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The compounding impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on the insecurity of indigenous women in Papua and West Papua, Indonesia

Immense beyond imagination, the untamed rainforests of western New Guinea represent a biodiversity hotspot, home to several unique species of flora and fauna. The territory’s astonishing beauty and diversity is underpinned by a stunning array of natural resources. The island is also home to many indigenous communities practicing hundreds of local languages and traditions and depending on their natural environment for maintaining their traditional livelihoods, identity and culture. The territory’s much-contested decolonization process in the 1950-60s led to widespread discontent among indigenous Papuans and gave rise to persistent dissent from Indonesian rule, routinely met with disproportionately violent action by Indonesian security forces. Adding to these longstanding colonial ills and grievances, indigenous Papuan communities also struggle to grapple with inequitable allocation of land and resources, extreme pollution and environmental degradation caused by the mining and palm oil sectors. In the meantime, climate-exacerbated weather events have become more frequent in the region creating new tensions by putting an additional strain on natural resources and thus leading to an increased level of insecurity and inequality. In particular, these challenges have a disproportionate and profound impact on indigenous Papuan women, whose native lands are deeply embedded in their cultural and ethnic identity, and who are dependent on access to land to carry out their prescribed roles. Displacement also puts women at further risk of violence. Adding to sexual violence and displacement experienced by indigenous Papuan women, the loss of traditional lands and resources has been identified as having a singularly negative impact on women as it impedes their empowerment and makes them vulnerable to continued violence. The Papuan experience thus serves as a timely illustration to exemplify how environmental factors, such as resource extraction and climate change, not only amplify vulnerabilities and exacerbate pre-existing inequalities stemming from colonial times, they also give rise to gendered consequences flowing from large-scale degradation and loss of the natural environment.

Campervans and the Paris agreement : what's the deal?

The impact of COVID-19 related regulations and restrictions on mobility and potential for sustained climate mitigation across the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK: a data-based commentary

Human behaviour change is necessary to meet targets set by the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change. Restrictions and regulations put in place globally to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 have had a substantial impact on everyday life, including many carbon-intensive behaviours such as transportation. Changes to transportation behaviour may reduce carbon emissions. Behaviour change theory can offer perspective on the drivers and influences of behaviour and shape recommendations for how policy-makers can capitalise on any observed behaviour changes that may mitigate climate change. For this commentary, we aimed to describe changes in data relating to transportation behaviours concerning working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic across the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. We display these identified changes in a concept map, suggesting links between the changes in behaviour and levels of carbon emissions. We consider these changes in relation to a comprehensive and easy to understand model of behaviour, the Opportunity, Motivation Behaviour (COM-B) model, to understand the capabilities, opportunities and behaviours related to the observed behaviour changes and potential policy to mitigate climate change. There is now an opportunity for policy-makers to increase the likelihood of maintaining pro-environmental behaviour changes by providing opportunities, improving capabilities and maintaining motivation for these behaviours.

KLM, science-based targets, and the Paris Agreement. Expert Report

A cross-sectional study on the relation between the family nutrition climate and children’s nutrition behavior

Background: Parents influence their children’s nutrition behavior. The relationship between parental influences and children’s nutrition behavior is often studied with a focus on the dyadic interaction between the parent and the child. However, parents and children are part of a broader system: the family. We investigated the relationship between the family nutrition climate (FNC), a family-level concept, and children’s nutrition behavior. Methods: Parents of primary school-aged children (N = 229) filled in the validated family nutrition climate (FNC) scale. This scale measures the families’ view on the consumption of healthy nutrition, consisting of four dierent concepts: value, communication, cohesion, and consensus. Parents also reported their children’s nutrition behavior (i.e., fruit, vegetable, water, candy, savory snack, and soda consumption). Multivariate linear regression analyses, correcting for potential confounders, were used to assess the relationship between the FNC scale (FNC-Total; model 1) and the dierent FNC subscales (model 2) and the child’s nutrition behavior. Results: FNC-Total was positively related to fruit and vegetable intake and negatively related to soda consumption. FNC-value was a significant predictor of vegetable (positive) and candy intake (negative), and FNC-communication was a significant predictor of soda consumption (negative). FNC-communication, FNC-cohesion, and FNC-consensus were significant predictors (positive, positive, and negative, respectively) of water consumption. Conclusions: The FNC is related to children’s nutrition behavior and especially to the consumption of healthy nutrition. These results imply the importance of taking the family-level influence into account when studying the influence of parents on children’s nutrition behavior. Trial registration: Dutch Trial Register NTR6716 (registration date 27 June 2017, retrospectively registered), METC163027, NL58554.068.16, Fonds NutsOhra project number 101.253.

The Netherlands

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the European Parliament. It analyses the political and legal dynamics behind referendums on EU-related matters. It argues that we have entered a period of increasing political uncertainty with regard to the European project and that this new political configuration will both affect and be affected by the politics of EU-related referendums. Such referendums have long been a risky endeavour and this has been accentuated in the wake of the Great Recession with its negative ramifications for public opinion in the European Union. It is clear that referendums on EU matters are here to stay and will continue to be central to the EU’s future as they are deployed to determine the number of Member States within the EU, its geographical reach, its constitutional evolution and adherence to EU policies. Only now they have become an even riskier endeavour.