Green economy: Private sectors’ response to climate change

The focus of this paper is to present a discussion of the role of the private sector in response to the need for climate change adaptations. The study, which was conducted through a literature review, investigates the concept of the green economy and climate change, as well as businesses’ commitment to advance climate actions in ways that build resilience in vulnerable communities in developing countries. The paper calls on companies with national, regional, and/or global reach to adopt or develop strategies that improve resource efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce the loss of biodiversity. Businesses can accelerate this transition by aligning their investments with climate change adaptation opportunities, and thus, “green” the economy. In addition, green growth could be achieved through tactical public and private investments in mitigating climate change. The paper concludes that the private sector is a key sector in addressing the challenges of vulnerable communities, and it has much to contribute to the planning, development, and implementation of climate adaptation strategies, including sector‐specific expertise, technology, efficiency, financing, and entrepreneurship. Finally, some social conditions and environmental boundaries have been highlighted in this paper to attract the attention of business leaders who are trying to build initiatives and advance climate actions that will reduce socio‐community risks from climate change. Also, comprehensive initiatives and strategies have been recommended to private companies seeking to address climate vulnerabilities.     

Does External Funding Help Adaptation? Evidence from Community-Based Water Management in the Colombian Andes

Despite debate regarding whether, and in what form, communities need external support for adaptation to environmental change, few studies have examined how external funding impacts adaptation decisions in rural resource-dependent communities. In this article, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to assess how different funding sources influence the initiative to adapt to water scarcity in the Colombian Andes. We compare efforts to adapt to water scarcity in 111 rural Andean communities with varied dependence on external funding for water management activities. Findings suggest that despite efforts to use their own internal resources, communities often need external support to finance adaptation strategies. However, not all external financial support positively impacts a community’s abilities to adapt. Results show the importance of community-driven requests for external support. In cases where external support was unsolicited, the results show a decline, or “crowding-out,” in community efforts to adapt. In contrast, in cases where communities initiated the request for external support to fund their own projects, findings show that external intervention is more likely to enhance or “crowds-in” community-driven adaptation.     

How to make climate change research relevant for Indigenous communities in Torres Strait,Australia

Several Torres Strait communities have significant infrastructure and sacred sites located only a few metres above sea level. As a consequence, these areas are vulnerable to erosion due to the projected increase in storm surge intensity caused by climate change. Common sense suggests that Islanders would welcome new scientific research about how climate change might affect them, in order to understand the significance of these impacts and the timeframes involved. However, one leader has taken a seemingly counterintuitive stance, and has refused to let new climate research occur. We explore why this position was taken, and the implications of this decision for ongoing scientific research. In order to carry out this analysis, we provide a contextual background by assessing Islanders' recent experience with scientific researchers, and the response of policy-makers to it. We find that despite a clearly documented problem with “top-down” decision-making, this process remains. In this instance, we find that there is a systemic lack of collaboration with Islanders to allow them to prioritise their concerns, and a lack of adequate resources to allow them to build their resilience to climate impacts. We conclude that only through a genuine collaborative approach to climate adaptation can activities be properly developed, prioritised and undertaken.     

Adaptation in Practice: How Managers of Nature Conservation Areas in Eastern England are Responding to Climate Change

Although good general principles for climate change adaptation in conservation have been developed, it is proving a challenge to translate them into more detailed recommendations for action. To improve our understanding of what adaptation might involve in practice, we investigated how the managers of conservation areas in eastern England are considering climate change. We used a written questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to collect information from managers of a range of different conservation areas. Topics investigated include the impacts of climate change perceived to be of the greatest importance; adaptation goals being set; management actions being carried out to achieve these goals; sources of information used; and perceived barriers to taking action. We identified major themes and issues that were apparent across the sites studied. Specifically, we found ways in which adaptation had been informed by past experience; different strategies relating to whether to accept or resist change; approaches for coping with more variable conditions; ways of taking a large-scale approach and managing sites as networks; some practical examples of aspects of adaptive management; and examples of the role that other sectors can play in both constraining and increasing a conservation area’s capacity to adapt. We discuss the relevance of these findings to the growing discussion in conservation about identifying adaptation pathways for different conservation areas and a potential progression from a focus on resilience and incremental change to embracing “transformation.” Though adaptation will be place-specific, we believe these findings provide useful lessons for future action in both England and other countries.     

Understanding climate,adapting to change: indigenous cultural values and climate change impacts in North Queensland

Many authors have suggested that Indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, yet there remains a paucity of fine-grained geographic data on the particular impacts of climate change on specific places and on local communities, especially Australian Indigenous communities. While there are some recent studies being undertaken with Australia's Torres Strait Island people, our research takes up the issues of vulnerability and resilience with two Indigenous communities from different environments on the mainland in North Queensland. They are the Aboriginal peoples of the rainforest and reef environments of the Wet Tropics and the Aboriginal people of the discontiguous rainforest, grasslands, dry forests and marine environments of Cape York. The results demonstrate variability in their understandings of climate change and in their capacities to anticipate and manage its impacts, while at the same time illustrating some common held themes about environmental and cultural values, observed environmental change, attributions of cause and effect, and of climate in general.     

Are Wastewater Systems Adapting to Climate Change?

Wastewater (WW) systems are vulnerable to extreme precipitation events; storm‐induced WW system failures pollute the environment and put public health at risk. Despite these vulnerabilities, we know very little about how WW managers are responding to current climate risks or to future climate change. This study aims to fill this critical gap in the literature. Data from surveys and interviews were used to understand what WW managers are doing to adapt to the current climate, what facilitates those adaptations, and if they are adapting to future climate change. Findings show most WW managers (78%) are making changes to build resiliency to storms they have experienced in the past (e.g., extra fuel on site, extra staff on call, more training, better communication, adding generators, elevating components, adding capacity); most are not adapting to future climate change. Our work suggests organizational leadership, concern about future climate‐related impacts, and experiencing storm impacts drive resiliency changes while regulatory requirements drive adaptation to future climate change. Beyond advancing science, our work offers practical suggestions for building WW system resilience and for increasing WW system's consideration of future climate impacts in their resiliency building efforts.     

Farm Level Adaptation to Climate Change: The Case of Farmer’s in the Ethiopian Highlands

In Ethiopia, climate change and associated risks are expected to have serious consequences for agriculture and food security. This in turn will seriously impact on the welfare of the people, particularly the rural farmers whose main livelihood depends on rain-fed agriculture. The level of impacts will mainly depend on the awareness and the level of adaptation in response to the changing climate. It is thus important to understand the role of the different factors that influence farmers’ adaptation to ensure the development of appropriate policy measures and the design of successful development projects. This study examines farmers’ perception of change in climatic attributes and the factors that influence farmers’ choice of adaptation measures to climate change and variability. The estimated results from the climate change adaptation models indicate that level of education, age and wealth of the head of the household; access to credit and agricultural services; information on climate, and temperature all influence farmers’ choices of adaptation. Moreover, lack of information on adaptation measures and lack of finance are seen as the main factors inhibiting adaptation to climate change. These conclusions were obtained with a Multinomial logit model, employing the results from a survey of 400 smallholder farmers in three districts in Tigray, northern Ethiopian.     

Place attachment as a driver of adaptation in coastal communities in Northern Norway

Changes in a range of interlinked factors, in social, economic, environmental and climatic conditions, require adaptation in many communities. This paper explores how place attachment affects adaptive responses to a changing social context through analysing adaptation in two coastal municipalities in Northern Norway. The main challenge in these municipalities is declining populations and the consequences accompanying this trend, including livelihood uncertainties and decreased provision of public services. This paper discusses the role of place attachment in motivating adaptation to these changes to contribute to a growing body of literature within climate change adaptation on “subjective” (values, culture and place) dimensions. The findings suggest that people are motivated to act based on their emotional connection with place, and the paper argues that place attachment may offer a better starting point for climate change adaptation than an emphasis on climate change impacts.     

Changing Human Landscapes Under a Changing Climate: Considerations for Climate Assessments

Climate change is a fundamental aspect of the Anthropocene. Climate assessments are frequently undertaken to evaluate climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. Assessments are complex endeavors with numerous challenges. Five aspects of a climate assessment that can be particularly challenging are highlighted: choice of assessment strategy, incorporation of spatial linkages and interactions, the constraints of climate observations, interpretation of a climate projection ensemble, uncertainty associated with weather/climate dependency models, and consideration of landscape–climate influences. In addition, a climate assessment strategy that incorporates both traditional “top-down” and “bottom-up” methods is proposed for assessments of adaptation options at the local/regional scale. Uncertainties associated with climate observations and projections and with weather/climate dependency (i.e., response) models are incorporated into the assessment through the “top-down” component, and stakeholder knowledge and experience are included through the “bottom-up” component. Considerable further research is required to improve assessment strategies and the usefulness and usability of assessment findings. In particular, new methods are needed which better incorporate spatial linkages and interactions, yet maintain the fine grain detail needed for decision making at the local and regional scales. Also, new methods are needed which go beyond sensitivity analyses of the relative contribution of land use and land cover changes on local/regional climate to more explicitly consider landscape–climate interactions in the context of uncertain future climates. Assessment teams must clearly communicate the choices made when designing an assessment and recognize the implications of these choices on the interpretation and application of the assessment findings.     

Old ways for new days: Australian Indigenous peoples and climate change

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how Australia's Indigenous peoples understand and respond to climate change impacts on their traditional land and seas. Our results show that: (i) Indigenous peoples are observing modifications to their country due to climate change, and are doing so in both ancient and colonial time scales; (ii) the ways that climate change terminology is discursively understood and used is fundamental to achieving deep engagement and effective adaptive governance; (iii) Indigenous peoples in Australia exhibit a high level of agency via diverse approaches to climate adaptation; and (iv) humour is perceived as an important cultural component of engagement about climate change and adaptation. However, wider governance regimes consistently attempt to “upscale” Indigenous initiatives into their own culturally governed frameworks - or ignore them totally as they “don't fit” within neoliberal policy regimes. We argue that an opportunity exists to acknowledge the ways in which Indigenous peoples are agents of their own change, and to support the strategic localism of Indigenous adaptation approaches through tailored and place-based adaptation for traditional country.     

Barriers and enablers to climate change adaptation in hierarchical governance systems: the case of Vietnam

Governments fulfil important roles in increasing the adaptive capacity of local communities to respond to climate change impacts, particularly in developing countries. Existing studies on how governments enable and constrain the ways in which local level communities learn and build their adaptive capacity, however, generally adopt network or market-oriented types of governance. However, the most vulnerable regions to climate change impact in the world are generally governed through hierarchical policy systems. This research aims to understand how the hierarchical policy system in Vietnam creates enables and/or constrains the policy capacity of policy actors to contribute to effective climate change adaptation. We conducted interviews (n?=?26) with key actors at multiple levels of government. Our findings show the importance of clear legal institutions, available financing for implementing policies, and the training of governmental staff, particularly at district and commune levels where the policy capacities are generally too low to deal with climate change impacts. We conclude that any efforts to support local actors (i.e. smallholder farmers) should include investments in policy capacity to ensure uptake and upscaling of adaptation actions more broadly.     

Spatially identifying vulnerable communities to climate change impact in South Australia

The impending form and extent of climate change and its direct impacts present disproportionate challenges for the most socially and economically disadvantaged groups within populations. Evaluating the vulnerability of disadvantaged groups in the context of climate change has presented tremendous theoretical, methodological and policy challenges especially where vulnerability assessment research is focused at the local community level. This study addresses the challenges by developing an interdisciplinary methodology, based on expert knowledge, and uses the state of South Australia as a case study. It focuses on key indicators that measure the exposure of local communities to climate change and socio-economic vulnerabilities of local populations. A main contribution in this study is the novel incorporation of physical, environmental and socio-demographic data sets and extensive use of spatial modelling and estimation methods to spatially define climate change and social vulnerability “hot spots”. This paper assesses vulnerability under moderate and high Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change CO₂ emission scenarios in order to generate an assessment model to be used before planning is done. The result is the creation of a practical tool through which decision-makers can better understand how the complexity of one's local spatial context influences the unique exposure, which different vulnerable communities have, to the impacts of climate change. This paper presents a useful tool that can be used in the initial assessment phase by planners and policy-makers to better assist those who are limited in their ability to adapt to climate change.     

Using Social Network Analysis to examine the role that institutional integration plays in community-based adaptive capacity to climate change in Caribbean small island communities

Remote island communities in the Caribbean are known to be disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. As a result, there is a need to better understand the factors that contribute to increasing local-scale adaptive capacity through large-scale adaptation projects. While it has been argued that strong institutional networks are highly influential in a community’s ability to leverage funds and to implement tailored adaptation projects, limited empirical research has been undertaken. Social Network Analysis was used to retrospectively evaluate the importance of institutional integration for enhancing adaptive capacity in the small island community of Paget Farm in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Paget Farm successfully adapted to a lack of fresh water through the implementation of a funded solar-powered desalination plant – and as a result the community represents an ideal case study for analysis. Results reveal that while the level of vertical integration varied throughout the temporal phases of the adaptation project, horizontal integration was consistently low. These findings suggest that high integration between institutions may not be required during all project phases in order to ensure success and that more consistent rather than high levels of integration between sectors may be more meaningful for enhancing adaptive capacity.     

Vulnerability and adaptation to heat in cities: perspectives and perceptions of local adaptation decision-makers in Sweden

Climate change vulnerability is disproportionately distributed between different population segments in society. This study qualitatively explores how key stakeholders in municipalities (i.e. planning and operational staff in municipalities and the vulnerable themselves) construct social vulnerability in relation to climate change with a specific focus on thermal stress (i.e. heat waves) and which adaptive responses they identify at different levels. The empirical material consists of five focus groups with actors in a large Swedish municipality where the “Vulnerability Factor Card Game” was used as stimulus material to create 10 fictional individuals. The results show that there is a substantial amount of local knowledge about vulnerability drivers and inter-relations between social factors and vulnerability. Local decision-makers also defined a wide range of possible adaptation measures at different municipal levels. Our study clearly indicates that contextualised knowledge, which could complement the quantitative approaches in research, is abundant among municipal planners, staff employed at municipal operations such as health care, and among the vulnerable themselves. This knowledge remains untapped by research to a great extent and only seems to have an insignificant influence on policy-making. In particular, how impacts vary between different social and demographic groups and how adaptation strategies that target the most vulnerable could be defined are of great interest. The present study clearly indicates that social hierarchy may produce increased inequality in the specific context of climate change, vulnerability and adaptive responses at different levels.     

Nepalganj,the centre of the world: local perceptions of environmental change and the roles of climate-change adaptation actors

This paper explores community perspectives of environmental change and the role development actors in the regional Nepali town of Nepalganj. Understanding these perceptions is crucial for planning future adaptation to climate change and ensuring that these measures are sustainable and in line with community priorities. Firstly, I contend that whilst the local community in Nepalganj may be experiencing the impacts of climate change, they are unfamiliar and disassociated with the concept. Secondly, I identify a number of risks and opportunities around the role of local government, international development organisations and local non-government organisations in future adaptation actions. Participant perceptions of these institutions in their community reinforce a number of established critiques of development around themes such as poor consultation and short project timelines. The long-term success of adaptation actions will be shaped by the ability and willingness of development actors to evolve their practices by listening to local communities.     

“In common nature”: an ethnography of climate adaptation in the Lesotho Highlands

In Lesotho, climate change adaptation funding is being managed and distributed by the same mechanisms which have traditionally operationalised humanitarian aid and international development assistance in the country. Lessons from the HIV/AIDS disaster, along with insights into the value of participatory approaches foregrounding the expertise of indigenous communities, must be heeded in order to ensure that those most affected by climate change have a say in how adaptation is carried out. This paper proposes that indigenous people have developed and actively maintained resilience strategies, encoded in social practices and farming techniques, designed out of long experience with climatic variability. Through case studies, indigenous resilience strategies are explored, with emphasis on the anarchistic, improvisational nature of traditional ecological knowledge. Future directions for policy-makers and practitioners dealing with climate change adaptation are suggested, namely the need to foreground indigenous knowledge and the experiences of frontlines experts in key policy arenas.     

Water Access, Water Scarcity, and Climate Change

This article investigates the approaches of the various discourses operating in the water sector and how they address the issues of scarcity and equitable access under projected climate change impacts. Little synergy exists between the different approaches dealing with these issues. Whilst being a sustainable development and water resources management issue, a holistic view of access, scarcity and the projected impacts of climate change is not prevalent in these discourses. The climate change discourse too does not adequately bridge the gap between these issues. The projected impacts of climate change are likely to exacerbate the problems of scarcity and equitable access unless appropriate adaptation strategies are adopted and resilience is built. The successful delivery of accessible water services under projected climate change impacts therefore lies with an extension of the adaptive water management approach to include equitable access as a key driver.     

Development,Malaria and Adaptation to Climate Change: A Case Study from India

India has reasons to be concerned about climate change. Over 650 million people depend on climate-sensitive sectors, such as rain-fed agriculture and forestry, for livelihood and over 973 million people are exposed to vector borne malarial parasites. Projection of climatic factors indicates a wider exposure to malaria for the Indian population in the future. If precautionary measures are not taken and development processes are not managed properly some developmental activities, such as hydro-electric dams and irrigation canal systems, may also exacerbate breeding grounds for malaria. This article integrates climate change and developmental variables in articulating a framework for integrated impact assessment and adaptation responses, with malaria incidence in India as a case study. The climate change variables include temperature, rainfall, humidity, extreme events, and other secondary variables. Development variables are income levels, institutional mechanisms to implement preventive measures, infrastructure development that could promote malarial breeding grounds, and other policies. The case study indicates that sustainable development variables may sometimes reduce the adverse impacts on the system due to climate change alone, while it may sometimes also exacerbate these impacts if the development variables are not managed well and therefore they produce a negative impact on the system. The study concludes that well crafted and well managed developmental policies could result in enhanced resilience of communities and systems, and lower health impacts due to climate change.     

“At the water's edge”: community voices on climate change

The photovoice research project, “At the water's edge”, which gives voice to communities exploring the threats and impact of climate change and rising sea levels on coastal communities, was conducted during an environmental art symposium in the Noosa Biosphere Reserve, Australia in June 2009. Photos by participants illustrated both local and global threats and reflected psychological tension between global and local action. This research partnership with the local people demonstrated an innovative visualisation technique which can be used to collaboratively build capacity and consensus about adaptation to climate change. It also contributed to the Biosphere Reserve's educational and cultural aims in relation to climate change.     

Planning for global environmental change in Bangkok's informal settlements

Government agencies in cities across Asia recognise that municipalities must take steps to adapt to projected climate changes if people and places are to be kept above water. This paper focuses on planning for climate change in Bangkok because it ranks among the top 10 port cities vulnerable to climate change related flooding. It is also understood that the most devastating impacts of climate change will be suffered by the city's most vulnerable residents: the poor. Not only do impoverished people occupy physically vulnerable space, such as riverbanks, but they are also the least equipped to recover from the disruption of their livelihoods.

Several scholars have identified “institutional traps” that prevent the Thai government from successfully aiding poor and marginalised flood victims in the past. These include poor coordination, lack of monitoring and evaluation, rigidity, crisis management and elite capture. Lebel, Manuta, and Garden (2011, 56) Lebel, L., J.B. Manuta, and P. Garden. 2011. “Institutional Traps and Vulnerability to Changes in Climate and Flood Regimes in Thailand.” Regional Environmental Change 11 (1): 45–58.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] pose the crucial question: “How have individuals – from local community leaders through to national level politicians and bureaucrats – successfully influenced policy and programmes to avoid institutional traps and improve adaptive capacities to climate change?”

In this paper, we begin to address this question through examining emergent methods of “community based adaptation” and reviewing case studies of adaptation action from other vulnerable communities in the Global South. These lessons – such as overcoming institutional rigidity and avoiding elite capture – are important for Bangkok and other cities in the Global South that face many different challenges by global environmental change.