Kayne Anderson Small Cap Sustainable Growth

[Crystle Rike]

Indigenousknowledge (IK) refers to the understandings, skills and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings. Local knowledge (LK) refers to the understandings and skills developed by individuals and populations, specific to the place where they live. These forms of knowledge, jointly referred to as Indigenous and Local Knowledge or ILK, are often highly context specific and embedded in local institutions, providing biological and ecosystem knowledge with landscape information. For example, they can contribute to effective land management, predictions of natural disasters, and identification of longer-term climate changes, and ILK can be particularly useful where formal data collection on environmental conditions may be sparse. ILK is often dynamic, with knowledge holders often experimenting with mixes of local and scientific approaches. Water management, soil fertility practices, grazing systems, restoration and sustainable harvesting of forests, and ecosystem-based adaptation are many of the land management practices often informed by ILK. ILK can also be used as an entry point for climate adaptation by balancing past experiences with new ways to cope. To be effective, initiatives need to take into account the differences in power between the holders of different types of knowledge. For example, including indigenous and/ or local people in programmes related to environmental conservation, formal education, land management planning and security tenure rights is key to facilitate climate change adaptation. Formal education is necessary to enhance adaptive capacity of ILK, since some researchers have suggested that these knowledge systems may become less relevant in certain areas where the rate of environmental change is rapid and the transmission of ILK between generations is becoming weaker.

Land-based responses to climate change can be mitigation (e.g., renewable energy, vegetation or crops for biofuels, afforestation) or adaptation (e.g., change in cropping pattern, less water-intensive crops in response to moisture stress), or adaptation with mitigation co-benefits (e.g., dietary shifts, new uses for invasive tree species, siting solar farms on highly degraded land). Productive land is an increasingly scarce resource under climate change. In the absence of adequate deep mitigation in the less land-intensive energy sector, competition for land and water for mitigation and for other sectors such as food security, ecosystem services (ES) and biodiversity conservation could become a source of conflict and a barrier to land-based responses.

Other barriers can arise when, in the short term, adaptation to a climate stress (e.g., increased dependence on groundwater during droughts) can become unsustainable in the longer term, and become a maladaptation. Policies and approaches that lead to land management that synergises multiple ES and reduce trade-offs could find greater acceptance and enjoy more success.

Opportunities to obtain benefits or synergies from land-based mitigation and adaptation arise from their relation to the land availability and the demand for such measures in rural areas that may otherwise lack incentives for investment in infrastructure, livelihoods and institutional capacity. After decades of urbanisation around the world, facilitated by significant investment in urban infrastructure and centralised energy and agricultural systems, rural areas have been somewhat neglected; this is even as farmers in these areas provide critical food and materials needed for urban areas. As land and biomass becomes more valuable, there will be benefits for farmers, forest owners and associated service providers as they diversify and feed into economic activities supporting bioenergy, value-added products, preservation of biodiversity and carbon sequestration (storage).

A related opportunity for benefits is the potentially positive transformation in rural and peri-urban landscapes that could be facilitated by investments that prioritise more effective management of ES and conservation of water, energy, nutrients and other resources that have been priced too low in relation to their environmental or ecological value. Multifunctional landscapes supplying food, feed, fibre and fuel to both local and urban communities, in combination with reduced waste and healthier diets, could restore the role of rural producers as stewards of resources rather than providing food at the lowest possible price. Some of these landscape transformations will function as both mitigation and adaptation responses by increasing resilience, even as they provide value-added bio-based products.

Governments can introduce a variety of regulations and economic instruments (taxes, incentives) to encourage citizens, communities and societies to adopt sustainable land management practices, with further benefits in addition to mitigation. Windows of opportunity for redesigning and implementing mitigation and adaptation can arise in the aftermath of a major disaster or extreme climate event. They can also arise when collective action and citizen science motivate voluntary shifts in lifestyles supported by supportive top-down policies.

These changes result in compound risks to food systems, human and ecosystem health, livelihoods, the viability of infrastructure, and the value of land (high confidence). The experience and dynamics of risk change over time as a result of both human and natural processes (high confidence). There is high confidence that climate and land changes pose increased risks at certain periods of life (i.e., to the very young and ageing populations) as well as sustained risk to those living in poverty. Response options may also increase risks. For example, domestic efforts to insulate populations from food price spikes associated with climatic stressors in the mid-2000s inadequately prevented food insecurity and poverty, and worsened poverty globally. 7.2.1, 7.2.2, 7.3, Table 7.1

There is significant regional heterogeneity in risks: tropical regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America are particularly vulnerable to decreases in crop yield (high confidence). Yield of crops in higher latitudes may initially benefit from warming as well as from higher carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. But temperate zones, including the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Gobi desert, Korea and western United States are susceptible to disruptions from increased drought frequency and intensity, dust storms and fires (high confidence). 7.2.2

Risks related to land degradation, desertification and food security increase with temperature and can reverse development gains in some socio-economic development pathways (high confidence). SSP1 reduces the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems and thus limits risks resulting from desertification, land degradation and food insecurity compared to SSP3 (high confidence). SSP1 is characterised by low population growth, reduced inequalities, land-use regulation, low meat consumption, increased trade and few barriers to adaptation or mitigation. SSP3 has the opposite characteristics. Under SSP1, only a small fraction of the dryland population (around 3% at 3C for the year 2050) will be exposed and vulnerable to water stress. However under SSP3, around 20% of dryland populations (for the year 2050) will be exposed and vulnerable to water stress by 1.5C and 24% by 3C. Similarly under SSP1, at 1.5C, 2 million people are expected to be exposed and vulnerable to crop yield change. Over 20 million are exposed and vulnerable to crop yield change in SSP3, increasing to 854 million people at 3C (low confidence). Livelihoods deteriorate as a result of these impacts, livelihood migration is accelerated, and strife and conflict is worsened (medium confidence). Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapters 6 and 7, 7.2.2, 7.3.2, Table 7.1, Figure 7.2

Land-based adaptation and mitigation responses pose risks associated with the effectiveness and potential adverse side-effects of measures chosen (medium confidence). Adverse side-effects on food security, ecosystem services and water security increase with the scale of bioenergy and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) deployment. In a SSP1 future, bioenergy and BECCS deployment up to 4 million km2 is compatible with sustainability constraints, whereas risks are already high in a SSP3 future for this scale of deployment. 7.2.3

There is high confidence that policies addressing vicious cycles of poverty, land degradation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implemented in a holistic manner can achieve climate-resilient sustainable development. Choice and implementation of policy instruments determine future climate and land pathways (medium confidence). Sustainable development pathways (described in SSP1) supported by effective regulation of land use to reduce environmental trade-offs, reduced reliance on traditional biomass, low growth in consumption and limited meat diets, moderate international trade with connected regional markets, and effective GHG mitigation instruments) can result in lower food prices, fewer people affected by floods and other climatic disruptions, and increases in forested land (high agreement, limited evidence) (SSP1). A policy pathway with limited regulation of land use, low technology development, resource intensive consumption, constrained trade, and ineffective GHG mitigation instruments can result in food price increases, and significant loss of forest (high agreement, limited evidence) (SSP3). 3.7.5, 7.2.2, 7.3.4, 7.5.5, 7.5.6, Table 7.1, Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapters 6 and 7, Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 7

Delaying deep mitigation in other sectors and shifting the burden to the land sector, increases the risk associated with adverse effects on food security and ecosystem services (high confidence). The consequences are an increased pressure on land with higher risk of mitigation failure and of temperature overshoot and a transfer of the burden of mitigation and unabated climate change to future generations. Prioritising early decarbonisation with minimal reliance on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) decreases the risk of mitigation failure (high confidence). 2.5, 6.2, 6.4, 7.2.1, 7.2.2, 7.2.3, 7.5.6, 7.5.7, Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapters 6 and 7

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