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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.
Read More...
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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...Not for the "Future of Water"? The role of widespread groundwater pollution
06/06/11 10:41
Anna Lappe from the Small Planet Institute was asked to submit a video the Future of Water event described in an earlier post (below, and to be broadcast here tomorrow, June 7). She had a bad experience with the event’s sponsor, Dow Chemical. In her words, “My contribution, which raised concerns about the threats to water sustainability from toxins in our environment, was rejected by 4goodmedia on the grounds that this should be a ‘positive, inclusive discussion.’ While I, too, believe in the principles of inclusiveness and engagement, I feel strongly we must pursue those principles in an honest context, including with full knowledge of water sustainability in relationship to Dow. For that reason, I felt it would disingenuous to engage in this conversation without pointing out the direct relationship between Dow’s core business products—a source of its $8 billion in profit last year—and toxins polluting groundwater across the United States and around the world.”
In fairness to Anna, I asked for (and obtained) her permission to post her video on this site after I was contacted by her. And in full disclosure, I was interviewed and presumably my video will be shown tomorrow, and I suggested several other people who might be interviewed for the event. While I do not agree with much that Dow Chemical has done in the past or is doing now as company policy, I felt that it was personally ethical to participate in this event. Good people can disagree over some issues. And I suspect that upon viewing this video you can see why Dow and the event’s producer would decide not to include it. That also doesn’t mean that the issues are not important or worth discussing, hence my own decision to include her video here. Read More...
In fairness to Anna, I asked for (and obtained) her permission to post her video on this site after I was contacted by her. And in full disclosure, I was interviewed and presumably my video will be shown tomorrow, and I suggested several other people who might be interviewed for the event. While I do not agree with much that Dow Chemical has done in the past or is doing now as company policy, I felt that it was personally ethical to participate in this event. Good people can disagree over some issues. And I suspect that upon viewing this video you can see why Dow and the event’s producer would decide not to include it. That also doesn’t mean that the issues are not important or worth discussing, hence my own decision to include her video here. Read More...
CCW.org and ClimatePrep.org interview Jared Diamond: Where do we go from here?
01/06/11 15:31
Last October, my friend and colleague Eliot Levine from ClimatePrep.org and I sat down and talked with world-renowned conservation biologist Jared Diamond and author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse (as well as many other publications) and asked him to look forward in time: how do we cope with the coming climate change impacts globally? What kinds of choices do we face? What risks do we face? Our questions to Diamond focused on finding the emerging issues that we in the developed world, the developing world, and all humans globally face as we move forward.
Given who was interviewing him and the scope of the issues we were discussing, Diamond prominently mentions water as a fundamental adaptation problem. Our discussion lasted about an hour and a half and was both wide ranging and rich. Hence a length of 11 minutes.
Given who was interviewing him and the scope of the issues we were discussing, Diamond prominently mentions water as a fundamental adaptation problem. Our discussion lasted about an hour and a half and was both wide ranging and rich. Hence a length of 11 minutes.
UK infrastructure and climate change report
18/05/11 08:21
This series of reports is just out from the UK government. I believe it highlights well where the global emerging issues are around adaptation and development strategies: infrastructure design, operations, and management. The US government’s executive branch is moving rapidly in this direction as well, right behind the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and now the UK. China and South Africa are beginning to move in this direction. India and Brazil are a bit farther behind. The environmental community should care because most of the landscapes we care about – at least terrestrial and freshwater landscapes – are usually caught in a web of existing or planned infrastructure, most of which will last decades to centuries. In the view of this blog, infrastructure (especially water infrastructure) is the key battleground for conservation and sustainable development for this century, and how we engage with that debate and process will determine how both humans and ecosystems respond to climate change and synergies between climate and other forces over the long haul. —JHM
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Video: Sundarbans and Climate Change
08/09/10 04:44
John Matthews from World Wildlife Fund and Sara Tynnerson from Stockholm Resilience Center from Stockholm University talks to Deepak Menon, India Water Portal. John talks about the impact of climate change on the Sunderbans in the eastern part of India.
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Climate adaptation, water, and governance: An emerging nexus
21/09/10 15:39
Update: Session now available for download here. When the roundtable session begins after the introduction, sound quality drops. You can skip forward to 59:26 to hear the roundtable summaries (very interesting!). The panel discussion and questions begin at 1:41:00.
Changing Climate, Shifting Institutions: Building Governance and Capacity through Freshwater Adaptation
Efforts to respond to the impacts of a shifting climate in the water community have widely focused on particular eco-hydrological changes in freshwater systems, such as floods, droughts, and higher water temperatures. From this perspective, climate change is defined largely as a problem with an engineering (or engineering finance) solution. Engineers themselves, however, have declared that the current measures for designing long-lasting water infrastructure assumes that the recent historical hydrological information is a fair representation of future conditions — an assumption that has recently been declared “dead,” since historical statistically “normal” hydrological states are expected to shift, but without knowing how much or often even in what direction. Climate change thus causes increasingly uncertain hydrological futures for decades and possibly centuries.
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Changing Climate, Shifting Institutions: Building Governance and Capacity through Freshwater Adaptation
Efforts to respond to the impacts of a shifting climate in the water community have widely focused on particular eco-hydrological changes in freshwater systems, such as floods, droughts, and higher water temperatures. From this perspective, climate change is defined largely as a problem with an engineering (or engineering finance) solution. Engineers themselves, however, have declared that the current measures for designing long-lasting water infrastructure assumes that the recent historical hydrological information is a fair representation of future conditions — an assumption that has recently been declared “dead,” since historical statistically “normal” hydrological states are expected to shift, but without knowing how much or often even in what direction. Climate change thus causes increasingly uncertain hydrological futures for decades and possibly centuries.
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Video: Green Glaciers: The Melting Grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau
04/08/10 19:37
A video followup about climate change impacts and adaptation options on the Tibetan plateau. Read More...
Video: Conservation portfolios for climate adaptation - Daniel Schindler, University of Washington
07/01/10 16:38
In this video, Daniel Schindler of the University of Washington discusses his research on ecosystem changes in response to climate change and the importance of heterogeneity. Schindler is a fisheries ecologist who works on a wide range of topics, especially with salmonids and plankton in the Pacific Northwest of the North America. Read More...
Video: Red Eyes in Copenhagen: Adaptation at COP15
27/12/09 08:26
Red Eyes in Copenhagen: Climate Adaptation at COP15
7 mins, December 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark
In December 2009, representatives of 192 nations met in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a new international climate change agreement. Most of these efforts focused on climate mitigation — reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to slow down the rate of climate change. These results received widespread analysis. But there were also heated if less publicized negotiations to help the poor and vulnerable of the world adapt to the negative impacts of climate change. Filmed within hours of the conclusion of the Copenhagen Accord on 19 December 2009, this film shows the sleep-deprived thoughts of WWF staff about the impacts and efficacy of the Accord for international climate adaptation policy. These staff have worked on these issues for many years.
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7 mins, December 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark
In December 2009, representatives of 192 nations met in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a new international climate change agreement. Most of these efforts focused on climate mitigation — reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to slow down the rate of climate change. These results received widespread analysis. But there were also heated if less publicized negotiations to help the poor and vulnerable of the world adapt to the negative impacts of climate change. Filmed within hours of the conclusion of the Copenhagen Accord on 19 December 2009, this film shows the sleep-deprived thoughts of WWF staff about the impacts and efficacy of the Accord for international climate adaptation policy. These staff have worked on these issues for many years.
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Video: Jim Jarvie from Mercy Corps on Development and Ecosystem-based Adaptation
26/12/09 06:04
Jim Jarvie of Mercy Corps: The Direction of Adaptation and Development.
2:25 mins, November 2009, Fuller Symposium, Washington, DC
Jim Jarvie was stood apart at the WWF Fuller Symposium last November: he works for Mercy Corps, one of the leading economic development non-governmental organizations active in the developing world today. In this video, he reflects on issues that are extremely relevant to the practice of climate adaptation globally: Is ecosystem-based adaptation different than community-based adaptation?
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2:25 mins, November 2009, Fuller Symposium, Washington, DC
Jim Jarvie was stood apart at the WWF Fuller Symposium last November: he works for Mercy Corps, one of the leading economic development non-governmental organizations active in the developing world today. In this video, he reflects on issues that are extremely relevant to the practice of climate adaptation globally: Is ecosystem-based adaptation different than community-based adaptation?
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Video: More Water Asks at the COP
17/12/09 06:47
Quick update: a video on the UNFCCC COP15 site of me speaking last week on water and climate from an event sponsored by the Global Water Partnership, Stakeholders Forum, and the Stockholm International Water Institute. Read More...
Video: The Language of Climate Change Is the Language of Water
14/12/09 04:04
At a recent event sponsored by TERI and the Yale School of Forestry, WWF-US CEO Carter Roberts spoke to a small distinguished group in Denmark’s Kronborg Castle about the vulnerability of freshwater species and ecosystems — and communities and their livelihoods — to climate change. Read More...
Video: Voices on water, biodiversity, and COP15
14/12/09 00:35
The Dutch government and its environmental assessment agency organized a great series of events over two weeks here at the COP on climate adaptation issues. If you’re interested in water, it would be hard to leave the Holland Climate House. I’m involved in a total of four side events there, with one remaining. Read More...
Video: UK Rivers on the Edge
01/11/09 09:06
When we think about great freshwater ecosystems globally, most people don't think about the United Kingdom. The Yangtze of China is probably closer to most visions of a great river, or perhaps from a wild perspective Lake Baikal of Russia or the Colorado river as it passes through the Grand Canyon. But there is also great beauty and wonder in small places — streams and ponds — that may lack grandeur but are no less moving or important. The chalk streams of southern England and northern France are precisely such places.
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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...
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...
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...
Fixed video streaming! The Cerrado of Brazil
09/08/09 08:19
I’ve just returned from a trip to Brazil, where most of my time was spent talking in Brasilia with colleagues and policymakers working on climate adaptation issues from a freshwater perspective. Read More...
New! Video blog entries
08/07/09 15:43
I’ve started teaching a distance learning course with Dr. Bruce Dugger at Oregon State University on wetlands. Read More...
