Managing Protected Areas Under Climate Change: Challenges and Priorities

The implementation of adaptation actions in local conservation management is a new and complex task with multiple facets, influenced by factors differing from site to site. A transdisciplinary perspective is therefore required to identify and implement effective solutions. To address this, the International Conference on Managing Protected Areas under Climate Change brought together international scientists, conservation managers, and decision-makers to discuss current experiences with local adaptation of conservation management. This paper summarizes the main issues for implementing adaptation that emerged from the conference. These include a series of conclusions and recommendations on monitoring, sensitivity assessment, current and future management practices, and legal and policy aspects. A range of spatial and temporal scales must be considered in the implementation of climate-adapted management. The adaptation process must be area-specific and consider the ecosystem and the social and economic conditions within and beyond protected area boundaries. However, a strategic overview is also needed: management at each site should be informed by conservation priorities and likely impacts of climate change at regional or even wider scales. Acting across these levels will be a long and continuous process, requiring coordination with actors outside the “traditional” conservation sector. To achieve this, a range of research, communication, and policy/legal actions is required. We identify a series of important actions that need to be taken at different scales to enable managers of protected sites to adapt successfully to a changing climate.     

Climate Change Adaptation Among Tibetan Pastoralists: Challenges in Enhancing Local Adaptation Through Policy Support

While researchers are aware that a mix of Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK), community-based resource management institutions, and higher-level institutions and policies can facilitate pastoralists' adaptation to climate change, policy makers have been slow to understand these linkages. Two critical issues are to what extent these factors play a role, and how to enhance local adaptation through government support. We investigated these issues through a case study of two pastoral communities on the Tibetan Plateau in China employing an analytical framework to understand local climate adaptation processes. We concluded that LEK and community-based institutions improve adaptation outcomes for Tibetan pastoralists through shaping and mobilizing resource availability to reduce risks. Higher-level institutions and policies contribute by providing resources from outside communities. There are dynamic interrelationships among these factors that can lead to support, conflict, and fragmentation. Government policy could enhance local adaptation through improvement of supportive relationships among these factors. While central government policies allow only limited room for overt integration of local knowledge/institutions, local governments often have some flexibility to buffer conflicts. In addition, government policies to support market-based economic development have greatly benefited adaptation outcomes for pastoralists. Overall, in China, there are still questions over how to create innovative institutions that blend LEK and community-based institutions with government policy making.     

Universities and Climate Change Mitigation: Advancing Grassroots Climate Policy in the US

While US climate change mitigation policy has stalled at the national level, local and regional actors are increasingly taking progressive steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Universities are poised to play a key role in this grassroots effort by targeting their own emissions and by working with other local actors to develop climate change mitigation programmes. Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University have collaborated with university administrators and personnel to inventory campus emissions and develop mitigation strategies. In addition, they have facilitated a stakeholder-driven climate change mitigation project in one Pennsylvania county and started an ongoing service-learning project aimed at reducing emissions in another county. These campus and community outreach initiatives demonstrate that university-based mitigation action may simultaneously achieve tangible local benefits and develop solutions to broader challenges facing local climate change mitigation efforts. Outcomes include improved tools and protocols for measuring and reducing local emissions, lessons learned about service-learning approaches to climate change mitigation, and methods for creating climate change governance networks involving universities, local governments and community stakeholders.     

Universities and Climate Change Mitigation: Advancing Grassroots Climate Policy in the US

Abstract

While US climate change mitigation policy has stalled at the national level, local and regional actors are increasingly taking progressive steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Universities are poised to play a key role in this grassroots effort by targeting their own emissions and by working with other local actors to develop climate change mitigation programmes. Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University have collaborated with university administrators and personnel to inventory campus emissions and develop mitigation strategies. In addition, they have facilitated a stakeholder-driven climate change mitigation project in one Pennsylvania county and started an ongoing service-learning project aimed at reducing emissions in another county. These campus and community outreach initiatives demonstrate that university-based mitigation action may simultaneously achieve tangible local benefits and develop solutions to broader challenges facing local climate change mitigation efforts. Outcomes include improved tools and protocols for measuring and reducing local emissions, lessons learned about service-learning approaches to climate change mitigation, and methods for creating climate change governance networks involving universities, local governments and community stakeholders.     

A Semiotic Approach to Food and Ethics in Everyday Life

The aim of this paper is to explore how food can be analyzed in terms of signs and codes of everyday life, and especially how food can be used to express ethical concerns. The paper investigates the potential of a semiotic conceptual analysis: How can the semiotic approach be used to analyze expressions of ethics and food ethics in everyday life? The intention is to explore from a theoretical point of view and with constructed cases, how semiotics can be used to analyze the role of food as an expression of ethics in everyday life among families, friends, and colleagues: How do foodstuffs function as signs of ethics in everyday life? How is food used to send signals about care and concern? How are the signs of food ethics perceived? It is concluded that analyzing ethical considerations with respect to food with the help of the semiotic model can show us perspectives that otherwise would be difficult to see and thus we can address everyday food ethical issues that otherwise might not be noted. The semiotic approach to food ethics in everyday life is a conceptual framework that can be used to draw attention to certain domains and fields of food ethical behavior that otherwise would tend to remain implicit and unspoken.     

The Price of Responsibility: Ethics of Animal Husbandry in a Time of Climate Change

This paper examines the challenges that climate change raises for animal agriculture and discusses the contributions that may come from a virtue ethics based approach. Two scenarios of the future role of animals in farming are set forth and discussed in terms of their ethical implications. The paper argues that when trying to tackle both climate and animal welfare issues in farming, proposals that call for a reorientation of our ethics and technology must first and foremost consider the values that drive current livestock production. This paper sets forth and discusses the broader societal values implicit in livestock production. We suggest that a virtues approach would improve our thinking and practice regarding animal agriculture, facilitating a move from livestock production to animal husbandry. This change in animal agriculture in a time of climate change would stress virtues such as attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness as central elements in any mitigation or adaptation program.     

Constrained Choice and Climate Change Mitigation in US Agriculture: Structural Barriers to a Climate Change Ethic

This paper examines structural barriers to the adoption of climate change mitigation practices and the evolution of a climate change ethic among American farmers. It examines how seed corn contracts in Michigan constrain the choices of farmers and allow farmers to rationalize the over-application of fertilizer and associated water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Seed corn contracts use a competitive “tournament” system where farmers are rewarded for maximizing yields. Interviews and a focus group were used to understand fertilizer over-application and barriers to participating in a climate change mitigation program. Results indicate that farmers agree that they over-apply fertilizer but would be unlikely to participate in a mitigation program due to their contracts and lack of support from seed corn companies. Because only a few companies control access to the seed corn market, farmers feel they have few choices. Farmers rationalized their practices as their only option given the competitive nature of their contracts and blamed other sources of pollution. Despite increasing efforts to educate farmers about climate change, structural barriers will continue to constrain participation in mitigation efforts and the development of a climate change ethic.     

The Ethics of Assisted Colonization in the Age of Anthropogenic Climate Change

This paper examines an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant as the pressures of a warming planet, changing climate and changing ecosystems ramp up. The broad context for the paper is the intragenerational, intergenerational, and interspecies equity implications of changing the climate and the value orientations of adapting to such change. In addition, the need to stabilize the planetary climate by urgent mitigation of change factors is a foundational ethical assumption. In order to avoid further animal and plant extinctions, or at the very least, their increased vulnerability to becoming rare and endangered; the systematic assisted colonization of “at risk” species is being seriously considered by scientists and managers of biodiversity. The more practical aspects of assisted colonization have been covered in the conservation biology literature; however, the ethical implications of such actions have not been extensively examined. Our discussion of the value issues, using a novel case study approach, will rectify the limited ethical analysis of the issue of assisted colonization of species in the face of climate change pressures. Beyond sustainability ethics, both animal and environmental ethical approaches will be used and intrinsic versus instrumental value orientations in the literature shall form the basis of our discussion. After the application of all the ethical approaches to the case studies, we conclude that without mitigation and the prospect of a future stable climate, assisted colonization will be involved in an inherently unethical process and a “move and lose it” outcome. With mitigation, there is wide-ranging ethical support for assisted colonization.     

东北地区典型农区土地利用变化对农业扩张和气候变化的响应研究

大规模的农业扩张和全球气候变化导致东北地区发生剧烈的土地利用/土地覆盖变化。本研究分析了研究区1976—2008年的土地利用变化和生长季各月气温的变化趋势,并结合农业扩张程度,探究LUCC对农业扩张和气候变化的响应,为指导农业发展规划和保障国家粮食安全提供理论依据。结果表明,1976—2008年农田面积逐步增加,生长季气温一直呈上升趋势。1976—2001年生长季气温的上升趋势不稳定,气温变化程度较大;2001—2008年,农业扩张放缓,生长季气温上升趋势显著,且上升趋势一直增加,气温变化比上一时期更稳定;且这两个时期农业扩张和气候变化对土地利用强度的影响在南北和东西方向上均存在明显差异。     

A Precautionary Approach to Genetically Modified Organisms: Challenges and Implications for Policy and Science

The commercial introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has revealed a broad range of views among scientists and other stakeholders on perspectives of genetic engineering (GE) and if and how GMOs should be regulated. Within this controversy, the precautionary principle has become a contentious issue with high support from skeptical groups but resisted by GMO advocates. How to handle lack of scientific understanding and scientific disagreement are core issues within these debates. This article examines some of the key issues affecting precaution as a legal standard and as an approach to the use of science in decision-making processes. It is pointed out that there is a need for reflection over the level of scientific evidence required for applying the precautionary principle as well as who should have the burden of proof when there are uncertainties. Further, an awareness of the broader scientific uncertainties found in GMO risk assessment implies that a precautionary approach must be elaborated: both for acknowledging uncertainties and for identification of scientific responses. Since precaution is an important issue within the sustainable development framework, it is suggested that sustainability can provide a normative standard that can help to reveal the influence and negotiate the importance of the various forms of uncertainty. Wise management of uncertainties and inclusion of normative aspects in risk assessment and management may help to ensure sustainable and socially robust GMO innovations at present and in the future.     

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.     

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.     

Changing Climate,Challenging Choices: Identifying and Evaluating Climate Change Adaptation Options for Protected Areas Management in Ontario,Canada

Climate change will pose increasingly significant challenges to managers of parks and other forms of protected areas around the world. Over the past two decades, numerous scientific publications have identified potential adaptations, but their suitability from legal, policy, financial, internal capacity, and other management perspectives has not been evaluated for any protected area agency or organization. In this study, a panel of protected area experts applied a Policy Delphi methodology to identify and evaluate climate change adaptation options across the primary management areas of a protected area agency in Canada. The panel identified and evaluated one hundred and sixty five (165) adaptation options for their perceived desirability and feasibility. While the results revealed a high level of agreement with respect to the desirability of adaptation options and a moderate level of capacity pertaining to policy formulation and management direction, a perception of low capacity for implementation in most other program areas was identified. A separate panel of senior park agency decision-makers used a multiple criterion decision-facilitation matrix to further evaluate the institutional feasibility of the 56 most desirable adaptation options identified by the initial expert panel and to prioritize them for consideration in a climate change action plan. Critically, only two of the 56 adaptation options evaluated by senior decision-makers were deemed definitely implementable, due largely to fiscal and internal capacity limitations. These challenges are common to protected area agencies in developed countries and pervade those in developing countries, revealing that limited adaptive capacity represents a substantive barrier to biodiversity conservation and other protected area management objectives in an era of rapid climate change.     

Food Security in the Face of Climate Change,Population Growth,and Resource Constraints: Implications for Bangladesh

Ensuring food security has been one of the major national priorities of Bangladesh since its independence in 1971. Now, this national priority is facing new challenges from the possible impacts of climate change in addition to the already existing threats from rapid population growth, declining availability of cultivable land, and inadequate access to water in the dry season. In this backdrop, this paper has examined the nature and magnitude of these threats for the benchmark years of 2030 and 2050. It has been shown that the overall impact of climate change on the production of food grains in Bangladesh would probably be small in 2030. This is due to the strong positive impact of CO₂ fertilization that would compensate for the negative impacts of higher temperature and sea level rise. In 2050, the negative impacts of climate change might become noticeable: production of rice and wheat might drop by 8% and 32%, respectively. However, rice would be less affected by climate change compared to wheat, which is more sensitive to a change in temperature. Based on the population projections and analysis of future agronomic innovations, this study further shows that the availability of cultivable land alone would not be a constraint for achieving food self-sufficiency, provided that the productivity of rice and wheat grows at a rate of 10% or more per decade. However, the situation would be more critical in terms of water availability. If the dry season water availability does not decline from the 1990 level of about 100 Bm³, there would be just enough water in 2030 for meeting both the agricultural and nonagricultural needs. In 2050, the demand for irrigation water to maintain food self-sufficiency would be about 40% to 50% of the dry season water availability. Meeting such a high agricultural water demand might cause significant negative impacts on the domestic and commercial water supply, fisheries, ecosystems, navigation, and salinity management.     

Population,Development, and Waste Management in Botswana: Conceptual and Policy Implications for Climate Change

Based on government and other relevant documentation, this paper explores the conceptual linkage between population, development, and waste management in Botswana and the implications of this relationship for global climate change. Population is increasing, albeit at a decreasing rate. Spatially, the population is becoming more and more concentrated as the rates and level of urbanization increase. Economic growth has remained consistently high. The combined effect of population dynamics and economic development are having a noticeable imprint on the environment in the form of increased waste generation. Poor waste management poses a real threat to environmental sustainability in general and climate change in particular because of inadequate technology, weak institutional mechanisms to enforce regulations, and low levels of sensitization among the public to deal with the problem. Mitigation measures are suggested to minimize the negative effects of waste management on climate change.     

全球气候治理背景下中国气候金融发展的挑战和应对

气候金融是全球气候治理的重要基础和关键要素。国际政治局势的变动和《巴黎协定》的签订使得全球气候治理格局发生了重大转变。文章基于这一时代背景和国际气候金融发展趋势,从气候金融政策发展、气候金融机构及其产品和服务、气候金融风险管理三个角度梳理中国气候金融发展现状和内外部障碍。基于此,文章提出了气候金融发展的中国应对策略,认为应健全政策体系,加强国际合作;扩大金融供给,完善行业体系;健全法规约束,提升管理水平。     

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in the Land Use Sector: From Complementarity to Synergy

Currently, mitigation and adaptation measures are handled separately, due to differences in priorities for the measures and segregated planning and implementation policies at international and national levels. There is a growing argument that synergistic approaches to adaptation and mitigation could bring substantial benefits at multiple scales in the land use sector. Nonetheless, efforts to implement synergies between adaptation and mitigation measures are rare due to the weak conceptual framing of the approach and constraining policy issues. In this paper, we explore the attributes of synergy and the necessary enabling conditions and discuss, as an example, experience with the Ngitili system in Tanzania that serves both adaptation and mitigation functions. An in-depth look into the current practices suggests that more emphasis is laid on complementarity—i.e., mitigation projects providing adaptation co-benefits and vice versa rather than on synergy. Unlike complementarity, synergy should emphasize functionally sustainable landscape systems in which adaptation and mitigation are optimized as part of multiple functions. We argue that the current practice of seeking co-benefits (complementarity) is a necessary but insufficient step toward addressing synergy. Moving forward from complementarity will require a paradigm shift from current compartmentalization between mitigation and adaptation to systems thinking at landscape scale. However, enabling policy, institutional, and investment conditions need to be developed at global, national, and local levels to achieve synergistic goals.     

From Environmental Ethics to Nature Conservation Policy: Natura 2000 and the Burden of Proof

Natura 2000 is a network of natural sites whose aim is to preserve species and habitats of relevance in the European Union. The policy underlying Natura 2000 has faced widespread opposition from land users and received extensive support from environmentalists. This paper addresses the ethical framework for Natura 2000 and the probable moral assumptions of its main stakeholders. Arguments for and against Natura 2000 were analyzed and classified according to “strong” or “weak” versions of the three main theories of environmental ethics – anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Weak (intergenerational) anthropocentrism was found to underlie the Natura 2000 network itself and the positions of environmentalists, while strong (traditional) anthropocentrism pervaded the positions of economic developers. Land users seemed to fall somewhere between weak and strong anthropocentrism. The paper discusses the relation between ethics and different attitudes towards Natura 2000, highlighting some of the implications for the network’s ongoing implementation. It is shown that Natura 2000 achieves a strong reversal of the burden of proof from conservation to economic development and land use change under anthropocentrism. It is argued that the alleged theoretical divide between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism in relation to the burden of proof does not seem to hold in practice. Finally, it is predicted that the weak versions of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism, are likely to converge extensively in respect to nature conservation policy measures.“Charting the depths of law and policy disputes yield an understanding of ethical differences.” Paul B. Thompson (2002, p. 189).