'Green' business is claimed by some South African retailers even though they lack well-founded and integrated sustainable, social, and environmental commitments. This is because no standards of greening exist for retail in South Africa. The purpose of this study is to explore, 'What constitutes green retail in the South African supermarket sector?' This required investigation into the sustainability of the companies' green business processes, social component of sustainability, and the existing state of the green retail sector. The five dominant supermarkets were selected to answer a questionnaire based on different environmental variables and principles. Interviewee responses were supplemented with publicly available company reports and these were then critiqued by allocating a level of commitment to sustainability of companies' green business processes, social considerations of sustainability, and establishing the current state of the green retail sector. Results show that within business processes, sustainable procurement is becoming increasingly accounted for through eco-labels and enterprise development programs. Distribution processes assist in verifying green claims and production. Various international and local sustainability programs are used to validate green efforts in the lack of national standards. Best practice frameworks are being utilised in the absence of local green standards and where limited, some are creating their own innovative solutions. Sustainability is a core focus at an executive level to some to ensure full integration of sustainability. Retailers may not necessarily pursue trends, but they have similar pressures that are often variably addressed. Although retailers' attempts to green their operations may not be standardised, the retail industry in South African has almost privatised sustainability and socio-economic development as they have superseded legislation to contribute to society and transform communities. It is an opportunity for retailers to take responsibility for their operations and in doing so create innovative solutions that address South Africa's environmental and social issues, in spite of the lack of green standards and governmental regulation, and in doing so become leadership companies that are accountable to their consumer base.

Human demographic changes in association to environmental fluctuations were studied for the North American Arctic and boreal region. Using the frequency of archaeological radiocarbon dates from the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database as a proxy for population size, past changes in population density were estimated and quantitatively examined in relation to reconstructions of temperature and sea ice conditions. This was conducted across three spatial scales: the entire area, the four major cultural-environmental regions and sixteen subregions in order to identify both broad-scale and local phenomena. There was a high correspondence between millennial and centennial-scale climate variability and paleodemographic changes across the region, with increasing population density during warmer periods and lower density during cooling episodes. An abrupt Late Holocene cooling (neoglaciation) beginning at 3.9 ka triggered a nearly-synchronous population decline across the region. Cooling temperatures and increased sea ice coverage also influenced large-scale migration patterns of Paleo-Inuit peoples as well as their cultural evolution.

Meat consumption has been a prominent part of humanity’s dietary culture, particularly in modern, Western developed nations. However, recent research has shown that collectively reducing our consumption of animal products can have major benefits for mitigating our environmental footprint. Despite a consensus among climate scientists on its potential impact, the public does not recognize the effectiveness of this behavioral shift. Recent efforts to address this have created movements and organizations that focus on reduction of meat consumption (e.g. flexitarianism, reducetarianism, Meatless Mondays), rather than elimination of meat consumption (e.g. vegetarianism, veganism) with the intent of creating a more acceptable message, from a less stigmatized group, thereby reaching more people and resulting in greater change. However, the relative impact of these messages has not been compared in previous work. The present research investigates the perceptions of these messages and messengers to assess if there are differences in how people respond to these messages and change their intentions. Study 1 examined interpersonal communication, testing the difference between a message of giving up meat, coming from a vegetarian, and a message of reducing meat consumption, from a reducetarian. Study 2 extended Study 1, replicating the study while adding a third condition to further differentiate the effects of message and messenger using a reduction focused article from a vegetarian. Study 3 extended the previous studies to communication from NGOs with explicit goals as reducetarian or vegetarian. Across all studies, we find that people are more willing to share messages from a reducetarian perspective than a vegetarian one, people agree with that message more, and indicate that they are closer to reducing up meat consumption after reading that article.

Forests play an important role in mitigating climate change. It can not only provide carbon sequestration in standing forests and long-life forest products, but can also reduce carbon release by bioenergy’s substitution of fossil fuel. Therefore, a comprehensive impact from forest carbon on landowners’ forest management decisions should be analyzed when considering those uncertainties in carbon life cycle. The first part of the dissertation is a meta-analysis review, in which important factors that can influence the estimation of harvesting rotations under carbon sequestration are summarized and analyzed. It concludes that some issues as natural disturbances and forest bioenergy deserve more attentions, which are addressed in the following two chapters. The second part adopts a revised Faustmann model to assess the relation between wildfire risk and prescribed fire under four assumed carbon policy scenarios. It arrives at the conclusion that penalty on carbon release in prescribed fire may reduce carbon sequestration in standing forests and make forest landowners to take the risk of loss in wildfire. Thus, a carbon policy with such a regulation should be adopted with caution. The third part investigates the probable influence brought by wood-based biofuel of stochastic prices with a Monte Carlo method. The results demonstrate that the assumption of double stochastic prices leads to earlier harvesting when comparing to constant price scenario or stochastic price assumption of only timber. The stochasticity of energy price may benefit landowners but also introduce uncertainties into their revenue. It also reduces sequestered carbon in standing forests and long-life forest products, which should be paid more attention when a general point of view on forest carbon is the concern. This project is informative for landowners who are facing new opportunities and challenges in forest management and is also helpful for carbon policy makers when dealing with forest carbon dilemmas of prescribed fire and bioenergy.

The Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF) was utilized to study the effects of warmer lake surface temperatures on the lake effect snow (LES) environments of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Composites of recorded LES cases were created for WRF input to represent average LES conditions which revealed three distinct large-scale patterns. WRF runs consisted of altering lake temperatures up to 4.3°C for three future time frames. Lake Erie projections exhibited more sensitivity to alterations as more WRF runs revealed significant (p-value ≤ 0.05) changes to the environment. Lake Erie solely showed any distinctive changes with early and mid-century WRF runs with increased surface CAPE around 80 J/kg and total precipitation around 1.5 mm. Late century alterations for both lakes revealed significant (p-value ≤ 0.05) changes including up to 2.1 g/kg increased specific humidity and a 9K surface-850mb temperature difference indicating both lakes were most sensitive to late century alterations.

The cement industry represents nearly 8% of fossil fuel and industrial emissions making it a key area of focus for policymakers around the world. Much of the current effort in cement manufacturing has focused on energy efficiency and material substitution with more recent work focused on carbon dioxide uptake and recycled concrete aggregate use to address greenhouse gas emissions and material conservation, respectively. Currently, no meaningful approach exists for practitioners or policymakers to address greenhouse gas emission reduction for cement manufacturing that incorporates the concepts of material conservation. The Carbon Hierarchy is proposed as a successive stage hierarchy to address this gap. This work is logically and empirically validated using a newly constructed model incorporating the key levers of service life extension, thermal energy decarbonization, limestone substitution, mineral component (MIC), carbon dioxide uptake with consideration for the process flow that incorporated reintroduction of end-of-life (EOL) concrete as raw material or clinker substitution in cement manufacturing and as potential downstream use as aggregate. The Carbon Hierarchy proposed in this research could guide decisions to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the cement industry while ensuring material conservation. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Many states and municipalities are using climate forecasts and vulnerability analyses to prepare comprehensive frameworks designed to guide adaptation actions (Hamin, 2012). The responsibility for facilitating the development and adoption of these frameworks, also known as climate adaptation plans, often lies with planning practitioners. However, if planning is understood to be the organization of hope and its language that of the future (Baum, 1997), planning practitioners must consider how to effectively uphold these disciplinary concepts when addressing climate change—an issue with the propensity to stimulate fear and despair for a future marked by uncertainty. Developing and implementing adaptation policies and practices designed to increase community resilience in the face of a changing climate require negotiating a balance between pessimistic feelings that climate change is already underway and won’t be stopped and optimistic feelings that actions taken now will matter. Employing qualitative research methods informed by grounded theory, this research examines a set of state-level climate change adaptation plans to identify the key elements within and their implications for negotiating the despair and hope associated with climate change. Research methods from the field of narratology provide a basis for understanding these elements as components of a narrative. Findings suggest that state-level adaptation plans, understood as narratives, are comprised of elements that can be employed to balance the despair and hope associated with climate change. These findings support research emerging from the field of planning theory, which suggests that persuasive narratives may have relevance in mobilizing action on climate-related issues. Informed by research from diverse fields of inquiry, recommendations that guide the use of select elements in adaptation plans were developed to aid in overcoming the barriers that uncertainty, fear and despair play in limiting effective action on climate change.

The scientific evidence that humans are directly influencing the Earth’s natural climate is increasingly compelling. Numerous studies suggest that climate change will lead to changes in the seasonality of surface water availability thereby increasing the need for groundwater development to offset those shortages. Research shows that the Northeast region of the U.S. is experiencing changes to its’ natural climate and hydrologic systems. This study provides the first instrumental long-term regional compilation and analysis of the water table response to the last 60 years of climate in New England. This investigation will evaluate the physical mechanisms and underlying mechanisms, natural variability and response of New England aquifers to climate variability. Using 100 long term groundwater monitoring stations with 20 or more years of data coupled with 67 stream gages, 75 precipitation stations, and 43 temperature stations, several statistical analyses are performed. Groundwater trends are calculated as normalized anomalies and analyzed with respect to regional compiled precipitation, temperature, and streamflow anomalies to understand the sensitivity of the aquifer systems to change. Trend, regression, correlation and spectral analysis are preformed on groundwater data to identify statistical relationships with climate variables, hydrogeologic properties and the hydrologic setting. Results suggest that regionally, New England aquifers respond strongly to annual and decadal changes in climate. Coherence in the relationship between groundwater and climate variables exists with a second order variability related to the hydrogeologic setting. The trend and regression analysis demonstrate that water level fluctuations are producing statistically significant results with increasing water levels over at least the past thirty years at most well sites. Long term cycles within the groundwater data suggest teleconnections with known sea surface temperature or pressure fluctuations such as ENSO, NAO, IPO and QBO. Anomalies of groundwater data within various geologic settings suggest that watershed characteristics; such as the surficial geology and topography of the region, play a role in the evolution of water levels in New England. These results have major implications for not only water management but the agriculture, forestry, fishing, and tourism industries as they all depend on the quantity and quality of water resources of the region.

Inledning: Klimatförändringar innebär stora risker för den globala såväl som den svenska ekonomin. Politiker har kommit att inse att klimatförändringar därför utgör ett stort och pressande hot. I denna anda representerar Parisavtalet, som undertecknades i december 2015, det första heltäckande klimatavtalet som uttryckligen erkänner behovet av att göra finans flöden förenliga med en väg mot låga utsläpp av växthusgaser och klimattålig utveckling. Som en primär kreditgivare är banksektorn potentiellt en nyckelaktör kring vitala initiativ som skall minska belastningen på miljön. Syftet: Denna uppsats har haft som mål att undersöka svenska storbankers roll i samhället för hållbar utveckling samt hur de ger stöd till företag i omställningsarbetet för att möta kraven i Parisavtalet. Metod: Kvalitativa metoder används i detta arbete för att uppfylla studiens syfte. Forskningsdesignen representerar en dokumentstudie där bearbetning av empiriskt material sker med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat. Resultatet visar att samtliga storbanker kommit en bra bit på vägen med både sin egen interna omställning i relation till ett mer hållbart arbete som ligger i linje med Parisavtalet. Samtidigt har denna transformationsresa kommit att även påverka de kundrelationer som företagen har genom att de har intagit en coachande roll i syfte att hjälpa andra att arbeta mer hållbart, samt att ingå mer finansiellt och moraliskt hållbara samarbeten. Slutsats: Bearbetad empiriskt underlag påvisar att storbankerna har ett viktigt arbete i sin roll som rådgivare för de svenska företagen i att stödja och påverka företagen i deras strävan att uppnå ett lyckat omställningsarbete inom hållbarhet i enlighet med Parisavtalet

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