Evaluating the impacts of sea level rise on coastal wetlands in Languedoc-Roussillon,France

Sea-level rise due to climate change creates new risks of submersion in coastal areas that must be taken into account. Although these are long-term risks for 2100, it is important to anticipate possible consequences in order to identify the most vulnerable areas or issues and develop the appropriate adaptation policies. The aim of this paper is to examine the consequences of such sea-level rise for wetlands in the Languedoc-Roussillon region (France) which is particularly at risk of submersion. The analysis is based on the worst case scenario of a one meter sea level rise by 2100, with a variety of adaptive strategies: denial, laissez-faire and strategic retreat of infrastructure and buildings. This latter strategy assumes that the retreat wetlands is unconstrained. The evaluation examines the losses and transformations of ecological habitats, depending on their distance from salt water. Estimating damages and benefits requires first, to study the evolution of the services supplied by different habitats and second, to estimate the value of the economic impact. This approach demonstrates the superiority of a strategic retreat policy which would halve the damages resulting from submersion.     

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.     

Extended impacts of climate change on health and wellbeing

Anthropogenic climate change is progressively transforming the environment despite political and technological attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle global warming. Here we propose that greater insight and understanding of the health-related impacts of climate change can be gained by integrating the positivist approaches used in public health and epidemiology, with holistic social science perspectives on health in which the concept of ‘wellbeing’ is more explicitly recognised. Such an approach enables us to acknowledge and explore a wide range of more subtle, yet important health-related outcomes of climate change. At the same time, incorporating notions of wellbeing enables recognition of both the health co-benefits and dis-benefits of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies across different population groups and geographical contexts. The paper recommends that future adaptation and mitigation policies seek to ensure that benefits are available for all since current evidence suggests that they are spatially and socially differentiated, and their accessibility is dependent on a range of contextually specific socio-cultural factors.     

油田井场废水配制压裂液处理技术实验研究

针对油田井场废水高悬浮物、高色度、高金属离子浓度的特征,以处理后配制压裂液为目标,通过p H值调节及无机高分子絮凝法对井场废水进行了处理实验。结果表明,碳酸钠作为优选的p H值调节剂,可以在较低的p H值条件下有效去除废水中的高价金属离子;无机絮凝剂聚合硫酸铁在强碱性条件下对于悬浮物、色度的去除效果明显优于聚合氯化铝。聚合硫酸铁絮凝法可以使井场废水达到配制压裂液用水的要求。     

The evolution of socio-ecological systems: changing palm species management in the Colombian Amazon as an indicator of ecological and institutional change

We investigate natural resource governance in three indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. We base our analysis on an evolutionary governance model in which governance dimensions emerge as relevant through time. The less accessible of the communities represents earlier steps in governance evolution, while the more physically accessible is more integrated into the western scene. We observe how increased physical accessibility in a community brings in western governance models which hybridize with more traditional ones, influencing the couplings between the social and ecological systems. We zoom in on changing management of three commonly used palm species and illustrate how detailed studies of natural resource management contribute to understanding governance evolution. By comparing governance evolutions we were able to gain insights and improve our understanding on how natural resource management changes in communities transiting into western ways of living. In doing so we recognized points of rigidity and flexibility which might influence the social ecological systems capacity to adapt to changing conditions.     

Modeling Streamflow and Water Quality Sensitivity to Climate Change and Urban Development in 20 U.S. Watersheds

Watershed modeling in 20 large, United States (U.S.) watersheds addresses gaps in our knowledge of streamflow, nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus), and sediment loading sensitivity to mid‐21st Century climate change and urban/residential development scenarios. Use of a consistent methodology facilitates regional scale comparisons across the study watersheds. Simulations use the Soil and Water Assessment Tool. Climate change scenarios are from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program dynamically downscaled climate model output. Urban and residential development scenarios are from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios project. Simulations provide a plausible set of streamflow and water quality responses to mid‐21st Century climate change across the U.S. Simulated changes show a general pattern of decreasing streamflow volume in the central Rockies and Southwest, and increases on the East Coast and Northern Plains. Changes in pollutant loads follow a similar pattern but with increased variability. Ensemble mean results suggest that by the mid‐21st Century, statistically significant changes in streamflow and total suspended solids loads (relative to baseline conditions) are possible in roughly 30‐40% of study watersheds. These proportions increase to around 60% for total phosphorus and total nitrogen loads. Projected urban/residential development, and watershed responses to development, are small at the large spatial scale of modeling in this study.     

Reducing Fertilizer‐Nitrogen Losses from Rowcrop Landscapes: Insights and Implications from a Spatially Explicit Watershed Model

We present conceptual and quantitative models that predict changes in fertilizer‐derived nitrogen delivery from rowcrop landscapes caused by agricultural conservation efforts implemented to reduce nutrient inputs and transport and increase nutrient retention in the landscape. To evaluate the relative importance of changes in the sources, transport, and sinks of fertilizer‐derived nitrogen across a region, we use the spatially explicit SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes watershed model to map the distribution, at the small watershed scale within the Upper Mississippi‐Ohio River Basin (UMORB), of: (1) fertilizer inputs; (2) nutrient attenuation during delivery of those inputs to the UMORB outlet; and (3) nitrogen export from the UMORB outlet. Comparing these spatial distributions suggests that the amount of fertilizer input and degree of nutrient attenuation are both important in determining the extent of nitrogen export. From a management perspective, this means that agricultural conservation efforts to reduce nitrogen export would benefit by: (1) expanding their focus to include activities that restore and enhance nutrient processing in these highly altered landscapes; and (2) targeting specific types of best management practices to watersheds where they will be most valuable. Doing so successfully may result in a shift in current approaches to conservation planning, outreach, and funding.     

New York City Environmental Justice Alliance Waterfront Justice Project

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities.     

Governing Quasi-Public Network Services for adaptation to climate change

Adaptation takes place in both private and public sectors, or as an interrelation between the two, and often under the realm of public regulation. Thispaper uses the Swedish and the Norwegian electricity grid sector, as providers of a vital public good under strict public regulation, to analyse reforms' effects on adaptive capacity in this area. The paper shows that transformational changes in both sectors during the 1990s shifted both the formal organisational structure (rules and regulations), as well as the organisational culture, in the direction of economic efficiency. These two dimensions individually reduced adaptive capacity to climate change, although differently in the two countries. However, the formal structure and organisational culture also yielded substantial influence on each other. This leads to the conclusion that when designing public regulations and implementing reforms, organisational culture must be considered in the design. Also the paper contests previous findings in the literature by showing that under given conditions there exist some substitution between the two dimensions in influencing adaptive capacity, implying that both dimensions should be included when analysing adaptation since analysing them in isolation is likely to lead to wrong conclusions.     

Mainstreaming climate change adaptation at the local level

National authorities in many countries aim at having climate change adaptation mainstreamed into existing policy domains in order to achieve coherence and synergies, and to avoid mal-adaptation. Because of local variations in climate change impacts, the lion's share of climate adaptation work will have to take place at the local level. This means also that the mainstreaming process needs to occur locally. This article examines the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into existing sectors in five Norwegian municipalities. Applying theories of mainstreaming and policy integration we find that policy development is slower, but perhaps more robust in the municipalities that have chosen a horizontal, cross-sectoral approach to mainstreaming than in the municipalities that have chosen a vertical sector approach to mainstreaming.