Building Climate Adaptation Capacity in Amazon Floodplain Communities

This story is part of a series on adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon. Located in the lower Amazon floodplain of Brazil, the Santarém region harbors important fisheries that many people depend on for employment, food security, government tax revenues, and items to export to both domestic and foreign markets. Climate change is creating difficulties, but not [...]

Voices from the Kathryn Fuller Symposium: Daniel Schindler

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US 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, [...]

Voices from the Kathryn Fuller Symposium: Jim Jarvie

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US 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, [...]

Notes from Copenhagen: Water and Climate Change

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US On 12 December 2009, WWF-US CEO Carter Roberts spoke to a distinguished group in Denmark’s Kronborg Castle at an event organized by TERI and the Yale School of Forestry and sponsored by Coca-Cola. In a session moderated by Rajenda Pachauri, head of the IPCC, Roberts spoke about the importance of water and [...]

Notes from Copenhagen: At the Hinge

This week, serious negotiations begin, main plenary hall at the Bella Centre © WWF-Canon/Richard Stonehouse

By John Matthews, CI A week of prelude is over. The real work has begun in Copenhagen. Last week was intense, fast-paced, and frantic. Most people here are profoundly exhausted. But we’re at the hinge now. Negotiation teams are shifting from delaying and positioning to taking firm and often oppositional stands. More senior level staff are [...]

Notes from Copenhagen: Adaptation support key

The world’s wealthy nations have a long way to go on the key negotiating element of climate change adaptation at Copenhagen, WWF warned today “climate change adaptation mechanisms and measures and especially finance must be a key part of any successful deal reached at Copenhagen, but it is an issue starved of attention, commitments and [...]

Getting Better Together

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

By John Matthews, CI 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 [...]

Working with Community Fisheries in the Amazon Basin

Oviedo in the field (c) Antonio Oviedo/WWF-Brazil

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US This story is part of a series on adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon. The majority of Brazilian Amazon fishermen live in areas vulnerable to climate change, or depend on resources whose distribution and productivity are known to be influenced by climate variability. One of these areas is the Amazon floodplains, where WWF-Brazil [...]

First Encounters

Fishermen on a boat carrying wood. Danube Delta, Romania Project (c) WWF-Canon / Michel GUNTHER

  This story is part of a series on adaptation in the Danube-Carpathian region.  “For this freshwater strategy meeting, we should invite someone from the climate group, you know, to see what they have got to say.” “Ok, let’s see who we can contact.” This is more or less how it all started in the summer [...]

England’s Chalk Stream Ecosystems at Risk

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US WWF-UK recently released Rivers on the Edge which highlights the beauty and challenges facing the chalk streams of southern England and northern France. Such small freshwater systems are critical to greater ecosystem functioning and act as crucial reservoirs of biodiversity. Unfortunately, being a small system means that not only are they often overlooked [...]