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Climate change has been predicted to place more pressure on biological variety throughout the planet. The movement of species and ecosystems, even across international borders, necessitates international collaboration between governments. However, existing international conservation laws do not consider climate change and are thus not expected to provide sufficient support for species and ecosystem adaptation. This research delves into the difficulty of making international nature conservation legislation resilient to climate change and the corresponding mismatch.

AbstractClimate change has significantly influenced the characteristics of seasons and negatively affected ecosystems and socio‐economic life. This study presents a new, objective definition for seasons in the Arabian Peninsula. Specifically, the study determines disruptions in the onset, cessation, and duration of winter, spring, summer, and autumn based on mean intra‐annual changes of 12 climatological parameters from 1950 to 2019. Data for climatological parameters were obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis. These data were analysed using two multivariate statistical methods: principal component analysis and cluster analysis. The results show that the characteristics of the four seasons differ from conventionally defined seasons. The differing characteristics of the four seasons are (a) that winter extends for 91 days, between 2 November (the previous year) and 31 January; (b) spring extends for 111 days, until 22 May; (c) summer extends for 106 days, until 5 September and, finally; (d) autumn completes the cycle, extending for 57 days. To investigate the decadal disruption of seasons' characteristics, the analysis was performed on the data collected during five overlapping 30‐year periods: 1950–1979, 1960–1989, 1970–1999, 1980–2009, and 1990–2019. The most remarkable changes were noticed during the last 30 years. Compared to the 70‐year analysis, the 1990–2019 analysis showed extra prolongation in the duration of summer and a shortage in winter, which aligns with the recent warming and drying of the Arabian Peninsula. Summer (winter) lasts for 126 (76) days. All analyses propose that all seasons start earlier, compared with the astronomical definition. The findings of this study are key to understanding the consequences of seasons changes in the Arabian Peninsula. These consequences include impacts on agriculture, water deficits, ecosystems, and land cover.

This paper presents potential upgrades to the Palm Jumeirah Island’s outer revetment to extend its design life for 50 years, considering the sea level rise (SLR) associated with climate change. The paper proposes several upgrade options to ensure that the hydraulic stability and wave overtopping discharges of the Palm Jumeirah revetment comply with the recommended design criteria based on industry guidelines. The performance of the existing revetment, in terms of the hydraulic stability and wave overtopping discharge criteria, is assessed using design wave heights (1- and 100-year events) extracted from an extreme wave analysis study on the Dubai coast. The results show that, based on the new design conditions, the existing structure should be upgraded to meet the armor stability criteria and recommended overtopping discharge values. Three different upgrade solutions are designed and analyzed to satisfy the required hydraulic stability and overtopping conditions. The suggested upgrade options are an extra armor layer, a flat berm, and a submerged breakwater offshore. The proposed upgrade solutions are preliminary designs that would require verification in terms of their geotechnical stability and physical model testing to evaluate their performance.

Climate change may affect micro and macro-components of ecosystems. The impacts may extend to affect agriculture, water cycles and human stability and health. Costal and arid areas could be under higher risks due to several factors associated with seawater rise, desertification, water and food scarcity, etc. Both marine and terrestrial biodiversity in vulnerable areas to climate change may show imbalance, disappearance, migration and mutation. Qatar –as well as the GCC region- could be affected directly and indirectly by climate change where seawater is the main source of desalination. Oceans acidification and salinization phenomena have been recorded due to inputs of CO2 and brines associated with water losses through evaporation. One of the major features is the sea level rise which is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing. Climate change makes all needs to be less workable. Simply, climate change means changing the hydrological cycle where water is the sum of heating and cooling processes. Climate change means that it is hard to predict water availability. On the other hand, agriculture will be particularly under stress, water is scarce, there will be increase of water demand for other purposes. Moreover, water is the key component of any ecosystem. Ecosystems, like general systems, consist of components between which there are exchanges for processes that exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium if left undisturbed. The state is maintained by negative feedback and altered by positive feedback. Finally, changes in climatic water balance drive shifts in plant and animal species. The talk will cover the following: (1) features of climate change in arid and semi-arid regions; (2) climate change in terms of hydrology; (3) climate change and ecosystems; (4) climate, water and food security.

Abstract The development of desalination has been essential to the rapid economic development of the countries bordering the Arabian Gulf. The current production capacity of sea water desalination plants drawing water from Gulf is over 20 million m3 day−1, which may rise to 80 million m3 day−1 by 2050. Whilst supporting aspects of sustainable development related to water and sanitation, desalination impacts the marine environment through impingement and entrainment of organisms in intakes, and through thermal, brine and chemical discharges. This may compromise other objectives for sustainable development related to sustainable use of the oceans. Under business as usual scenarios, by 2050, the impact of individual desalination plants will combine causing a regional scale impact. Without mitigating actions to avoid the business as usual scenario, by 2050, desalination in combination with climate change, will elevate coastal water temperatures across more than 50% of the Gulf by at least 3 °C, and a volume of water equivalent to more than a third of the total volume of water between 0 and 10 m deep will pass through desalination plants each year. This will adversely impact the coastal ecosystem of the Gulf, with impacts on biodiversity, fisheries and coastal communities and may cause potential loss of species and habitats from the Gulf. Given the significant implications of these preliminary findings, and in light of the precautionary approach to management, it is recommended that mitigating options addressing behavioural, regulatory and technological change are rapidly evaluated and implemented to avoid the development of desalination in the region along a business as usual pathway, and multidisciplinary research studies should be conducted to reduce uncertainty in predictions of future impacts.

Attachment theory is an ethological approach to the development of durable, affective ties between humans. We propose that secure attachment is crucial for understanding climate change mitigation, because the latter is inherently a communal phenomenon resulting from joint action and requiring collective behavioral change. Here, we show that priming attachment security increases acceptance (Study 1: n = 173) and perceived responsibility toward anthropogenic climate change (Study 2: n = 209) via increased empathy for others. Next, we demonstrate that priming attachment security, compared to a standard National Geographic video about climate change, increases monetary donations to a proenvironmental group in politically moderate and conservative individuals (Study 3: n = 196). Finally, through a preregistered field study conducted in the United Arab Emirates (Study 4: n = 143,558 food transactions), we show that, compared to a message related to carbon emissions, an attachment security–based message is associated with a reduction in food waste. Taken together, our work suggests that an avenue to promote climate change mitigation could be grounded in core ethological mechanisms associated with secure attachment. Significance Attachment theory focuses on the primal form of emotional bonding between humans. Attachment is conceptualized as an innate behavioral system aimed at safeguarding against potential threats by assuring proximity to caring and supportive others. When individuals feel securely attached (thus feeling less threatened in most situations), the activation of the caregiving behavioral system (concern for others) is facilitated. With this research, we show that priming attachment security influences how much people care about and accept climate change via an increased empathy for humanity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this activation bypasses the resistance of politically conservative individuals to mitigate climate change. Overall, we show that attachment security–based stimuli can inform intervention and policymaking strategies to help fight climate change.

We investigate whether, and how, auditors price risks related to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for a sample of firms traded in the US that disclose their CO2 emissions data. Specifically, we assess whether auditors price CO2 physical and transition risks among multiple categories of emission measures as auditor business risks. After controlling for audit fee determinants, we find that auditors assign a fee premium in the presence of greater total and direct emissions measures, signifying auditor perception of greater risk arising from higher emitting clients. Our findings are robust to alternate specifications (endogeneity, headquarter state membership in a cap and trade agreement, the Paris climate change agreement). Our paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on whether and how auditors respond to emissions information through their pricing decision.