| 英文摘要: | Climate change is observed globally, and the projections predict that the change will continue in the future for quite a long time. The mitigation and adaptation to climate change, however, are offering tremendous business opportunities around the world, especially for businesses operating in the agri-food, energy, finance, and health sectors, water infrastructure, built environments, and other relevant services. When the severity of heat waves is considered, for instance, it would become quite clear that the demand for cooling would accelerate, putting further stress on energy supply and increasing the risk of electricity black outs. Similarly, the projections also provide warnings about increased drought risk in many regions around the globe, and even worse, it should also be emphasized that 60% more food will be needed globally, while 100% more demand for food is projected in developing countries by the year 2050. While all these are being projected, we are experiencing progressively increasing stress on our global freshwater resources, which are worsened further by climate change-driven impacts and water pollution. Consequently, reducing agri-food production systems' susceptibility to climate change and strengthening the resilience of such systems are extremely important to sustain and improve the livelihoods of billions of people around the globe. Moreover, reducing emissions due to fossil fuels consumption and production is vital for the whole global population, and agri-food and energy sectors have tremendous potentials for reducing inefficiencies and emissions while simultaneously playing their crucial roles in food and energy security as well as poverty reduction. Both of these sectors are facing significant climate change-driven challenges, which provide ample opportunities for cutting-edge novel knowledge and innovative products, processes, services, and policies. And due to the reciprocal relationships between climate change and agri-food and energy innovations, in return, complementing the other forms, such innovations will speed up the climate change mitigation and adaptation processes.
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