The question of how to design and implement effective adaptation measures is one that I think most adaptation practitioners are still struggling with, and will continue to struggle with, for many years to come. With hundreds of adaptation initiatives underway around the world, we are beginning to develop a set of best practices that will be valuable as we move forward with further project implementation. What many of us are finding is that adaptation isn’t a one size fits all- effective adaptation will likely vary by region and expected climate impacts as well as be driven by the local economy, demographics, and values. Where I work, The Resource Innovation Group, we are attempting to provide some insight into this challenging question of “effective” adaptation by experimenting with different approaches. We are currently embarking on a project aims to engage the greater region in collaboration around climate change adaptation through the Willamette Valley Resilience Compact.
Imagine you are walking down the street on your way to your favorite sandwich shop. You are dreaming about the amazing chicken sandwich you are about to order when all of a sudden an activist from Veggie Lovers Unite! hands you a flyer.On the front page it says “Switch now! Become a vegetarian!” Just underneath the headline is a citation from a very reputable scientific journal. It cites the statistic: “it takes 10 times more fossil fuel to produce one calorie of animal protein than it does to produce one calorie of plant protein.”
On the back page of the flyer, there are quotes from several well-known scientists, politicians, and celebrities about how happy they are now that they switched to vegetarianism. The flyer also outlines a five step plan for how to make the switch from die-hard, meat-devouring carnivore to tofu-marinating vegetarian.
You continue walking down the street to the sandwich shop. You’re not normally a vegetarian, but you were just presented with some credible scientific evidence that switching to vegetarianism would be good for the environment, and that’s something you care about. Are you going to make the switch? Are you going to order the vegetarian sandwich?
The answer is most likely: No. Even though you are a “science-type” and hold scientific evidence in high regard, the statistic on the flyer is just not enough to convince you to make a major life change. In fact, it isn’t even enough to convince you to order a vegetarian sandwich five minutes after reading the flyer.
Now imagine you are the head of a government agency, say the City Water Authority. An environmental scientist from the World Climate Organization comes to brief you on the impact that climate change will have on your water management systems. Are you going to take his or her word and start making changes tomorrow? Probably not.
What, then, is required to make a government official, or anyone for that matter, digest new evidence and take action?
For the past four years, the organization that I work for, The Resource Innovation Group (TRIG), has been running a series of Climate Futures Forums in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The Forums are essentially based on the principles of Community Based Adaptation (CBA) and we have found them to be an effective means for bridging the gap between climate scientists and local decision-makers. In addition, the Forums demonstrate the value of bringing local experts into the community adaptation planning process: these “experts” are individuals that may not necessarily have academic training on climate change or adaptation, but who have observational and experiential expertise. They live, work and play in these communities and know them well. While the Forums have proven to be extremely instrumental for adaptation planning in the Pacific Northwest, I hope that by sharing the process and lessons learned here, other organizations may be interested in replication.
While mitigating the future rise in global temperature has received much attention worldwide, support to help those vulnerable adapt to the inevitable impacts of rising temperature has been limited. The estimated annual cost of adaptation is USD 100 bn, and bilateral and multilateral funding pledges form just a fraction of this amount. Given that donor and government funding is neither sufficient nor sustainable, there is an urgent need to engage private capital and enterprise in climate change adaptation.
Asian cities are expected to account for more than 60% of global population growth in the next 30 years. The bulk of this growth is expected to come from tier two and three cities and towns that are least equipped with the infrastructure to cope with increased population pressure. As a result, a large number of poor people in urban areas will be highly vulnerable to the changing climate; many already are. Efforts to build resilient cities are thus critical now, and through the development and provision of resilient and inclusive products and services the private sector can participate.
In order to explore business models with the potential to build the resilience of the urban poor, Intellecap, an inclusive business advisory firm, is partnering with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN). The initial report based on a study of vulnerabilities and opportunities in four Asian cities identified nine key sectors with clear business opportunities in the area of climate adaptation and resilience: micro-insurance, affordable healthcare, waste management and sanitation, water management, affordable housing, off-grid renewable energy, microfinance, information and communication technology and livelihood promotion.
It can be challenging to find climate change adaptation resources that explain complex concepts to lay audiences in easy-to-understand language. Academic journal articles, project case studies, vulnerability assessments, and the like often speak to the experts rather than newcomers. Providing these types of documents to those new to the field is like asking them to watch a mystery movie one hour after it started – they might catch on eventually, but chances are they will leave the cinema confused and frustrated.
Thankfully there are a number of resources out there that are appropriate for those who are relatively new to adaptation. Here are a few that I have found particularly useful and always include in the bundle of pdf’s that I distribute to our workshop participants. All are available free of charge online.
Twin works in partnership with over 50 farmer organisations world wide, facilitating market access and helping to build business and organisational capacity. We are currently developing our strategy to support smallholder producer organisations to effectively plan adaptation interventions with their members; an initial project with Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative Enterprises in Uganda is already underway.
Gumutindo: Climate Change is Here Now.
Members of Gumutindo Cooperative live in the upland valleys of Mount Elgon, where they produce high quality organic and Fairtrade certified coffee. Climate change presents a serious threat to smallholder coffee farmers since coffee trees are highly vulnerable to changes in their environment and only thrive within a narrow temperature range and under the right rainfall conditions. In Uganda, coffee farmers are extremely worried about the future since they are already suffering from increased climate variability including longer drought periods and heavier rainfall leading to poor quality cherry, low yields and severe erosion. In March 2010 following extremely heavy rains, a devastating landslide killed over 300 people that live and farm on Mount Elgon. This season farmers suffered from an unusually long drought season and extremely late rains, threatening food security.
The symptoms are familiar. You seem to hear about a new climate information portal or knowledge platform being launched every week. You check it out and it seems impressive at first glance. Nice graphics. Promising headings. Ambitious objectives. Cool tools.
But as you click further you start to wonder. How’s this different from that portal you heard about last week? Or that big World Bank one (or was it UN) that’s been around for a few years? Which one is more useful for me, and how are they different? How can I make sure I’m getting the best information? There’s so many out there, how can I make sense of them? And which one would I recommend to my developing country partner with a patchy internet connection and not a lot of time to play with?
Let’s call it Portal proliferation Syndrome or PPS, because along with this syndrome you tend to get APS (Acronym Proliferation Syndrome). It’s widespread, and it’s becoming increasingly global as more countries start thinking about how to get to grips with climate change, and more organisations and donors pick up on the climate issue.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond is a world-renowned expert on ancient societies. His now famous book, Collapse, is a study of the choices societies have made throughout history in the face of change – climate change, as well as others — and the consequences of such choices.
In early 2011, my colleague, John Matthews, and I had a chance to sit down with Diamond to talk about climate change, the challenges presented to conservation and development practitioners, and the opportunities he sees in confronting them.
Among US cities, it appears that Chicago is among the most advanced on introducing climate adaptive measures into their planning, according to this New York Times article. If current emissions trends continue, by 2070 Chicago could have a climate that resembles that of today’s southern states of Alabama and Louisiana, with 35 percent more precipitation in the winter and spring and 20 percent less in the summer and autumn. Among potential impacts cited in the article include 1200 heat-related deaths per year, deterioration of infrastructure, flooding, and termite infestation. (Termites are currently not able to survive Chicago’s cold winters.)
The article outlines a number of interesting adaptation measures the city is taking to prepare for a warmer and wetter future. The one I find most interesting will make many conservationists squeamish – the decision to stop planting common tree species, like ash and Norway maple, in favor of trees found much further south, like swamp white oak and bald cypress. In the adaptation training workshops we have conducted many participants have reacted negatively to the idea of proactively introducing species that will be resilient to a future climate, preferring traditional conservation measures that restore ecosystems to previous conditions. I suspect that in the future more of us will learn to accept the inevitable and begin following Chicago’s lead.
I was trained as a biologist in the traditional university-style: a focus on one-discipline. Most of my research over the 15 years since this formal training ended has focused on understanding the growth and movements of marine species. A lot involved work on cephalopods – squid, octopus and cuttlefish – creatures that are strongly influenced by environmental conditions, such as changes in water temperature.
Given my background as a marine scientist, I guess it was inevitable that I would become interested in species responses to climate change, and what we may be able to do to help best adapt to the subsequent impacts on marine ecosystems. Like many marine biologists, my existing skill set and experience was geared towards the detection of biological impacts and not really the development and assessment of adaptation options. I discovered very quickly that adaptation research was a whole new kettle of fish!
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