ClimatePrep

By Dr. Gretta Pecl, University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, The Australian Marine Adaptation Network

To download a copy of the Rock Lobster Vulnerability Assessment click on the lobster photo © Bruce Miller

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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By Regie Junio, Ateneo de Zamboanga University, Philippines      

Children fetching drinking water © Regina Junio

Three years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a non-government organization in implementing development projects funded by official development assistance. One of the main objectives of the project was to establish marine protected areas (MPAs) through a participatory coastal resources management approach (PCRM) in the provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines.  In doing so, we hoped to provide an enabling environment for good governance, peace, and development. We partnered with local government units, including the barangays (the smallest administrative division in the Philippines), municipalities and provinces, as well as peoples’ organizations and other community stakeholders.    

The process of implementing the project moved these stakeholders from simply being participants in the CRM project to being CRM practitioners. In the beginning, the communities found managing their MPAs truly burdensome, as they needed to dedicate some of their time to helping patrol the MPAs on top of finding alternative areas to fish. But as they persevered with the project they began to observe a decrease in illegal fishing activities, an increased awareness among local folks on the significance of MPAs, and eventually a witnessed increase in their fish catch.    

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By Carina Bachofen

Three Bengali women in Dhaka. By Ahron de Leeuw via Wikimedia Commons

Last year marked the three-year anniversary of Cyclone Sidr, which ravaged the southern coast of Bangladesh and claimed the lives of 3,500 people. Loss of life was exacerbated by loss of development potential as the fierce storm decimated the mud and thatch homes of countless families, destroyed key infrastructure, and damaged productive land, leaving millions of poor individuals more vulnerable to climate change than ever before. In the wake of Cyclone Sidr, questions were raised about how to build resilience to climate change without compromising national development goals. So now, more than three years later, is Bangladesh developing differently? What lessons can be learned from the Bangladeshi experience to reframe development and climate action as mutually supportive objectives?

One can consider these questions and measure development progress from several angles. As climate change affects men and women differently, understanding the gender dimensions of climate change can provide valuable clues for designing development interventions that build resilience to climate impacts, and are effective and equitable for all.

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By Shaun Martin, WWF-US

Children in Nepal ©Shaun Martin

Ecosystem-based Adaptation. If you understand what adaptation is, then the term “ecosystem-based adaptation,” or EbA, should be self-explanatory. But it’s not. There is perhaps no concept more confusing or misunderstood than this one. So what does Ecosystem-based Adaptation really mean and why are we so confused about it?

To understand the source of this confusion, we must first look at another term – Community-based Adaptation, or CbA. As far as I can tell, there is no universally accepted definition of CbA. Each development organization that employs CbA seems to have its own way of defining it. One definition that I like states that “CbA is a community-led process based on communities’ priorities, needs, knowledge, and capacities, which should empower people to plan for and cope with the impacts of climate change.” (Hannah Reid, Mozaharul Alam, Rachel Berger, Terry Cannon, Saleemul Huq, and Angela Milligan, Community-based Adaptation to Climate Change: an Overview, 2010)

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By Eilif Ursin Reed

Satellite image of the Maldives © NASA

Just like the swimming polar bears have become symbols for disappearing sea ice in the Arctic, the remote atolls of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean have become emblematic for the consequences of sea level rise.

It just makes plain sense that islands on which the highest elevation is sometimes less than two meters, the IPCC’s predicted sea level rise of up to 58 cm by 2100 will cause devastation.

Or does it? Things that seem obvious at first glance, usually turn out to be more complicated if you look closer. So too with climate change.

In spite of the attention devoted to tropical islands over the last few years, with stories about “climate refugees” and whole nations being forced to move off their islands because of sea level rise, research on the subject has been scarce.

There is little doubt that climate change is happening. It is highly probable that we will experience sea level rise this century and with it an increase in severe flooding events. However, how and to what extent this will affect the islanders of the world is a different story. Not necessarily a happier one, but it could at least be one about capabilities, adaptation, knowledge and resilience; rather than the one-sided doomsday narratives we have come to know too well.

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By Eliot Levine, WWF-US

Jared Diamond © Becky Hale via National Geographic

We recently had the great pleasure of meeting with New York Times bestselling author Jared Diamond (Collapse; Guns, Germs, & Steel) for a wide-ranging conversation, and will post a video of that interview soon. However, to set the stage for our meeting we wrote to Dr. Diamond with some initial questions.

This first interview touches on just a few, although large, topics including: the challenges faced by developed and developing countries, the relevance of conservation practice (past and present) in meeting today’s environmental and development challenges, and of course lessons we can learn from past societies and their efforts to adapt to environmental changes.

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By Carina Bachofen and Edward Cameron

Indigenous farmer in Bolivia describes recent experiences with climate variability in the dry Altiplano region of Bolivia © Ana Bucher

Speaking at the UN Climate Conference in Bali in December 2007, Al Gore quoted the Spanish poet Antonio Machado telling the assembled delegates, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.” The foundations for the path to climate change adaptation are built upon lessons learned from coping with climate variability in the past. Successful leaders in adaptation are those who create an enabling environment to construct this path.

Learning from the past

For hundreds of years, indigenous farmers in Bolivia have been using traditional knowledge to manage storms, droughts, floods and pests and to diversify food security. These hold tremendous potential to inspire, inform and complement the design of adaptation strategies for the future.

To prevent and cope with drought-related disasters, the Aymaran indigenous people have employed ancient engineering practices to harvest rainwater in the mountains and pampas by building small dams called qhuthañas. These dams collect and store rainwater for future use, freeing up time for women and children who may otherwise have to travel long distances to collect water. The qhuthañas also serve as a readily available source of clean water for local consumption, building resilience of local communities to cope with droughts over the long-term. Continue reading

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US

One of ClimatePrep’s primary goals is to highlight unique solutions to some of the toughest challenges presented by climate change. This week we would like to draw attention to a project in Peru that combines an old technique for gathering water with modern technology to develop a low cost solution to dwindling, and costly, water supplies for a suffering hillside community.

Kai Tiedemann (front) and local worker Segundo Velasquez inspect a net in April 2007 that Tiedemann and Anne Lummerich designed to collect water from fog in Bellavista, Peru. © Anne Lummerich

The cheapest place to live near Lima is on the steep hills at the edge of the city. The hillside village of Bellavista has attracted people from all over the country, mostly farmers looking for a cheaper way of life. The newcomers who settle in this area build shacks on unclaimed land. If they stay long enough, and plant enough trees to fend of the dangerous landslides, they can obtain government issued title. Unfortunately, the region has a serious lack of freshwater. Lima only gets about 1.5 centimeters a year and as a result the city relies heavily upon glacial melt from the Andes Mountains. Unfortunately, the glaciers have been receding at an alarming rate and according to climate models this trend will only increase. The lack of water available has meant that planting and irrigating the trees has become extremely difficult for longtime residents as well as newcomers. Additionally, the lack of reliable water resources means that the villagers are spending ten times the amount that city dwellers spend on water for cooking, cleaning, and drinking as it must be transported up the hills on a weekly basis. Kai Tiedemann and Anne Lummerich, two German biologists who run Alimón (a small nonprofit that supports Latin American development) have decided to implement a unique solution. Continue reading

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US

The information, graphics, and quotes found in the article below were repurposed from an earlier report on this subject by Scientific American. The original article, with additional pictures can be found here.

The artificial glacier stores water for the drier sowing season © Nick Pattinson for Scientific American

In India, the ancient kingdom of Ladakh, between Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, is the highest inhabited region on Earth. It is also one of the driest , and received no more water a year than the Sahara Desert. But despite this, more than 275 000 people are living in Ladakh, most of them farmers and their families. Due to the weakness of infrastructures in this area, all of them are totally dependents on glaciers and snowmelt to irrigate crops and so to survive. Changes in the regions climate, such as decreasing amounts of precipitation and increasingly warmer winters, has resulted in  a severe decrease in the number and size of many of the glaciers. The ones that remain are at higher altitudes, too far from villages, and don’t produce significant melt water to irrigate the population’s crops. Consequently, the inhabitants only have 2 solutions to survive: one is to migrate to megacities, and the other one is to adapt to these new changes in climate. A retired civil engineer, Chewang Norphel, has decided to develop an innovative community-based solution. “Water is the most important thing we have. Without water, we have no food; no life” he says. His solution is both innovative and relatively simple- create an artificial glacier. Continue reading

By John Matthews, CI 

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.