Moving past the rhetoric： Policy considerations that can make Sino-African relations to improve Africa＇s climate change resilience and the attainment of the sustainable development goals

Climate change is a threat to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) in sub-Saharan Africa as its impacts can lead to increased incidences of poverty and inequality which can subsequently lead to a 12% decline in the Human Development Index(HDI) for subSaharan Africa. Emerging countries such as China have the potential to support Africa to achieve the SDGs by pioneering Southe South Climate Finance(SSCF) modalities. In order to increase knowledge on climate informed development and the role of China in global climate governance, the paper examined various research articles, case studies, policy briefs and project reports. Sino-African aid, investments and trade were noted as essential in mitigating Africa's climate change vulnerabilities which induce poverty traps and inequality. Some African countries were noted to have a comparative advantage in environmental standards over China but lacked the initiative to use this comparative advantage to enhance the Forum on Chinae Africa Cooperation(FOCAC) and assist China to have a sustainable growth trajectory. The paper concludes that SSCF modalities can enhance climate risk management in Africa if they focus on improving financial inclusion and improving climate finance flows towards climate change adaptation activities in Africa. Additionally, to increase the effectiveness and impact of Chinese climate finance support to Africa, African policymakers should not allow political and market forces to decide how climate related support from China should be allocated as decisions based on political and market forces could potentially promote an inequitable distribution of funds and ignore the most vulnerable countries and regions.

Improving risk reduction potential of weather index insurance by spatially downscaling gridded climate data-a machine learning approach

Open-access gridded climate products have been suggested as a potential source of data for index insurance design and operation in data-limited regions.However,index insurance requires climate data with long historical records,global geographical coverage and fine spatial resolution at the same time,which is nearly impossible to satisfy,especially with open-access data.In this paper,we spatially downscaled gridded climate data(precipitation,temperature,and soil moisture)in coarse spatial resolution with globally available longterm historical records to finer spatial resolution,using satellite-based data and machine learning algorithms.We then investigated the effect of index insurance contracts based on downscaled climate data for hedging spring wheat yield.This study employed countylevel spring wheat yield data between 1982 and 2018 from 56 counties overall in Kazakhstan and Mongolia.The results showed that in the majority of cases(70%),hedging effectiveness of index insurances increases when climate data is spatially downscaled with a machine learning approach.These improvements are statistically significant(p≤0.05).Among other climate data,more improvements in hedging effectiveness were observed when the insurance design was based on downscaled temperature and precipitation data.Overall,this study highlights the reasonability and benefits of downscaling climate data for insurance design and operation.

The UNFCCC,the EU,and the UNSC:A research agenda proposal for the climate security question

This study proposes climate security:a research agenda proposal with certain research significance.It acknowledges the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC),the European Union(EU)and the United Nations Security Council(UNSC)as current institutional case studies(and key actors)for international climate politics.It answers the question of the extent to which climate security scholars have mapped the field with respect to these three institutions.To do this,it reviews relevant literature of climate security and concisely summarizes the literature views.Although climate security scholars have studied how these specialist institutions have understood global climate governance,a comparative coverage of how the institutions have conceptualized climate security is missing in existing literature.The key finding shows the concepts of epistemic communities,climate securitization and climate-riskifications as appropriate analytical themes for interpreting the emerging norm of climate security.Arguing that conceptual development persists even though the institutions original mandates did not require such conceptualization,the study uses discourse analysis of relevant literature on climate security to orient future research on climate change and climate security given the knowledge that speech-acts on climate security(henceforth speech-acts)now seem like potential policy consideration in the foreseeable future.