Management strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on sea turtle’s terrestrial reproductive phase

Climate change poses a serious threat to sea turtles (Cheloniidae) as their terrestrial reproductive phase is only successful within a limited range of environmental and physical conditions. These conditions are likely to become less optimal as climate change progresses. To date, management and conservation of sea turtles has focused almost entirely on non-climatic stressors, due at least in part to practitioners not knowing what strategies to take and the feasibility and risks of potential strategies. To aid the management of sea turtles in a changing environment, we identified management strategies via a focus workshop and surveys to mitigate the impacts of climate change to the terrestrial reproductive phase of sea turtles. The effectiveness, ecological risks and potential social and logistical constraints associated with implementing each of the identified management strategies is discussed. Twenty management strategies were identified; strategies varied from habitat protection to more active and direct manipulation of nests and the nesting environment. Based on our results, we suggest a three-pronged approach to sea turtle conservation in light of climate change, where managers and researchers should: 1) enhance sea turtle resilience to climate change by mitigating other threats; 2) prioritise implementing the ‘no regret’ and ‘reversible’ management strategies identified here; and 3) fill the knowledge gaps identified to aid the trial and implementation of the potential strategies identified here. By combining these three approaches our collective toolkit of sea turtle management strategies will expand, giving us an array of viable approaches to implement as climate change impacts become more extreme.     

Contribution of industrial and developing countries to the atmospheric CO2 concentrations: — impact of the Kyoto protocol

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto protocol made under the Convention, aim at controlling the greenhouse gas emissions and their concentrations in the atmosphere. The contributions of fossil fuel use in industrial and developing countries to the atmospheric CO₂ concentration are calculated using estimates for emission developments and a simple carbon cycle model. The contribution of the industrial countries to the CO₂ concentration increase, above the preindustrial level, is estimated to be about 50 ppm in 1990 if only the emissions from fossil fuels are considered. The contribution from developing countries is about 15 ppm. The contribution from industrial countries would increase by about 20 ppm between 1990 and 2010 if no emission reductions were assumed and by about 15 ppm in the considered rather strict reduction scenario. According to the Kyoto protocol the emissions from industrial countries should be reduced by 5.2% from the 1990 level in about 20 years. This development of the emissions would cause a concentration increase of 18 ppm. The concentration increase due to developing countries between 1990 and 2010 would be about 15 ppm. In order that the present global increase rate of CO₂ concentration 1.5 ppm/a would not be exceeded, steeper reductions than those made in Kyoto should be agreed. Increasing global emissions and slow removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere makes it difficult to reach the ultimate objective of the Climate Convention, the stabilisation of the atmospheric concentration.     

The impact on food security and future adaptation under climate variation: a case study of Taiwan’s agriculture and fisheries

According to Food and Agriculture Organization and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, climate change will lead to a severe food-supply problem. In the future, food production will continually decrease because of aggravated effects of climate change, causing food production to continually decrease. Food production will be unable to satisfy the demand of the global population, leading to a food-security crisis. As the world population continues to increase, the shortage of food will become increasingly severe, particularly for those located in “climate impact hotspots” of tropical, subtropical, small-island countries, and countries that are dependent on imports to meet domestic demand such as Taiwan. Numerous Taiwanese studies have suggested that agricultural and fishery productivity has declined because of climate variation, which may cause changes and instability in food quantity and quality, and increase deficiency and uncertainty in the food supply. Therefore, to discuss the risks posed by climate change to the stability of food supply and demand, this paper, taking Taiwan as a case, explored the impact of climate variation on food security and future adaptation strategies. TaiCCAT’s supportive system for decision-making (TSSDA) was adopted here to assess and analyze the current situations of agricultural and fisheries production and supply, as well as future food supply risks, in addition to evaluating the deficiencies in the existing climate adaptation strategies in order to plan and revise feasible future adaptation alternatives. Based on the rule of risk management, the adaptation strategies recommended in this study were differentiated into two categories: proactive adaptation and planned adaptation. Proactive adaptation is emphasized to counter the uncertainty of food production, which increases the difficulty of production and necessity to import food. Conversely, planned adaptation can be used to manage the uncertainty of food supply to implement adjustments in production and marketing, as well as to mitigate the impact of climate variation.     

Correction to: Assessing local climate vulnerability and winegrowers’ adaptive processes in the context of climate change

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change - Section 3.4.2: Reference “Nicholas and Durham 2012” should have been cited in the last sentence. That is “Using a list of...     

Assessing local climate vulnerability and winegrowers’ adaptive processes in the context of climate change

Adaptation to climate change is a major challenge facing the viticulture sector. Temporally, adaptation strategies and policies have to address potential impacts in both the short- and long term, whereas spatially, place-based and context-specific adaptations are essential. To help inform decision-making on climate change adaptation, this study adopted a bottom-up approach to assess local climate vulnerability and winegrowers’ adaptive processes in two regulated wine-producing areas in the Anjou-Saumur wine growing sub-region, France. The data used for this study were collected through individual semi-structured interviews with 30 winegrowers. With a focus on wine quality, climate-related exposure, and sensitivity were dependent on many contextual factors (e.g., northern geographical position, wine regulatory frameworks, local environmental features) interacting with the regional oceanic climate. Climate and other non-climate-related variables brought about important changes in winegrowers’ management practices, varying in time and space. This ongoing process in decision-making enhanced winegrowers’ adaptive responses, which were primarily reactive (e.g., harvesting, winemaking) or anticipatory (e.g., canopy and soil management) to short-term climate conditions. Winegrowers described changing trends in climate- and grapevine (Vitis) -related variables, with the latter attributed to regional climate changes and evolving management practices. Regarding future climate trends, winegrowers’ displayed great uncertainty, placing the most urgent adaptation priority on short-term strategies, while changing grapevine varieties and using irrigation were identified as last resort strategies. The study concluded by discussing the implications of these findings in the context of climate change adaptation in viticulture.     

Unilateral Clean Development Mechanism – An approach for a least developed country?: The case of Yemen

Decision parameters prevailing in the market lead to a slim expression of interest of foreign investors for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in a bi- or multilateral design in Yemen. The Designated National Authority Secretariat in Yemen experiences the preference of Annex I entities of merely buying Certified Emission Reductions rather than investing in projects. Yemen's ability, like many least developed countries, to carry out unilateral CDM projects is moderate. Domestic project developers perceive difficulties in procuring underlying finance as key barrier in materializing CDM project activities in a unilateral design. The country remains trapped in a “catch 22 situation”. International assistance through low interest loans and capacity building for domestic financial institutions tailored to CDM project activities may trigger the market. Aggravation can be assisted by amending the policies of Annex I countries, in consequence to allocate a substantial share of their procurement activities to Certified Emission Reductions from least developed countries. Acquisition programmes may give preference to projects from host countries not traditionally represented in the pool of attractive CDM destinations.     

Article 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol: consequences for industrialised countries’ commitment,the monitoring needs,and possible side effects

In the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries have agreed to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. To achieve that target, direct human induced activities initiated in the Land-use Change and Forestry sector since 1990, shall be included. However, the wording in the Protocol has caused confusion. The IPCC has been requested to deliver a Special Report on Land-use, Land-use Change and Forestry issues arising from this Protocol. In the present study a limited initial assessment of the implications of alternative interpretations of Afforestation, Reforestation and Deforestation (ARD), addition of the soils compartment, the selection of additional activities, and feasibility of monitoring was done for a limited number of countries.The results show that it is possible to keep the biosphere articles in the Protocol even though we had to make several assumptions concerning for example, areas of application and effectiveness of additional activities. The consequences of alternative interpretations for ARD have a large impact on the countries’ assigned amount; varying from a compensation of 26% of total national emissions (Forestry interpretation for Sweden) to an addition of an extra 13% of the emissions (Global interpretation for Australia). Through selection of a large set of additional activities, most of the studied industrialised countries achieve more sequestration than the reduction of emissions they have committed themselves to. Methods for monitoring are available, but there is no one ideal method. Depending on scale and site: a combination of forest inventory with flux measurements and remote sensing is proposed.     

Indigenous culture and adaptation to climate change: sockeye salmon and the St’át’imc people

This paper provides a culturally-informed understanding of the impacts of climate change on a highly important subsistence activity that has been practiced by First Nations of central British Columbia for thousands of years. The paper begins with a review of the science regarding sockeye salmon and climate change. It discusses harvest patterns, and how the timing of runs has changed. A survey was conducted by the first author regarding St’át’imc traditional fishing at a historic site on the Fraser River, in 2005. The results show that the impacts of climate change are apparent to those conducting traditional fishing practices, in terms of changed timing and abundance of salmon runs. These perceptions fit closely with the information available from scientists and management agencies. These changes are highly problematic for the St’át’imc, in that the preservation method (drying) is tied to seasonal weather patterns. The whole cultural setting, and the relevance of salmon for subsistence would be highly altered by climate change that leads to changes in the timing and abundance of sockeye salmon. The paper discusses mitigation and adaptation alternatives, but also indicates the scope of these seem limited, given the resource systems and the context of these activities.     

Contribution of different sectors to developed countries’ fulfillment of GHG emission reduction targets under the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol

Greenhouse gas (GHG) data submitted in April 2014 on land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), energy, industrial processes, solvents and other product use, agriculture, and waste for 37 developed countries was analyzed to estimate the relative contributions of different sectors to GHG emission reductions. This GHG data from the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol included 35 parties to Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol, the United States and Canada. Results show that the contribution of each sector was, in order: energy (36.9%), industrial processes (12.4%), agriculture (9.9%), LULUCF (7.7%), waste (3.4%), and solvents and other product use (0.1%). The average proportion of base year emissions reduced in each sector by countries in Annex B was, in order: energy (7.4%), agriculture (2.7%), LULUCF (1.9%), industrial processes (1.2%), waste (0.5%), and solvents and other product use (0.1%). Overall, the energy sector contributed the highest GHG emission reductions, while the agriculture and LULUCF sectors also made contributions. Most countries achieved limited absolute GHG reductions from their chosen LULUCF activities, but the relative contribution of GHG emission reductions from LULUCF was significant but small. This suggests that, unless there are substantial changes to accounting rules, future emission reductions will mainly result from mitigation actions targeting fossil fuel consumption, while the agriculture and LULUCF sectors will continue to play auxiliary roles.     

Health officials’ perceptions of and preparedness for the impacts of climate variability on human health in the Somali region of Ethiopia

A proactive strategy to respond effectively to health impacts related to climate variability, particularly within vulnerable populations, is of vital importance. Such a strategy can be attained if health officials have a deep understanding of how climate variability affects human health and if the resources available for the health care sector are sufficient. This study assessed the perceptions and preparedness of health officials toward climate variability and health impacts in the Somali region of Ethiopia. The resources available for the health care sector were also assessed. The results show that approximately 80% of health officials were aware of the relationship between climate variability and human health impacts, but the majority of them were unable to project the future trend of related health problems in the region. The results also show an inadequate availability of health care resources, particularly in regards to infrastructure, numbers of health professionals, and training on climate variability and health. The results further revealed problems with poor living conditions, such as access to sanitation and safe water, for the majority of people in the study area. Climate variability is thus one of the many factors exacerbating the increasing trend of human health problems in the Somali region. Besides improving training to increase health officials’ knowledge of climate variability and human health impacts, the government should also address other factors that currently hinder a successful response to increasing disease prevalence.     

Policy-induced innovations networks on climate change adaptation – An ex-post analysis of collaboration success and its influencing factors

This study is about 16 policy-induced innovation networks on climate change adaptation, i.e., subsidised multi-actor networks that are initiated by research institutes and formed around a particular real-life problem aiming at joint development, test, and implement adaptation measures. The political-administrative context is Germany, and the institutional context is a joint research framework in which each network works independently on a particular topic, but remains bound to the principle of practical and solution-oriented research carried out in close partnership between scientific and extra-scientific actors. Our objective is to provide empirical insights into the processes and outcomes of such networks and to systematically analyse the networks’ collaboration success and its influencing factors. To this end, collaboration success is operationalised as a three-dimensional metric including (1) the practitioners’ satisfaction with the cooperation, (2) their perceived learning effects, and (3) their perceived implementation capacity. Results show a decreasing level of success throughout the three dimensions and particularly a gap between knowledge acquisition and learning on the one hand and implementation, i.e., transforming the knowledge into action, on the other. While the positive relationship between these dimensions is confirmed, results of correlation analysis highlight the importance of repeated participation, appropriate information management, and inclusive as well as responsive network practices. We discuss the results against our existing knowledge on multi-actor collaborative research and deduce (methodological) lessons learnt as well as future research needs.     

Kinetics for the reaction of hydroxyl radicals with CH_3Br and its implications in the atmosphere

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The vulnerability of Australian rural communities to climate variability and change: Part I—Conceptualising and measuring vulnerability

Vulnerability is a term frequently used to describe the potential threat to rural communities posed by climate variability and change. Despite growing use of the term, analytical measures of vulnerability that are useful for prioritising and evaluating policy responses are yet to evolve. Demand for research capable of prioritising adaptation responses has evolved rapidly with an increasing awareness of climate change and its potential impacts on rural communities. Research into the climate-related vulnerability of Australian rural communities is only just beginning to emerge. Current research is dominated by hazard/impact modelling, drawing on a heritage of managing the risks posed by seasonal climate variability. There is a natural tendency to use the same risk management approach to understand the emergent nature of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore the consequences for policy advice of imperfectly examining vulnerability through the lens of an impact/hazard modelling approach to risk management. In a second paper in this series, we show how hazard/impact modelling can be complemented with more holistic measures of adaptive capacity to provide quantitative insights into the vulnerability of Australian rural communities to climate variability and change.     

How does climate change adaptation affect public budgets? Development of an assessment framework and a demonstration for Austria

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change - Public adaptation to climate change affects government budgets directly on the expenditure side, but also indirectly via changes in the tax...     

Impacts of climate change and CO2 increase on agricultural production and adaptation options for Southern Québec, Canada

This study involves the assessment of the potential impacts of greenhouse gas climate change and changing ambient carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels on crop yields in Quebec, Canada. The methodology involves coupling the transient diagnostics of two Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models, namely the Canadian CGCM1 and the British HadCM3, to the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) 3.5 crop models to simulate current (1961–1990) and future (2040–2069) crop yields and changes. This is done for four different crop species, namely spring wheat, maize, soybean, and potato, and for seven agricultural regions of Southern Quebec. The results of this study focus on the main causative factors influencing crop yields, namely the direct CO₂ fertilization effect, the influence of the increase in growing season temperature, including optimal thermal conditions and acceleration in crop maturation, soil moisture availability, as influenced by precipitation and evapotranspiration, and nitrogen uptake by crops. Our results show that crop yield changes may vary according to climate scenario, crop species, and agricultural region. Consistent with other similar research, it would seem that these multiple causative factors very often seem to cancel each other out and dilute the impacts of climate change on crop yields.     

The impact of the gulf war on the Arabian environment—I. Particulate pollution and reduction of solar irradiance

This paper investigates some of the air pollution problems which have been created as a result of the Gulf war in early 1991. Temporary periods of increased dust storm activity have been observed in Saudi Arabia. This is presumably due to disturbance of the desert surface by the extremely large number of tanks and other war machines before and during the war. The concentrations of inhalable dust particles (<15 μm) increased during the months just after the war by a factor of about 1.5 of their values during the same months of the previous year, 1990.The total horizontal solar energy flux in Riyadh has been significantly reduced during dry days with no clouds. This is attributed to the presence of soot particles, which have been generated at an extremely high rate from the fired oil fields in Kuwait.The direct normal solar insolation were also measured at the photovoltaic solar power plant in Riyadh during these days and significant reductions were observed due to the effective absorption of solar radiation by soot particles. The generated power from the plant has been reduced during days with a polluted atmosphere by about 50–80% of the expected value for such days, if the atmosphere were dry and clear.     

The vulnerability of Australian rural communities to climate variability and change: Part II—Integrating impacts with adaptive capacity

In the first paper in this series [Nelson, R., Kokic, P., Crimp, S., Martin, P., Meinke, H., Howden, S.M. (2010, this issue)], we concluded that hazard/impact modelling needs to be integrated with holistic measures of adaptive capacity in order to provide policy-relevant insights into the multiple and emergent dimensions of vulnerability. In this paper, we combine hazard/impact modelling with an holistic measure of adaptive capacity to analyse the vulnerability of Australian rural communities to climate variability and change. Bioeconomic modelling was used to model the exposure and sensitivity of Australian rural communities to climate variability and change. Rural livelihoods analysis was used as a conceptual framework to construct a composite index of adaptive capacity using farm survey data. We then show how this integrated measure of vulnerability provides policy-relevant insights into the constraints and options for building adaptive capacity in rural communities. In the process, we show that relying on hazard/impact modelling alone can lead to entirely erroneous conclusions about the vulnerability of rural communities, with potential to significantly misdirect policy intervention. We provide a preliminary assessment of which Australian rural communities are vulnerable to climate variability and change, and reveal a complex set of interacting environmental, economic and social factors contributing to vulnerability.     

CO2-emission reduction in China’s residential building sector and contribution to the national climate change mitigation targets in 2020

Between 1980 and 2007, in the Chinese building sector in urban and rural areas, coal was mainly substituted with electricity and natural gas. Growing income will further increase energy consumption and CO₂-emissions in the building sector. Using an econometric model, disaggregated energy demand and related CO₂-emissions in the residential sector as well for the whole economy are estimated and forecasted until 2050. In 2009, the Chinese government pledged itself to reduce CO₂-intensity by 40%?C45% in 2020 compared to 2005. Aim of this article is to assess to which extent the measures in the building sector in China can contribute to this target. Main results of the analysis are: (a) The primary energy source coal was mainly substituted by electricity generated with coal. Apart from convenience gains, the environmental advantages are questionable. (b) Between 2010 and 2050, energy demand in the building sector will grow by 2.0%?C4.1% per annum leading to CO₂-emissions at least almost tripling from about 560 mill. tons in 2010 to about 1,500 mill. tons in 2050. (c) The energy efficiency gains in the building sector and other sectors of the Chinese economy, however, are not enough to fulfill the national CO₂-intensity targets. The reduction of the CO₂-intensity of GDP would be 37.2% in the BAU-scenario, and 31.9% in the LOW-scenario. Only in the HIGH-scenario (46.3%), the economy is growing efficient enough relative to the induced CO₂-emissions. The remaining CO2-emission reductions could be gained by additional promotion of renewable energies (mainly solar and geo-thermal) in the building sector.