Safe Islands in an Ocean of Trouble: Adaptation in the Maldives

By Carina Bachofen and Edward Cameron The Maldives is a country with many pseudonyms and identities. The great Venetian explorer Marco Polo referred to the Maldives as the “flower of the Indies”; to the scores of holidaymakers and honeymooners the island nation is popularly known as the “pearls of the Indian Ocean”. In recent years, as the [...]

What Price Adaptation? What Does Good Adaptation Look Like?

By Carina Bachofen and Edward Cameron Assessments of the global cost of adaptation have varied drastically, ranging from $4-109 billion per year. The World Bank recently released the summary reports of the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change study, which estimates it will cost between $70-$100 billion each year from now until 2050. Why do cost estimates [...]

Pushing Adaptation Policy: Not an Easy Task

This story is part of a series on adaptation in the Danube-Carpathian region. Compared to other river systems such as the Ganges river in south Asia, the Danube basin  is not likely to be dramatically affected by climate change. Nevertheless, some parts of the river basin will probably suffer from more droughts. Floods are already increasing in [...]

Farming with the Titimangsa: Losing Weather (and Water) in Time

By Nikolai Sindorf, WWF-US In 1997 I went to the western part of Java in Indonesia to perform research on agricultural water management. Java is one of the most densely populated regions and high-yielding rice paddy lands in the world. The focus of my research was how rice farmers dealt technologically and organizationally with ongoing [...]

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: 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 [...]