In this third and final installment of a three part series on WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program’s coastal adaptation projects in Costa Rica, Valerie Guthrie discusses the community’s efforts to educate and actively involve Junquillal’s youngest inhabitants in WWF’s adaptation work.
Communities matter. This is the foundation for our work helping sea turtles and the people of Junquillal prepare for the increasingly severe impacts associated with climate change.
For this reason, myself and a team of others at WWF have worked with the community of Junquillal to develop an experimental program that aims to integrate children in helping our community adjust to climate change. However, while our work focuses on sea turtles, our planning did not start with them. We started by asking ourselves a simple question, “What’s the best way to teach children, young people, and adults about a global problem that has direct local effects where they live?”
An enormous amount of attention has been paid to the loss of the ancient glaciers in the Himalayas and across the Tibetan plateau. Their retreat and the loss of glacial mass have been tied to rising air temperatures, longer warm seasons, and shifting precipitation patterns. But while dramatic and newsworthy, the loss of glaciers does not have an immediate impact on most people and ecosystems in the region beyond dry-season flows. Glaciers represent old reservoirs of water that build up over decades, centuries, and even millennia. However, most of the liquid water resources in the Himalayas and plateau come from seasonally frozen rain, groundwater, and snow, which accumulate each winter and melt over the following spring and summer to enter the rivers, groundwater, and lakes of south and central Asia.
I’ve just returned from two weeks on the Tibetan plateau, mostly in Qinghai province of western China, with a team from the China Program Office of WWF, WWF-US, and a colleague from the Qinghai State Forestry Administration. We were scoping climate change impacts and considering adaptation strategies for the region, with a focus on water resources.
by Ana Fonseca, WWF-LAC and Carlos Drews, WWF-International
In this second installment of a three part series on WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program’s coastal adaptation projects in Costa Rica, Ana Fonseca, the Latin America and Caribbean lead with WWF-LAC, together with Carlos Drews discusses the community’s efforts to adapt – both for the turtles and themselves.
The fortunes of coastal communities like Junquillal are intimately tied to the sea and the shoreline that sits just meters away from houses and roads, a relationship shared by species like sea turtles, for whom the beach is the sole nesting site. Coastlines are not static however, but instead shift according to storms, currents, and changing sea levels. Scientists warn that the sea-level could rise by at least one meter by the end of the century due to climate change, threatening both coastal communities as well as critically important turtle nesting sites like Junquillal.
As part of ClimatePrep.org’s continuing feature on sea turtles and adaptation, we interviewed Marianne Fish, Program Leader for Marine and Coastal Adaptation with WWF – Latin America and the Caribbean. She spoke about incorporating adaptation into existing conservation efforts, “no regrets” strategies, and how sea turtles are a focal species for adaptation projects in part because they make use of many of the same coastal and marine habitats that are critical to humans – beaches, coral reefs, and mangroves.
A densely populated country with a very long coastline, Vietnam appears frequently on lists of the countries that are expected to be most seriously affected by climate change. And the Mekong Delta will be one of the most impacted areas within Vietnam: a broad, flat plain that receives the sediment-laden waters of the Mekong River, the Delta is home to about 18 million people. While it can be difficult to predict how climate change will impact a region as complex as the Mekong Delta, it is expected that sea level rise, increased storm surge, and saltwater intrusion will significantly threaten biodiversity and human livelihoods across the so-called Rice Bowl of Vietnam.
Junquillal Beach in the north Pacific of Costa Rica is a representative example of many places in Latin American and the Caribbean where wildlife and communities are already feeling the impacts of climate change. In 2005, with the support of the community, WWF started the project “Conservation of Pacific Leatherbacks” (in Spanish, Conservación – Baulas del Pacífico (CBP)). The CBP Program includes the monitoring and protection of sea turtle nesting sites, community education and training programs, and the development of flooding maps for the Junquillal area.
In this three part series, Gabriel Francia, Ana Fonseca, and Valerie Guthrie from WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program will discuss their efforts to work with communities and integrate the latest climate science and mapping technologies as part of a multi-faceted sea turtle and coastal adaptation project in Costa Rica. A previous entry on ClimatePrep featured a video from Junquillal.
In this entry, Gabriel Francia discusses the community’s efforts to adapt – both for the turtles and themselves.
Click to Download: Experiencias de Adaptación al Cambio Climático (4.89 MB pdf)
Ecosystems and communities at high latitudes (i.e. the Arctic) and high altitudes (Himalayas, Andes, etc.) are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and there is a great need for adaptation expertise in these areas.
The publication “Experiencias de Adaptación al Cambio Climático en Ecosistemas de Montaña en los Andes del Norte” [Experiences with Climate Change Adaptation in Mountain Ecosystems of the Northern Andes] presents a synthesis of the workshop held in Bogotá, Colombia, in February, 2009 by WWF, Fundación Humedales, the Colombian Ministry of the Environment, Housing and Regional Development, and the National Hydrology and Meterorology Institute of Colombia (IDEAM) in the context of work currently being carried out towards the development of strategies for climate change adaptation in the coffee-growing region of the central Andes of Colombia and the Andean-Amazon piedmont of Colombia, Ecuador, and the north of Peru.
Marine turtles and their nesting beaches are threatened by sea-level rise and nest overheating resulting from climate change. A WWF project in Junquillal beach, Costa Rica, joined forces with the community to lead the implementation of adaptation measures such as coastal planning in consideration of sea-level rise, flood risk reduction, restoration of coastal vegetation for shade, and educating children with a new awareness of the links among climate shifts, nature conservation, and community well-being. This video is the abridged (8 min) version of the full length (24 min) documentary “Playas Calientes – Olas Furiosas” (2009).
For more information on WWF’s Adaptation to Climate Change for Marine Turtles (ACT) project, click here and here.
The Kathryn Fuller Science for Nature Seminars bring distinguished scientists from a variety of fields to present cutting edge research of central importance to international conservation. Dr. Andrew Baker, an Assistant Professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami, presented in 2009. He discussed the effects of climate change on coral reef ecosystems and the adaptive capacity of corals to these effects. Watch Baker share the innovative research he’s working on, and how it might translate into effective conservation tools.
In early November of 2009, WWF convened the 4th annual Kathryn Fuller Science for Nature Symposium. This year’s event, titled “Securing Water for Nature and People in a Changing Climate,” provided a state-of-the-science review of climate impacts on freshwater systems, challenges to freshwater ecosystem conservation, the role of adaptation in water management, and provided a platform for the development of an adaptation based “conservation agenda.”
Daniel Schindler of the University of Washington discussed his research on ecosystem changes in response to climate change and the importance of ecosystem diversity. Watch him share some of his key messages and explain heterogeneity here:
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