Search Results (113)

Despite numerous global initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the implementation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics aimed at mitigating climate change, promoting social welfare, and addressing a variety of other causes, progress has been significantly slower than expected, particularly in developing economies. Thus, we attempted to link corporate ESG to sustainable development. It was also investigated whether ESG contributes to a reduction in corporate risk. Using panel data and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique, we examine the relationship between ESG scores and important financial risk indicators such as systematic risk (beta), stock price volatility, unsystematic risk, and the cost of capital (WACC). The findings show that corporations place a disproportionate emphasis on governance (G) rather than environmental (E) and social (S) characteristics. ESG and G governance were also found to be statistically significant predictors of financial risk. This disparity shows that companies may be using high governance scores to conceal underperformance in environmental and social issues, raising worries about greenwashing and superficial compliance. As a result, their contributions to SDGs such as affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), climate action (SDG 13), and reduced inequalities (SDG 10) are minimal. The findings highlight the need for a more open, balanced, and integrated ESG approach, one that not only promotes sustainable development but also improves long-term financial resilience. Full article

The global youth mental health crisis is increasingly intertwined with climate change, as young people experience heightened climate anxiety and ecological grief. This study examines the relationship between nature connectedness, climate worry, coping strategies, and mental health outcomes among Canadian university students. Drawing on Pihkala’s process model of eco-anxiety, we propose the Developing Ecological Consciousness Model, a three-act framework that traces young people’s journey from climate awareness to meaningful engagement. Using path analysis on two independent samples (N = 1825), we found that nature connectedness predicts increased climate worry, which in turn correlates with higher levels of depression and anxiety. However, meaning-focused coping emerged as a protective factor, mitigating these negative mental health impacts. Problem-focused coping alone was insufficient, highlighting the need for balanced strategies. The study underscores the dual role of nature connectedness—both as a source of climate distress and a foundation for resilience. These findings highlight the need for interventions that foster ecological consciousness while addressing the emotional toll of climate change, offering insights for policymakers, educators, and mental health practitioners working with youth in a warming world. Full article

The climate crisis poses profound risks to present and future generations. Nonetheless, the perspectives of children and young people internationally, and more specifically in Brazil, remain underexplored. Based on a multi-discipline literature review on climate anxiety and nature (dis)connectedness, the hypothesis is that the effects and symptoms of increasing (dis)connection with natural environments have short-, medium-, and long-term consequences. Access to natural spaces is a vital response to counteract the negative impacts of climate change. This article discusses findings from a study conducted in urban Brazil with 200 young people aged 12 to 18 years old, with the aim of addressing three research questions from ten questions that comprised the complete survey. The major research questions were as follows: 1. ‘Climate change worries me’: How do you relate to this statement? 2. How does climate change affect you?, and 3. Do you think some young people are more affected by climate change than others? The results show that young people care about and are preoccupied with climate change, especially when they reflect on their futures and the future generations. Although young participants are deeply concerned about climate change and feel its effects personally in the form of anxiety, fear, and insecurity, they often lack clear pathways for contributing to broader environmental efforts beyond individual actions. These findings highlight an urgent need to foster community-based approaches and enhance education and resources for enlarging and improving youth engagement, especially to rethink the everyday strategies addressing these challenges, and to foster new paradigms of interaction with the natural world based on (re)connection with natural spaces. The correlation between climate anxiety and nature (dis)connection offers an approach that is still little explored, especially concerning children and young people. Full article

Most current undergraduate students have always lived in a world where climate change has been part of the popular discourse. Surveys show that younger individuals are more worried about climate change than older adults, but there has been relatively little examination of the role that concern is playing in the educational and career plans of undergraduate students. This study presents the results of a survey of undergraduates at a US public university that examines the impact of climate change on what these students choose to study and how they are preparing for post-graduation careers. The results show that the majority of respondents believe climate change is an important social problem, that humans have caused it, and that we have a responsibility to address it. About 15 percent of respondents also report that climate change has impacted their area of study or their post-graduation career plans. Respondents who have taken a class focused on climate change are most likely to report an impact, while respondents who have not discussed climate change in a university class are the least likely to report an impact. If the impact of climate change on educational choices grows as climate change impacts increase, universities should expect to see changing demands in areas of study as well as an increasing need for programming and support to prepare students for climate-oriented careers. Full article

There is a consensus that climate change has affected society. The increase in temperature and reduction in precipitation for some regions of the world have had implications for the intensity and frequency of extreme events. This scenario is worrying for various sectors of water use, such as hydroelectric power generation and agriculture. Reduced flows in river basins, coupled with increased water consumption, can significantly affect energy generation and food production. Within this context, this paper presents an analysis of climate change impacts in a large basin of Brazil between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, considering the effects of water demands. Inflow projections were generated for seven power plant reservoirs in the Tocantins–Araguaia river basin, using projections from five climate models. The results indicate significant reductions in flows, with decreases of more than 50% in the average flow. For minimum flows, there are indications of reductions of close to 85%. The demand for water, although growing, represents a smaller part of the effects, but should not be disregarded, since it impacts the dry periods of the rivers and can generate conflicts with energy production. Full article

Addressing climate change requires deeper insight into the psychological drivers of pro-environmental behavior. This study investigates how personality traits, climate-related emotions, and demographic factors can predict sustainable consumption and climate action participation using a Bayesian regression approach. Drawing from the HEXACO personality model and key emotional predictors—Climate Change Worry (CCW) and environmental empathy (EE)—we analyzed data from 604 adults in Greece to assess both private and public climate-related behaviors. This research is novel in its integrative approach, combining dispositional traits and affective states within a Bayesian analytical framework to simultaneously predict both sustainable consumption and climate action. Bayesian model testing highlighted education as the most powerful and reliable predictor of sustainable consumption, with increasing levels—namely Doctoral education—linked to more environmentally responsible action. CCW produced small but reliable effects, supporting hypotheses that moderate emotional concern will lead to sustainable behavior when linked to efficacy belief. The majority of HEXACO traits, e.g., Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness, produced limited predictive power. This indicates in this case that structural and emotional considerations were stronger than dispositional personality traits. For climate action involvement, Bayesian logistic models found no considerable evidence of any predictor, corroborating the perspective that public participation in high effort action is most likely to rely on contextual enablers instead of internal sentiments or attributes. A significant interaction effect between education and gender also indicated that the sustainability effect of education is moderated by sociocultural identity. Methodologically, this research demonstrates the strengths of Bayesian analysis in sustainability science to make sensitive inference and model comparison possible. The results highlight the importance of affect-related structural variables in behavioral models and have applied implications for theory-informed and targeted climate education and communication interventions to enable different populations to act sustainably. Full article

Stock returns are a critical aspect of investment decisions, and understanding whether climate change commitment influences stock returns is essential for informed decision-making. This paper investigates the impact of climate change commitment on the stock returns in the GCC countries for non-financial companies during the period of 2010–2023. The sample consisted of a total of 285 companies collected using the Refinitiv Eikon platform. The developed model was estimated using panel GMM regression. The results suggested that when companies reported their climate change commitment, it was appreciated by high demand for their stock and in turn caused the stock return to be higher. In addition, profitability and growth affect stock returns significantly positively, and this implies that investors concentrate on whether the company has higher profits and better growth prospects to demand more shares, and this affects the share prices positively. In addition, the size of a company has been found to affect the stock return positively, and this suggests that investors in the GCC feel confident in demanding the shares of large companies. Moreover, the results showed that leverage significantly negatively affects stock return, and this implies that investors interpret the position of highly leveraged companies to be bad due to worries that companies will not be able to service their loans. Such results might help investors to formulate their investment strategies and select their shares based on significant determinants. Finally, our results hold based on the reported robustness of results. Full article

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues on the public policy agenda. Employing data from rounds 8 and 10 of the European Social Survey, this paper examines the relationship between the perception of Europeans towards climate change and the limitation of energy consumption. An ordered logit model shows that socio-demographic characteristics are strongly related to attitudes towards climate change: female, more educated, and left-leaning respondents display, on average, higher levels of worry and personal responsibility for addressing climate change. However, the relationship between these predictors with greater support for energy reduction measures is non-trivial. Through our unique dataset, the study investigates the evolution of attitudes towards private energy consumption reduction over time. Although beliefs are becoming more positive across Europe, personal responsibility to address climate change seems to play an especially pivotal role in Eastern countries. Policy implications are discussed in light of these results. Full article

Climate change (CC) is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Research suggests that pro-environmental behaviors (PEB) are essential to address this crisis, encompassing sustainable consumption (e.g., recycling or saving energy) and active participation (e.g., protesting or donating). In this regard, young adults play a significant role as change agents. Considering the previous literature affirming the importance of CC emotions on PEB, this study aims to analyze the mediating role of eco-worry and eco-anxiety in the relationship between two cognitive antecedents (general willingness to behave pro-environmentally and CC agency) and two types of PEB (sustainable consumption and active participation). To do so, we gathered a sample of 308 young adults aged 18 to 30 years. Results show that eco-worry mediates the relationships between both antecedents (willingness and CC agency) with sustainable consumption and active participation. In contrast, eco-anxiety in young adults only mediates the relationship between CC agency and active participation. Our findings suggest that eco-worry plays a crucial role in promoting PEB more broadly, while eco-anxiety appears to be only relevant in influencing active participation. These results contrast with others observed in the adult population, so further studies are needed to confirm these findings. Full article

Background/Objectives: The climate crisis has been associated with significant and complex challenges for youth mental health. Anxiety, sadness, and anger have been identified as core emotional responses to the climate crisis and its impacts. However, there are limited data on how these emotions correlate with climate awareness and engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. The present study explores parental accounts on climate crisis-related emotional responses, awareness levels, and engagement in climate actions among Greek youth, as well as the role of their parents’ emotional responses. Methods: This study employed a cross-sectional online survey of parents with children aged 10–18 years in Greece. A total of 186 parents completed questionnaires assessing their children’s and their own climate crisis-related emotional responses (worry, sadness, and anger), levels of climate awareness, and engagement in mitigating actions. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between children’s emotions and sociodemographic factors, parental emotions, and climate-related behaviors. Results: The children in our study exhibited lower levels of climate-related worry, sadness, and anger compared to their parents. While 33.3% of parents reported worrying “very much”, only 7.5% of children were reported as experiencing this level of distress. Parental emotional responses were significant predictors of children’s emotions, with high parental worry associated with increased odds of child worry (adjusted OR: 7.80, 95% CI: 1.71–35.62). Climate awareness was higher among parents (64%) than children (44.7%), and children engaged less frequently in climate-mitigating behaviors than parents. Family communication about climate change was also strongly associated with children’s emotional responses. Conclusions: According to their parents’ accounts, children and adolescents in Greece exhibit moderate levels of overall climate distress, while parental emotions and communication within the family influence their responses. The present study’s findings support the need for climate education and policy initiatives that enhance emotional resilience and encourage active engagement among youth. Full article

Issues of economic inequality are inextricably linked to the present climate and environmental crisis, with disadvantaged groups facing disproportionate impacts. This paper explores the intersection of socioeconomic status (SES) and degrees of emotional, cognitive, and behavioural engagement with the climate crisis, as well as equity in the provision of climate change and sustainability education (CCSE). We surveyed over 2000 students (ages 11–14) in England, comparing responses between students with the most (n = 599) and fewest (n = 389) books at home (as a proxy for SES). Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were significantly less worried about a climate-altered future, had lower levels of knowledge about climate change, and were less likely to undertake a range of pro-environmental behaviours. Our findings also emphasise the critical role of the school environment in promoting engagement with the climate crisis and the need to improve provision of CCSE for disadvantaged groups. Further, they reveal severe socioeconomic inequalities in the perceived experiences of CCSE and participation in climate and sustainability action, which was observed even when these activities were made available. This suggests that school systems must consider other possible explanations for whether disadvantaged children and young people engage with these issues beyond their opportunity to do so. Full article

Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time. Its increasingly visible effects make it a global worry and a chronic stressor, especially for specific developmental targets such as young adults. This study outlines the process of the Italian adaptation and validation of the Climate Change Coping Scale (CCCS), an instrument that examines three distinct coping strategies for addressing climate change. Study I, conducted with a sample of 230 Italian young adults (42.6% males; 57.4% females), explores the latent structure of the instrument using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Parallel Analysis (PA) and outlines the preliminary psychometric properties of the CCCS. A distinct sample of 500 Italian young adults (38.6% males; 61.4% females) was selected for Study II, which presents the results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), supporting a first-order factor structure with three correlated dimensions. These dimensions, as in the original scale, are labeled ’Meaning-Focused Coping’ (five items), ’Problem-Centered Coping’ (five items), and ’De-Emphasizing/Avoidance Coping’ (six items). The internal reliability of the CCCS, the measurement of invariance between males and females, and its discriminant and convergent validity are also described. Finally, significant differences in the levels of the three identified coping strategies are presented and discussed in relation to sociodemographic variables, including gender, political orientation, occupational and relationship status, and participation in environmental organizations. Overall, the results of Studies I and II highlight the reliability, validity, and robustness of the Italian version of the Climate Change Coping Scale. Full article

Mitigating the environmental impact of agricultural practices, particularly intensive rice farming, is critical in the face of climate change. This study focuses on mapping rice residue burn areas and their dates while estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with residue burning and rice cultivation. By using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, machine learning algorithms, and ground truth data, we analyzed changes in rice cultivation patterns before and after the Kaleshwaram intervention. The Near-Infrared Region (NIR) band was instrumental in accurately identifying residue burn areas and pinpointing burn dates, enabling timely alerts for decision-makers to act. Detailed quantifications of CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O emissions from crop residue burning, alongside methane emissions from rice cultivation, highlight the significant contribution of these practices to overall GHG emissions. Key findings reveal a significant 82.1% increase in rice cultivation area from 2018–2019 to 2022–2023, accompanied by a worrying rise in residue burning, with some regions experiencing up to a 276% increase in burn areas. This research not only reveals the dual challenges of residue burning and GHG emissions but also emphasizes the importance of integrating precise burn date monitoring with emission data. The findings provide a strong foundation for implementing sustainable crop residue management strategies and developing informed policies to mitigate the adverse environmental effects of rice farming. Full article

This paper aims to present an overview of the current state of hydrogen storage methods, and materials, assess the potential benefits and challenges of various storage techniques, and outline future research directions towards achieving effective, economical, safe, and scalable storage solutions. Hydrogen is recognized as a clean, secure, and cost-effective green energy carrier with zero emissions at the point of use, offering significant contributions to reaching carbon neutrality goals by 2050. Hydrogen, as an energy vector, bridges the gap between fossil fuels, which produce greenhouse gas emissions, global climate change and negatively impact health, and renewable energy sources, which are often intermittent and lack sustainability. However, widespread acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel source is hindered by storage challenges. Crucially, the development of compact, lightweight, safe, and cost-effective storage solutions is vital for realizing a hydrogen economy. Various storage methods, including compressed gas, liquefied hydrogen, cryo-compressed storage, underground storage, and solid-state storage (material-based), each present unique advantages and challenges. Literature suggests that compressed hydrogen storage holds promise for mobile applications. However, further optimization is desired to resolve concerns such as low volumetric density, safety worries, and cost. Cryo-compressed hydrogen storage also is seen as optimal for storing hydrogen onboard and offers notable benefits for storage due to its combination of benefits from compressed gas and liquefied hydrogen storage, by tackling issues related to slow refueling, boil-off, and high energy consumption. Material-based storage methods offer advantages in terms of energy densities, safety, and weight reduction, but challenges remain in achieving optimal stability and capacities. Both physical and material-based storage approaches are being researched in parallel to meet diverse hydrogen application needs. Currently, no single storage method is universally efficient, robust, and economical for every sector especially for transportation to use hydrogen as a fuel, with each method having its own advantages and limitations. Moreover, future research should focus on developing novel materials and engineering approaches in order to overcome existing limitations, provide higher energy density than compressed hydrogen and cryo-compressed hydrogen storage at 70 MPa, enhance cost-effectiveness, and accelerate the deployment of hydrogen as a clean energy vector. Full article

Climate change is known to have an impact on human health, including mental health. To better understand this phenomenon, the Climate Change Worry Scale (CCWS), a 10-item questionnaire, was developed to assess climate change worry as a psychological response to climate change. The aim of this study was to validate a German version of the CCWS among university students and to explore potential associations with health outcomes. The CCWS was translated into German and used in an online survey of 1105 university students. We tested the scale’s psychometric properties and assessed its associations with sociodemographic characteristics and health outcomes. These included the Somatic Symptom Scale-8, Jenkins Sleep Scale, WHO-5 Well-being Index, and Patient Health Questionnaire 8. All CCWS items loaded on one factor and the items showed high internal consistency. Positive associations were observed between climate change worry and self-reported somatic symptoms, sleep difficulties, mental well-being, and depressive symptoms in multivariate regression models. The German version of the CCWS is a valid tool to measure climate change worry and can be used in future studies. The association between the CCWS and mental health underscores the need to recognize that students perceive climate change as a serious threat. Full article