Challenges and lessons learned for REDD+ finance and its governance.

Discussion on reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries began at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties in 2005, and the agenda for "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+)" was introduced under the UNFCCC. The REDD+ framework was developed with the expectation that it would significantly contribute to climate change mitigation at a relatively low cost and produce benefits for both developed and developing countries. Finance is a key element of REDD+ implementation, and many financial sources, approaches, and mechanisms have supported REDD+-related activities in various developing countries.

Impacts of Subsurface Dam Construction on Downstream Groundwater Levels and Salinity in Coastal Aquifers.

Subsurface dam is a promising engineering technology for groundwater resources development. However, the possible impacts of these dams on the groundwater environment have been a major concern. Here, we used a three-dimensional (3D), variable-density, unsaturated-saturated groundwater flow model to explore how a groundwater-storage-type subsurface dam, built in the freshwater domain of an unconfined coastal aquifer, affected groundwater levels and salinity in the downstream area.

The state-of-the-art and future research directions on sacred forests and ecosystem services.

The importance of forests in providing a healthy environment and good quality of life for people is crucial. Sacred forests, in particular, play a significant role in the social and ecological aspects of life. Despite numerous studies and reports on the subject, there is a lack of an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of research on sacred forests and their ecosystem services.

A review of ICT-enabled learning for schoolgirls in Asia and its impacts on education equity.

The education pathways and opportunities of schoolgirls in Asia are facing different challenges. The empirical studies have implemented Information and Communication Technology-enabled learning to expand such pathways and opportunities and promote education inclusiveness and equity. Through the Gender Analysis Framework, this review paper focuses on exploring and discussing how ICT-enabled learning may expand schoolgirls' education pathways and opportunities in Asia for inclusive and equitable education.

Understanding human vulnerability to climate change: A global perspective on index validation for adaptation planning.

Climate change is a severe global threat. Research on climate change and vulnerability to natural hazards has made significant progress over the last decades. Most of the research has been devoted to improving the quality of climate information and hazard data, including exposure to specific phenomena, such as flooding or sea-level rise.

Beyond Indicators and Success Stories: An Emerging Method to Assess Social Learning in Large-Scale Transdisciplinary Research Programs.

Facilitated learning approaches are increasingly being used as a means to enhance climate and sustainability collaborations working across disciplines, regions, and scales. With investments into promoting and supporting inter- and transdisciplinary learning in major programs on complex global challenges like climate change on the rise, scholars and practitioners are calling for a more grounded and empirical understanding of learning processes and their outcomes. Yet, methodologies for studying the interplay between learning and change in these initiatives remain scarce, owing to both the "hard to measure" nature of learning and the complexity of large-scale program implementation and evaluation.

Outcome-Based Assessment of the Payment for Mountain Agriculture: A Community-Based Approach to Countering Land Abandonment in Japan.

Agricultural land accounts for 37% of the world's terrestrial area, and the multiple functions of agroecosystems-providing food, soil and water retention, and various cultural services-are of great importance for sustainable land management. To ensure that multifunctionality, payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have been developed for heterogeneous agroecosystems. However, the effects of the schemes have not been fully measured because, in most cases, they have been implemented as action-oriented programs rather than outcome-based payments.

COVID-19 and ASEAN responses: Comparative policy analysis.

Scholars and policy-makers agree that cross-border and multi-sector cooperation are essential components of coordinated efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections. This paper examines the responses of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nation) member countries to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the limits of regional cooperation. ASEAN has pre-existing cooperative frameworks in place, including regional health security measures, which, at least theoretically, could assist the region's efforts to formulate cooperative responses to containing a global pandemic.

Relationship between diarrhoea risk and the combinations of drinking water sources in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

In Nepal, the number of diarrhoea hospitalizations in all ages is seriously high. According to the World Health Organization, diarrheal diseases can be substantially prevented through safe drinking water sources. In the Kathmandu Valley, because of the shortage of piped water, local residents use alternative water sources, such as groundwater, jars and tanker water.

Urban-rural linkages: effective solutions for achieving sustainable development in Ghana from an SDG interlinkage perspective.

Urbanization and concomitant challenges pose a great threat to sustainable development. Urban and rural development interacts through the flows of people, materials, energy, goods, capital, and information. Without building sound urban-rural linkages, achieving development in one area could compromise it in another area.

Impact of population growth and land use and land cover (LULC) changes on water quality in tourism-dependent economies using a geographically weighted regression approach.

This paper aims to assess the influence of land use and land cover (LULC) indicators and population density on water quality parameters during dry and rainy seasons in a tourism area in Indonesia. This study applies least squares regression (OLS) and Pearson correlation analysis to see the relationship among factors, and all LULC and population density were significantly correlated with most of water quality parameter with P values of 0.01 and 0.

Ignored and invisible: internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the face of COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 is impacting the whole world. The impacts are different on different countries and societal groups, and those who are poor, mobile, and displaced are disproportionally affected. There are different ways that they are affected: they are more vulnerable to contracting the disease while living in shelter, have many barriers to access to social services and health care, difficulty in accessing relief and aid, prone to livelihood loss, and financial insecurity.

An integrated approach to sustainable development, National Resilience, and COVID-19 responses: The case of Japan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to historic economic fallout. To protect public health and stabilize incomes, governments have implemented massive fiscal stimulus packages. These fiscal supports are crucial, though there is concern that sustainable and resilient development will be sacrificed in the rush to preserve incomes and industries.

Climate change research in Asia: A knowledge synthesis of Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (2013-2018).

Countering climate challenges requires genuine multi-layered approaches in cooperation with various stakeholders. Spanning 20 years, the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) has been facilitating the research community to provide regional and grassroots results and solutions, while acting as a mechanism to encourage science-policy-stakeholder dialogue. This paper outlines the relevance of APN projects to IPCC policymaking by laying out knowledge products and lessons learned from the projects.

Impact assessment of land use functions on the sustainable regional development of representative Asian countries - A comparative study in Bangladesh, China and Japan.

Sustainable land use is a fundamental research field for land use planning. However, regional policymakers often lack access to the theoretical impacts that a land use policy might have on local development, especially in remote agricultural areas. Furthermore, knowledge exchange is important, especially in the context of globalization.

The human imperative of stabilizing global climate change at 1.5°C.

Increased concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases have led to a global mean surface temperature 1.0°C higher than during the pre-industrial period. We expand on the recent IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.

Simulation of Gomti River (Lucknow City, India) future water quality under different mitigation strategies.

The Gomti River in Lucknow City, India, was an important source of water for the different uses few decades ago. However, because of the rapid global changes, current status of the river is very critical from environmental, aesthetic and commercial usage point of view. Henceforth, this research work focused on assessing the current as well as predicting its future situation using different scenarios while considering key drivers of global changes namely climate change and population growth.

Food Security of Adolescents in Selected Khat- and Coffee-Growing Areas in the Sidama Zone, Southern Ethiopia.

Whilst pervasive food insecurity exists among adolescents in Ethiopia, the available information is scant and inconsistent. Therefore, the main objective of this cross-sectional study was to contribute to these gaps by assessing the food security of adolescents in the selected khat- and coffee-growing areas. We selected 234 (117 girls and 117 boys) adolescents aged 12⁻18 years via stratified random sampling.