Archive by category | Adaptation

Development community must accept uncertainty

Development community must accept uncertainty

Uncertainty in regional climate projections isn’t going away, and that’s an inconvenient truth the development community will have to face, says Christoph Müller of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany.  Read more

IHDP: the Bonn Declaration that wasn’t

Some of my fellow Open Meeting attendees were musing at dinner about how many Bonn Declarations exist. The top ten Google results point to six different texts named after the eminent city. The organizers of this conference originally proposed to add yet another Bonn Declaration to the list, one laying out the way forward for research on human dimensions of global change. But it turned out not to be easy to articulate a common vision that the motley group gathered here – who work on everything from emissions scenarios to development policy to the sociology of knowledge – could accept.  Read more

IHDP: No time for pessimism, says small islands leader

IHDP: No time for pessimism, says small islands leader

A group of ambassadors from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) stopped by the IHDP conference yesterday and held a panel discussion on dealing with the leading edge of dangerous climate change. For AOSIS countries that stand to be swallowed by rising seas or devastated by droughts and storms, their continued existence is on the line in this year’s climate negotiations. At the UN meeting here in Bonn in March, the group issued a statement saying, “The survival of the small island states should be the benchmark for the success of the Copenhagen agreement.” I nabbed AOSIS chair Dessima Williams of Grenada for a quick interview on the island states’ agenda.  Read more

IHDP: From London to Ibadan, ‘it’s not our problem’

Yesterday I caught a speedy summary of the climate vulnerability of Nigerian cities that included a glimpse into public perceptions there. Felix Olorunfemi of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research surveyed 300 people door-to-door in the city of Ibadan and found that awareness of climate change was low, that it was seen as a complex and abstract problem, and that knowledge of such environmental problems wasn’t correlated with action taken to address them.  Read more

Climate and society in the Arctic

Climate and society in the Arctic

Although the Inuit people of the North American Arctic are generally thought to be vulnerable to climate change, particularly in the wake of record sea ice loss, it can be difficult to quantify all of the risks to their way of life. In a new paper in Climatic Change, a group of researchers led by Gita Laidler of Carleton University assessed the ability of the residents of Igloolik, a coastal community north of the Arctic Circle, to adapt to changing conditions. The team reports that although the hunters have so far adapted to thinning ice and changing seasons, societal changes  … Read more

Q&A: Andrew Gouldson, director of the new Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy

Q&A: Andrew Gouldson, director of the new Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy

The UK will get an intriguing new climate research centre next week, with the launch of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and the University of Leeds. In a Q&A for Nature Reports Climate Change, I’ve interviewed Andrew Gouldson, who will co-direct the centre with Judith Rees under chairman Lord Nicholas Stern – and who envisions a strong focus on regional impacts of climate change.  Read more

Bangladesh’s battle with climate change

Bangladesh’s battle with climate change

As a vast, flat delta, Bangladesh is perhaps the country most clearly associated with the threat of rising seas – without protective barriers along the coast, even a moderate increase in sea level could cause flooding deep inland. Estimates suggest that even a one-metre rise could swallow 15 to 20 per cent of the land area, where some 20 million people reside.  Read more

Adaptation needed to avoid world food crisis

Adaptation needed to avoid world food crisis

The recent food crisis, which saw crop prices sky rocket in 2007/08, demonstrated the fragile nature of the world’s food system. Coping with the short-term challenges of food price volatility is daunting, but the longer-term challenge of avoiding a perpetual food crisis due to global warming could be far more serious.  Read more