1,721,157 research outputs found
Institutional networks for inclusive coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago
No full textThe authors consider the role of institutional networks in integrated and inclusive coastal-zone management in Trinidad and Tobago. Drawing on theories of social institutions, a framework for understanding the institutional prerequisites for participatory management is developed. In this framework, distinction is made between institutions at the community, formal-organisational, and national regulatory levels and the means by which institutions adapt to and learn about new issues in terms of networks of dependence and exchange are characterised. The immediate networks between actors (their spaces of dependence) are augmented by wider networks between institutions at various scales (their spaces of exchange). This framework is applied to a case study of resource management in Trinidad and Tobago. Semistructured interviews with key government urban and economic planners, fisheries regulators, and other agents in Trinidad and Tobago, and a participatory workshop for resource managers, are used to identify the perceived opportunities and constraints relating to integrated and inclusive resource management within the social institutions. The findings are analysed through an exploration of the spaces of dependence and exchange that exist in the various social networks at the different institutional scales. The prescriptive relevance of this approach is in the demonstration of the nature of change required in social institutions at all scales to facilitate integrated and inclusive resource managemen
Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy
No full textClimate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. We propose that a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. First we frame the set of responses at the national policy level as a trade off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. We argue that these are the pertinent trade-offs, rather than those usually posited between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment. Starting with this complete vision of response options should enable policy makers to re-evaluate the risk environment and the set of response options available to them. From here, policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken. Institutional arrangements dictate social and political acceptability of different policies, they structure worldviews, and they determine the provision of resources for investment in technological innovation and social change. The importance of focussing on the timing of the response is emphasised to maximise the potential for adjustments through social learning and institutional change at different policy scales. We argue that the ability to respond to climate change is both enabled and constrained by social and technological conditions. The ability of society to respond to climate change and the need for technological change for both decarbonisation and for dealing with surprise in general, are central to concepts of sustainable development
Successful adaptation to climate change across scales
No full textClimate change impacts and responses are presently observed in physical and ecological systems. Adaptation to these impacts is increasingly being observed in both physical and ecological systems as well as in human adjustments to resource availability and risk at different spatial and societal scales. We review the nature of adaptation and the implications of different spatial scales for these processes. We outline a set of normative evaluative criteria for judging the success of adaptations at different scales. We argue that elements of effectiveness, efficiency, equity and legitimacy are important in judging success in terms of the sustainability of development pathways into an uncertain future. We further argue that each of these elements of decision-making is implicit within presently formulated scenarios of socio-economic futures of both emission trajectories and adaptation, though with different weighting. The process by which adaptations are to be judged at different scales will involve new and challenging institutional processes
Adapting to climate change: perspectives across scales
No full textThere has been an explosion of interest in adaptation to climate change over the past five years. Since initial work for the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC (Smit and Pilifosova, 2001 B. Smit and O. Pilifosova, Adaptation to climate change in the context of sustainable development and equity, J.J. McCarthy, O. Canziani, N.A. Leary, D.J. Dokken, K.S. White, Editors , Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. IPCC Working Group II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2001), pp. 877–912. | View Record in Scopus | | Cited By in Scopus (1)Smit and Pilifosova, 2001) demonstrated that adaptation is both important and complex, there has been an increasing focus on documenting adaptations as they happen and explaining the processes by which adaptation can occur, hopefully successfully. The explosion of interest has therefore occurred for two main reasons. The first reason is because adaptation is happening today; decisions are being made in boardrooms, living rooms and government offices about how to adapt to current changes. From decisions on premiums by insurance companies, through to decisions to engineer buildings for a warmer climate, adaptation is occurring. These decisions and processes of adaptation often proceed even without explicit recognition that the changes in variability faced are consistent with or attributable to human induced climate change (Reilly and Schimmelpfennig, 2000; Kane and Yohe, 2000). The question is being asked: what is effective adaptation?The second reason for increasing interest in adaptation to climate change relates to the global discussions on the role of adaptation as an alternative to mitigation, i.e., minimising the causes of human-induced climate change. This issue is often framed as whether adaptation can substitute for mitigation and provide more ‘breathing space’ for global emissions trajectories, rather than in placing risk management as central to the global problematic and the recognition of the joint determinants of the ability to adapt and to mitigate ( [Yohe, 2001] and [Yohe, 2004] ; Yohe et al., 2004).In both of these areas of concern (effective adaptation decision-making and global response), issues of future potential adaptation, its social and institutional organisation, and technical and social limits to adaptation are critical. These debates uniform global negotiations on both responsibility and funding for adaptation (Smith et al., 2003). They also impinge on the relative role of different stakeholders in actual adaptation of implementation.Despite this growth in demand for information on adaptation options and the potential for adaptation as a response to climate change, so far only two major collections on adaptation have so far been published (a special issue of Climatic Change published in 2000 (Kane and Yohe, 2000) and a book edited by Smith et al. (2003)).This special issue of Global Environmental Change presents some emerging conceptual and empirical advances in the understanding of adaptation to climate change, at a range of spatial scales. These include explicit consideration of the role of climate information in adaptation planning—who knows what and who needs to know what for effective adaptation actions to proceed? Empirical evidence on how information on climate risks has been used in adaptation decisions demonstrates (in the papers by Conway and Tompkins) that adaptation proceeds in a piecemeal fashion with both individual interests and collective senses of risk involved in using scenarios or experience in implementing change.Adger et al. (2005a) examine criteria for the definition of “successful” adaptation, showing how they vary with spatial scale and are interpreted and weighted differently by different interest groups. Brooks et al. (2005) and Haddad (2005) both explore factors affecting adaptive capacity at the national scale. Brooks et al. (2005) describe a set of calibrated indicators of adaptive capacity, showing that adaptive capacity is associated primarily not with measures of wealth, but indicators of governance, civil and political rights, and literacy. Haddad (2005), however, shows how national adaptive capacity varies with national socio-political goals, and different weightings given to different indicators produce different maps of adaptive capacity. Conway (2005) and Tompkins (2005) examine how responses to past climatic variability in the Nile Basin (variability in river flows) and the Cayman Islands (hurricanes) influence adaptation to future climate change. Tompkins (2005), for example, shows how support networks, strong governance and willingness to learn have increased the resilience of the Cayman Islands to hurricane impact. This resilience was witnessed after Hurricane Ivan passed through the Caribbean in September 2004. In comparison with other islands which experienced similar winds, rain and flooding, the Cayman Islands fared relatively well. Nonetheless, learning is on-going as the recovery process has proved difficult and not without problems. The roles of local institutions and governance structures are also illustrated by Næss colleagues (2005) review of municipal response to the changing flood hazard in Norway: they show how aims and objectives at one level are not necessarily applied at another.Issues of equity and justice are widely discussed in terms of emissions targets, but have only recently become seen to be vitally important in developing adaptation strategies (Adger et al., 2005b). Thomas and Twyman (2005) show how the distribution of the costs and benefits of adapting to climate change in resource-dependent societies in southern Africa depend on the interactions between inequitable natural resource use policies and community-based natural resource management programmes. Finally, Dessai et al. (2005) consider the use of climate scenarios for adaptation planning in practice, presenting real-world examples of different ways in which scenarios can be used: they show that the role played by scenarios depends on the approach to adaptation adopted and the financial and technical capacity to handle scenario information.The papers in this special issue address a diversity of adaptation issues and take a range of approaches. This emphasises and illustrates the diversity of the factors affecting adaptation and the ability to adapt: these are based not only on geographical context, but also on social and political conditions and drivers. Taken together, the papers emphasise the significance of scale in understanding, explaining and enhancing adaptation (see also Wilbanks, 2002). Scale affects the criteria defining “successful” adaptation, and determines the relevance of different factors influencing adaptive capacity: indicators calculated at one scale may hide substantial variations in adaptive capacity at another.Scale affects the fundamental conceptualisation of equity and justice. Again, assessments of the differential burden of adaptation within a country would offer a different perspective than assessments of differences between countries. Scale determines the construction and the implementation of adaptation policies, with actions and plans at the national level significantly affected by local institutional issues. Finally, scale influences the appropriate technical tools for the assessment of adaptation options. A lesson from this collection of papers is that complexity in adaptation is brought about by multiple scales of interaction between human and environmental systems. This complexity has significant implications for public policy given that decision-makers within governance hierarchies are always reticent to embrace institutional solutions at lower levels of scale. At the same time, local solutions are not always readily scaleable to other levels of decision-making. Adaptation presents formidable challenges to governance, science and ultimately to the sustainability of society and the environment on which it depends
Modelling household well-being and poverty trajectories: an application to coastal Bangladesh
No full textResource-based livelihoods are uncertain and potentially unstable due to variability over time, including seasonal variation: this instability threatens marginalised populations who may fall into poverty. However, empirical understanding of trajectories of household well-being and poverty is limited. Here, we present a new household-level model of poverty dynamics based on agents and coping strategies – the Household Economy And Poverty trajectory (HEAP) model. HEAP is based on established economic and social insights into poverty dynamics, with a demonstration of the model calibrated with a qualitative and quantitative household survey in coastal Bangladesh. Economic activity in Bangladesh is highly dependent on natural resources; poverty is widespread; and there is high variability in ecosystem services at multiple temporal scales. The results show that long-term decreases in poverty are predicated more on the stability of, and returns from, livelihoods rather than their diversification. Access to natural resources and ecosystem service benefits are positively correlated with stable income and multidimensional well-being. Households that remain in poverty are those who experience high seasonality of income and are involved in small scale enterprises. Hence, seasonal variability in income places significant limits on natural resources providing routes out of poverty. Further, projected economic trends to 2030 lead to an increase in well-being and a reduction in poverty for most simulated household types
Ecosystem service for well-being in deltas: Integrated assessment for policy analysis
No full textThis book answers key questions about environment, people and their shared future in deltas. It develops a systematic and holistic approach for policy-orientated analysis for the future of these regions. It does so by focusing on ecosystem services in the world’s largest, most populous and most iconic delta region, that of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. The book covers the conceptual basis, research approaches and challenges, while also providing a methodology for integration across multiple disciplines, offering a potential prototype for assessments of deltas worldwide.Ecosystem Services for Well-Being in Deltas analyses changing ecosystem services in deltas; the health and well-being of people reliant on them; the continued central role of agriculture and fishing; and the implications of aquaculture in such environments.The analysis is brought together in an integrated and accessible way to examine the future of the Ganges Brahmaputra delta based on a near decade of research by a team of the world’s leading scientists on deltas and their human and environmental dimensions.This book is essential reading for students and academics within the fields of Environmental Geography, Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy focused on solving the world’s most critical challenges of balancing humans with their environments
Does adaptive management of natural resources enhance resilience to climate change?
No full textEmerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. We argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. We review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. We demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago. The case demonstrates that community-based management enhances adaptive capacity in two ways: by building networks that are important for coping with extreme events and by retaining the resilience of the underpinning resources and ecological systems<br/
- …
