Climate Prep

by John Matthews, WWF-US

I have just returned from the first of three quick trips to China. Even by my standards, the first journey was extremely peripatetic, full of constant motion. But sometimes having so many changes in quick succession shows surprising connections — hidden threads and themes.

A recent UN policy brief discusses why water-related climate change adaptation is critical for achieving sustainable development around the world. As significant water shortages already exist, water is the medium through which climate impacts are going to be felt most immediately and most severely by many people. “Adaptation to climate change is urgent. Water plays a pivotal role in it, but the political world has yet to recognize this notion.” Among other things, this report recommends implementing “no regrets” strategies since they have positive development outcomes that are resilient to climate change.

UNWater.org: “Climate Change Adaptation: The Pivotal Role of Water”

An interesting new brief from WWF and Germanwatch gives us reasons to be optimistic as international climate negotiations continue. In discussing the status of adaptation negotiations under the UNFCCC  as the international community moves toward COP16 at Cancun, the authors argue that “the current negotiating text still bears the opportunity to create a strong, implementation-focused adaptation action framework.” Read the report and get informed about what needs to happen before COP16.

Germanwatch and WWF: “International Action on Adaptation and Climate Change”

By Jonathan Cook, WWF-US

Sarus cranes (© Nguyen Van Hung )

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.

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Hammad Naqi Khan, WWF-Pakistan

Hammad Naqi Khan is Director of Programs at WWF – Pakistan and an expert on field-based environmental and water resource management projects. We caught up with Hammad during a recent conference in Washington, where he told us how WWF – Pakistan is working to prepare government and local communities to face the challenges of climate change.

ClimatePrep: WWF-Pakistan has made great progress in incorporating adaptation into its programs. Can you tell us about some of the projects that are currently going on?

HNK: Well, we have two meta-goals – conserving biodiversity, and addressing humanity’s ecological footprint. And we know that part of the way to meet these goals – a very important part – is to help people adapt to the way the world is changing. Whether it’s because of climate change, or anything else.

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Another insightful article from The Climate Desk, this time at Wired.com. While federal level adaptation planning for the U.S. is still in development, states like California have gone ahead and published their own state adaptation strategies.  “By the mid-2000s, when the rest of the country was waking up to the challenge of global warming, California was already pursing an aggressive program to assess the likely damage.”

Wired.com : Plan B: California Braces for Climate Change

Related: Map of U.S. States with Adaptation Plans at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change

Slate’s ongoing series on climate change with the Climate Desk has a great article on how climate change is affecting the wine industry, and what winegrowers intend to do about it. As far back as 2005, one winegrower implored his colleagues, “We must recognize that climate change is not a problem of the future, … It is here today and we must adapt now.”

Slate.com : In Vino Veritas

by John Matthews, WWF-US

When I was in graduate school, I spent a lot of time reading mostly abstract scientific papers about how the world’s climate was shifting. My time in the field was spent measuring how changes in rainfall and air temperatures have been affecting dragonflies. I began to feel very worried about how even small shifts in our climate were going to affect a lot of freshwater species.

Two years ago, I was hired by WWF to help colleagues around the world think through the problems that climate change was making for people and wild species all over the world. In my second week with WWF, a colleague called: Can you be in New Delhi in ten days? Within a few hours of landing we went to a national park that was a wetland recognized for its international importance. To my horror, I couldn’t see any water. Large trees were growing in the parched soil. I thought, I have nothing to say that’s useful here. There are no aquatic ecosystems left in this place. My Indian colleagues took us all a few miles upstream to a bridge, overlooking a dry riverbed full of grazing sheep.

Ashes await the return of the river (c)John Matthews/WWF-US

Here I saw the cremation sites of people who had brought their relative’s remains from far away, so that their ashes could wash downstream to the sacred Ganges of northern India. But there had been no water here for five years. There were only ashes.

I was so horrified at myself, so suddenly aware that my experience in North America had led me to view species and ecosystems as something wild and separate from myself. I felt quite suddenly aware that my species was managing freshwater ecosystems in ways that combined with the effects of climate change to cause really serious negative impacts to people and those ecosystems. The people who lived near this river needed it back, and they needed it to be healthy. And quite literally they needed it for their spirit. I thought, we have to get better, and we have to get better together: people, species, ecosystems.

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