Topics may include, but are not limited to:
– Climate action plans and solutions for green and sustainable cities
– Cultural heritage and environmental sustainability
– Environmental policy and governance
– Air quality and climate indicators
– Sustainable agriculture and land use
– Biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services
– Climate adaptation and resilience
– Development of resilient communities through disaster risk reduction
– Citizen and participatory science and public engagement
– Best practice methodologies for specific use cases
– Metadata standards for integration of data from different research domains
– Project reports or infrastructure requirements related to multidisciplinary use cases
Approximately three-quarters of the European population is urban. Cities are also responsible for a similar percentage of European global greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union recognized this with its numerous programs created to encourage cities to take the lead in climate mitigation initiatives.
Over one hundred cities have joined either the European Union's 2030 climate neutral, smart city program and/or ICLEI's climate neutral cities mission. Munich, Zurich, and Paris are three of these cities. They aim to be climate leaders, developing policies and programs to sharply cut emissions while improving the quality of urban life and enhancing resilience against the effects of a changing climate.
Becoming carbon neutral is a complex task that requires an understanding of the wide variety of emission sources found in a city, the development of effective counter-measures, the establishment of priority areas for action, and the steps being taken to encourage public participation and acceptance. It also requires significant data regarding the main sources of pollution and the impacts policies are having on emission levels.
Munich, Zurich, and Paris are among Europe’s richest cities with excellent scientific and technological capacities. Climate change has been high on their policy agendas and they have attracted considerable international attention for their initiatives. How are these cities doing in their efforts to lower their carbon emissions and green their environments? All three have set ambitious carbon neutrality targets but are following different strategies with different priorities. How were decisions made about which projects to prioritize and where to invest limited budgets? Are the cities achieving not only emissions reductions but also doing so with climate justice considerations? Do they have sufficient emissions data and monitoring capacity?
This presentation will examine the goals, targets, policies and programs of these cities, with particular attention to how emissions observations and monitoring are feeding into the policy process and how universities and publics are engaged in bringing about change. This presentation draws on observations from the ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) PAUL (Pilot Applications in Urban Landscapes) Horizon 2020 project and the interviews and fieldwork that was conducted in these and several other European cities. It will consider what can be learned from the project's findings for moving European cities forward in evidence-based, participatory climate decision-making and show case some of the exciting projects being developed in these cities.
How to cite: Schreurs, M.: Towards Climate Neutralality in European Cities, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14904, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14904, 2026.
Many global environmental treaties include provisions for parties to evaluate their effectiveness. These effectiveness evaluations are, in part, intended to keep parties on track towards meeting collective treaty objectives and provisions, and they rely heavily on scientific and technical information. Understanding how they work provides a key area where social science knowledge can help scientists be more effective at informing governance. While previous literature sought to conceptualize and define treaty effectiveness in specific ways, we develop and apply a new four-step analytical framework for examining how the treaty parties themselves to the seven treaties in the four issue areas of stratospheric ozone depletion, persistent organic pollutants, mercury, and climate change have set up and carried out varying kinds of collective effectiveness evaluations. In our framework, the first step, agreement, looks at of the ways in which treaty objectives and provisions reflect consensus among the negotiating countries on collective objectives and the mechanisms to achieve them. The second step, translation, explores how parties select and use indicators related to treaty objectives and provisions for carrying out effectiveness evaluations. The third step, attribution, focuses on how parties use indicators to engage the causal question of whether treaty implementation has led to desired changes and outcomes. The fourth step, reformulation, details how effectiveness evaluations feed back into alterations to treaty objectives and provisions. In this presentation, based on our comparative and empirically-grounded analysis across the seven treaties in the four issue areas, we present ten specific lessons. Our goal is to develop useful knowledge that can be applied towards improving the ability of international environmental treaty-based cooperation to advance sustainability transitions on a human-dominated planet. The lessons are based on the finding that treaty effectiveness evaluations are best understood as political and dynamic processes that treaty parties, having both shared and individual interests, use as collective learning and accountability mechanisms. shaping science-policy interactions.
How to cite: Selin, N. and Selin, H.: How to evaluate a global environmental agreement: what works, what doesn’t, and who decides?, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2606, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2606, 2026.
Climate performance indices play a crucial role in evaluating countries’ efforts and advancing global environmental governance. This study critically examines the disparities among prominent climate performance indices, including the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), and the Climate Action Tracker (CAT). Our analysis reveals significant divergences in country rankings, particularly between ‘developed’ and ‘least developed’ nations, underscoring how subjective methodological choices impact the results and interpretation of indices. We develop an analytic tool, called EPI-equity, to demonstrate how integrating equity principles can substantially alter performance assessments. We furthermore propose a novel conceptual framework to classify indices based on the choice of methodological framework and embedded normative choices, highlighting how these can shape the interpretation of performance. These results enable the contextualization of the outcomes of climate performance indices and the degree to which they align with one another. Thus, this framework helps translate methodological choices into a conceptual understanding of what an index truly measures. We propose that explicitly articulating the normative choices embedded in performance indices can enhance transparency, guide developers in aligning methodological choices with intended interpretations, and provide users with a clearer understanding of the results. Our analysis highlights the importance of employing multiple indices that encompass a range of normative choices for a comprehensive evaluation of countries’ climate performance. This adaptable framework provides a structured approach to guide the selection of indices spanning a broad spectrum of viewpoints, and, thereby, mitigates the likelihood of conflicts arising from fragmented worldviews on complex socio-environmental issues
How to cite: Murari, K. K., Dhara, C., Gupta, A., Bagri, I., and Block, S.: Interpreting climate performance indices: implications for equitable and effective policy, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4423, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4423, 2026.
Islands are especially susceptible to climate change and thus the policy of adaptation must be considered within the systemic perspective in order to work against the effects in the environment, society, and economy. In the Canary Islands, rising sea levels could have important effects to coastal environments such as beaches, dunes, and wetlands, but also to critical infrastructure, homes, and tourism-related economies.
This work provides the first comprehensive evaluation of coastal management in the Canary Islands with respect to sea-level rise, carried out by an interdisciplinary scientific group that cover oceanographers, geographers, and public policy and administration. We analyse existing climate-change legislation and regulatory instruments through a socio-ecological systems lens, focusing on (i) the intentionality of adaptation, that is, the treatment of risk, time, and collective responsibility, and (ii) the substance of adaptation policies, that is, the actions, time scales, and implementation structures that emerge. We will identify the configurations of policy events that shape the emerging network of coastal management for sea-level rise.
The results show the existence of discrepancies between legal systems and implementation. Adaptation actions are often strategic but vague in terms of timelines, responsibilities, and legal tools in line with the current climate emergency. The lack of coordination between institutions is an important factor in adaptive management, causing overlaps, contradictions, and delays in very time-sensitive areas like coastal zones. The proposed solutions address the improvement of institution-level collaborations.
In addition to the Canary Islands, a transferable solution has been identified through which multidisciplinary data on the environment and social science approaches to governance can be employed to foster more sustainable climate action plans.
How to cite: González, A. G., García-Romero, L., González-Dávila, M., Santana-Casiano, J. M., Ferraro, G., González-Santana, D., Naranjo-Almeida, L., and Peña-Alonso, C.: From ocean observations to climate action plans: bridging science and governance for coastal adaptation in the Canary Islands, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4495, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4495, 2026.
As the core component of the Earth’s ecosystem and a vital resource base for human development, the ocean possesses irreplaceable value for global economic growth, ecological security, and scientific and technological progress. Marine technology, which underpins the observation, exploration, and protection of the ocean environment, serves as a key bridge between human activities and the marine system. In recent years, with the continuous expansion of the industrial scale of marine observation and exploration equipment, improving the level of industrial standardization and enhancing the efficiency of interdisciplinary and international cooperation have become key priorities for major maritime nations. The development of international standards based on global consensus is not only an important attempt toward (i) improving the efficiency of marine technology research, development, and acquisition and (ii) promoting standardized and large-scale industrial growth but also an effective way for countries to strengthen their technological competitiveness in the international market. From marine observation and exploration to the development and utilization of marine resources, every stage of the industrial chain has specific standardization needs. For example, the testing verification and equipment performance evaluation, for marine observation and exploration equipment not only require standards for test methods, performance assessment, and operating procedures but also for product quality indicators, compatibility, and safety.
In anticipation of the broad development prospects of marine technology and its growing need for standardization, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) established the Subcommittee on Marine Technology in 2014 (ISO/TC 8/SC 13). The Subcommittee focuses on developing international standards in the fields of marine observation, exploration, and environmental protection. Over the 12 years since its establishment, the Subcommittee has published 14 international standards in the field of marine observation, exploration and environment impact assessment under ISO. The Subcommittee has recruited 20 member countries and maintains cooperation with international organizations involved in marine affairs, such as the International Seabed Authority and the World Meteorological Organization, making it one of the most important international bodies in the field of marine standards.
Based on the practical work of the Subcommittee, this study systematically reviews the development of international standardization for marine observation and exploration technologies, and environment impact assessment, including the relevant organizations, technology advancements, and emerging standardization dynamics. Furthermore, the study identifies current challenges, namely the following: (1) the asynchronous development between technological innovation and standardization processes, (2) insufficient engagement from industry stakeholders, and (3) difficulties in addressing the standardization needs of deep-sea mining. Based on the findings, this study proposes the following solutions to address the aforementioned challenges: (1) balancing technological advancement with market readiness during standard development, (2) enhancing promotional efforts to improve industry participation, and (3) actively addressing collaborative barriers among international marine organizations.
We are committed to advancing international standardization in the emerging field of marine observation，exploration and environment protection, with a focus on standardizing technical specifications, eliminating trade barriers, and providing a common technical language to facilitate international cooperation in marine technology.
How to cite: Ma, L.: Dynamics, challenges, and prospects of international standardization for marine observation, exploration and environment protection, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8553, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8553, 2026.
To elucidate some of the key cross-disciplinary research questions of today such as mitigating environmental crises or adapting to climate change, we need cross-disciplinary data analysis, as well as policy integration. This requires that data can be seamlessly blended from environmental and social science domains, along with citizen science and other sources. Traditionally, there have been many serious challenges with the integration of these data: structural, semantic, organisational, and legal, among others. Relevant data may be of different types, use wildly different formats, leveraging different measurement units, including geospatial. Examples of such heterogeneity include large environmental data spaces like Copernicus, official statistics from national agencies, sub-national social surveys, and various individual research projects.
To build systems for integrating and accessing such blended, cross-disciplinary data, a new and robust approach to cross-domain metadata is urgently needed. Rather than creating yet another standard, the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF) provides an implementation framework for how this can be done in practice, based on the re-use of existing common standards working together coherently. CDIF builds on the FAIR principles but is a concrete implementation framework for data and infrastructure practitioners and, by design, provides comprehensive coverage of the most critical areas in the research data lifecycle: Discovery, Data Structure, Semantics, Provenance, Universals, and Access. This presentation will introduce the concept and culture of CDIF, the suite of existing standards that are leveraged by CDIF, and how it can be implemented in concrete use-cases related to climate change adaptation and managing effects of the green transition.
How to cite: Orten, H. and Bell, D.: CDIF - a unified framework for the integration of data from different research domains, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17675, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17675, 2026.
Environmental justice screening increasingly relies on indicator-based tools to identify disadvantaged places and to inform permitting, mitigation, and investment. Yet “cumulative burden” is operationalized inconsistently across tools, and modelling choices can materially alter who is flagged, where burdens cluster, and how results are interpreted. A related open question is how cumulative-burden definitions interact with statistical uncertainty across communities, particularly where designations hinge on threshold rules. This study first evaluates how sampling uncertainty in survey-derived socioeconomic indicators affects the designation of overburdened communities and, by extension, the statistical certainty of threshold-based eligibility for funding or regulatory protections. Using margin-of-error information for derived measures, the analysis quantifies when communities are confidently above or below statutory-style cutoffs and identifies an uncertainty zone where designations are sensitive to sampling variability, with the strongest instability expected near thresholds. In a second step, the study assesses cumulative burden across multiple burden categories under alternative screening approaches commonly used in environmental justice tools. Scenario families include indicator- and category-threshold counting as well as index-based aggregation with additive and multiplicative combination rules. A global sensitivity analysis is then used to compare the relative importance of cumulative-burden modelling choices against other core design decisions, clarifying which assumptions most strongly affect rankings and designations. Finally, spatial modelling and machine learning are used to characterize where uncertainty is systematically elevated beyond what population size alone would predict and to identify contextual and demographic correlates of these patterns, supporting an intersectional interpretation of who is most affected by uncertain classifications. Together, the results provide a transparent assessment of how uncertainty and cumulative-burden definitions jointly shape indicator-based environmental justice screening outcomes.
How to cite: Feldmeyer, D. and Tate, E.: Cumulative Burden and Uncertainty in Environmental Justice Screening, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15255, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15255, 2026.
Trust or Stagnation? Institutions, Social Values, and the Future of Forest Ecosystem Services in Europe
Environmental issues are fundamentally societal and cultural, necessitating interdisciplinary approaches to understand how human systems interact with ecological functions. While Europe is a highly forested region with a long history of social–environmental interactions, the adoption of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) remains comparatively limited. This research employs a scenario-based foresight approach to bridge social science and environmental studies, investigating how public funding frameworks can better integrate PES to support forest ecosystem services (ES).
The study employs a qualitative methodology grounded in scenario-based foresight. To ensure policy relevance and analytical coherence, a fast-track scenario approach was adopted, drawing on the EU OpenNESS scenario set (Wealth-being, United-we-stand, Eco-center, and Rural Revival) as a foundational framework. Data were generated through horizon scanning, combining literature synthesis with primary expert insights from nine European forest-related case studies. These inputs were analysed using an expanded STEEP-V framework, which explicitly integrates social values alongside social, technological, economic, environmental, and political drivers of change.
The findings further highlight that current institutional arrangements—particularly complex administrative procedures, fragmented policy objectives, and rigid funding structures—often discourage participation from forest owners, who do not always act as purely economically rational agents. To explore institutional alternatives, four integration strategies were therefore evaluated: Business-as-Usual, voluntary enhancement of existing funds (Integration+), mandatory enhancement (Integration++), and the creation of a dedicated PES fund. Results indicate that Integration+ is the most robust strategy across all plausible futures, offering flexibility while remaining politically and institutionally feasible.
Unlike existing PES studies that focus primarily on ecological effectiveness or site-level implementation challenges, this contribution emphasizes how future social values, institutional design, and funding architectures jointly shape environmental outcomes. Ultimately, it argues that the future of forest ecosystem services depends on the synergy between adaptive policy design and evolving societal stewardship. To enable viable climate action and sustainable land-use pathways, governance systems must move toward administrative simplification and trust-based arrangements that foster a more resilient and constructive relationship between people and the environment.
Key words: Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES); Socio-ecological systems; Scenario-based foresight; Institutional innovation; EU funding frameworks.
How to cite: Nazari, M., Putri Nina, S., and Vacik, H.: Trust or Stagnation? Institutions, Social Values, and the Future of Forest Ecosystem Services in Europe, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20413, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20413, 2026.
Previous research has found that natural disasters affect people's attitudes towards the environment. This covers both environmental concern and environmental behaviour. This paper combines data from the World Values Survey with disaster data from the EM-DAT database to analyse the relationship between the occurrence and impacts of natural disasters. Different disaster types are used to determine whether there are similar patterns among storms, floods, droughts, extreme weather, and wildfires. In addition, different time spans are applied to cover long-term (ten years) and short-term (one year) influences on people's opinions and behaviours. Indicators used for natural disasters in the EM-DAT database include the number of events, the number of reported fatalities, and the number of affected persons. On the national level, several other indicators are included about the economy and the population. On the individual level, the analysis uses the World Values Survey wave six, which covers 60 countries worldwide, including many low-income countries. It includes questions about environmental behaviour, e.g., whether people have donated money to ecological organisations or participated in a protest, and about environmental attitudes, e.g., whether the respondent considers protecting the environment important. Also included are demographic characteristics like age, gender, income, and level of education. By combining the World Values Survey data with the EM-DAT disaster data, it becomes possible to investigate the relationships between natural disasters and environmental attitudes and behaviours in a comparative way across nations.
How to cite: Zenk-Möltgen, W.: The impact of natural disasters on environmental concern and behaviour - a multilevel analysis of the World Values Survey, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21986, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21986, 2026.
Understanding long-term interactions between humans and their environment requires integrative approaches that combine natural sciences with historical and social perspectives. Floodplains constitute particularly rich archives in this regard, as they record the long-term interplay between human activities and natural ecosystems. This study presents an interdisciplinary framework combining geophysics, geomorphology, paleoenvironmental analysis and biogeochemical proxis, land-use studies, archaeology and historical sources to reconstruct the Eger River floodplain evolution from the Holocene multi-channel anastomosing system to the recent, extensively straightened, highly regulated urban riverscape.
This study is grounded in development-led geoarchaeological excavations in the vicinity of the medieval hub of Nördlingen, southern Germany. Strategically selected key sites along the river corridor upstream and downstream of the medieval town allow comparative analyses, with a focus on how the town and its associated activities and urban crafts influenced floodplain dynamics.
Our methodology adopts an interdisciplinary, multi-proxy approach. Old maps and archival data inform the spatial reconstruction of water use; together with geophysical surveys, these guide targeted coring campaigns. Sediment cores are analysed by a comprehensive suite of laboratory analyses (sediment texture, stationary X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, CNS analysis, carbonate content and pH measurements, Urease activity, soil microbial biomass and stable isotope ratios (δ13C, δ15N)) and geochronological analyses (radiocarbon dating, luminescence dating). All findings are subsequently contextualised with the robust archeological and paleoenvironmental datasets.
The development and integration of our multi-proxy framework has yielded a high-resolution biogeochemical and chronostratigraphical model of its floodplain which is essential for gaining comprehensive insights into the history of Eger River water management. Our reference model identifies three major sediment units of fluvial origin, together with anthropogenically driven higher concentrations of heavy metals in the topsoil. Our study effectively reconstructs the spatial and temporal progress of human related landscape, land-use and environmental changes in a characteristic mid-European floodplain.
How to cite: Zvara, E. and Pejdanović, S. and the Authors: Reconstructing Eger floodplain development (Nördlingen, southern Germany): An interdisciplinary approach to land use change, paleoenvironment, and pollution history, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10388, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-10388, 2026.
Traditional Irrigation Knowledge (TIK) is a time-tested set of social and environmental arrangements centered on the use of gravity-fed channels to flood irrigate crops. In Spain, many traditional irrigators rely on knowledge, practices and water management regulations that derive from the al-Andalus period (711-1492 AD) and hence are a conspicuous example of agrarian practices that have shown sustainability through time. However, we still do not know how they reason and make decisions regarding irrigation systems and agricultural practices.
Here we present the preliminary results from c. 100 semi-structured interviews with irrigators from six different traditional irrigation systems of Spain. The study combined free-listing, cognitive mapping and a semi-structured questionnaire to examine irrigators' conceptualizations of irrigation and agroecosystem dynamics.
The results indicate that traditional irrigators think about irrigation not only as a productive strategy to manage water and crops, but also as a culturally embedded system sustained by emotional attachment and ancestral continuity. Decision-making is strongly informed by local ecological knowledge and lived experience. Many irrigators rely on animal behaviour (such as birds, amphibians, insects and cattle) to predict and identify climatic patterns; the same applies for cloud formation processes, wind patterns and other meteorological phenomena. Many local communities have also learned to identify comestible weeds growing after irrigation, which they use as condiments. Overall, our work shows that irrigators decision-making is highly influenced by local ecological memory and personal experience, and reveals that the relevance of traditional irrigation systems for sustainability extends beyond food production to encompass ecological, social and emotional dimensions.
How to cite: Aguiló-Rivera, C., Linga, S. N., Richards, O., Flinders, S., and Puy, A.: The cultural and cognitive dimensions of traditional irrigation knowledge in Spain , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14607, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14607, 2026.
All over the world, multiple processes make coastlines dynamic. With climate change accentuating some of these processes, coastal evolution is a subject of growing concern. This dynamic is generally reflected in cartographic representations that are used in scientific analyses but also for coastal zone management. Indeed, maps remain the most effective way of connecting the reality on the ground with users. However, while the appropriation of maps and, consequently, the understanding of environmental phenomena by a variety of audiences remains a major challenge, it is rarely evaluated.
It is by developing an original interdisciplinary approach that brings together geosciences and environmental psychology, that will be presented the method used to evaluate cartographic representations of shoreline dynamics, and to understand of how they are observed, perceived, interpreted, and understood.
The experimental protocol is based on a combination of concepts and methods from these different disciplines. Using explicit methods such as questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, as well as implicit methods such as eye movement analysis, several standard maps representing coastal dynamics are presented to a large group of volunteers. This allows for the evaluation of the effectiveness, comprehensibility, and appreciation of each map.
The aim of this research is to develop a methodology that can be applied to other case studies and to provide concrete solutions to the various stakeholders regarding risk management in their territory through effective communication. This approach will ultimately increase the resilience of the territories and populations involved by engaging them. It also demonstrates how combining social sciences and geosciences can enrich methodologies.
How to cite: Banton, E., Gargani, J., Jouannic, G., and Navarro Carrascal, O.: Interdisciplinarity for evaluating cartographic representations of shoreline dynamics, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17990, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17990, 2026.
Sustainable forest management is critical for addressing global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and social equity. Several international agreements, including the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forest and Land Use (2021) and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022), recognise the importance of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in halting and reversing forest loss. However, conventional science-driven approaches to forest management often overlook the deep ecological and cultural insights embedded in IKS. As a result, despite its acknowledged importance, IKS remains poorly integrated into formal scientific knowledge systems and policy frameworks.
Indigenous communities have managed forest landscapes for millennia, developing profound ecological understanding through place-based observation, lived experience, and cultural traditions. Indigenous Knowledge Systems complement scientific methodologies by fostering innovative, adaptive, and co-management practices, as well as culturally sensitive conservation techniques.
Drawing on multiple case studies from the Western Ghats, India, this study examines Indigenous Peoples’ perceptions of changes in tropical natural forest systems and how these changes affect their livelihoods, cultural values, and relationships with forests and the broader environment. The study also highlights the potential of integrating geospatial data with Indigenous Peoples’ place-based knowledge to enhance environmental understanding.
Our findings indicate that collaboration among Indigenous Peoples, scientists, and decision-makers, as well as the integration of IKS into forest management, face significant institutional, epistemological, and governance-related challenges. We argue that revisiting the role of Indigenous Peoples in forest management and developing meaningful, respectful pathways to integrate Indigenous knowledge into sustainable forest governance are essential to halting and reversing forest loss.
How to cite: Vijayan, D. and Kareyapath, L.: Revisiting the Role of Indigenous Peoples and their Knowledge in Sustainable Forest Governance, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20217, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20217, 2026.
Regional ecological protection and restoration are vital for enhancing environmental quality and supporting sustainable development. However, large-scale conservation initiatives often overlook associated socioeconomic trade-offs, intensifying conflicts between protection and local development. Existing research focuses predominantly on ecosystem indicators, leaving a gap in understanding the livelihood impacts of such interventions. Analyzing the trade-offs between ecological restoration and socioeconomic factors, especially livelihoods, is therefore critical for refining ecosystem services, improving conservation policies, and fostering sustainable resident livelihoods. This study examines the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau to assess the human-nature relationship following large-scale ecological protection and restoration. Using departmental surveys, we evaluated socio-ecological satisfaction, while household questionnaires analyzed local perceptions and livelihood outcomes related to protected areas (PAs). These were integrated with an ecosystem service trade-off analysis to inform optimized conservation policy and livelihood strategies. Key findings include: First, PAs mainly influenced local subsidy income, farmer livelihoods, and tourist numbers, significantly affecting participation in conservation. Impact on livelihoods exhibited a threshold effect, with income spillover observed within 10–20 km from PAs. Resident engagement in protection was significant within 10 km, whereas ecological indicators (e.g., vegetation, biodiversity) showed no clear threshold. Livelihood and health indicators consistently reflected conservation effects across zones, suggesting their utility as key metrics for evaluating ecological initiatives. Nonetheless, livelihood outcomes remain constrained by local ecological conditions and land resources. Second, clear disparities emerged inside versus outside PAs regarding livelihood improvement, ecological change, policy compliance, and human-environment relations. Livelihood and income growth were lower inside PAs (by 4.5% and 7.6%, respectively), while policy participation and compliance were higher (by 8.2% and 7.4%). However, protection-development conflicts intensified inside PAs (12.4% higher than outside). To harmonize human-nature relations, PA management should integrate ecosystem service trade-offs, enhance total service supply, and align goals with local functional contexts. Engaging farmers and herders in conservation, upgrading tourism and rural infrastructure, and increasing access to ecosystem services can raise tourism-linked income and improve livelihood sustainability.
How to cite: Feng, Y.: Socioecological Trade-offs of Conservation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20461, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20461, 2026.
Research for Development support to smallholder farming systems is, with 70-90% of the global public and philanthropic funds, heavily skewed towards technical solutions i.e. seeds, fertilizers, technologies; while it is people and social systems that make or break “change”. In their decision-making, smallholders are often restricted by a lack of knowledge to fully and sustainably use the potential of their agricultural resources. In low-and-middle-income countries extension services are in place to fill knowledge gaps, yet these are chronically understaffed, farm households are often remote, extension budgets limited and language barriers exist. Digital extension tools are meant to serve as a low-cost, innovative way to reach more farmers. In practice, most digital extension tools have a low social fit: they are inaccessible (low digital literary, poor network, unaffordable), commercial (non-impartial) and non-inclusive (women less frequently owning smartphones), resulting in a limited uptake and impact. As part of the CIRNA project (CIRcularity of Nutrients in Agroecosystems and co-benefits for animal and human health), we analysed phone ownership and use for agricultural extension in Kenya and Uganda. 99% of the households we interviewed owned a basic (feature) phone, while smartphone ownership was much higher in Kenya (82%) than in Uganda (28%). We teamed up with a Social Enterprise from Kenya, specialized on inclusive ICT solutions for development, to create two locally grounded digital extension pathways for smallholders: An AI-driven WhatsApp chatbot for Kenya, capitalizing on higher smartphone adoption, and an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) hotline for Uganda to ensure accessibility for feature phone users. The chatbot in Kenya has an SMS dial-in option, too, so also feature phone users can participate. The extension tools are built on a social business model where revenue from content scaling is re-invested into the platform. Early demand testing in Uganda has already engaged over 29,000 farmers, signalling a robust appetite for the proposed digital advisory service. We explore the potential of these tools to not only "scale out" numbers but "scale deep" by impacting social norms, specifically targeting women and youth to ensure inclusive development.
How to cite: Michalscheck, M., Leitner, S., Wanyama, I., and Merbold, L.: Without social fit - no technical fix: inclusive digital extension for smallholders in Kenya and Uganda, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17079, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17079, 2026.
The participation of Indigenous communities in forest management has become a crucial component of the global effort to achieve conservation goals. Indigenous peoples are globally recognized as agents of sustainability, as their unique knowledge, lifestyles, and skills provide practical solutions to many environmental issues faced worldwide. Several international agreements including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the importance of Indigenous peoples' rights and emphasize the importance of Indigenous peoples' participation as key to achieving the SDGs' ambitions. However, establishing the basic rights of indigenous people for their traditional livelihood and involving all Indigenous communities in participatory management has proven challenging in a diverse country like India due to the complexity of its social and political landscape.
Through an extensive review of relevant literature, this study examines how the forest policy impacts Indigenous rights and livelihood, against the main international frameworks which acts as a guideline on the same. Further, through a case study based in the south of India, study analyses the intensity of participation of Indigenous people in the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme and the factors influencing it, as well as its outcomes.
Our study reveals the mixed impact of forest policies on indigenous rights and livelihoods. While modern forest laws and policies are found to challenge traditional livelihoods, there has been a focused effort to establish indigenous rights within these policies. However, the reality on the ground regarding the implementation of these rights differs significantly from the published government statistics. Despite the emphasis placed on the importance of Indigenous participation in JFM policies, the level of involvement was found to be limited in the area studied. In the areas where there was indigenous participation in JFM, absolute decision-making authority and power-sharing were lacking. The sustainability of the JFM programme was found to be affected by challenges such as benefit sharing and NTFT collection. Guided by the results of the analysis and the perspectives of Indigenous peoples, the study proposes the active involvement of Indigenous peoples in forest management programmes, incorporating appropriate mechanisms to integrate their practices and knowledge, which could help in achieving the dual objectives of conservation and empowerment.
How to cite: Kareyapath, L. and Vijayan, D.: Sustainable Forest Management policies and Indigenous people - a case study from India, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-22419, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-22419, 2026.
In recent decades, truck-based, cross-border food trade in West African countries has rapidly increased. Although such motorized transport enables fast movement of large volumes of goods, the question remains whether traditional forms of long-distance trade with caravans, which were of great importance in the past, continue to function as an element of social and ecological connectivity. By integrating historical records with recent GPS tracking of selected camel caravans and surveys with caravan leaders in Niger, we analyse the evolution of caravan trading practices over time and their role in present-day global trade. Our findings show that the great salt caravan across the Ténéré Desert (Aïr Mountains – Bilma/Fachi – Aïr Mountains – Hausaland) continues to operate annually, albeit on a smaller scale (length, duration, number of animals) than in the past. We hypothesize that the persistence of caravan trading is linked to social and cultural factors, such as social status, prestige, and encoded values, rather than economic efficiency, product quality, and transport time. We further argue that the flexibility and adaptability of caravan trading systems operating in a highly volatile environment of changing political and ecological conditions play a critical role in their continued existence.
How to cite: Fastner, K., Mohamed, A. K. I., Schareika, N., and Buerkert, A.: Crossing the sands: the role of traditional caravan trading in the 21st century, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-19339, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-19339, 2026.
Healthy soils are fundamental for life on Earth, providing essential ecosystem services such as food production, climate regulation, and disease control. Yet, over 60% of soils in Europe is degraded. In response, the Soil Strategy of the European Union aims to restore all soils in Europe by 2050. Achieving this aim requires more than scientific understanding of soil processes and novel technologies, since soils are embedded in complex societal systems. For instance, agricultural soils are part of food supply chains that influence how farmers can manage their soils. Improving soil health therefore also requires understanding the societal processes that affect soil health, and what knowledge or innovation can help steering these processes towards sustainability. To assess the latter, input from societal soil stakeholders is essential.
Project SOLO addresses this challenge by developing transdisciplinary roadmaps for future European soil research. These roadmaps identify what knowledge or innovation is needed to restore all soils in Europe towards a healthy state. Nine thematic roadmaps, covering issues such as soil biodiversity and erosion, are co-created by diverse groups of scientists and societal stakeholders. These roadmaps are updated annually, and open for review. The context-dependence of what we want from soils and what is possible is captured by four regional nodes that develop local research agendas in contrasting European settings. Further regional inputs are collected during annual outreach events across 12 different countries. An overarching roadmap synthesizes the thematic and regional roadmaps into a holistic research agenda that informs future EU funding calls.
This synthesis was led by soil scientists and enriched by the contributions of social scientists who were essential in developing a bottom-up methodology for quantitative synthesis and for interpreting the results. The overarching roadmap reveals the synergies and trade-offs when addressing knowledge gaps across different soil health themes and European regions. These insights resulted in four promising strategies for developing the knowledge needed to improve European soil health most effectively.
This presentation will highlight the 2025 overarching roadmap, its key findings, and the inter-and transdisciplinary approaches that enabled its development. The SOLO roadmaps support structuring the policy agenda for future soil research and innovation that is needed for Europe’s transition toward sustainable soil use.
How to cite: Koorneef, G., Nóvoa, T., Chowdhury, S., Dönitz, E., Enríquez, S., Farfan, M., Lejoly, J., Yacoub Lopez, C., and van der Putten, W.: Project SOLO: co-creating research and innovation roadmaps to restore European soils, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-19590, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-19590, 2026.
Posters on site: Mon, 4 May, 14:00–15:45 | Hall X5
Over the past few centuries, generations of farmers have lived and cultivated the high, rugged mountains of the Rwenzori along the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite its exceptionally steep topography, which involves erosion and landslide risks, smallholder farmers continue to till the steep slopes for their survival and livelihood. This phenomenon has been presented as a recent response to land scarcity due to population pressure, exacerbated by climate change. In this paper, we question the population pressure narrative and argue that understanding the evolution of steep slope agriculture requires a historicized contextualization. We reconstruct the environmental history and the emergence of social ecological systems of steep slope agriculture in the Rwenzori region. We utilise the historical literature and the lived experiences of the smallholders in the Rwenzori mountains to highlight that steep slope agriculture is reminiscent of intersecting colonial and post-colonial processes that shaped the social-political environment in which the Bakonzo became and remain the inhabitants of the marginal lands of the Rwenzori mountains. We argue that policies often do not account for the social and cultural identities of locals, which excludes them from development interventions, exposing them to further marginalisation. A more nuanced analysis of the local environmental and social conditions may be insightful in the development of policies that centre on local realities in development programs and in designing appropriate and practical interventions.
How to cite: Ainembabazi, T.: Tilling the heights: A historical account of the evolution of steep slope agriculture in the Rwenzori mountains, Uganda, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13448, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13448, 2026.
A longer farming distance often leads to the abandonment of cropland by households with limited farming capacity, thereby reducing the stability of cropland utilization. China's cropland requisition-compensation balance policy, which initially targeted only construction-occupied cropland, has now been expanded to cover all types of land occupation, achieving large-scale requisition-compensation balance. However, the impact of this policy on changes in farming distance remains unclear. Based on land use, DEM, rural residential area, and administrative division data, this study identifies the occupied and supplemented cropland parcels. It calculates the cropland quantity balance index and the slope gap between occupied and supplemented cropland, respectively assessing the balance status in terms of quantity and slope. Additionally, it measures the surface farming distance and employs correlation analysis to explore the impact of quantity and slope balance in cropland requisition-compensation on changes in farming distance.
Nationwide, small-scale requisition-compensation quantity balance of cropland was consistently achieved, while large-scale quantity balance was only attained during the period of 2010–2015. The slope of construction-occupied cropland was significantly lower than that of supplemented cropland, with an even greater slope gap observed in mountainous areas. Changes in farming distance exhibited significant differences between requisition-compensation balanced areas and unbalanced areas. In areas with small-scale requisition-compensation quantity balance of cropland, the shortening of farming distance was more pronounced, yet reducing the slope of compensated cropland to a level lower than that of construction-occupied cropland often required sacrificing a certain degree of farming distance. Large-scale requisition-compensation quantity balance of cropland exerted a mild inhibitory effect on the shortening of farming distance during 2010–2015, whereas it facilitated the reduction of farming distance in other periods. In most areas where the slope of supplemented cropland was lower than that of all occupied cropland, the effect of reducing farming distance was significant. The impact of cropland requisition-compensation balance on farming distance displayed distinct regional variations across different agricultural zones. This study further summarizes the pathways of farming distance changes in different types of regions and proposes corresponding recommendations for cropland utilization to promote the enhancement of cropland use stability.
How to cite: Wu, Z., Xiong, W., and Tan, Y.: Analysis of the impact of China's cropland requisition-compensation balance on changes in farming distance: from the perspective of quantity and slope balance, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20204, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20204, 2026.
Smallholder farming has been central to the global food supply for centuries, yet its role is waning as economic development reshapes agricultural systems. This transition remains poorly understood, limiting our capacity to safeguard food security and environmental sustainability under rapid structural change. Using agricultural data from 124 countries from 1961 to 2021, we reveal a widespread shift from staple to cash crops, especially in low- and middle-income countries dominated by smallholders. This shift coincides with rising staple food imports, challenging national food security objectives.
Our analysis uncovers a global divergence in socio-ecological outcomes. Over six decades, high-income countries expanded average farm size by 126%. This structural consolidation was linked to a 12% reduction in cash crop ratios and a 99% increase in staple productivity. Crucially, it also decoupled production from environmental pressure, associated with declines in net staple imports by 58%, nitrogen pollution by 28%, and post-harvest losses by 38%. By contrast, smallholder-dominated regions saw farm size shrink by 12%. This fragmentation was accompanied by a 2% increase in cash crop ratios but a 26% decline in staple productivity. Consequently, these regions faced intensifying pressures, including an 11% rise in staple imports, a 12% increase in nitrogen pollution, and a 9% increase in crop losses.
These patterns identify farm size as a critical socio-economic driver strongly correlated with global production, trade, and environmental outcomes. Our findings underscore the need to integrate farm size management with agricultural practices to reconcile the trade-offs between food security goals and planetary boundaries.
How to cite: Wang, S., Duan, J., Ren, C., Zhang, X., Wang, C., Lu, M., Xu, J., Zhu, Y.-G., and Gu, B.: Farm size reshapes food security and environmental sustainability through crop structure and trade, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4769, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4769, 2026.
Resource scarcity and a growing population have driven an increasing interest in zero-acreage farming (Z-Farming), a form of urban agriculture that leverages synergies between food production and buildings, rather than conventional farmland. While Z-Farming presents an innovative approach to producing food locally, acceptance remains critical for its sustainable adoption. This systematic literature review (SLR) examines the current state of research on the acceptance of Z-Farming, focusing on the various forms of Z-Farming involved, the stakeholders involved, and the barriers and drivers of acceptance. By synthesising research on stakeholder perspectives globally, this review of 53 empirical studies across 105 countries between 2010 and 2024 provides a structured approach to understanding the multidimensional acceptance of Z-Farming. It proposes a framework that employs the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) and Social Practices Approach (SPA) to assess the acceptance of Z-Farming. This supports future research and policy by guiding context-sensitive engagement strategies. By advancing conceptual clarity and system-level understanding, it aims to contribute to the transformation of sustainable urban food systems.
How to cite: Salleh, A. F., Artmann, M., and Karthe, D.: Food in the city: Barriers, drivers, and stakeholders for acceptance of zero-acreage farming, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1277, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1277, 2026.
Municipal climate adaptation is increasingly described as evidence based. In practice, however, the evidence that shapes local adaptation planning often concentrates on standardised assessments, indicator dashboards, and other formats that are designed for comparability and reporting. These formats offer clear advantages, yet they can also narrow what is visible and discussable in decision making, especially when lived experiences and local knowledge do not readily translate into accepted evidential forms. This study starts from a simple question. Does a given adaptation evidence portfolio provide sufficiently representative coverage of what matters for local adaptation, or does it systematically privilege particular knowledge forms and contents.
To address this question, this study operationalises epistemic justice as a diagnostic lens for adaptation evidence systems. The aim is not to judge whether a process is morally just or unjust. The aim is to make the structure of evidential recognition inspectable by asking what kinds of knowledge are treated as credible, what kinds of experiences become intelligible within prevailing categories and tools, and what institutional rules and incentives determine whether a claim can be recognised as evidence. Conceptually, the analysis is aligned with an adaptation decision making sequence that distinguishes understanding, planning, and managing. This alignment clarifies where evidence is produced, where it is mobilised, and where it is reviewed.
Empirically, the protocol is demonstrated using materials from three municipalities in the Seoul Capital Area, South Korea. The dataset consists of two bundles of evidence artefacts. The first bundle includes formal evidence embedded in adaptation related plans and reports, standardised assessments, and survey based materials. The second bundle includes artefacts generated through participatory knowledge production activities conducted within a research and development programme, such as workshop outputs, participatory mapping products, and prioritisation records. Each artefact is coded using a structured spreadsheet workflow with a codebook, coding rules, and summary tables. The comparison focuses on expressive coverage rather than predictive accuracy. It examines how the portfolio represents who is affected, where impacts are situated, how causal narratives and constraints are articulated, and what kinds of actions are rendered feasible or infeasible.
The contribution is a transferable diagnostic protocol that makes evidential bias and representational gaps empirically describable and comparable across cases. The study offers an approach for moving beyond general calls for more participation or more data by specifying how evidence systems can be examined and improved in municipal climate adaptation decision support.
How to cite: Baek, S., Shin, J., and Park, C.: Operationalising epistemic justice to diagnose municipal climate adaptation evidence systems, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21277, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21277, 2026.
With 61 cubic meters of blue water available per capita per year, Jordan is among the world’s most water-scarce countries. This scarcity results from the rapidly rising demand, driven by population growth and the expansion of irrigated agriculture, to which responses have been supply-side measures, such as installing water infrastructure to capture, produce, and purify water, limiting demand through reduced provision of water through supply intermittence, installing water flow restrictors, and closing down water extraction wells, as well as changes in the water governance system, which has experienced increasing centralization. Here, we map the development of water institutions and ever-increasing infrastructure in Jordan, which have mediated water user demand and water availability over the past 78 years. It shows that, despite the massive growth of water extraction, storage, treatment, and transfer infrastructure, total water availability has been stagnating at around 1200 million cubic meters per year since 2010, while demand continues to grow. We systematically review Jordan’s water-related laws and policy documents and lay out the legal mechanisms and policies for allocating surface-, ground- and unconventional water to municipal, agricultural and industrial water users, which shows discrepancies between current laws and policies regarding the priority of use, and extant water allocation. Water user perspectives derived from a small sample of interviews illustrates water service deficits and adaptive efforts to deal with supply intermittence and water quality issues on the receiving end of water allocation. Looking into the future, we discuss a reallocation scenario for the year 2050 that limits water extraction to renewable rates, restricts agricultural water use to reused domestic and industrial water and prioritizes domestic water demand. We propose legal changes necessary to accommodate this change, thereby closing a gap in the operationalization of water management that requires not only hydrological and engineering perspectives, but also the socio-institutional conditions to balance supply and demand.
How to cite: Krueger, E. and Jurf, M.: A century of infrastructure and institutions mediating water allocation in Jordan, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20156, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20156, 2026.
Providing rural populations with safe drinking water remains a pressing issue in many regions of the world, particularly where decentralized water supply systems are used and water quality varies significantly. This study analyzes the relationship between the chemical composition of drinking water and the perception of its quality among residents of rural settlements in the Akmola region of Kazakhstan, represented by various landscape types. The study is based on a mixed-methods approach, including hydrochemical analysis of drinking water samples, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Spearman correlation analysis, as well as the processing of village-level questionnaire data reflecting complaints, satisfaction levels, and post-treatment practices. The results show that most of the studied water sources belong to the Ca–Mg–Cl–HCO₃ hydrochemical type, with higher levels of dissatisfaction with drinking water quality observed in rural settlements in the steppe zone. The findings highlight the need to link objective water quality assessments with subjective public perceptions to improve the effectiveness of rural water supply management and build community confidence in water safety measures.
How to cite: Beisenova, R., Nugmanov, A., Zhupysheva, A., Tussupova, K., and Mashayeva, A.: Comparing perceived and actual drinking water quality across rural Northern Kazakhstan, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13874, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13874, 2026.
Water scarcity and droughts caused by climate change pose growing risks to both human societies and natural ecosystems. Due to the consequences of climate change and the associated adaptation and mitigation decisions, as well as the general use of infrastructure for water use, extraction, and management, humans also actively influence the availability of water at the local level.
The water-climate nexus is spatio-temporally evolving, and driven by both environmental, technological and societal factors. For local political and non-political decision-makers in water management, adapting to climate change poses considerable challenges, as decisions must be made amid the uncertainties and variabilities related to climate change in order to make infrastructure systems resilient. To find out how to improve decision-making in this area, we are investigating water governance networks within the context of climate change and from the perspective of socio-ecological-technological systems in the local environment of Tübingen, Southern Germany. In our interdisciplinary case study, we integrate methods and findings from political and environmental science. To capture the societal perspective, discourse network analysis (Leifeld 2017) of local newspaper coverage on water-related issues in the Neckar Valley and the Upper Gäu region near Tübingen is being conducted. Newspaper articles published between 2018 and 2025 were screened using the keyword "water," and more than 1.500 articles were systematically coded to identify stakeholders involved, their relations, their constellations, and their expressed positions. For the environmental perspective we investigate climate and hydrogeological data from the same region. We explore the linkages between socio-political discourse and hydrogeological systems, and test for changes in conversations due to climatic extremes. Specifically, we investigate how local or regional hydrogeological or climate-related events, such as droughts, influence the intensity of discourse and the salience of issues in local water governance debates.
We aim to improve our understanding of governance networks during times of climate crisis. The results of our study aim to help identify effective strategies for water resilience, adaptive capacity building, and carbon reduction, thereby supporting informed decision-making.
References:
Leifeld, P. (2017). Discourse network analysis. In The Oxford handbook of political networks, 301–326.
How to cite: Franz, S., Höckh, F., Rehfeld, K., and Nagel, M.: Linking Socio-Ecological-Technological Systems and Water Governance Networks in the Context of Climate Change, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9917, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9917, 2026.
Climate change mitigation pathways are explored in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which are sophisticated frameworks but have limitations. They struggle with modelling abrupt changes and typically focus on specific subsystems such as the economy and the climate, neglecting social and political processes. Real economies are deeply intertwined with social, political and climate spheres, and the design of climate policy crucially depends on governing parties and public opinion, which in turn is shaped by economic performance, industry interests and climate impacts.
Recent research has investigated how social influence and economic conditions shape public opinion and climate policy outcomes. Di Benedetto et al. (2025) extended the Dystopian Schumpeter Keynes (DSK) model by integrating an election mechanism in which a green party competes against a brown party. Election outcomes depend on economic conditions and climate variables, creating feedbacks between policy effectiveness and public support, but households are treated as a homogeneous aggregate. At the same time, Lackner et al. (2024) linked an opinion dynamics model to the DSK, capturing how economic performance, perceived climate change, lobbying and social influence shape household preferences, without feedback to political commitment.
In this paper, we integrate these two approaches within the DSK model to capture interactions between opinion dynamics, political outcomes, climate policy implementation and the economy. Households vote every four model years for either a green or a brown party. Climate policies may reduce public support through economic impacts, but may also strengthen green industries that promote climate awareness. We analyse policy packages including carbon pricing, industrial regulation and public subsidies aligned with EU climate targets, and assess how socio-economic and political dynamics shape the long-term feasibility of ambitious climate policy.
How to cite: Di Benedetto, A., Lackner, T., Mellacher, P., Wieners, C. E., and von der Heydt, A. S.: Integrating public opinion and political dynamics into (agent-based) integrated assessment modelling, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7620, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7620, 2026.
Climate change poses increasing risks to cultural heritage across Europe, particularly to stone-built monuments and cultural landscapes exposed to changing temperature regimes, altered precipitation patterns, and more frequent extreme weather events. Addressing these challenges requires interdisciplinary approaches that integrate environmental research, heritage science, and societal engagement within local development frameworks.
This paper presents the methodological framework developed within the STECCI project, focusing on community-based approaches for integrating climate-vulnerable cultural heritage into sustainable tourism and local development strategies. STECCI focuses on medieval limestone tombstones (Stećci), a transnational UNESCO World Heritage property located in environmentally sensitive regions of the Western Balkans, where climate-related pressures intersect with social, economic, and governance challenges.
The proposed methodology combines participatory social research, policy analysis, and preliminary economic insights to support evidence-based and inclusive decision-making processes. Central to the approach are Social Labs implemented across five countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, and Germany), which engage local communities, cultural institutions, tourism stakeholders, and public authorities through structured participatory formats. These Social Labs function as spaces for co-creation and cross-sector collaboration, fostering social inclusion and long-term stakeholder engagement.
Rather than generating new large-scale quantitative datasets, the framework emphasizes the systematic synthesis of existing project evidence, including community knowledge, local initiatives, and early economic signals related to heritage valorisation. Collected evidence is thematically clustered across social, economic, and cultural dimensions in order to identify key challenges, policy gaps, and development opportunities for sustainable tourism as a pathway for climate adaptation and heritage resilience.
The paper proposes a transferable, community-centered methodological model that integrates cultural heritage into sustainable tourism development strategies at both local and institutional levels. While grounded in the Western Balkans context, the framework is designed to be adaptable to other climate-sensitive regions facing similar constraints in governance capacity and resource availability.
How to cite: Pean, V., Gogic, A., and Tinaj, S.: Community-based methodologies for climate-resilient cultural heritage and sustainable tourism: STECCI project, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-18775, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-18775, 2026.
Accelerating biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation threaten global ecological security, prompting the urgent need for achieving the 30×30 biodiversity target. In China, expanding protected areas (PAs) to meet this target may increase conservation burdens on governments and local communities, raising concerns about equity. Unequal delineation of PAs leads to inter-regional conflicts and resulting in inefficient conservation initiatives. However, few studies have investigated how conservation responsibility will distribute and change across regions and income groups after meeting the 30×30 target in China. Here, we expanded China’s PAs under four scenarios to meet the target based on selection principles. We evaluated the benefits of PA expansion using richness and representativeness indexes and assessed changes of inequality in conservation responsibilities after achieving the target. Our findings revealed that achieving the 30×30 target would increase PA’s effectiveness of species and ecosystems by 130.2% and 70.4%, respectively. Unexpectedly, it also reduced inequality in inter-provincial and inter-city conservation responsibilities by 22.3% and 10.5%, respectively, with economically developed eastern regions shouldering greater responsibilities than before. Moreover, inequality among income groups decreased by 3.7%. Our study highlights the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s potential to promote biodiversity conservation while reducing inequality in conservation responsibilities, informing future ecological compensation policies.
How to cite: Tang, H. and Peng, J.: Inequality reduction of conservation responsibility: An unexpected outcome of achieving the 30×30 biodiversity target in China, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5370, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5370, 2026.
Following an interdisciplinary workshop organized by Urban Ecosystem Science working group at Technische Universität Berlin in 2025, a report was published summarizing the current long-term ecological monitoring efforts taking place in Berlin, Germany. These efforts include a range of realms from atmospheric, aquatic, and biodiversity monitoring with direct implication and interplay related to urban cooling services, urban re-development, governance and policy, and environmental ideology (Churkina et al., 2025). In contrast to numerous long-term environmental monitoring projects in remote or ‘natural’ areas, urban sites have been historically under-represented, and standards have not yet been established to qualify urban environmental monitoring as being high-quality for the context. In particular, urban projects face unique challenges related to disturbance and data quality, while also presenting unique demands related to the inclusion of human-related and socially relevant data. More so, environmental outcomes and social processes are inherently intertwined and interdependent, and urban environmental monitoring must include strong socially relevant data collection, as well as public outreach. As such, in addition to a goal of improving and coordinating the current environmental monitoring efforts in Berlin, we have developed two further objectives in order to 1) define key criteria that yield a high quality interdisciplinary urban long-term monitoring site, and 2) identify all existing long-term urban monitoring projects globally and assess them based on these criteria, with over 200 projects in over 30 countries already identified. Overall, this work will help to establish guidelines for high-quality interdisciplinary long-term urban environmental monitoring, particularly relevant in an increasingly urbanized world, where we face a wide range of pressing environmental concerns.
How to cite: Ryan, C., Churkina, G., Plakias, A., Schubert, S., Salim, M., Nehls, T., and Höfling, M.: Urban Long-Term Ecological Monitoring: Identifying Best Practices and Existing Efforts, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-18782, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-18782, 2026.
Urban greenery is a crucial element in building sustainable cities and communities. Despite the widespread use of satellite and street view imagery in monitoring urban greenery, there are significant discrepancies and biases in their measurement across different urban contexts. Currently, no literature systematically evaluates these biases on a global scale. This study utilizes the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from satellite imagery and the Green View Index (GVI) from street view imagery to measure urban greenery in ten cities worldwide. By analyzing the distribution and visual differences of these indices, the study identifies eight factors causing measurement biases: distance-perspective limitation, single-profile constraint, access limitation, temporal data discrepancy, proximity amplification, vegetative wall effect, multi-layer greenery concealment, and noise. Moreover, a machine learning model is trained to estimate the bias risks of urban greenery measurement in urban areas. We find that bias in most cities primarily stem from an underestimation of GVI. Dubai and Seoul present fewer areas with overall bias risk, while Amsterdam, Johannesburg and Singapore present more such areas. Our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the differences between the metrics and offer insights for urban green space management. They emphasize the importance of carefully selecting and integrating these measurements for specific urban tasks, as there is no “true“ greenery.
How to cite: Huang, Y.: No ‘‘true" greenery: Deciphering the bias of satellite and street view imagery in urban greenery measurement, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4357, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4357, 2026.
The universal call to focus strategies on eliminating poverty, protecting the environment, and promoting prosperity through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) faces challenges in local implementation, particularly in Latin America, where violence remains a persistent issue. In this context, this study explores the gap between SDG targets and the local realities in Ecuador, a country experiencing a rise in violence. During the year 2024, we collected citizens’ knowledge through an online survey distributed via social media and email to (i) map public awareness of the 169 SDG targets, (ii) identify citizen-driven targets tailored to local realities and (iii) highlight SDGs that should include targets addressing violence. Our findings revealed a limited understanding of targets related to well-being (SDG 3), education (SDG 4), urban sustainability (SDG 11), peace and justice (SDG 16), and global partnerships (SDG 17). Moreover, citizens are more familiar with SDG targets regarding no poverty (SDG 1), zero hunger (SDG 2), clean energy (SDG 7), innovation (SDG 9), and climate action (SDG 13). Participants also proposed local targets such as agroecology inspired by ancestral practices like “Sumak Kawsay” (good living), improving education by artificial intelligence, expanding collective initiatives like “minga” (community clean-up efforts), including fire awareness programs and preventing crime around high schools. Finally, citizens stressed that SDGs on poverty, education, gender equality, and climate must address violence. This pioneering study helps those working on the SDGs to understand them not just as a one-size-fits-all framework but as a tool for adapting global strategies to local conditions.
How to cite: Fonseca, K. and Clairand, M.: Assessing local progress toward sustainable development goals in a context of violence: Perspectives from Ecuador, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6067, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6067, 2026.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exhibit both interconnectedness and heterogeneity, forming an internationally recognized goal system that integrates environmental restoration, economic transformation, and social coordination. Moving beyond a single-goal–oriented linear logic, the SDGs emphasize the investigation of interactive relationships among multidimensional objectives. However, resource-based regions have developed highly resource-dependent land-use structure through long-term resource exploitation, and now face compounded challenges including resource depletion pressures, economic structural imbalance, accumulated ecological degradation, escalating social risks, and insufficient development resilience. These challenges collectively represent a concentrated manifestation of conflicting objectives and coordination failures.. Although ecological restoration has increasingly been adopted as a key spatial governance instrument, theoretical frameworks and implementation pathways for supporting multi-dimensional goal coordination remain insufficiently integrated. To address this gap, this study introduces symbiosis theory, treating ecological restoration as a practical carrier linking goal systems with symbiotic mechanisms. Accordingly, a research framework is established following the logic of “symbiotic unit coordination - identification of symbiotic modes - classified and graded implementation - realization of symbiotic goals”. The results indicate that: (1) A coherent development logic is formed: resource elements as the foundation, ecological restoration as the instrument, and sustainable development as the ultimate objective. Based on differences in dominant resources, industrial structure, and spatial constraints in resource-based regions, three primary development modes are identified: agriculture-oriented, industry-oriented, and living–tourism-oriented modes. (2) Taking Fugu County as an empirical case, seven symbiotic modes are proposed under the three primary development modes, such as land consolidation + ecological agriculture, ecological industry, and ecological tourism. The suitability of symbiotic modes is assessed across three dimensions: resource allocation, ecological environment, and restoration potential. The results reveal significant spatial heterogeneity, with suitable areas overlapping with resource-rich zones, indicating effective alignment between resource utilization and spatial development conditions. (3) Based on the spatial configuration of symbiotic modes, restoration types are classified into three categories: coordinated, single-function, and other types, with context-specific measures implemented to balance development and restoration. In addition, according to symbiotic mode suitability, four levels of restoration priority are delineated: priority restoration, key restoration, general restoration, and restricted restoration, with guiding spatially targeted investment and orderly implementation. (4) For the three primary development modes, this study investigates the causes of symbiotic environmental imbalance from five critical interfaces: environmental restoration, material production, market exchange, information communication, and institutional support, and proposes corresponding pathways for achieving symbiotic objectives. Overall, this study provides a land-use–oriented theoretical and practical reference for promoting multi-objective coordination and sustainable development in resource-based regions.
How to cite: Zhu, R. and Xie, M.: Integrating Ecological Restoration and Symbiosis Theory: Multi-Objective Framework and Pathway for Sustainable Development in Resource-Based Regions., EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10073, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-10073, 2026.
The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average, with particularly profound impacts along Arctic coastlines. Coastal erosion is accelerating due to longer open-water seasons, stronger winds, and rising permafrost temperatures. These changes have far-reaching consequences for Arctic communities, whose livelihoods and cultural practices are closely tied to local ecosystems and the services they provide. Approximately 1162 seasonal and year-round settlements are located directly along Arctic coasts.
This study focuses on an Arctic summer settlement on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) in northwestern Canada, a site where coastal environmental change has been documented by natural science research for several decades. Building on this long-term record, we conducted ecosystem services (ES) mapping to integrate social and natural science perspectives on these changes. Questionnaire-based interviews with a diverse range of stakeholder groups - including Yukon Territorial Park Rangers, Indigenous community members, a Yukon Parks Conservation Biologist and scientific groups from Canada and Europe - were combined with participatory mapping methods. The resulting maps identify a wide range of ES across this Territorial Park and reveal spatial patterns and hotspot areas of ES provision and change. These outputs provide a valuable foundation for future management and planning by linking observed environmental change with human use, values, and dependencies.
By bridging the natural and social sciences, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of a rapidly changing and highly sensitive Arctic coastal environment. As one of the first ES assessments conducted in an Arctic community, this work demonstrates the potential of an expanded ES approach to capture the complex socio-ecological impacts of climate change along Arctic coasts.
How to cite: Petzold, P., Lantuit, H., Ramage, J., Ohl, S., and Viitanen, L.-K.: Mapping Change at the Arctic Coast: A Socio-Ecological Ecosystem Services Approach in a Rapidly Warming Environment, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13328, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13328, 2026.
Lepchas are the indigenous people of the Eastern Himalaya concentrated in the areas of Sikkim, West Bengal, Nepal and Bhutan. They are called Rong or Mutanchi Rongkup means ‘children of God’. Though Lepchas are the original inhabitants of Sikkim Himalaya, they are also spread over the land of Darjeeling Himalaya and they believe their homeland as Nye Mayel Lyang means ‘land blessed by God’ or ‘hidden land’. The Lepcha tribe of Darjeeling Himalaya coexists with other indigenous people but among them Lepchas boast unique cultural practices that encompass environment friendly handlooms and crafts made with bamboo, cane, fibres of different textures which are produced from various nettle species, and are also biodegradable in nature. The traditional craftsmanship of the Lepchas is based on nettle fibres, cotton and bamboo from intricate weaving by womenfolk on backstrap looms to distinctive bamboo crafts and items done by skilled men. Bamboos are used from large constructions to small artistic works like basketry, headgears, musical instruments, utility items to traditional symbolic hats, Sumok-thyaktuk. Nettle and cotton fibres made from vegetable dyes are used in backstrap looms for weaving traditional attires.
In recent times the traditional usage of handlooms and crafts are declining due to threats of survival of such nature based cultural practices. The generational wisdom of eco-centric knowledge is not transferred to the younger generation as they are mostly adapting modern ways of living. The other reasons are lack of documentation of Lepcha practices in Lepcha language and migration of other communities to this land leading to shifting to different alternative livelihoods. Based on key observations, gathering information from field study in the Kalimpong region of Darjeeling Himalaya and from archival research it is known that cultural heritage like traditional craftsmanship of Lepchas is declining in the form of cultural erosion. Lepchas has a rich tradition of using nature based local resources, technology to shape their art, craft and antiquity which are also their source of livelihood. The objective of the study therefore lies to understand the importance of traditional crafts and handlooms of Lepchas as cultural heritage stating their need for a sustainable Himalayan Mountain environment. The study also aims to analyse the government’s role with the help of local people to initiate marketing strategies by introducing these eco-friendly products in global markets using Lepcha craftsmanship. Furthermore, the study attempts to explore how these cultural norms and environmental adaptability can both be revived and protected with the collaborative community-based capacity building programmes, documentation of shared knowledge from older to younger generation, through cultural exchange programmes, trade fairs and exhibitions to the newer global audiences.
The integration of cultural preservation methods, environment conscious marketing of products, creating artisans’ support mechanism, restoring traditional ecological knowledge will act for the benefit of such indigenous people along with maintaining environmental sustainability of this region. Safeguarding Lepcha craftsmanship as cultural heritage will not only protect this community but also boost the economy in this environmentally fragile Himalayan region in a sustainable manner.
How to cite: Mangal, A. and Sati, V. P.: The ethos of traditional craftsmanship as cultural heritage of Lepcha tribe of Darjeeling Himalaya in maintaining environmental sustainability, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-585, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-585, 2026.
As global urbanization accelerates, the United Nations projects that nearly 68% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, increasing pressure on urban livability under climate change, pollution, and urban heat islands. Conventional comfort research often relies on single indicators (e.g., temperature) and misses how people experience outdoor spaces. This study proposes a multi-domain framework integrating thermal, visual, acoustic, and air-quality factors to evaluate community-scale outdoor comfort. Fieldwork was conducted in a dense, mixed-use traditional neighborhood in the Daxue community during an Intensive Observation Period (IOP). The researcher walked a predefined route with multiple checkpoints at scheduled times to represent daily outdoor activities. A mobile sensing device continuously recorded air temperature, humidity, wind speed, illumination, sound level, and air-quality indicators, while structured qualitative rating scales documented in-situ perceptions of comfort across domains.
To bridge the gap between monitoring evidence and community perceptions, the study convened a participatory mapping workshop with residents and other stakeholders. Monitoring results were shared as prompts, and participants collaboratively identified perceived environmental hotspots and discussed the contextual drivers behind them. Beyond jointly proposing improvement strategies and practical solutions, the workshop also helped residents and stakeholders better understand local environmental issues and strengthen environmental awareness. By combining objective monitoring, qualitative perception records, and participatory mapping, this approach links environmental science with community-informed decision-making and provides actionable evidence for community-scale planning and design. Future work will extend the framework across seasons and diverse urban typologies to refine and generalize the proposed model.
How to cite: Chen, W.-J., Chien, S.-S., and Juang, J.-Y.: Assessing Community-Scale Multi-Sensory Environmental Comfort: A Case Study of Daxue Community, Taipei, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17733, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17733, 2026.
As coal-dependent regions increasingly transition away from fossil fuels, questions about how to responsibly close and transform coal mines have gained global attention. In India, where coal mining has created monoeconomies with considerable informal and semi-/unskilled employment opportunities, the closure and transition of coal mines has significant implications for mining communities’ livelihoods and landscapes. However, existing approaches to post-mining land management globally tend to prioritize technical remediation and environmental compliance associated with mine closure and often overlook the voices and priorities of affected communities. Where stakeholder perspectives are solicited, it is most often through structured, quantitative multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques incorporating the perspectives of mining personnel and geotechnical experts rather than community members. Even while India and other countries (e.g., Australia) champion the use of participatory methods and stakeholder involvement in mine‑closure planning, there is still no agreed-upon set of protocols for fostering consistent, in-depth engagement. A critical gap persists between grassroots, community‑led initiatives and more technical top-down approaches, and research from the social sciences on mining remains notably scarce.
This study addresses this gap in the post-mining land use (PMLU) literature by explicitly incorporating social and community priorities into suitability assessments of PMLUs in the Indian context. We propose a “people-centric” approach integrating spatial‑decision support tools with social‑ecological systems thinking, which enables the identification of PMLUs which are not only suitable to the specificities of the mine site, but in line with more pressing socio-economic needs faced by surrounding stakeholders, particularly mining communities. Our three phase approach includes I) compiling information about the mine site, key stakeholders, and the regional context, II) understanding the social-ecological system the mine site is situated in, and III) developing spatially-explicit PMLU recommendations that are both technically appropriate for the site and match stakeholder needs and priorities.
Phase I involves (re)assessing the mine site to ensure the site meets baseline environmental standards as well as engaging with regional and local stakeholders to solicit priorities, build trust, and set expectations. Phase II uses qualitative system dynamics modelling and causal loop diagrams to understand key social-ecological linkages and feedbacks, and then match the most relevant PMLUs to stakeholder priorities. Phase III involves identifying relevant geotechnical, biophysical, and socioeconomic criteria for each selected PMLU, and conducting a geographic information system (GIS)-MCDA with conflict resolution algorithms to map the most suitable locations within the mine site for each use.
Our workflow is designed to be flexible and responsive to changes in context; each phase operates along a spectrum of Low‑Medium‑High complexity, allowing for differences in data availability and time/resource constraints for stakeholder consultations, which is particularly important in low and middle income contexts like India. By foregrounding community priorities and embracing mixed-methods, we seek to bridge the gap between geotechnical and socio-cultural approaches to coal mine repurposing, identifying PMLUs that are not only technically feasible, environmentally sound, and economically viable, but deliver tangible livelihood benefits while preserving sociocultural ties to the landscape.
How to cite: Tiwari, A., Ramachandran, A., and Chowdhary, V.: A People-Centric Approach to Repurposing Coal Mines in India, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5100, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5100, 2026.
Enabling People-Centric Energy Transition through Circular Economy: Evidence from Rajhara, India.
Animesh Ghosh & Vaibhav Chowdhary
animesh.ghosh@ashoka.edu.in, vaibhav.chowdhary@ashoka.edu.in
India’s net-zero commitment for 2070 requires credible, people-centric pathways for managing coal-mine closures and the socio-ecological disruption they trigger. In India, the discontinuation of mining has left over 100,000 hectares of disturbed land awaiting closure or repurposing, with 299 abandoned/discontinued/closed mines identified by the Government creating not only significant livelihood risks for mine-dependent local economies, but also persistent environmental and ecological burdens (e.g., unsafe voids and overburden dumps, dust and habitat fragmentation, degraded soils, contaminated runoff/acid mine drainage, and residual emissions). This study presents action research from Rajhara, a discontinued coal-mining landscape in Palamu district, Jharkhand, where the Ashoka Centre for a People-Centric Energy Transition (ACPET) assessed closure-linked vulnerabilities and co-designed circular-economy “repurposing” interventions to rebuild livelihoods around agriculture, the dominant pre-mining occupation.
Using an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach, the research combined household and farmer surveys with qualitative KIIs/FGDs to examine (i) a Solar Lift Irrigation (SLI) intervention (7.5 HP pump), (ii) the formation and early strengthening of a Farmer Producer Organization (FPO), and (iii) complementary diagnostics on clean-cooking practices. The analysis applies the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Adaptability) principles and the AARQA (Accessibility, Accountability, Reliability, Quality, Affordability) framework to assess transition outcomes across gender, wellbeing, and livelihood dimensions, besides income-expenditure dynamics.
Findings show that productivity gains are strongly mediated by governance. Prior to SLI, irrigation was entirely rainfed, and farm incomes were low; post-intervention, early implementation evidence indicates improved water access, higher cropping aspirations, and strong perceived income potential among participating farmers. Water-quality testing suggests mine water is suitable for irrigation, strengthening environmental feasibility. However, operational sustainability is defined through proper execution of Water User Group-defined regulations, transparent cost-sharing, and reliable scheduling. The FPO baseline (approximately 750 farmers, with a majority being women and predominantly marginal/ small holdings) highlights the centrality of collective institutions for input aggregation, including seeds, fertilizer, production planning, and market linkages. Evidence on clean cooking highlights persistent affordability constraints and gendered exposure risks, reinforcing the need for integrated livelihood-energy interventions.
Overall, the case demonstrates how repurposed post-mining assets, paired with fit-for-context local institutions, can function as a practical model of “people-centric transition” in coal-mine–affected regions.
Keywords: just transition; coal-mine closure; circular economy; asset repurposing; solar lift irrigation; farmer producer organization; mixed methods; gender; India.
How to cite: Ghosh, A. and Chowdhary, V.: Enabling People-Centric Energy Transition through Circular Economy: Evidence from Rajhara, India., EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16863, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16863, 2026.
Participatory, community, and citizen science broaden engagement in science and help catalyze interdisciplinary solutions to urgent environmental problems. The Community Science Exchange aims to promote and disseminate this work, building connections between Earth and environmental science researchers, communities, local organizations, and the public. The Exchange, launched in 2022, is a partnership between several societies and publishers and is made up of two parts: Community Science, a peer-reviewed journal, and the Hub, a novel editor-vetted center for sharing resources and case studies complementary to and beyond the traditional paper. Four years on, we’ll present an update on topics and issues covered through the Exchange, discuss user-requested features, and solicit feedback on what’s next.
How to cite: Giampoala, M., Schuette, A., Vrouwenvelder, K., Dedej, S., and Sedora, B.: Supporting Participatory Earth and Environmental Science through the Community Science Exchange, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8305, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8305, 2026.
Effective environmental governance relies on robust spatial assessment tools to mediate the complex interaction between anthropogenic land-use pressures and ecological preservation. In this context, the Environmental Conservation Value Assessment Map (ECVAM) in South Korea is a national-scale environmental assessment system designed to comprehensively evaluate environmental value for spatial planning, environmental impact assessment, and policy-related decision-making. It employs an indicator-based grading framework in which the final grade is determined using a minimum indicator approach that reflects the most constrained environmental condition. Within this framework, the fragility indicator functions as a proximity-based measure representing areas potentially exposed to anthropogenic land-use pressure. With the increasing reliance on spatial indicators to support environmental planning and assessment, the need to refine distance-based indicators so that they better reflect current land-use dynamics has become increasingly evident. This study aimed to strengthen the conceptual foundation of fragility by examining its relationship with related concepts and by proposing alternative interpretations that enhance clarity and applicability, while also exploring potential improvements to the evaluation method, including revised distance-based criteria incorporating recent land-use patterns. A Delphi-based expert elicitation process was applied to evaluate and select among the proposed conceptual and methodological alternatives. The results indicated that retaining the existing conceptual definition of fragility ensured continuity and interpretability within the assessment framework, while revising the evaluation criteria to reflect contemporary spatial patterns was identified as the most appropriate improvement strategy. The revised criteria were derived from empirically observed urban expansion trends and applied within the existing distance-based structure of the indicator. When applied at the national scale, the improved criteria produced a more differentiated spatial distribution of fragility compared to the existing approach, particularly in areas experiencing recent development pressure, reducing overgeneralization near urban edges and enhancing sensitivity to recent land-use transitions. These findings demonstrate that incorporating observed land-use change trajectories into distance-based indicators provides a practical and transferable approach for improving the relevance and usability of policy-oriented environmental assessment maps.
This work was supported by Korea Environment Industry &Technology Institute (KEITI) through "Climate Change R&D Project for New Climate Regime.", funded by Korea Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment (MCEE) (RS-2022-KE002123).
How to cite: Chai, M., Jang, R.-I., Lee, S.-W., Ha, E., Kim, Y.-J., Kim, S.-R., Jeon, S.-W., and Yoon, J.-H.: Bridging expert consensus and spatial assessment: Refining the fragility indicator for national environmental planning, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8907, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8907, 2026.
Environmental challenges are not only ecological but also deeply social, shaped by values, power relations, and the ways in which knowledge is produced and shared. While citizen and participatory science are often associated with public data collection, participation also takes place through dialogue, creative and artistic practices, agenda-setting, and long-term community engagement. This contribution reflects on community-based public engagement initiatives in marine and polar research as participatory practices that sit at the intersection of environmental and social sciences.
Drawing on experiences from early-career–led scientific communities and engagement initiatives, this reflective case study explores how participatory approaches are enacted in practice beyond formal citizen science frameworks. These initiatives create spaces where researchers, students, practitioners, and members of the public interact, exchange perspectives, and co-develop understandings of environmental issues, often through creative, artistic, and narrative-based formats. In this context, art-based engagement grounded in place and materiality foregrounds sensory experience and cultural context, highlighting how environmental knowledge is embedded in relationships between people, landscapes, and histories. By combining scientific perspectives with artistic and experiential approaches, such initiatives create inclusive environments in which participants are encouraged to reflect on environmental change not only intellectually, but also emotionally and culturally.
From an early-career researcher (ECR) perspective, the contribution examines both the opportunities and challenges of fostering meaningful participation in environmental science contexts. Opportunities include the ability to experiment with inclusive formats, lower hierarchical barriers, and integrate social-science perspectives such as reflexivity, co-creation, and community building into environmental research cultures. At the same time, challenges persist, including limited recognition of engagement work, uneven participation across social groups, and the tension between short-term project timelines and the long-term commitment required for participatory approaches.
The presentation reflects on lessons learned regarding what enables participation to be meaningful rather than symbolic. Key factors include creating safe and welcoming spaces for dialogue, valuing different forms of knowledge, and acknowledging that participation is a process rather than an outcome. Importantly, this contribution avoids framing participation as the responsibility of a specific career stage or actor, instead emphasizing that participatory environmental research benefits from shared responsibility across researchers, institutions, and societal partners.
By situating community-based engagement practices within broader social-science discussions on participation and public engagement, this contribution offers insights for researchers interested in integrating participatory approaches into environmental studies. It highlights how reflective, practice-based perspectives can support more inclusive and socially grounded pathways toward sustainable environmental action.
How to cite: Vural, D. and Karaoğlu, A. G.: Beyond Data Collection: Reflecting on Community-Based Participatory Practices in Environmental Science, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20569, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20569, 2026.
Posters virtual: Mon, 4 May, 14:00–18:00 | vPoster spot A
EGU26-16322 | Posters virtual | VPS31
Feeling at Home as a Dimension of Resilience in Architecture for Extreme EnvironmentsMon, 04 May, 14:45–14:48 (CEST) vPoster spot A
As human exploration advances into increasingly hostile and isolated environments, such as extraterrestrial habitats on Mars, the Moon, or deep-sea stations, the concept of resilience must evolve beyond its traditional technical and physiological dimensions.
This need becomes particularly critical in contexts of long-duration habitation, where survival alone is insufficient to guarantee long-term operational stability and human wellbeing.
Central to this assertion is the recognition that resilience entails examining construction in relation to permanence, which may also be understood as a sense of feeling at home, shifting resilience from a purely performance-based concept to a relational and experiential condition.
This perspective requires redirecting science, technology, and design toward the conditions that enable habitation to become sustainable, meaningful, and socially durable.
This includes environmental adaptation, understood as the strategic use of local raw materials and regenerative systems, reducing dependency on external supply chains and increasing environmental compatibility, as well as the processes accompanying construction, which involve the complex relationships between these local materials, the tools, crafts, and other elements that make construction possible.
These construction–material ecologies play a decisive role in transforming temporary shelters into places of permanence.
Finally, it encompasses cultural embeddedness, which acknowledges the importance of cultural identity, symbolic practices, and sensory experiences that converge in the creation of an atmosphere of resilience, influencing perception of safety, cohesion, and long-term habitability.
The literature on this concept is fragmented due to the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the aspects involved in the state of feeling at home.
Architecture, design, sociology and anthropology, nutrition, indoor environmental quality (thermal, acoustic, lighting, olfactory), tactile experience, physical activity, structural safety, and risk perception all contribute to this condition, yet are rarely addressed within a unified framework.
A common view across disciplines is missing in the related literature, yet it is of fundamental importance to understand and to design the future of resilient spatial architecture, both in extraterrestrial settings and in climate-stressed environments on Earth.
This abstract proposes a theoretical framework for understanding resilience in these terms, emphasizing the integration of cultural, psychological, material, and collaborative factors in the sustainable design of long-term human settlements in hostile environments.
By reframing resilience as the capacity to sustain a sense of “being at home”, the framework offers a shared conceptual ground for interdisciplinary dialogue across environmental sciences, engineering, architecture, and the social sciences.
It challenges the prevailing techno-centric framing of resilience in extreme environments, arguing instead for a holistic approach that embraces human complexity, cultural roots, and collaborative innovation, with direct implications for climate adaptation, remote communities, and future off-Earth settlements.
How to cite: Alcindor, M., Salese, F., Sangiorgio, V., Araújo, A. M., Rodrigues, P. F. S., and Simão, E.: Feeling at Home as a Dimension of Resilience in Architecture for Extreme Environments , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16322, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16322, 2026.
EGU26-20080 | Posters virtual | VPS31
Designing mitigation pathways in Czech agricultureMon, 04 May, 14:48–14:51 (CEST) vPoster spot A
Climate change adaptation and mitigation take place in a complex world associated with deep uncertainties related to external factors, among others population growth, new technologies, socio-economic developments and their subsequent impacts (Haasnoot et al., 2013, 2024). Therefore, there is a need for flexible framework that can respond to these challenges, bridge the social and environmental sciences and support climate change mitigation. Scenario planning can assist in developing integrative mental models to deliver pathways of change while incorporating alternative policies, evolving innovative practices and management options (Sroufe and Watts, 2022). The fundamental strength of the pathways approach is their ability to deal with uncertainty by assessing possible future impacts and navigating across multiple future trajectories. Pathways are designed to achieve future vision and assess whether the desired objectives have been accomplished (Coulter, 2019). Specifically, this approach can help to explore potential future trajectories, investigate innovation for carbon sequestering and more sustainable agriculture (Sroufe and Watts, 2022). So far, limited literature concerning development of pathways approach to GHG mitigation in agriculture exists.
Our approach aims to combine SSPs (Shared-socioeconomic pathways) downscaled for the Czech Republic within AdAgriF project with Mitigation pathways developed for Czech agriculture. Such integration enables us to assess the full potential of particular SSP-pathway combinations while considering future uncertainties. These SSP-independent pathways are not tied to a single SSP storyline, but instead each pathway is assessed for robustness across SSPs. This approach avoids over-commitment to one socio-economic future and highlights no-regret and robust mitigation pathways (bundles of measures).
This presentation highlights the process of interdisciplinary cooperation in order to support the pathway co-development, which involves exploring potential trajectories of pathways and their mitigation measures as well as SSPs with modelling using various agro-ecosystem simulation models that will be applied.
References:
Haasnoot, M., Di Fant, V., Kwakkel, J., & Lawrence, J. (2024). Lessons from a decade of adaptive pathways studies for climate adaptation. Global Environmental Change, 88, 102907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102907
Haasnoot, M., Kwakkel, J. H., Walker, W. E., & Ter Maat, J. (2013). Dynamic adaptive policy pathways: A method for crafting robust decisions for a deeply uncertain world. Global Environmental Change, 23(2), 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.12.006
Sroufe, R., & Watts, A. (2022). Pathways to Agricultural Decarbonization: Climate Change Obstacles and Opportunities in the US. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 182, 106276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106276
How to cite: Krkoška Lorencová, E., Suchá, L., Koudelková, M., and Harmáčková, Z.: Designing mitigation pathways in Czech agriculture, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20080, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20080, 2026.
EGU26-17008 | ECS | Posters virtual | VPS31
Fund Flows and Absorption Challenges under India’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) — Evidence from public financial management systems and city-level consultationsMon, 04 May, 15:09–15:12 (CEST) vPoster spot A
India, with its rapid urbanisation, faces high pollution levels and continues to fail to meet World Health Organisation (WHO) standards, accounting for 17 of the 30 most polluted cities globally. The annual economic losses incurred due to its polluted air are equivalent to almost 3 per cent of the nation’s GDP. Effective air pollution management requires adequate budgetary support and resource allocation. To address this, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019, is India’s flagship programme aimed at achieving a 40 per cent reduction in particulate concentration by 2026 in 130 non-attainment cities. NCAP implementation is supported through multiple funding streams, including convergence of existing national schemes like Smart Cities Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission, etc., as well as Fifteenth Finance Commission (XV-FC) and NCAP grants. Through this, India established a framework for financing clean air action, but challenges related to capital absorption and impact persist. As of October 2025, only 59.15 per cent of the NCAP funds and 77 per cent of XV-FC funds have been utilised, and by 2024-25, only 25 out of 130 cities have reduced PM 10 levels by 40 per cent.
This study critically examines the evolution of the fund disbursal mechanism (pre-requisites, performance assessment criteria and disbursement) over the years, by tracing the fund flow mechanism and Portal for Regulation of Air pollution in Non-Attainment cities (PRANA) records. Furthermore, it compares allocation versus absorption and assesses structural and operational complexities that limit the impact of fund utilisation and overall cost-effectiveness. This study leverages a mixed-methods approach, integrating insights from secondary literature and city-level field consultations. The analysis identifies a set of design and implementation constraints, including limited mechanisms for assessing the effectiveness of fund utilisation, sectoral prioritisation that is not consistently aligned with air quality outcomes, weak interdepartmental coordination and capacity limitations at the city level. It also highlights inadequate recognition of city-level initiatives within performance assessment frameworks, the absence of a sufficiently targeted and results-oriented approach, and delays in state-level financial systems that affect the timeliness of fund disbursal, and in turn, the overall progress of the programme. In addition, issues pertaining to data availability, pollution monitoring representativeness, and operation and maintenance requirements continue to influence programme performance. The study emphasises the value of integrating procedural and statutory costs and considerations into financial planning processes, strengthening institutional capacities and promoting effective fund utilisation. The findings aim to inform policy deliberations on air quality governance and financing in India.
How to cite: Tiwari, A., Srivastava, R., and Goel, U.: Fund Flows and Absorption Challenges under India’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) — Evidence from public financial management systems and city-level consultations, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17008, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17008, 2026.
