Nigeria’s Response to the Impacts of Climate Change: Developing Resilient and Ethical Adaptation Options

Global climate change will have a strong impact on Nigeria, particularly on agricultural production and associated livelihoods. Although there is a growing scientific consensus about the impact of climate change, efforts so far in Nigeria to deal with these impacts are still rudimentary and not properly coordinated. There is little evidence of any pragmatic approach towards tracking climate change in order to develop an evidence base on which to formulate national adaptation strategies. Although Nigeria is not alone in this regard, the paper asserts that National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy could help address this situation by guiding the integration of climate change adaptation into government policies, strategies, and programs, with particular focus on the most vulnerable groups and the agricultural sectors. There is an urgent need to adopt abatement strategies that will provide economic incentives to reduce the risk from disasters, such as developing agricultural practices that are more resilient to a changing climate.     

Leveraging the power of learning to overcome negotiation deadlocks in global climate governance and low carbon transitions

ABSTRACT

Learning among actors within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations helped transferring climate policies across countries and changed negotiation positions. Together with group pressure and leadership by key governments and non-national actors, experience, knowledge and belief-based learning types altered the UNFCCC negotiation dynamics and facilitated the Paris Agreement. Governments, the UNFCCC secretariat and NGOs created opportunities for government representatives to explore policy options and learn from each other’ successes of designing and implementing low carbon policies. These experience exchanges during and beyond the UNFCCC meetings were established to help countries share their experiences with low carbon economic development plans to address climate change while decoupling economic growth. Based on elite interviews, participant observation and document analysis, this contribution examines how learning facilitated breakthroughs in international climate negotiations. It finds that structured experience exchange of and reflection on other countries’ and non-national actors’ successful policy experiences can modify national interests as policymakers increasingly understand that climate action can support economic growth. This resulted in a higher willingness to take on more ambitious climate action commitments. Sharing experiences with climate policies can facilitate other actor’s learning how they can adapt successful policies to their specific framework conditions.     

Risk and vulnerability analysis: A feasible process for local climate adaptation in Sweden?

Climate change is an important new challenge for local authorities. This study analyses the potential for using the Swedish mandatory process for risk and vulnerability analysis (RVA) as a vehicle to improve local climate adaptation work. An advantage with RVA is its comprehensive approach in dealing with all relevant threats and all vital functions of society. In order to test the applicability of incorporating climate adaptation into RVA, we studied practical experiences from three Swedish municipalities. In all municipalities, a pre-study to identify relevant climate-induced events was performed. In one municipality, this was followed by a more detailed analysis of the potential impacts of these events on the functions of the various administrations and companies within the local authority. Problems identified in successful integration of climate change into the municipal RVA process were lack of sufficient knowledge to identify the impacts of climate change on the level of the respective specialist or district administration and lack of resources to perform the analysis. There were also some difficulties in including a long-term perspective relevant for climate adaptation into RVA, which usually focuses on current threats. A positive outcome was that work on extreme climate events in RVA provided a traceable method to identify events with a potentially great impact on the function of local society and results that could be fed into other ongoing processes, such as spatial planning and housing plans.     

Adaptive Management and Climate Change Adaptation: Two Mutually Beneficial Areas of Practice

Adaptive management (AM) is a rigorous approach to implementing, monitoring, and evaluating actions, so as to learn and adjust those actions. Existing AM projects are at risk from climate change, and current AM guidance does not provide adequate methods to deal with this risk. Climate change adaptation (CCA) is an approach to plan and implement actions to reduce risks from climate variability and climate change, and to exploit beneficial opportunities. AM projects could be made more resilient to extreme climate events by applying the principles and procedures of CCA. To test this idea, we analyze the effects of extreme climatic events on five existing AM projects focused on ecosystem restoration and species recovery, in the Russian, Trinity, Okanagan, Platte, and Missouri River Basins. We examine these five case studies together to generate insights on how integrating CCA principles and practices into their design and implementation could improve their sustainability, despite significant technical and institutional challenges, particularly at larger scales. Although climate change brings substantial risks to AM projects, it may also provide opportunities, including creating new habitats, increasing the ability to quickly test flow‐habitat hypotheses, stimulating improvements in watershed management and water conservation, expanding the use of real‐time tools for flow management, and catalyzing creative application of CCA principles and procedures.     

Contrasting Lumped and Distributed Hydrology Models for Estimating Climate Change Impacts on California Watersheds1

Maurer, Edwin P., Levi D. Brekke, and Tom Pruitt, 2010. Contrasting Lumped and Distributed Hydrology Models for Estimating Climate Change Impacts on California Watersheds. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 46(5):1024–1035. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2010.00473.x Abstract: We compare the projected changes to streamflows for three Sierra Nevada rivers using statistically downscaled output from 22 global climate projections. The downscaled meteorological data are used to drive two hydrology models: the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting model and the variable infiltration capacity model. These two models differ in their spatial resolution, computational time step, and degree and objective of calibration, thus producing significantly different simulations of current and future streamflow. However, the projected percentage changes in monthly streamflows through mid-21st Century generally did not differ, with the exceptions of streamflow during low flow months, and extreme low flows. These findings suggest that for physically based hydrology models applied to snow-dominated basins in Mediterranean climate regimes like the Sierra Nevada, California, model formulation, resolution, and calibration are secondary factors for estimating projected changes in extreme flows (seasonal or daily). For low flows, hydrology model selection and calibration can be significant factors in assessing impacts of projected climate change.     

Hydrological Variability and Uncertainty of Lower Missouri River Basin Under Changing Climate

The lower Missouri River Basin has experienced increasing streamflow and flooding events, with higher risk of extreme hydrologic impacts under changing climate. The newly available North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) climate projections were used as atmospheric forcing for Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model which runs with varying potential evapotranspiration (PET) methods to assess the hydrological change and uncertainty of 2040‐2069 over 1968‐1997. The NARCCAP temperature and precipitation predictions were refined using a bias correction method. The results show that, following the seasonal variability of precipitation, various water fluxes would increase in most seasons except the summer. Expected precipitation tends to increase in intensity with little change in frequency, triggering faster surface water concentration to form floods. The greatest streamflow increase would occur from November to February, increasing by around 10% on average. An increase of 3% occurs in the other months except for July and August in which river discharge decreases by around 2%. The climate predictions contribute more uncertainty annually, but PET algorithms gain more influence in winter or when other weather factors such as wind play a relatively more important role on evapotranspiration flux. This study predicts an even wetter environment compared to the historically very wet period, with the possibility of more flooding.     

Influencing climate change regulations: examining responses from large-scale firms

Recent climate change projections and a push towards a universal agreement on carbon emission reductions suggest that firms will need to respond to future regulatory changes. This paper employs an influencing strategies lens to examine how large-scale firms might respond to future climate change regulations. The study uses a structured qualitative methodology to explore and explicate the strategic responses from 21 international firms to the proposed emissions trading scheme outlined in Australia's Garnaut Climate Change Review. The results of the analysis show that firms can use pre-emptive influencing strategies in attempts to shape and mould regulatory design parameters, secure high levels of transitional economic support, and shift the balance of public policies and expenditure. Complementary defensive strategies may also target policy makers and regulators with some of the potential negative consequences of the new regulations.     

Blowing policy bubbles: rethinking emissions targets and low-carbon energy policies in the U.K.

The issue of proportionality is central to climate policy debates about setting targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of low-carbon energy. In effect, these debates centre on whether the perceived social costs outweigh the benefits of policies and, if not, whether this may lead to over-investment or ‘policy bubbles’. Political attention, agenda setting and policy image are all crucial drivers of ambitious policy formation, as seen in the case of the United Kingdom's (U.K.) Climate Change Act (2008). However, as political salience waned and economic depression dragged on, the cost of long-term climate targets has been reconsidered. Based on documentary analysis and 33 interviews with central political actors, this article presents a detailed account of how economic arguments have been used to reinterpret and challenge policies, using the heuristics of ‘over-investment’ and ‘policy bubbles’. Ultimately, arguments about proportionality hinge on which costs and benefits are considered. In the U.K., economic and technical framings are typically prioritised, but they do not explain contradictory and politically motivated policy decisions. We discuss these dynamics within the context of maturing renewable energy technologies, high energy prices and the U.K.’s cross-party consensus approach to climate politics.     

Climate Change Impacts on Irrigation Water Needs in the jaguaribe River Basin1

Gondim, Rubens S., Marco A.H. de Castro, Aline de H.N. Maia, Sílvio R.M. Evangelista, and Sérgio C. de F. Fuck, Jr., 2012. Climate Change Impacts on Irrigation Water Needs in the Jaguaribe River Basin. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 48(2): 355‐365. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2011.00620.x Abstract: Climate change is conceptually referred to as a modification to the average of climate variables and their natural variability, due to both natural and anthropogenic driving forces, such as greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change potentially impacts rainfall, temperature, and air humidity, which have relationship with plant evapotranspiration and consequently to irrigation water needs (IWN). The purpose of this research is to assess climate change impacts on irrigation water demand, based on climatic impacts stemming from future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. The study area includes eight municipalities in the Jaguaribe River Basin, located in the Ceará State of semiarid northeast Brazil. The FAO Penman‐Monteith method is used for the calculation of a reference evapotranspiration with limited climatic data. IWN projections are calculated using bias‐corrected climate projections for monthly rainfall and surface temperature derived from the United Kingdom’s Hadley Centre Regional Climate Model simulations. The increase in the average IWN is projected to be 7.9 and 9.1% over the period 2025‐2055 for the A2 and B2 scenarios, respectively with respect to 1961‐1990 baseline.     

The Sensitivity of Northern Groundwater Recharge to Climate Change: A Case Study in Northwest Alaska1

Clilverd, Hannah M., Daniel M. White, Amy C. Tidwell, and Michael A. Rawlins, 2011. The Sensitivity of Northern Groundwater Recharge to Climate Change: A Case Study in Northwest Alaska. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 47(6):1228–1240. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2011.00569.x Abstract: The potential impacts of climate change on northern groundwater supplies were examined at a fractured‐marble mountain aquifer near Nome, Alaska. Well water surface elevations (WSE) were monitored from 2004‐2009 and analyzed with local meteorological data. Future aquifer response was simulated with the Pan‐Arctic Water Balance Model (PWBM) using forcings (air temperature and precipitation) derived from fifth‐generation European Centre Hamburg Model (ECHAM5) global circulation model climate scenarios for extreme and modest increases in greenhouse gases. We observed changes in WSE due to the onset of spring snowmelt, low intensity and high intensity rainfall events, and aquifer head recession during the winter freeze period. Observed WSE and snow depth compared well with PWBM‐simulated groundwater recharge and snow storage. Using ECHAM5‐simulated increases in mean annual temperature of 4‐8°C by 2099, the PWBM predicted that by 2099 later freeze‐up and earlier snowmelt will decrease seasonal snow cover by one to two months. Annual evapotranspiration and precipitation are predicted to increase 27‐40% (55‐81 mm) and 33‐42% (81‐102 mm), respectively, with the proportion of snowfall in annual precipitation decreasing on average 9‐25% (p < 0.05). The amount of snowmelt is not predicted to change significantly by 2099; however, a decreasing trend is evident from 2060 in the extreme ECHAM5 greenhouse gas scenario. Increases in effective precipitation were predicted to be great enough to sustain sufficient groundwater recharge.     

Effect of crude oil carbon accounting decisions on meeting global climate budgets

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quantified a cumulative remaining carbon budget beyond which there is a high likelihood global average temperatures will increase more than 2 °C above preindustrial temperature. While there is global participation in mitigation efforts, there is little global collaboration to cooperatively mitigate emissions. Instead, countries have been acting as individual agents with independent emission reduction objectives. However, such asymmetric unilateral climate policies create the opportunity for carbon leakage resulting from the shift in embodied carbon emissions within trade networks. In this analysis, we use an optimization-based model of the global crude trade as a case study to demonstrate the importance of a cooperative, system-level approach to climate policy in order to most effectively, efficiently, and equitably achieve carbon mitigation objectives. To do this, we first characterize the cost and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the 2014 crude production and consumption system by aggregating multiple data sources and developing a balanced trade matrix. We then optimize this network to demonstrate the potential for carbon mitigation through more efficient use of crude resources. Finally, we implement a global carbon cap on total annual crude emissions. We find that such a cap would require crude consumption to drop from 4.2 gigatons (Gt) to 1.1 Gt. However, if each country had an individual carbon allocation in addition to the global cap consistent with the nationally determined contribution limits resulting from the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, allowable consumption would further decrease to approximately 770 million metric tonnes. Additionally, the carbon accounting method used to assign responsibility for embodied carbon emissions associated with the traded crude further influences allowable production and consumption for each country. The simplified model presented here highlights how global cooperation and a system-level cooperative approach could guide climate policy efforts to be more cost effective and equitable, while reducing the leakage potential resulting from shifting trade patterns of embodied carbon emissions. Additionally, it demonstrates how the spatial distribution of crude consumption and production patterns change under a global carbon cap given various carbon accounting strategies.     

Local action for climate change: transnational networks and the Irish experience

Climate change policies are informed by contributions from public, private and civil society organisations at a range of scales from the local to the global. Such policy formation has come to be termed multilevel governance. Transnational networks of local authorities are an emerging feature of multilevel governance and they have been heralded as a means to improve the implementation of climate change policy on the ground. However empirical evaluation of these transnational climate change networks is geographically limited and no research examining their impact in Ireland has been conducted. In response this paper considers the significance of European climate change networks within Ireland's climate change strategy. It concludes that these formal transnational networks have had limited impact to date due to ongoing negotiations about the politics of scale and responsibility with respect to climate change policies in Ireland.     

The IPBES Conceptual Framework: An Unhelpful Start

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have recently launched themselves as the UN-sanctioned instrument for conserving nature. They seek to establish themselves as the authority in this field alongside the well-known Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in climate science. Quickly following or even before recent publication of their conceptual framework in two biology journals, they were already underway building upon it. This headlong push, we believe, is ill advised. We show how the framework is unsound as a foundation for further work—in a number of ways and perhaps even by its authors’ own lights. It is therefore urgent that the IPBES thoroughly and thoughtfully reconsider their framework before too much effort is wasted.     

Impacts of Climate Change on Extreme Precipitation Events Over Flamingo Tropicana Watershed1

Abstract: Climate change, particularly the projected changes to precipitation patterns, is likely to affect runoff both regionally and temporally. Extreme rainfall events are expected to become more intense in the future in arid urban areas and this will likely lead to higher streamflow. Through hydrological modeling, this article simulates an urban basin response to the most intense storm under anthropogenic climate change conditions. This study performs an event‐based simulation for shorter duration storms in the Flamingo Tropicana (FT) watershed in Las Vegas, Nevada. An extreme storm, defined as a 100‐year return period storm, is selected from historical records and perturbed to future climatic conditions with respect to multimodel multiscenario (A1B, A2, B1) bias corrected and spatially disaggregated data from the World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP's) database. The cumulative annual precipitation for each 30‐year period shows a continuous decrease from 2011 to 2099; however, the summer convective storms, which are considered as extreme storms for the study area, are expected to be more intense in future. Extreme storm events show larger changes in streamflow under different climate scenarios and time periods. The simulated peak streamflow and total runoff volume shows an increase from 40% to more than 150% (during 2041‐2099) for different climate scenarios. This type of analysis can help evaluate the vulnerability of existing flood control system and flood control policies.     

Governing climate change for a just city: challenges and lessons from Maputo,Mozambique

As new forms of governance for climate change emerge in African cities, will they enable emancipatory and socially progressive transformations or will they exacerbate existing inequality, poverty and vulnerability patterns? This paper presents one of the case studies developed by UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative in Maputo, Mozambique. The case analyses first, the production of urban vulnerabilities under climate change, and second, the existing governance arrangements for climate change in the city. Building on the lessons of the case study, the paper argues that to ensure that new forms of climate change governance lead to socially and environmentally just outcomes climate change interventions should, at least, meet two conditions: first, they should consider the close interactions between social and ecological elements and, specially, how patterns of urban inequality interact with environmental factors; second, they should recognise the opportunities in African cities through a broad notion of governance that looks beyond the government as the sole agent of urban change.     

The local governance of climate change: new tools to respond to old limitations in Esmeraldas,Ecuador

This article argues that climate change, seen as a socially constructed anticipation of natural disasters and a future-risk that plays out in present politics, is enabling the emergence of new modes of governance in cities of the global south. The article focuses on the process by which the city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, developed a Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Strategy. Within the context of climate change adaptation, Esmeraldas mobilised new discourses, stakeholders, and planning mechanisms to address pre-existing urban planning and development limitations. This discursively enabled the municipality's ongoing governance project by leveraging resources, creating consensus, and informing practice. Climate change adaptation thus became an important mechanism for engaging with local priorities, particularly those of the most vulnerable populations, and for bridging the gap between the formal world of policymaking and the reality of life in the city, which is more often structured by informality.     

Waste management in a more unequal world: centring inequality in our waste and climate change discourse

ABSTRACT

Climate change is expected to contribute to global inequality, and exacerbate ecological risk for the world's poor. Despite recent trends within waste management academic discourse, which has begun to engage with inequality, and its underlying socio-economic and socio-political causes, discussions of inequality have so far remained absent from our investigations on climate change's impacts on waste management systems and practices. The purpose of the discussion is to call for a centring of inequality within our waste and climate discourse. I identify two main pathways for scholarly investigation, specifically, developing alternative waste management solutions for contexts in which waste management systems fail, which do not just perpetuate existing inequalities, and addressing the growing inequality in waste management technology and practice between the Global North and the Global South.     

Context-dependent evaluation of climate change policies: competing policies,knowledge and emotions

Climate change policies can compete with policies on other social and environmental problems for limited economic resources. This paper investigates the potential influence of alternative policies on citizens’ preferences for climate change policies. A contingent valuation study was implemented to estimate the impact of observable and unobservable contextual effects of competing polices on climate change valuation. Individuals are also investigated about their endowment of knowledge and emotional reactions to such problems. The results show that citizens’ valuation of climate change policies crucially depends on the context-dependent competing policies. The valuation rises as the number of competing policies increases. This increment becomes economically significant when the competing policies are related to specific problems such as forest fires and development. In addition, the valuation also rises with the amount of knowledge endowed by the individual about the climate change problem, and with the experience of negative emotions such as fear and sadness.     

Incorporating Climate Change Into Water Resources Planning in England and Wales1

Arnell, Nigel W., 2011. Incorporating Climate Change Into Water Resources Planning in England and Wales. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 47(3):541‐549. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2011.00548.x Abstract: Public water supplies in England and Wales are provided by around 25 private‐sector companies, regulated by an economic regulator (Ofwat) and environmental regulator (Environment Agency). As part of the regulatory process, companies are required periodically to review their investment needs to maintain safe and secure supplies, and this involves an assessment of the future balance between water supply and demand. The water industry and regulators have developed an agreed set of procedures for this assessment. Climate change has been incorporated into these procedures since the late 1990s, although has been included increasingly seriously over time and it has been an effective legal requirement to consider climate change since the 2003 Water Act. In the most recent assessment in 2009, companies were required explicitly to plan for a defined amount of climate change, taking into account climate change uncertainty. A “medium” climate change scenario was defined, together with “wet” and “dry” extremes, based on scenarios developed from a number of climate models. The water industry and its regulators are now gearing up to exploit the new UKCP09 probabilistic climate change projections – but these pose significant practical and conceptual challenges. This paper outlines how the procedures for incorporating climate change information into water resources planning have evolved, and explores the issues currently facing the industry in adapting to climate change.