适应气候变化是当务之急

地球气候变化既有自然因素又有人为因素,全球变暖主要原因是人类活动温室气体排放过度。因此,在应对气候变化问题上,人们对减排温室气高度重视是理所当然,而长期以来对＂适应气候变化＂却有所忽视。其实,对发展中国家《适应气候变化》才是当务之急。本文在＂发展低碳经济,应对全球变暖＂减排二氧化碳温室气体的基础上,论述适应气候变化的迫切性和基本途径。     

Managing climate change risks in New York City’s water system: assessment and adaptation planning

Managing risk by adapting long-lived infrastructure to the effects of climate change must become a regular part of planning for water supply, sewer, wastewater treatment, and other urban infrastructure during this century. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP), the agency responsible for managing New York City’s (NYC) water supply, sewer, and wastewater treatment systems, has developed a climate risk management framework through its Climate Change Task Force, a government-university collaborative effort. Its purpose is to ensure that NYCDEP’s strategic and capital planning take into account the potential risks of climate change—sea-level rise, higher temperature, increases in extreme events, changes in drought and flood frequency and intensity, and changing precipitation patterns—on NYC’s water systems. This approach will enable NYCDEP and other agencies to incorporate adaptations to the risks of climate change into their management, investment, and policy decisions over the long term as a regular part of their planning activities. The framework includes a 9-step Adaptation Assessment procedure. Potential climate change adaptations are divided into management, infrastructure, and policy categories, and are assessed by their relevance in terms of climate change time-frame (immediate, medium, and long term), the capital cycle, costs, and other risks. The approach focuses on the water supply, sewer, and wastewater treatment systems of NYC, but has wide application for other urban areas, especially those in coastal locations.     

Adaptation and mitigation: trade-offs in substance and methods

Adaptation to climate change and mitigation of climate change are policy substitutes, as both reduce the impacts of climate change. Adaptation and mitigation should therefore be analysed together, as they indeed are, albeit in a rudimentary way, in cost-benefit analyses of emission abatement. However, adaptation and mitigation are done by different people operating at different spatial and temporal scales. This hampers analysis of the trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation. An exception is facilitative adaptation (enhancing adaptive capacity), which, like mitigation, requires long-term policies at macro level. Facilitative adaptation and mitigation not only both reduce impacts, but they also compete for resources.     

A decision inventory approach for improving decision support for climate change impact assessment and adaptation

Assessing and adapting to the impacts of climate change requires balancing social, economic, and environmental factors in the context of an ever-expanding range of objectives, uncertainties, and management options. The term decision support describes a diverse class of resources designed to help manage this complexity and assist decision makers in understanding impacts and evaluating management options. Most climate-related decision support resources implicitly assume that decision making is primarily limited by the quantity and quality of available information. However, a wide variety of evidence suggests that institutional, political, and communication processes are also integral to organizational decision making. Decision support resources designed to address these processes are underrepresented in existing tools. These persistent biases in the design and delivery of decision support may undermine efforts to move decision support from research to practice. The development of new approaches to decision support that consider a wider range of relevant issues is limited by the lack of information about the characteristics, context, and alternatives associated with climate-related decisions. We propose a new approach called a decision assessment and decision inventory that will provide systematic information describing the relevant attributes of climate-related decisions. This information can be used to improve the design of decision support resources, as well as to prioritize research and development investments. Application of this approach will help provide more effective decision support based on a balanced foundation of analytical tools, environmental data, and relevant information about decisions and decision makers.     

Scale,context, and decision making in agricultural adaptation to climate variability and change

This work presents a framework for viewing agricultural adaptation, emphasizing the multiple spatial and temporal scales on which individuals and institutions process information on changes in their environment. The framework is offered as a means to gain perspective on the role of climate variability and change in agricultural adaptation, and developed for a case study of Australian agriculture. To study adaptation issues at the scale of individual farms we developed a simple modelling framework. The model highlights the decision making element of adaptation in light of uncertainty, and underscores the importance of decision information related to climate variability. Model results show that the assumption of perfect information for farmers systematically overpredicts adaptive performance. The results also suggest that farmers who make tactical planting decisions on the basis of historical climate information are outperformed by those who use even moderately successful seasonal forecast information. Analysis at continental scales highlights the prominent role of the decline in economic operating conditions on Australian agriculture. Examples from segments of the agricultural industry in Australia are given to illustrate the importance of appropriate scale attribution in adapting to environmental changes. In particular, adaptations oriented toward short time scale changes in the farming environment (droughts, market fluctuations) can be limited in their efficacy by constraints imposed by broad changes in the soil/water base and economic environment occuring over longer time scales. The case study also makes the point that adaptation must be defined in reference to some goal, which is ultimately a social and political exercise. Overall, this study highlights the importance of allowing more complexity (limited information, risk aversion, cross-scale interactions, mis-attribution of cause and effect, background context, identification of goals) in representing adaptation processes in climate change studies.     

Adaptation to changing water resources in the Ganges basin, northern India

An ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) runs from the EU HighNoon project are used to project future air temperatures and precipitation on a 25 km grid for the Ganges basin in northern India, with a view to assessing impact of climate change on water resources and determining what multi-sector adaptation measures and policies might be adopted at different spatial scales.The RCM results suggest an increase in mean annual temperature, averaged over the Ganges basin, in the range 1–4 °C over the period from 2000 to 2050, using the SRES A1B forcing scenario. Projections of precipitation indicate that natural variability dominates the climate change signal and there is considerable uncertainty concerning change in regional annual mean precipitation by 2050. The RCMs do suggest an increase in annual mean precipitation in this region to 2050, but lack significant trend. Glaciers in headwater tributary basins of the Ganges appear to be continuing to decline but it is not clear whether meltwater runoff continues to increase. The predicted changes in precipitation and temperature will probably not lead to significant increase in water availability to 2050, but the timing of runoff from snowmelt will likely occur earlier in spring and summer. Water availability is subject to decadal variability, with much uncertainty in the contribution from climate change.Although global social-economic scenarios show trends to urbanization, locally these trends are less evident and in some districts rural population is increasing. Falling groundwater levels in the Ganges plain may prevent expansion of irrigated areas for food supply. Changes in socio-economic development in combination with projected changes in timing of runoff outside the monsoon period will make difficult choices for water managers.Because of the uncertainty in future water availability trends, decreasing vulnerability by augmenting resilience is the preferred way to adapt to climate change. Adaptive policies are required to increase society's capacity to adapt to both anticipated and unanticipated conditions. Integrated solutions are needed, consistent at various spatial scales, to assure robust and sustainable future use of resources. For water resources this is at the river basin scale. At present adaptation measures in India are planned at national and state level, not taking into account the physical boundaries of water systems. To increase resilience adaptation plans should be made locally specific. However, as it is expected that the partitioning of water over the different sectors and regions will be the biggest constraint, a consistent water use plan at catchment and river basin scale may be the best solution. A policy enabling such river basin planning is essential.     

Adaptation and mitigation as complementary tools for reducing the risk of climate impacts

This paper uses the likelihood of flooding along Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers in India to explore the hypothesis that adaptation and mitigation can be viewed as complements rather than sustitutes. For futures where climate change will produce smooth, monotonic and manageable effects, adopting a mitigation strategy is shown to increase the ability of adaptation to reduce the likelihood of crossing critical threshold of tolerable climate. For futures where climate change will produce variable impacts overtime, though, it is possible that mitigation will make adaptation less productive for some time intervals. In cases of exaggerated climate change, adaptation may fail entirely regardless of how much mitigation is applied. Judging the degree of complementarity is therefore an empirical question because the relative efficacy of adaptation is site specific and path dependent. It follows that delibrations over climate policy should rely more on detailed analyses of how the distributions of possible impacts of climate might change over space and time.

Adaptation pathways in planning for uncertain climate change: Applications in Portugal,the Czech Republic and the Netherlands

Adaptation pathways are developed to design adaptive policies to handle climate change uncertainty. Use of this tool varies across planning practices and adaptation challenges and adjusting the tool to particular practices can foster its adequate use. To gain insight into the use of adaptation pathways, we compared four initiatives (one each in Portugal and the Czech Republic and two in the Netherlands) with regard to design choices made. We found six design choices which need to be considered when adjusting adaptation pathways. Design choices about the geographic scale, inclusion of sectors, the generation and delineation of adaptation options, specification of possible pathways, the related performance metrics and the type of assessment are interdependent, but they are also influenced by contextual aspects. Analysis of the institutional diversity, planning culture and framing shows that the use of adaptation pathways is flexible enough to be adjusted for diverging planning practices. However, the tool is best suited to deliver local adaptation solutions, and adequate use depends on consensus about the adaptation problem, setting objective thresholds and determining uncertainty about future change. We conclude that understanding the customised use of tools for local planning practices is essential for adaptive policy design.     

Livelihoods, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in Morogoro, Tanzania

This article examines farmers’ livelihood responses and vulnerability to climate variability and other stressors in Morogoro, Tanzania, to understand their implications for adaptation to climate change by agricultural households in developing world more generally. In Morogoro, agricultural households have extended cultivation, intensified agriculture, diversified livelihoods and migrated to gain access to land, markets and employment as a response to climatic and other stressors. Some of these responses have depleted and degraded natural resources such as forest, soil and water resources, which will complicate their living with climate change in the future. This will be particularly problematic to vulnerable groups such as women, children and pastoralists who have limited access to employment, markets and public services. In this light, fair adaptation to climate change by agricultural households in Morogoro and elsewhere in developing countries requires several complementary responses. Adaptation efforts should involve effective governance of natural resources because they function as safety nets to vulnerable groups. In addition, strengthening of national markets by infrastructure investments and institutional reforms is needed to give incentives to intensification and diversification in agriculture. Market participation also demands enhancement of human capital by public programs on health, education and wellbeing.     

A discussion of the potential impacts of climate change on the shorelines of the Northeastern USA

An increase in the rate of sea-level rise and potential changes in storminess represent important components of global climate change that will likely affect the extensive coasts of the Northeastern USA. Raising sea level not only increases the likelihood of coastal flooding, but changes the template for waves and tides to sculpt the coast, which can lead to land loss orders of magnitude greater than that from direct inundation alone. There is little question that sea-level rise, and in particular an increased rate of rise, will result in permanent losses of coastal land. However, quantitative predictions of these future coastal change remains difficult due in part to the complexity of coastal systems and the influence of infrequent storm events, and is further confounded by coastal science’s insufficient understanding of the behavior of coastal systems over decadal timescales. Recently, dramatic improvements in technology have greatly improved our capabilities to investigate and characterize processes and sedimentary deposits in the coastal zone, allowing us, for the first time, to address some of the over-arching problems involved in shoreline change. Despite advances in many areas of coastal geology, our fundamental understanding of shoreline change has been limited by a lack of a broad and integrated scientific focus, a lack of resources, and a lack of willingness on the part of policymakers who make crucial decisions about human activity along the coast to support basic research in this area. Although quantitative predictions remain constrained, there remains little doubt that the predicted climates changes will have profound effects upon the Northeastern coast.     

Examining adaptation and mitigation opportunities in the context of the integrated watershed management programme of the Government of India

India occupies 2.4% of the world’s geographical area with a large percentage of its land under agriculture. About 228 Million hectares (Mha) of its geographical area (nearly 69%) fall within the dryland (arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid) region. Of the total cultivated area of 142 Mha, major part of agriculture in the country is rainfed, extending to over 97 Mha and constituting nearly 68% of the net cultivated area, therefore making the agricultural sector vulnerable and exposed to the vagaries of weather conditions. Climate change adds to this dimension of stress. A strong need is felt for targeting programmes in these areas that address issues related to employing suitable soil and water conservation measures. In this context this paper seeks to examine the case for watershed development as an adaptive strategy. An examination of the possibility of fortifying the existing programme with a view to adapting to expected changes in climate in future is undertaken. Also, the possibility of watershed development integrating into a suitable mitigation strategy for the country is assessed.

Adaptation and mitigation strategies in agriculture: an analysis of potential synergies

As climate changes due to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, agriculture will be one of the key human activities affected. Projections show that while overall global food production in the coming decades may keep pace with the food requirements of a growing world population, climate change might worsen existing regional disparities because it will reduce crop yields mostly in lands located at lower latitudes where many developing countries are situated. Strategies to enhance local adaptation capacity are therefore needed to minimize climatic impacts and to maintain regional stability of food production. At the same time, agriculture as a sector offers several opportunities to mitigate the portion of global greenhouse gas emissions that are directly dependent upon land use, land-use change, and land-management techniques. This paper reviews issues of agriculture and climate change, with special attention to adaptation and mitigation. Specifically, as adaptation and mitigation strategies in agriculture are implemented to alleviate the potential negative effects of climate change, key synergies need to be identified, as mitigation practices may compete with modifications to local agricultural practices aimed at maintaining production and income. Under future climate and socio-economic pressures, land managers and farmers will be faced with challenges in regard to selecting those mitigation and adaptation strategies that together meet food, fiber and climate policy requirements.     

Beyond the black box: Forest sector vulnerability assessments and adaptation to climate change in North America

In the wake of the failures to date of well-publicized multilateral and multi-sectoral mitigation efforts to control greenhouse gases, attention is now increasingly focused on the effectiveness and capacity of national and sub-national level sectoral plans, including forestry, to usher in a new era of adaptation efforts. In Canada, the government of British Columbia spent several years developing its Future Forest Ecosystems Initiative as part of a larger climate change response strategy in the forest sector. Similarly, in the United States, wildfire related events have led to climate change inspired efforts by individual states (e.g., Alaska, California) and the US Forest Service has recently undertaken plans to incorporate climate change considerations in national forest planning beginning with the National Road Map for Responding to Climate Change. This paper highlights a number of shortcomings with both these national and sub-national strategies with respect to the relationships existing between governance, forestry and climate change. It proposes incorporating considerations of governance mechanisms directly into forest sector planning and the need to assess not only natural system level changes but also the extent to which new problems can be dealt with by ‘old’ or ‘new’ governance arrangements.     

Climate change adaptation in the ski industry

Regardless of the success of climate change mitigation efforts, the international community has concluded that societies around the world will need to adapt to some magnitude of climate change in the 21st century. While some economic sectors (e.g., agriculture, water resources and construction) have been actively engaged in climate change adaptation research for years, adaptation has received scant consideration within the tourism-recreation industry. This is particularly the case for adaptation by tourism operators (supply-side). One exception where progress on supply-side climate adaptation has been made is the ski industry. This paper provides a brief overview of the literature on the implications of climate change for the international ski industry and how adaptation by ski area operators has been treated within these studies. This is followed by an inventory of climate adaptation practices currently used by ski industry stakeholders, including the historical development of certain key adaptations and constraints to wider use. The characteristics of ski areas with higher adaptive capacity are identified. Considering the highly competitive nature of the ski industry and the generally low climate change risk appraisal within the industry, climate change adaptation is anticipated to remain individualistic and reactive for some time. With only a few exceptions, the existing climate change literature on winter tourism has not considered the wide range of adaptation options identified in this paper and has likely overestimated potential damages. An important task for future studies is to develop methodologies to incorporate adaptation so that a more accurate understanding of the vulnerability of the international ski industry can be ascertained.     

Integrating mitigation and adaptation as responses to climate change: a synthesis

Integrating mitigation and adaptation (M&A) is a practical reality for climate change response policy, despite a range of conceptual and methodological challenges. Based on the papers in this special issue, some preliminary findings about appropriate integrated portfolios are offered, along with several implications for climate policy.     

Fishery livelihoods and adaptation to climate change: a case study of Chilika lagoon, India

Climate change combined with human activities poses significant risks to people’s livelihood especially in developing countries. Adaptation at the community level is of crucial importance in enabling them to respond to the direct and indirect effects of changes in climate. In a case study of fishing communities in Chilika lagoon, India, the focus is made on understanding climate change adaptation at the community level and scaling it up into the policy perspective through application of Sustainable Livelihood Approach. This article challenges the research and policy community to encourage the identification of locally negative constraints and positive strengths toward climate resilient communities in rural areas.

Institutional dynamics and climate change adaptation in South Africa

Climate change is a multi-dimensional issue and in terms of adaptation numerous state and non-state actors are involved from global to national and local scales. The aim of this paper is first to analyse specific institutional networks involved in climate change predominantly at the national level in South Africa and second to determine how different stakeholders perceive their role vis-a-vis climate change adaptation. Within the South African context there is a gap in understanding and evaluating how institutional networks operate and thus the findings of this work may help inform and strengthen such relationships in the future. Results showed that few institutions fully understand the implications of adaptation and their roles and responsibilities have not yet been properly defined. Constraints relating to capacity, lack of awareness and poor information flow need to be addressed. Climate change is perceived as an important issue although problems such as poverty reduction and job creation remain national priorities. Most importantly this research has demonstrated how adaptation challenges the hierarchical manner in which government works and a more collaborative approach to climate change adaptation is needed. Adaptation needs to be mainstreamed and institutional networks need to be strengthened in order for adaptation mechanisms to be effectively implemented.

Understanding barriers to decision making in the UK energy-food-water nexus: The added value of interdisciplinary approaches

The nexus represents a multi-dimensional means of scientific enquiry which seeks to describe the complex and non-linear interactions between water, energy, food, with the climate, and further understand wider implications for society. These resources are fundamental for human life but are negatively affected by shocks such as climate change and characterize some of the main challenges for global sustainable development. Given the multidimensional and complex nature of the nexus, a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge development through co-production is needed to timely and effectively inform the decision making processes to build societal resilience to these shocks going beyond the sectorality of current research practice. The paper presents findings from five themed workshops (shocks and hazards, infrastructure, local economy, governance and governments, finance and insurance) with 80 stakeholders from academia, government and industry in the UK to explore the impact of climate and weather shocks across the energy-food-water nexus and barriers to related responses. The research identified key stakeholders’ concerns, opportunities and barriers to better inform decision making centred on four themes: communication and collaboration, decision making processes, social and cultural dimensions, and the nature of responses to nexus shocks. We discuss implications of these barriers and how addressing these can better facilitate constructive dialogue and more efficient decision-making in response to nexus shocks.     

Adaptation options in agriculture to climate change: a typology

Adaptation in agriculture to climate change is important for impact andvulnerability assessment and for the development of climate change policy. A wide variety of adaptation options has been proposed as having thepotential to reduce vulnerability of agricultural systems to risks related toclimate change, often in an ad hoc fashion. This paper develops atypology of adaptation to systematically classify and characterize agriculturaladaptation options to climate change, drawing primarily on the Canadiansituation. In particular, it differentiates adaptation options in agricultureaccording to the involvement of different agents (producers, industries,governments); the intent, timing and duration of employment of theadaptation; the form and type of the adaptive measure; and the relationshipto processes already in place to cope with risks associated with climatestresses. A synthesis of research on adaptation options in Canadianagriculture identifies four main categories: (i) technological developments,(ii) government programs and insurance, (iii) farm production practices,and (iv) farm financial management. In addition to these `directadaptations', there are options, particularly information provision, that maystimulate adaptation initiatives. The results reveal that most adaptationoptions are modifications to on-going farm practices and public policydecision-making processes with respect to a suite of changing climatic(including variability and extremes) and non-climatic conditions (political,economic and social). For progress on implementing adaptations to climatechange in agriculture there is a need to better understand the relationshipbetween potential adaptation options and existing farm-level andgovernment decision-making processes and risk management frameworks.     

Climate change adaptation in the Sahel

Climate change adaptation now occupies central stage on the agenda of most environmental initiatives in Africa. Our current understanding on the state of adaptation is limited, however, both globally and in Africa in particular. This study examines the status of adaptation in the Sahel by reviewing the primary peer review literature that reports concrete climate change adaptation actions. Based on an analysis of 70 peer review papers that document 414 discrete adaptations, we create a snap shot of adaptations developed between 1975 and 2015, and also calculate the percentages of adaptation. The results show that from a country to country perspective, Kenya has the highest number of reported adaptation actions (75 or 18.1%). The percentages indicate that the adaptive capacity of the entire study area is generally low for all the countries being that the highest country-level percentage is recorded in Kenya and it is 18%. Regionally, West Africa has more adaptation actions (261 or 63%) when compared to other regions of the Sahel. Regional level percentages suggest a higher level of adaptation at the regional level being that the percentage falls within the high scale range. The most commonly used adaptation actions reported are income diversification and water harnessing respectively. When categorized, technically related adaptation actions dominate the adaptation charts. The decade 2008–2016 recorded the highest number of adaptations (65.2%). Adaptation actions are also reported to be triggered by climatic and non-climatic drivers which both record high frequencies but the climatic drivers (98%) of adaptation are slightly dominant relative to the non-climatic drivers (95%). These results should be viewed as proxies of climate change adaptation as much information may be found in grey literature and non-peer review national communications which are left out here because of their relative low standardization and acceptability due to the absence of peer review.