Major UN adapation meeting
28/09/11 15:03
Climate Adaptation Futures: Second International Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2012 May 29–May 31, 2012, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
On the way to Rio+20, join us to consider what science, policy, and action the world needs to adapt to climate change!
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On the way to Rio+20, join us to consider what science, policy, and action the world needs to adapt to climate change!
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New section: Publications
28/09/11 14:46
We’ve added a new tab at CCW -- the first in quite a while — with a set of downloadable publications.
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Water Hackathon!
26/09/11 07:34
WaterHackathon Asks: What’s Your Problem?
In search of new ideas and solutions to water and sanitation problems, the World Bank and Water and Sanitation Program, in collaboration with NASA and Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), are reaching out to new partners. WaterHackathon will convene teams of software developers, programmers and designers to solve (“hack”) technical challenges facing the water sector as defined in advance by the water community. The global event will take place simultaneously October 21 - 23 at multiple sites, including Bangalore, Cairo, Kampala, London, Nairobi, Tel Aviv, and Washington, DC.
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In search of new ideas and solutions to water and sanitation problems, the World Bank and Water and Sanitation Program, in collaboration with NASA and Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), are reaching out to new partners. WaterHackathon will convene teams of software developers, programmers and designers to solve (“hack”) technical challenges facing the water sector as defined in advance by the water community. The global event will take place simultaneously October 21 - 23 at multiple sites, including Bangalore, Cairo, Kampala, London, Nairobi, Tel Aviv, and Washington, DC.
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New UN adaptation and vulnerability site
16/09/11 15:34
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have jointly launched a new website for PROVIA – the Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation. Read More...
Video + podcast: An extended discussion of adaptation science and practice
12/09/11 12:29
From our sister-site at AdaptationAction.org, we present another video exploring some of the emerging issues in adaptation and conservation, particularly from the view of ecological science. Dr. Lee Hannah is an ecologist with Conservation International and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He's also one of only a few scientists who has been engaged for well over a decade on climate adaptation, so he has a deep perspective on how the science of climate adaptation has been evolving and where it might be headed. Working globally and regionally, Lee has been trying to bridge the gap between studying the impacts of climate and helping species, ecosystems, and communities and economies in the developing world adjust to the emerging climate. His work spans the laboratory, the field, and science and resource management policy. Here, we present a short video with some highlights of the discussion Lee and I had.
Here, we present both a brief video with highlights of conversation between myself and Lee. If you are interested in more of the details around how the science of adaptation is changing and where the practice of adaptation, conservation, and resource management are moving, then please listen to an edited version of our discussion in a podcast.
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Here, we present both a brief video with highlights of conversation between myself and Lee. If you are interested in more of the details around how the science of adaptation is changing and where the practice of adaptation, conservation, and resource management are moving, then please listen to an edited version of our discussion in a podcast.
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New PLoS Biology paper: The water-climate-infrastructure nexus
07/09/11 10:24
What happens when an engineer, a hydrologist, and an ecologist -- all working on global climate adaptation issues -- get together for a beer? Almost inevitably, a paper, more beer, and a bad hangover. The offspring in this case just published in the September 2011 issue of the journal PLoS Biology, entitled Converging Currents in Climate-Relevant Conservation: Water, Infrastructure, and Institutions. During the February 2011 conference by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the lead author of the paper gave a talk in a symposium on the practice of sustainable resource management in the developing world. The talk focused on the themes of water and climate change, and how infrastructure -- especially infrastructure designed to manage water for hydropower, agriculture, and cities -- was a key point of both conflict and potential convergence between the environmental and economic development communities. An editor from PLoS Biology came up afterwards and said, Could you turn that into a paper? The results are expressed both in print and in a short video below that the authors produced.
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Video: Climate adaptation in Rwanda
06/09/11 07:54
I recently came back from Stockholm World Water Week, which as always was an intense, hyperactive experience. But I caught up with my old friend Mark Chalmers from the WaterCube.tv. He’s one of the most thoughtful people I know about communicating climate adaptation and water issues, and he’s built an amazing little empire out of the process. There’s a lot on the WaterCube site that’s worth browsing. More on that later, in another entry. But he always manages to catch me on tape. This time, we talked about some of the remarkable experiences that have been coming from the little nation of Rwanda, most famous for the genocides that occurred there in the early 1990s. I recently led a vulnerability assessment for the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility and the Rwanda Environment Management Agency (REMA) of the country’s wetlands and the livelihoods and industries and ecosystems dependent on those wetlands. It’s a good story. I also talk about the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (http://alliance4water.org), that I helped found in 2010 and the progress of the past year.
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Interviews with thought-leaders in climate change: Engineering at the IDB
05/09/11 12:29
AdaptationAction.org is a new sister-blog of CCW that launched during World Water Week two weeks ago. While a lot of content has been planned for the site, the first focus has been on talking with some of the emerging thought-leaders in climate adaptation -- people who are at the edge of climate adaptation, conservation, economic development, and sustainable resource management. The first interview is with Fernando Miralles-Wilhem, an environmental engineer with the Inter-American Development Bank (usually just referred to as the IDB). Fernando is extremely unusual — an engineer who works with ecosystems, an academic with two decades of research into “applied” questions, and — rarest of all — a person who somehow combines science with policy and economic development. Affiliated with both Florida International University and the Inter-American Development Bank, Fernando describes how his work on wetlands has evolved into climate adaptation and climate-sustainable development.
Changing Currents: Filling the Stationarity Gap from John Matthews on Vimeo.
Read More...Workshop on water & climate in the Americas
05/09/11 11:44
You are hereby cordially invited to a workshop on water and climate change adaptation in the Americas to be held on September 7-8, 2011, in the World Trade Center in Mexico City, as part of the “Workshops of the Americas’ Targets and Solutions Groups on the road to the 6th World Water Forum”. This workshop will focus on key messages that affect water-based climate change adaptation, such as social organization, equity and poverty alleviation, hydro-climate information systems, institutional capacity development, infrastructure development and use of financing, and ecosystems. Read More...
The Stockholm Statement from World Water Week
05/09/11 11:08
The Stockholm Statement to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio+20 Summit)
Water is the bloodstream of the green economy. Water, energy and food are interlinked and interdependent; securing them is central to alleviating poverty and to creating a climate resilient and robust green economy. Population growth, expanding cities and accelerating economic activity increase the demand for energy and food and create unsustainable pressure on our water and land resources. By 2030, in a business as usual scenario, humanity’s demand for water could outstrip supply by as much as 40 per cent. This would place water, energy and food security at risk, increase public health costs, constrain economic development, lead to social and geopolitical tensions and cause lasting environmental damage.
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Water is the bloodstream of the green economy. Water, energy and food are interlinked and interdependent; securing them is central to alleviating poverty and to creating a climate resilient and robust green economy. Population growth, expanding cities and accelerating economic activity increase the demand for energy and food and create unsustainable pressure on our water and land resources. By 2030, in a business as usual scenario, humanity’s demand for water could outstrip supply by as much as 40 per cent. This would place water, energy and food security at risk, increase public health costs, constrain economic development, lead to social and geopolitical tensions and cause lasting environmental damage.
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