The Association of State Wetlands Managers (ASWM) is a great North American group that has been collating some resources on climate change and wetlands, both from climate mitigation and adaptation perspectives. I’m posting some of their material verbatim here, including a set of recommendations for managing wetlands they compiled recently. I have some issues with using wetlands as a carbon sequestration mechanism in some cases, but I’ve included those links as well. Read More...

Tags: wetlands, climate mitigation, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: policy, climate adaptation, sweden, video

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. Part of this prominence comes from the international climate change discussions that will occur in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. Here, a group of rapporteurs was asked by the World Water Week staff with SIWI to interview conference attendees about what they expect, if anything, will come out of the Copenhagen negotiations relevant to water, their home countries, and their families. 8.25 min. Read More...

Tags: video, unfccc, climate adaptation, policy

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. Alternatively, on the 18th December the negotiations finally break down, no deal is struck and world leaders walk away with nothing.  In our second breakfast roundtable we tackle the implications of the UNFCCC negotiations on international water management policy.  Listen in here.  Read More...

Tags: podcasts, unfccc, climate adaptation, policy, Development, conservation

Stockholm’s World Water Week is one of the critical meetings each year for discussing water issues. I’m deeply involved this year personally both in presenting and in collecting and synthesizing information about coping with climate change in the water sector. I’ve also been interviewed on some of these issues -- available on the hosting organization’s website. The first interviews here is a personal profile of me and WWF’s work on freshwater climate adaptation. Read More...

Tags: podcasts, policy, climate adaptation

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. Filmed on 3 August 2009 in Brasilia, DF, Brazil, this is a long flick at 25 minutes, so brace yourself. Although I appear visually a few times in the stream, most of what you see are the presentation slides filling the screen with me (in English) and Martin Charles (my most excellent Portuguese translator) delivering the substance of the keynote talk to a live audience of leading policy and resource management staff from various government and civil society groups. The event was billed as a climate adaptation workshop, spanning two days at a place called the LBV (very interesting in itself) but hosted by WWF-Brazil. Filmed in August 2009. Read More...

Tags: brazil, climate adaptation, portuguese, policy, conservation, video, Development

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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Tags: climate adaptation, asia, india, drr

Lou Leonard is a policy specialist with WWF-US, based in Washington, DC, who has been very actively involved in lobbying for the current Waxman-Markey climate change bill now in the U.S. Congress. His message goes out to all of us in the US who have been trying to reignite positive action by the US federal government for climate adaptation and mitigation in the past decade, which will mark a major shift in engagement by the US with the global debate about how to reduce the rate of climate change and begin to temper the worst impacts. — JM Read More...

Tags: united states, unfccc, climate adaptation, climate mitigation, waxman bill

In this entry, Anurag Danda, the program coordinator for the Sundarbans Adaptation Center, discusses recent relief efforts and the possibilities for long-term solutions to the ongoing climate-driven crises for people and species in the Sundarbans. Can the escalating problem of tropical storms and cyclones such as May 2009’s Alia be prevented or mitigated? Is there even a future for the Sundarbans as inhabited islands? — JM Read More...

Tags: india, climate adaptation, bangladesh, Development, asia

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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Tags: united states, waxman bill, climate adaptation, impacts, policy, water management

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...

Tags: climate adaptation, climate mitigation, nairobi statement, finance, policy, unfccc, Development

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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Tags: climate adaptation, climate mitigation

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. This particular bill, discussed in an earlier entry here, is exclusively discussed in the media as a carbon cap and trade bill, but I believe it’s most noteworthy as the first climate adaptation bill to be considered in the U.S. Given the almost complete lack of coverage of this aspect of the bill’s language (representing roughly a fifth of the original bill’s word count), I can only imagine that the media doesn’t understand the implications of an adaptation bill. Getting out of committee is a critical step and was full of a lot of political drama. To those of you unfamiliar with U.S. federal legislative procedures (happy people that you are), a piece of legislation (a “bill”) has to get out of its designated committee before it can be considered by the whole of the House. And getting approved by the House is not final either: the US Senate has to move bills through committees before reaching the floor of the Senate too. Then there is a joining process to merge the House and Senate versions. And then the president has to sign the bill. Many a slip remains, but this move shows some progress in pushing the U.S. towards engaging in a serious conversation about climate adaptation. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, waxman bill, policy, news

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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Tags: climate adaptation

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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Tags: climate adaptation, funding, climate mitigation, kenya, policy, africa, nairobi statement, unep

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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Tags: climate adaptation, policy, climate mitigation, north america, united states, united states

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...

Tags: climate adaptation, policy, conservation, Development, drr, community adaptation

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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Tags: india, climate adaptation, wetlands, mangroves, bangladesh, drr, asia

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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Tags: ramsar, asia, korea, climate adaptation, policy

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...

Tags: turkey, asia, europe, climate adaptation, policy, conservation, finance, Dams

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. The PDF download is about 3.5 mb, and it’s authored by myself (an ecologist) and Tom Le Quesne (an economist). The previous version was well reviewed by Water21, a European journal. The second piece is a collection of freshwater adaptation case studies from six regions of the world (mostly developing regions), compiled by Jamie Pittock. This PDF download is about 6.5 mb. In both cases, we would love to receive feedback. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation

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...

Tags: travel, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: climate adaptation, wetlands, policy, climate refugia, ramsar

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...

Tags: climate adaptation, climate mitigation, policy, news

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...

Tags: climate adaptation, policy, funding

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...

Tags: media, travel, sweden, policy, climate adaptation

A colleague closely affiliated with WWF who is now at Australian National University has just written an excellent series of climate adaptation case studies. Jamie Pittock, the author, is in the highest tier of international freshwater conservation and policy advocates. I highly recommend downloading the 6.5 mb file. A major recommendation behind this and a companion overview of climate adaptation that I wrote with another colleague, Tom LeQuesne, is maintaining healthy freshwater species and ecosystems is the key to keeping reliable and high-quality freshwater resources for societies, economies, and livelihoods Read More...

Tags: news, climate adaptation, policy, india, africa, china, Danube, yangtze river, europe, mexico, north america, brazil, south america

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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Tags: policy, climate adaptation, europe, north america

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. I first saw the Thames last February, late on a cold and windy night when I was full of sherry and dragging a lot of luggage on a tour of the City. I smiled into the thick, churning waters from a bridge. “That’s one of your rivers,” my friend T said to me as we looked down. I now smile since we’ve just launched a climate vulnerability assessment of the Thames. The report comes in three versions. The best place to begin is a glossy and very accessible summary. Also available are a technical summary and the full technical report. Read More...

Tags: united kingdom, news, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: india, climate adaptation, ethics, resilience

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...

Tags: policy, conservation, water management, climate adaptation, philosophy

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...

Tags: climate adaptation, philosophy, policy, climate mitigation

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...

Tags: united kingdom, thames, climate mitigation, policy, water management, climate adaptation

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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Tags: fish, climate adaptation, north america

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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Tags: fish, Dams, policy, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: news, species, climate adaptation, fish, north america

Tags: news, playa lakes, wetlands, climate adaptation, north america

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...

Tags: wetlands, climate mitigation, impacts, species, climate adaptation

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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Tags: policy, united kingdom, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: policy, climate adaptation, climate mitigation

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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Tags: climate adaptation, conservation