest a decrease in average yield and a substantial increase in the probability of low yields. It is also shown that yields have become increasingly resilient to heat over time. The second chapter studies the e↵ect of drought on cereal production in India by estimating thresholds of drought impact. By examining thresholds over time, evidence is found of decreasing average impacts, but with evidence of an abrupt increase in average drought impacts in more recent years. Thresholds of precipitation are also estimated, indicating substantial heterogeneity in resilience to drought across crop types and regions of India. The third chapter examines how changes in agricultural technology brought about by the Green Revolution a↵ected the relative importance of agro-climatic factors in determining crop yields. Using a detailed measure of crop suitability it is found that yields increased relatively more in areas of higher suitability, indicating complementarity between agricultural technologies and favourable agro-climatic characteristics. The final chapter uses farm-level data from a specifically-designed survey to assess the impact and determinants of climate change adaptation strategies on crop productivity in Pakistan. Adaptation has a beneficial e↵ect on rice yields, but not on wheat yields. This chapter also finds that a number of household and institutional factors are strongly related to whether households have adapted to climate change.

This thesis seeks to advance our understanding of climatic influence on economic outcomes. The approach taken places emphasis on understanding the channels and mechanisms through which weather has an effect, and through which climate change could have an effect, on economic behaviour – rather than estimating the impact of future climate change – to better inform the design and implementation of policy. This thesis is composed of four papers that adopt this new paradigm, providing new insights into how weather affects economic outcomes today, how economic agents respond to and manage the economic consequences of changes in their natural environment, and providing explicit mechanisms through which the impacts of, and adaptation to, climate change could affect economic outcomes in the future.

Tourism has become the most important source for stimulating the economies of countries of the world. It stimulates enormous investment in infrastructure and helps states to improve their balance of payments, which should help to create job opportunities and improve the living conditions of local people by helping to equalise economic opportunities and keep rural residents from moving to overcrowded cities (WTO, 2007). Libyan economy is still dependent on oil by a large margin, with the knowledge that there are other sectors which can participate in the diversification of the economy, but not given the opportunity by the Government (such as the tourism sector). But tourism development in order to be useful in the long term must be sustainable. Berlin Declaration of 1997 suggested that “achieving sustainable forms of tourism is the responsibility of all stakeholders involved, where it is critical that planners and decision-makers understand the attitudes of stakeholders towards sustainable actions in tourism development". The aim of the study is to explore the possibility of treating sustainable tourism development in the Al-Gabal Al-Gharbi City (GGC) in the future, by recognizing the extent of support that can be provided by key stakeholders for tourism, according to the study of their attitudes toward tourism development in this city. The GGC was selected as a case for the study because it is representative of other cities in Libya which are in urgent need of development projects in order to find solutions to many economic, social and environmental problems. Four key groups of stakeholders were selected to participate in this study (local residents, tourists, government sector, and the private sector). The researcher used "mixed method" to collect main data such as: The questionnaire which was used as a key method to discover the attitudes of residents and tourists, and the interviews used to explore the attitudes of the public and private sectors. Additionally, the researcher also used reports, studies, books, tables, images and maps published together with field visits to some tourist sites including close monitoring of the reality as a secondary source for data collection. The study led to some important findings, where it confirmed the existence of good tourist resources in the city in terms of quantity and quality of tourist products and identified the possibility of competition at the local and global levels. However many tourist sites would need more care and attention in terms of discovery, maintenance, advertising, and training. Thus there is a need for supportive policies such as legal, administrative and financial facilities. The study confirmed as well the existence of limitless support for tourism development by all stakeholders, which is an essential element for the sustainability of tourism development in the city. The study also identified the sustainable tourism development trends in the city by identifying tourism demand, its internal and external sources, and the key tourism projects that deserve priority for development and which have the support of stakeholders.