climate adaptation
Speaking Water to Power: An Address to Ministers in Advance of COP15
31/08/09 20:38
Does the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change help anyone with adaptation practice on the ground now? Can we improve international adaptation policy? Here, I was asked to speak by the Stockholm International Water Institute on behalf of the CSO/NGO community to a group of minister/cabinent-level officials involved with water and development from six different countries. The "high-level panel" occurred in late August 2009 during World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. By way of backstory, I was pretty angry by the time I got to talk. Most of the ministers had gone way over their allotted 5 minutes, and it was clear they weren't very interested in listening to me anyway. I felt a bit of passion by the time the discussion came around to me. Their statements were deeply theoretical -- lacking in people and places, removed from practical issues. They were cold. I felt hot. 7.5 min. Below is the written text of my presentation. Read More...
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The Watery Road to Copenhagen: Video Interviews from World Water Week
26/08/09 05:38
The water community gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2009 to discuss emerging and critical issues, and adapting to climate change was easily one of the most prominent topics discussed. Read More...
The Watery Road to Copenhagen: Podcast with Three Groups
18/08/09 06:58
Lets take two scenarios. On the 18th of December, the world walks away with a new global deal on climate change. The agreement includes progressive emission targets for rich countries, nationally appropriate mitigation strategies for developing countries, financing for adaptation and a good institutional framework. Read More...
World Water Week: Climate & Water Interviews!
18/08/09 02:50
Stockholm’s World Water Week is one of the critical meetings each year for discussing water issues. Read More...
One Talk, Two Heads: Bloviating on Climate Adaptation in Two Languages
12/08/09 12:05
This video is a fair representation of the overview adaptation talk I've been giving for the past few months, describing how climate adaptation differs from much of the economic development and conservation work up to now and how climate adaptation has some special challenges and opportunities for the water sector. Read More...
Beyond the Photos: Looking Closer at Impacts and Disaster Risk Reduction Plans for the Sundarbans
15/07/09 22:19
What does a village in the Sundarbans look like? We have already posted some photos of the village of Tipligheri that show how the residents here been affected by Tropical Storm Alia in May 2009 — and by extension how vulnerable such villages are to other tropical storms, which are strengthening in intensity as a result of climate change. My report here is in continuation of myupdate (ED: Anurag Danda’s) of 22 June profiling the impacts of Tropical Storm Alia on one village in the Sundarbans and the necessary recovery steps we are envisaging as part of the disaster risk reduction work of the Sundarbans Climate Adaptation Center. For those not familiar with the Sundarbans, Tipligheri stands in for many other villages in the region and is typical in many ways for the millions of people living in the Sundarbans.
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Guest Blog: An Urgent Update and Message on Waxman-Markey
24/06/09 14:38
Guest Blog: Reflections from the Sundarbans: Short-Term Progress, Long-Term Strategies?
23/06/09 11:57
Guest Blog: A National "Climate Service"?
19/06/09 18:08
Paul Fleming works on freshwater climate adaptation issues for the US City of Seattle, Washington. Seattle obtains much of its water from large rivers, and much of that water during the summer and fall is derived from the melting of annual snowpack — a process that is shifting rapidly as a result of climate change. 
Among his other responsibilities, Paul helps the city’s water supply utility think about how to manage their water resources in fiscally prudent, flexible ways, given that Seattle’s “normal” climate is altering rapidly. In early May, Paul spoke before the U.S. Congress in regard to the Waxman/Markey bill (discussed in several previous blogs here, most recently here) about the need for a National Climate Service — modeled in part on the existing National Weather Service. Such a group would likely focus on delivering analytical services for how climate is changing in critical parameters in particular regions — an excellent idea, which would be a great boon for facilitating and groundtruthing climate adaptation efforts. Below is his statement, as well as the statement of marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, who is now the head of NOAA, which is the agency that would host both the Weather Service and the Climate Service. Many thanks to Paul for supplying his remarks! — JM
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The Road to Copenhagen 1: Setting the Agenda in Bonn
03/06/09 09:50
The next stage in the process leading up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Copenhagen meeting (usually referred to as a “cop” or council or consultation of the signatory parties) began this week in Bonn, Germany. I’m not able to attend, but the process is important and I’ve been receiving almost hourly updates from colleagues there. You can see some of their progress and concerns on a video blog in order to get an idea of what being there is like. The most obvious issues are US climate mitigation policy, such as the Waxman/Markey bill (discussed in previous entries). But climate adaptation finance — the “adaptation fund” — is showing up a big second topic as well. Some background on adaptation finance was covered as well in previous entries here indirectly and here for more general issues. However, a “side event” has been planned to continue the process associated with the Nairobi Guiding Principles for freshwater adaptation and the water sector. What are those goals? And why does Bonn matter? Read More...
Memes in Action: Climate Mitigation vs. Climate Adaptation
28/05/09 10:32
Meme is one of those odd words that rarely strays from the rarefied world of academia, especially in the humanities and social sciences. A meme is an idea or term (or metaphor) that, like an organism, takes on a kind of life of its own from its creator and begins to evolve and shift through a community of users. For instance, the right-wing view in the US that President Obama is a socialist is a recent meme that has been evolving and shifting for the past few months, accruing new layers and images on a weekly basis. But the word occurred to me this week while I was listening to someone at an informal scientific meeting. The speaker was distinguishing between climate mitigation and climate adaptation and he used a metaphor I had invented about a year ago to describe the difference between climate mitigation and climate adaptation. The weird part for me was that he had never heard me use this metaphor or been to any of my talks, as far as either of us was aware. Immediately, I thought: a meme in action! To spread the meme around a little, I will provide the image here. The metaphor goes like this:
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NEWS: Crypto-Adaptation Legislation Leaves Committee
22/05/09 11:31
Late last night, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy Committee (the so-called Waxman committee, named after Henry Waxman, the current chair) managed to push an important climate change bill (usually referred to as the Waxman/Markey bill, after the sponsors of the legislation) out of the committee so the rest of the House can vote on it. Read More...
Stalking the Emerging Climate: Three Paradigms
19/05/09 19:30
When I was kid in east Texas, my father would take me hunting — deer, ducks, doves, squirrels, frogs. Whatever was in season and was legal. I was never an enthusiastic hunter, but I did enjoy being out in the woods, fields, and marshes with my father, and being close to wild things was very moving, which was one of the reasons I occasionally missed my shots on purpose. I particularly liked the “hunting” part of hunting: finding an animal, learning about it, and seeing it in situ. I know these skills helped me shift from being a natural historian to a professional ecologist and conservation biologist. And now I don’t hunt “for” animals, in the sense of pursuing them. I hunt for them, in the sense of someone who is seeking to help them — as their proxy. As a concerned friend, and no longer as a predator.
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Report from Kenya: The Nairobi Guiding Principles of 2009
24/04/09 12:35
So many critical issues surround climate change adaptation (and so much bad news keeps popping up from climate impacts science), I sometimes find knowing where to focus very difficult. But sometimes there is good news. I’ve just returned from a very fast meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, at the United Nations compound. Under the sponsorship of the Danish government, a new global framework and set of guiding principles for climate adaptation has been created (available as a PDF download). These principles are aimed at three distinct audiences: participants in and observers of the big UNFCCC CoP meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009, those institutions that are funding climate adaptation work right now, and the international movement to define climate adaptation theory, policy, and practice in coming decades. Here, I will provide personal reflections on my attendance on the discussions leading up to, at, and beyond the Nairobi meeting.
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The U.S. Politics of Climate Adaptation: The Waxman Committee
12/04/09 10:39
Climate adaptation is finally entering the consciousness of important policymakers, trickling up and through organizations. But these shifts are not occurring smoothly or without controversy and a lot of injured fingers and toes. And we seem to be moving towards two views of how to adjust to our emerging climate: “adaptation” and “Adaptation.” The state of conflict between these two views in the U.S. is globally important right now because the U.S. has been the silent watcher on climate issues for the last decade. The U.S. government has not substantively participated in climate talks, and because the U.S. economy is so large, competing economies must keep par — for good or ill. This rule is widely understood for climate mitigation issues (regulation of greenhouse gas concentrations), but it’s also true for climate adaptation costs as well, which will also become an increasingly major element of economic spending. Finally, U.S. policymakers are going to have this debate, probably as a result of the climate change bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives last fall.
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Growing an Adaptation Community
04/04/09 10:58
Those of us working in climate adaptation often work alone and in isolation within our organizations. It’s hard to find each other to learn and grow professionally. Moreover, we know we need support — emotional as well as professional, since climate adaptation is challenging and draining work whether you work in DRR, conservation, policy, or economic development. There have been a growing number of online communities that focus on climate adaptation. Here, we’re launching a new one called ClimateAdapt.Info. Read More...
New Sundarbans Adaptation Center & Disaster Risk Reduction
04/04/09 08:14
A significant number of the hits to this blog are from South Asia, mostly directed at a 2008 entry on the Sundarbans islands that sit on the coast of Bangladesh and northeastern India. These islands are home to millions of very poor people, have one of the largest coastal mangrove forests in the world, and are the major refuge for the remaining Bengal tigers. These island exist in a balance between accruing sediment flowing down the Brahmaputra-Ganges rivers, the ability of the mangroves to capture the sediment, and the erosive action of the Indian ocean. A 1970s-era sediment-capturing dam upstream in combination with rising sea levels have caught the islands in a dangerous vice: sediments are no longer accumulating at sustainable levels, while tropical storm frequency and severity seem to be increasing — on top of accelerating sea-level rise. According to Arjan Berkhuysen, an expert on climate adaptation in river deltas and estuaries with WWF-Netherlands, “These problems are similar in deltas all over the world.... [We’re] looking for natural solutions that respect the dynamics of the system while helping people towards sustainable development in the face of climate change.” Happily, we have some good news about the Sundarbans: a regional Climate Adaptation Center has just been founded on Mousuni island on the Indian side on 29 March 2009.
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My Conventional Intervention at Ramsar
31/03/09 09:19
I speak frequently in public. After a year and a half in this job, I estimate I’ve given something like seventy talks, whether as a formal presentations, running workshops, or sitting on panels. I am fortunate in that I do not get easily nervous, especially since I seem to have experienced everything from hecklers to total equipment failure in mid-speech — mic, projector, support staff. But the occasional fit of anxiety does hit, and then I comfort myself: this talk is not that important. Nothing really critical depends on the outcomes of my delivery. But this rationalization has its limits.
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Istanbullish on Water
31/03/09 06:36
World Water Forum must be one of the largest conferences on the planet. Occurring every three years, the venue shifts through the developing world. Two weeks ago, the fifth Forum occurred in Istanbul, Turkey, couched between Europe, Africa, and Asia. I heard estimates of between 20,000 and 30,000 attendees for the week. Though we were all there nominally in the name of “water,” I’m not sure how unified or clear the focus the meeting is or even can be. Our conservation booth was located near the massive and predictably colorful “Italy” booth but also near a cluster of dam builders. On one adaptation panel, I sat between the representative of professional organization for water engineering and policy consultants and a labor union representative for water supply and sanitation workers. The conference had the coherence of a river that has reached its floodplain, spreading out and slowing down. Nonetheless, there were some interesting trends in water with climate change and climate adaptation. Read More...
Two Easy Pieces, Redux
06/03/09 05:24
In August of 2008, WWF released two freshwater climate adaptation pieces, one of which has been revised. Adapting Water Management is a white paper on how to think about climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems and management from a policy perspective. Read More...
Dashing Among the Eco Stars
12/10/08 16:02
I just returned from the World Conservation Congress (or IUCN, as it is also known) in Barcelona, Spain. There is clearly a circuit of these international conservation and development meetings, with a set of individuals who travel from one meeting to the next. Sadly, I am now in this group. Walking around, recognized many faces from other recent, previous meetings, such as the Stockholm World Water Week (described in Meet the Banks and Meet the Press). Strangely, a few people even recognized me. There is a small hierarchy of what I can only assume are professional conference-goers. And in this hierarchy, there are the Eco Stars: those people known to all, who exist as Names and Contacts. Read More...
Wetlands 1: The Real Estate Crisis in Protected Areas
03/10/08 04:51
This entry will be the first in a series over the coming weeks. I have a series of talks and will be attending a number of unrelated events that are focusing on wetlands as a theme, so I will in turn inflict some of these thoughts on you, gentle reader. A serious contradiction exists with protected areas — places likes natural reserves and parks — and climate change. On one hand, these places have been designated because they are “special” and unusual parts of the landscape, having qualities that make them distinct from other places and thus worthy of being a protected area (or PA). Think of this as the spatial element of a PA. On the other hand, these areas are generally special because some mixture of climate, geology, and biological history combine to make them distinct during some window of time. At a different period in either of those three elements, the special qualities may exist in a very different combination at that place, or even over a different range of places. Think of this as the temporal element of a PA. Of all the most common types of PAs found worldwide, wetlands may be the most climate sensitive. And that has very important implications for how we define and protect wetlands PAs everywhere. Read More...
Ozy(mandias)fest 2008: Political v. Climate Change
27/09/08 08:05
The past ten days in the U.S. have been quite dramatic politically, even by the standard of being near the end of a very long and tight presidential campaign. A financial crisis on a scale with the the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929 looms, our once-close ally Pakistan has exchanged shots with U.S. troops in a border skirmish, and the two presidential candidates have had their first and quite volatile debate. But climate change issues have not gone away, and we’ve seen important statements that carbon dioxide emissions are speeding up particularly in the developing world, and several articles (and an excellent editorial) in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (arguably in the highest tier of general-science journals) review the latest analyses of realistic paths and rates of climate change and suggest that we may need to “start panicking.” Unfortunately, all of these pieces of news are not isolated from one another. Read More...
Meet the Banks
01/09/08 11:45
Much of the emphasis about freshwater climate adaptation boils down to how we manage water through infrastructure like dams and water management plans like environmental flows. But someone has to pay for dams, and large dams are very expensive and complex building projects. In much of the developing parts of the planet, these projects are funded by lFIs: international financial institutions. In practice, this means large development banks. As a biologist, I have had little experience interacting with banks beyond my own checking account. But in the world of water, they’re important. And in Stockholm’s World Water Week, I had some enlightening perspectives on how they are engaging with climate adaptation as part of their business world. Read More...
Meet the Press
23/08/08 05:12
World Water Week in Stockholm is very policy oriented. This year, much of the focus was on sanitation, but two days were spent in a series of linked symposia on water and climate. Talks ranged from more details on emerging climate impacts with the IPCC’s new technical report on water and climate to regional and local adaptation strategies and tactics. Easily two of the most novel experiences for me as a scientist were interacting with the press as an “adaptation expert” and holding some introductory climate adaptation conversations with two international development banks. I’ll write more about the banks later, but the media interaction was a good if difficult experience. Read More...
NEWS: climate adaptation case studies
22/08/08 13:31
A colleague closely affiliated with WWF who is now at Australian National University has just written an excellent series of climate adaptation case studies. Read More...
Action in the Air Conditioning
19/08/08 19:42
I’m in Stockholm for World Water Week. I speak tomorrow with some colleagues as part of a larger series of talks on water and climate, though I’ve been here for several days. This is an unusual meeting for me: heavy on policy and programs, light on science and what I am used to thinking of as analysis. And being here captures some of the tension that a lot of us involved in climate adaptation work feel on a regular basis: How do we balance between being in a clean, well-appointed convention center, somewhere in the over-developed (even post-developed) world, talking about “issues” with people that are often several steps removed from where the action is -- places in the developing world, out of the air conditioning and the people sampling the smorgasboard of ideas and recommendations in the cold light of energy-efficient bulbs.
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News: Change Comes to the Thames
18/08/08 00:18
The Thames is a great world river because of its connection to England for millennia, to London and the City as agents of modern history, and to its special chalk landscape. Read More...
Islands on the Edge: Climate Resilience and the Sundarbans of South Asia
14/08/08 11:41
April 2009: Note that some progress has been made — after reading the entry below, read the update here.
When I was an academic biologist, I certainly felt passionately about climate change, but (a) no one really listened to me, (b) I could say pretty much anything I wanted without fear of repercussion (or hope for influence), and (c) most of the impacts seemed -- ultimately -- rather theoretical. That’s no longer the case. I frequently give talks where I have to fight the urge to suppress strong feelings, usually anger or grief. Normally I do a pretty good job. But the feelings are there, whether or not they’re visible. Perhaps the most moving climate-related conversation occurred last April in New Delhi, about a place that I knew almost nothing about before a year ago: the network of islands off the Bangladeshi and eastern Indian coasts called the Sundarbans. They are arguaby among the most important and threatened ecosystems on the planet today. Read More...
When I was an academic biologist, I certainly felt passionately about climate change, but (a) no one really listened to me, (b) I could say pretty much anything I wanted without fear of repercussion (or hope for influence), and (c) most of the impacts seemed -- ultimately -- rather theoretical. That’s no longer the case. I frequently give talks where I have to fight the urge to suppress strong feelings, usually anger or grief. Normally I do a pretty good job. But the feelings are there, whether or not they’re visible. Perhaps the most moving climate-related conversation occurred last April in New Delhi, about a place that I knew almost nothing about before a year ago: the network of islands off the Bangladeshi and eastern Indian coasts called the Sundarbans. They are arguaby among the most important and threatened ecosystems on the planet today. Read More...
Nine Challeges to Freshwater Management from Climate Change
10/08/08 11:21
One of my key hunches is that climate change alters the framework of economic development and conservation. My proprietary and parochial interest is in freshwater ecosystems, but the insight (if insight it be) extends more broadly. Here, I propose a list of some of the climate-related elements I think we should be debating in regard to freshwater management. It is not complete, but these cover many of the big points we should probably be resolving now and over the next few years. Read More...
The Direction of Adaptation: Is E.O. Wilson Wrong?
09/08/08 15:31
E. O. Wilson is arguably the most famous living ecologist and conservation biologist of our time. He’s notable for many reasons, but here I am concerned about his recent move into discussing the approach we should take for climate adaptation work. I fear Wilson has just done a lot of damage to conservation policy. Read More...
Managing Water Managers
08/08/08 12:19
In London in late July, I met a several people who represent government and private bodies that “manage”’ the river Thames. The UK government owns the water, at least in theory, and this ownership devolves onto private businesses that manage portions of the watershed, including treating river water and sewage and moving water to houses. It’s an old an complex process, and there are a lot legacy (i.e., inherited and old fashioned) components to the systems. For instance, not many homes or businesses in the UK have water meters, so usage rates are often estimated. Many much less developed countries have much better metering systems simply because they have newer water distribution systems. Also, many of the facilities and pipes themselve are well over a century old, designed for quite different times and usage levels. Read More...
NEWS: Fish and climate change streaming talks
30/06/08 20:11
To quote a recent email: Increases in river and stream temperatures caused by water use, landscape alteration, and climate change were discussed in a May 6 symposium at the Western Division American Fisheries Society annual meeting in Portland, Oregon.
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Dams Be Damned?
26/06/08 19:06
Given that there are more than 45,000 large dams in place worldwide, the central problem of freshwater climate adaptation for the coming century is the best means of managing water infrastructure like dams, irrigation systems, water treatment plants, and hydroelectric power systems. Even conservation issues in most areas of the world are going to involve carefully managing water resources that (somehow) balance development and the integrity of natural systems.
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NEWS: streaming freshwater adaptation talk
24/06/08 19:50
A symposium from the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society focused on climate change and bull trout has been posted online for live streaming. Read More...
Wetlands in the Air
25/05/08 16:09
A study late last week suggested that atmospheric methane emissions are way up. This is disturbing on a number of levels that should have a lot of people very worried. Read More...
The Accent of Power
23/05/08 13:07
Last month I experienced perhaps my most interesting level of policymaker access to date when I was asked to speak at an embassy in the UK. Some 13 or 15 diplomats from across a large region were in attendance. They had not asked me per se to speak but they had approached our national office in that country. Two freshwater staffers were planning on going, and I was going to be arriving that morning in London on the day of the meeting. So my colleagues asked me to come speak as well.
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Good Cop, Bad Cop
20/05/08 08:20
My favorite means of explaining the difference between climate adaptation and climate mitigation in talks for the past few months is a simple metaphor. Imagine, I begin, that you are in a car, and you realize that you will inevitably be hitting a solid object — a wall, a major obstruction on the highway, anything. You know you are going to hit it, and you know it will hurt you and your car.
That obstruction is a changed climate. You have two basic responses you can rely on. First, you press your brake as hard as you can to reduce the rate of impact. You want to hit the obstruction at a slower speed. That's climate mitigation — the process of trying to lower the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and the concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Both are essentially attempts to slow down the pace of climate change. But you will still hit the obstruction, even if you hit it less hard. Climate adaptation is the second type of response: Read More...
That obstruction is a changed climate. You have two basic responses you can rely on. First, you press your brake as hard as you can to reduce the rate of impact. You want to hit the obstruction at a slower speed. That's climate mitigation — the process of trying to lower the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and the concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Both are essentially attempts to slow down the pace of climate change. But you will still hit the obstruction, even if you hit it less hard. Climate adaptation is the second type of response: Read More...
Odd Jobs
07/04/08 14:23
The hard rains of the past few days have kept me locked inside except for an almost aborted trail run along a muddy, hilly trail. I came back soaked from the rain and sweat, my tights brown on black from the mud, and hands numb from the cold. But I could hear and see lots of birds moving through, even a few varied thrush that aren't normally at lower altitudes. I also heard my first hermit thrush this morning -- another lovely song. To keep from going stir crazy form being stuck inside, I've turned to work and this blog. And a conference call this afternoon -- including North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe -- brought what has become a familiar issue back to the front.
I've visited probably over a dozen cities and several national WWF offices in my role as a "freshwater climate adaptation specialist." You're probably thinking, What does any of that mean? Truly, a most excellent question. A definition of "climate adaptation" and "freshwater climate adaptation" will have to wait for another entry. Instead, I'd rather talk about the confusion itself as a phenomenon.
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I've visited probably over a dozen cities and several national WWF offices in my role as a "freshwater climate adaptation specialist." You're probably thinking, What does any of that mean? Truly, a most excellent question. A definition of "climate adaptation" and "freshwater climate adaptation" will have to wait for another entry. Instead, I'd rather talk about the confusion itself as a phenomenon.
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