Jouni Paavola

• PhD
• Professor at University of Leeds

Humanity is dependent on ecosystems and the services they provide, yet unprecedented biodiversity decline continues. Ecosystem service (ES) and natural capital approaches offer a promising framing of the relationship between organisations and ecosystems, although not enough literature exists on their implementation and implications. We analysed 125...

In response to the limitations of conventional flood control measures, modern flood risk management is evolving towards a more community-centred approach, emphasizing household flood resilience. In line with this shift, a multidimensional framework encompassing physical, social, economic, and institutional aspects of flood resilience was developed...

The organisational arrangements of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism have been scrutinised for their capacity to support emissions reduction and promote local stakeholder participation. Yet, whether they facilitate REDD+ integration into land use sectors driving deforestation has received little atte...

Despite fast electrification in India, many communities still suffer from the direct and indirect effects of energy poverty. We investigate whether access to liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and consumption expenditure can be used as measures of energy poverty in India, with a particular focus on gender equality. A district-level, quantitative analysi...

Community risk and resilience to high-latitude wildfires has received limited conceptual attention, with a comprehensive, integrated framework that unpacks the complex human–fire–climate relationship in high-latitude environments largely missing. In this paper, we use insights from both the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction lite...

Emissions trading schemes (ETS) have spread across the globe to tackle climate change. However, limited attention has been given to how ETS characteristics and designs differ and why. We use the concept of institutional complementarity to explore how the EU ETS and South Korea's ETS (K‐ETS) adapt to complement established political economy. The EU...

Environmental policies ought to be integrated into economic sectors for successful outcomes. We assess to what extent Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD +) is integrated into land-use sectors driving deforestation in Cameroon. REDD + governance has been extensively examined, including the challenges of a multisectora...

Environmental policies ought to be integrated into economic sectors for successful outcomes. We assess to what extent Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD +) is integrated into land-use sectors driving deforestation in Cameroon. REDD + governance has been extensively examined, including the challenges of a multisectora...

This paper addresses why food security implications of projected losses to inland capture fisheries due to hydropower development have been neglected in policy arenas. Drawing on the case of the Lower Mekong Basin, this paper applies a conceptual framework for analyzing this question as a case of fundamental food system change. Four inter-related a...

Knowledge is an intrinsic element of environmental management. Understanding what kinds of knowledge are needed and how to communicate them effectively is crucial for building environmental management capacity. Despite extensive research, knowledge and its exchange are commonly considered from the viewpoint of its creators and disseminators, rather...

Non-technical Summary As adaptation deficits become increasingly evident and widespread, barriers to adaptation draw more attention as a key reason. However, the current understanding of the barriers is limited, making it challenging to provide practical solutions for real-world adaptation policy processes. This study aims to identify the origins,...

In many developing countries, lack of access to water and its unsustainable use and adverse health impacts are important policy issues. The challenge of improving water services in developing countries is not only limited to the provision of new connections for non-piped-source-dependent households but also to improving the service level for the al...

How energy relates to human need satisfaction, for whom, and with what wellbeing outcomes has remained under-researched. We address this gap by investigating the relationship between household energy footprint and well-being in the UK. Our results indicate that car and air transportation contributed the most to the total energy footprint of high-in...

Many countries have set net-zero targets to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals. However, we do not know why and how transitioning countries have set net-zero targets, given the narratives of economic growth persistent in them. We address this gap by examining the 2050 carbon neutrality target setting in South Korea and assessing its potential to f...

A scientific consensus acknowledges that climate change has increased wildfire activity in the Russian Arctic, a trend projected to continue in response to further warming. Regional governments across Russia have started to design and develop adaptation policies and plans (i.e. outputs) to this end. Our comprehensive understanding on the state of w...

China has pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and to become carbon neutral by 2060. Achieving the targets would need great improvement of its emissions trading scheme (ETS) that covers half of the country's emissions. Lessons from the European Union have shown that the ETS is not only a product of the changing circumstances, but its implementa...

Access to quality and adequate water supply is a basic need to sustain human life. Health risk of unsafe drinking water is a serious issue in many poor and underserved communities in developing countries. Therefore, the improvements of the health status of the people are considered as one of the main justifications of promoting investment in water...

As climate change adaptation has become essential for the sustainable development of nations, national adaptation policies have increasingly been adopted and implemented over the past decade. However, an adaptation gap is observable and getting wider. We investigate the barriers to national adaptation policy and their origins, influence as well as...

In this conceptual paper, we examine current theories of natural capital approach implementation and identify areas where further research is needed to help humanity live within planetary boundaries. Natural capital and ecosystem service approaches offer an advanced understanding of Earth's life‐support systems and their interaction with human well...

Despite youth organisations having participated as a recognised constituency (YOUNGO) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for over a decade, few studies have explored their lived experiences of participation. Drawing upon deep ethnographic engagement with a member organisation of YOUNGO conducted between 2015 and 2...

Sustainable development has been an important policy goal for the international community for over three decades. Still, the state of the planet continues to worsen. This conceptual article considers the failure largely a result of structural obstacles and the so-called weak sustainability discourse, popularized by the Brundtland report and manifes...

The European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS) has been established for more than 15 years, but limited attention has been given to how the changing political environment may affect the policy. We address this gap by investigating how the EU enlargement after 2004 affected the ETS and how the effects have been buffered. We develop a framewo...

As adaptation have received increasing attention, national adaptation policies and plans have been substantially developed. Despite the significant roles of national policy for adaptation, barriers to national adaptation policy have been overlooked and our understanding of the barriers is not sufficient as we expect. Also, the barriers are pointed...

Climate adaptation policy in the UK is ineffective and fails to address the many barriers to implementing adaptation in practice. As climate change impacts are increasing, there is an urgent need to address these barriers. Focusing on England, this policy brief provides a practical approach to systematically understand and address these barriers fo...

Transdisciplinary solutions are needed to achieve the sustainability of ecosystem services for future generations. We propose a framework to identify the causes of ecosystem function loss and to forecast the future of ecosystem services under different climate and pollution scenarios. The framework (i) applies an artificial intelligence (AI) time-s...

Although corporate sustainability theory is well established, there is limited research on the use and understanding of the ecosystem service (ES) approaches based on an advanced conceptualization of the environment in organizational practice. This article analyzes the use of ES approaches in organizations using a system theory lens, conducting emp...

International efforts to tackle desertification led by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) support participatory approaches. The emphasis has been on dialogue between different perspectives, which are often grounded in individualism rather than prioritizing society as a whole, and as a result progress in implementation h...

The normative concepts of equity and justice are rising narratives within global climate change discourse. Despite growing considerations of climate equity and justice within the adaptation literature, the extent to which adaptation research has worked to empirically assess and operationalize concepts of equity and justice in practice remains uncle...

There is increasing interest in natural flood management (NFM) and the delivery of public environmental goods. Yet the implementation of NFM can be ad‐hoc and is regionally diverse. Communities often play a role in NFM and thus we assess NFM governance in the UK and communities' position within it. We develop a theoretical framework using the conce...

The notion of insurance value of ecosystems has both conceptual and practical appeal. However, the operationalisation of the concept does not yet match the typical assumptions about the governance of ecosystems and ecosystem service provision. The articles in this special section provide the first comprehensive effort to address this challenge by o...

Substantial literature exists on household lifestyles and related energy use and emissions in the global north, but little is known for many countries the global south. We estimate household-level energy footprints for Zambia covering direct (traditional and modern energy carriers) and indirect energy use, and adopting energy extended multiregional...

Despite progress with national adaptation policies, the adaptation deficit is growing. Barriers to adaptation are a key reason for the adaptation deficit. Past research on barriers only offers a conceptual understanding of the barriers, with limited insight into real adaptation processes. Common causality, interrelationships and dynamics of the bar...

The link between energy use, social and environmental well-being is at the root of critical synergies between clean and affordable energy (SDG7) and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Household-level quantitative energy analyses enable better understanding regarding interconnections between the level and composition of energy use, and SDG...

Youth NGOs have participated in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for over a decade, yet research into their experiences is lacking. Drawing upon an ethnographic case study conducted between 2015 and 2018, we ask: does youth participation increase the democratic legitimacy of a UNFCCC-orchestrated global climate change regime?...

There is evidence that institutions related to climate change and natural resource management influence each other’s performance, and that local settings also shape policy outcomes. We examine how policy implementation processes and institutional interactions affect the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program in...

Increased river flows and sea level rise in a changing climate are of great concern in deltas and makes sustainability particularly important for delta societies. This article reviews current approaches to assess delta sustainability, results of these assessments and what they mean for policies regarding deltas. We particularly ask whether deltas n...

Ambitious climate action requires sustained long-term attention from political leaders. To understand how climate change entered the political agenda in a developing country, we examine from an agenda-setting perspective the attention paid by Mexican presidents to this issue from 1994 to 2018. We perform a longitudinal analysis of 968 documents ref...

Youth articulations of climate change injustice are experiencing an unprecedented moment in the spotlight as, inspired by Greta Thunberg, young people around the world take to the streets demanding justice for their generation in the face of climate emergency. Formal opportunities for youth voices to be heard in environmental governance are slim, a...

As experts predict that at least some irreversible climate change will occur with potentially disastrous effects on the lives and well-being of vulnerable communities around the world, it is paramount to ensure that these communities are resilient and have adaptive capacity to withstand the consequences. Adaptation and resilience planning present s...

Ecosystems can buffer against adverse events and, by so doing, reduce the costs of risk-bearing to society; benefits which have been termed 'insurance value'. Although the terminology is recent, the concept is older and has its roots in ecological resilience. However, a synthesis of studies through the lens of the insurance value concept is lacking...

Ecosystems can buffer against adverse events, such as storms or pest outbreaks by reducing the probability of harm and magnitude of losses. We conceptualise factors involved in the governance of insurance value provision, drawing on the notions of protection and insurance, exogeneity and endogeneity, and allocation of rights and responsibilities. U...

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and...

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and...

Governments are struggling to limit global temperatures below the 2°C Paris target with existing climate change policy approaches. This is because conventional climate policies have been predominantly (inter)nationally top-down, which limits citizen agency in driving policy change and influencing citizen behavior. Here we propose elevating Citizen...

This article proposes an innovative theoretical framework that combines institutional and policy network approaches to study multi-level governance. The framework is used to derive a number of propositions on how cross-level power imbalances shape communication and collaboration across multiple levels of governance. The framework is then applied to...

Businesses are increasingly called on to participate in tackling biodiversity loss, but the extent of corporate commitments to act is unclear. We have a limited understanding of differences in perceptions and actions regarding biodiversity across business sectors. Doubts also remain concerning the reliability of corporate reporting as a window into...

Biodiversity loss presents a serious business risk, particularly for natural resource–based sectors. Improved ecological knowledge has been identified as a means to change perceptions and motivate operational reform regarding biodiversity, but the processes by which businesses gain such knowledge remain unclear. One possible process is to use socia...

This article examines how social and health inequalities shape the health impacts of climate change in the UK, and what the implications are for climate change adaptation and health care provision. The evidence generated by the other articles of the special issue were interpreted using social justice reasoning in light of additional literature, to...

Systematic understanding of adaptation measures utilised by households in developing countries is needed to identify the constraints they face, and the external interventions or adaptation planning needed to overcome them. Understanding of autonomous household adaptation patterns remains underdeveloped. In particular little is known regarding wheth...

In the winter 2015/2016 a series of storms resulted in widespread flooding in northern England, damaging hundreds of properties, disrupting transport and exposing public contempt of flood risk management. The flooding was widely covered in the media. This chapter develops a methodological framework to conceptualise factors influencing risk percepti...

Many factors can conspire to limit the scope for policy development at the national level. In this paper, we consider whether blockages in national policy processes – resulting for example from austerity or small state political philosophies – might be overcome by the development of more polycentric governance arrangements. Drawing on evidence from...

In the winter 2015/2016 a series of storms resulted in widespread flooding in northern England, damaging hundreds of properties, disrupting transport and causing public disdain. The flooding was widely covered in the media. This article develops a methodological framework to conceptualise factors influencing risk perception related to flood events,...

This article explores how microfinance institutions are affected by and are responding to flooding by examining a case study in Satkhira District, Southwest Bangladesh. We develop a framework for understanding how microfinance institutions can reduce their vulnerability to climate risks and use the framework to empirically assess local-level practi...

Planning for adaptation to climate change is often regarded to be a local imperative and considered to be more effective if grounded on a solid evidence base and recognisant of relevant climate projections. Research has already documented some of the challenges of making climate information usable in decision-making but has not yet sufficiently ref...

Research on PES programs in agro-ecosystems is recent and limited in developing countries. We use a multi-method, quasi-experimental impact evaluation approach to examine direct and indirect livelihood impacts of the Equitable Payments for Watershed Services (EPWS) program piloted in the Morogoro region in Tanzania. The evaluation is based on a sur...

There is increasing interest in the potential of microfinance to foster climate change adaptation. However, existing literature over-relies upon theoretical arguments rather than empirical evidence, and until now the emphasis has been on potential positive linkages. We address these weaknesses by empirically examining the role of microfinance in ad...

This article re-conceptualizes Climate Policy Integration (CPI) in the land use sector to highlight the need to assess the level of integration of mitigation and adaptation objectives and policies to minimize trade-offs and to exploit synergies. It suggests that effective CPI in the land use sector requires i) internal climate policy coherence betw...

Unsustainable land uses present many challenges for securing ecosystem service provision. It is also difficult to estimate the cost of a transition to more sustainable land management practices for individual landholders. The main cost to landholders are the opportunity costs, the income foregone when changing land use for continued or enhanced eco...

A summary brief written based on our paper 'Adaptation planning and the use of climate change projections in local government in England and Germany' (published in Regional Environmental Change 2016

A summary brief written based on our paper 'Tailoring the visual communication of climate projections for local adaptation practitioners in Germany and the UK' (published in Philosophical Transactions A 2015)

Understanding the impacts of climate variability and change (CV&C) on electricity systems is paramount for operators preparing for weather-related disruptions, policymakers deciding on future directions of energy policies and European decision makers shaping research programs. This study conducted a systematic literature review to collate consisten...

The use of water resources has traditionally been studied by accounting for the volume of water removed from sources for specific uses. This approach focuses on surface and ground water only and it ignores that international trade on products with substantial amounts of embodied water can have impact on domestic water resources. Using current econo...

There is a growing imperative for responses to climate change to go beyond incremental adjustments, aiming instead for society‐wide transformation. In this context, sociotechnical ( ST ) transitions and social–ecological ( SE ) resilience are two prominent normative agendas. Reviewing these literatures reveals how both share a complex‐systems epist...

Visualizations are widely used in the communication of climate projections. However, their effectiveness has rarely been assessed among their target audience. Given recent calls to increase the usability of climate information through the tailoring of climate projections, it is imperative to assess the effectiveness of different visualizations. Thi...

Multi-level environmental governance (MLEG) has become commonplace, yet few attempts have been made to explain in economic terms why it should have emerged. This article examines four economic explanations for MLEG. The first considers it as a solution for overcoming collective action challenges when a large number of actors are involved. The secon...

There is growing interest in the role microfinance could play in facilitating adaptation to climate change. This article contributes to this interest by reviewing the state of the literature on microfinance and climate change adaptation which has two key areas. The first area of the literature focuses on the potential for microfinance to facilitate...

Many European countries have developed National Adaptation Strategies (NAS) to guide adaptation to the expected impacts of climate change. There is a need for more structured communication of the uncertainties related to future climate and its impacts so that adaptation actions can be planned and implemented effectively and efficiently. We develop...

Many central concerns of social economics, such as embeddedness, plural values and social justice, are highly pertinent to environment and sustainability. Somewhat paradoxically, there has been relatively little research on environment and sustainability in the core social-economics research community. But this is not to say that social-economics r...

Policy documents and academic literature suggest that Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) finance could complement traditional ‘energy access’ (EA) funding in developing countries, including the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Yet these propositions have not been empirically tested. This study helps fill this gap by examining constraints to CDM pro...

This paper investigates what drives household coping strategies in rural Uganda under different climatic hazards. Rural households in sub-Saharan Africa draw on various coping strategies to reduce the impact of climatic hazards on their livelihoods. Research to date provides only limited understanding of how the coping strategy portfolio of househo...

This article examines the emergence of conflict and collaboration in the implementation of forest conservation policies in Soria, Spain. We draw insights from discursive institutionalism and use a comparative case study approach to analyse and compare a situation of social conflict over the Natural Park declaration in the Sierra de Urbión, and a ci...

Regime complexes or overlapping regimes relating to a common subject matter create policy coherence challenges at the national level. Recent research has observed a positive correlation between regime complexes and policy coherence: improved regime integration enables greater policy coherence and vice versa. Policy coherence has nonetheless been ap...

Slow progress in scaling-up climate finance has emerged as a major bottleneck in international negotiations. Debt relief for climate finance swaps could provide an alternative source for financing mitigation and adaptation action in developing countries.

There is an on-going debate about climate-induced migration but little empirical evidence. We examine how climate-induced migration has impacted vulnerability and adaptation of a coastal fishing community in Bangladesh. We used household surveys, interviews and focus group discussions to compare fishery dependent households who migrated from Kutubd...

This article contributes to the limited empirical evidence on the determinants of farmers' participation decision in agricultural land (land use-modifying) payments for ecosystem services (PES) in developing countries. It examines how farmer and farm characteristics, programme factors, and the institutional context of its implementation determine f...

This study presents the first assessment of how an approach based on meeting fundamental human needs can assist regional planning. It uses the Human-scale Development methodology, based on fundamental human needs as a theoretical and methodological framework for scenario building. It offers a structured approach on how non-monetary values and pract...

doi: 10.1080/14693062.2013.861728

Limits and barriers to adaptation restrict people’s ability to address the negative impacts of climate change or manage risks in a way that maximises their wellbeing. There is a lack of evidence of this on small-scale fishing communities in developing countries. This study identifies and characterises limits and barriers to adaptation of fishing ac...