Page - 24 - in options, Volume summer 2016

asia 24 options + summer 2016 www.iiasa.ac.at regional focus Reducing smog without warming effect Given the notorious smog that hangs over many East Asian cities, with its detrimental effect on human health, agriculture, and ecosystems, it is hardly surprising that the region’s environmental debate has tended to focus on air pollution control rather than climate change mitigation. A recently proposed approach to control emissions of short‑lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) alongside CO2 offers the potential to reduce both air pollution and climate change. “While CO2 from fossil fuel use is the single biggest warming factor, black carbon (from solid fuel cooking and transportation) and methane (from oil and gas and livestock production) are important as well. They also contribute to air pollution,” says IIASA researcher Zbigniew Klimont. “Since they last from a few days to several years in the atmosphere, a strategy addressing their emissions would have near‑term impacts. However, high emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides, which lead to smog, also need to be reduced, and this in turn will result in additional warming,” he adds. Zbigniew and his collaborators at five universities and research centers in Japan used a global climate model and a regional chemical transport model to test various scenarios where climate change targets and air pollution mitigation strategies were combined. Reduction of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds would decrease the SLCP surface ozone, and methane reductions would reduce radiative forcing (additional warming). Combining these actions with a climate change strategy addressing the 2°C target could efficiently reduce regional pollution as well as alleviate the warming impact of reducing sulphur dioxide, the  study revealed. CW Further info Akimoto  H, Kurokawa  J, Sudo  K, Nagashima  T, Takemura  T, Klimont  Z, Amann  M, Suzuki  K (2015). SLCP co-control approach in East  Asia: Tropospheric ozone reduction strategy by  simultaneous reduction of NOx/NMVOC and methane. Atmospheric Environment 122:558–595 [doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.10.003]. Zbigniew Klimont klimont@iiasa.ac.at Putting nature tourism on the right track The giant panda research project at Wolong Nature Reserve, China, made headlines in 1980 as the first‑ever scientific collaboration on conservation between China and the West. Until a devastating earthquake in 2008 closed the park, it attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world. Nature‑based tourism has the potential to enhance biodiversity conservation and alleviate poverty, yet if not carefully planned it can cause ecological degradation, with little benefit to local communities. “Tourism is a complex and dynamic social‑ecological system: its interconnected components are hard to engineer to optimize desired change. It takes a long time to understand the non‑linearities,” says  IIASA researcher Wei Liu. Applying the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to data obtained from interviews and surveys with residents, tourists, and reserve officials, as well as from government documents, Liu and colleagues from China and the USA systematically tracked critical events and major changes in Wolong over 30 years, and explored the forces—ecological, economic, social, and governance—that drove these changes. “We now better understand the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of destination development, especially in the context of China during a period of great societal transition,” says Liu. “This year Wolong begins its rebirth as a major tourist destination after eight years of official inactivity following the earthquake. How  do you start again after a system crashes? We hope our analysis can provide some guidance on how a fragile tourism system can best enter into the next stage of the development lifecycle.” CW Further info Liu  W, Vogt  CA, Lupi  F, He  G, Ouyang  Z, Liu  J (2016). Evolution of tourism in a flagship protected area of China. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 24(2):203–226 [doi:10.1080/09669582.2015.1071380]. Wei Liu liuw@iiasa.ac.at