1,721,039 research outputs found
Development Pressures and Management Considerations in Small Caribbean Islands' Coastal Zones
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to examine the management of coastal zones in island states in the Caribbean; to highlight the developmental and environmental pressures that are experienced; and to discuss some of the constraints to management. Caribbean island states face a number of development constraints due to the small sizes of their economies, populations, resource bases and land areas. With limited potential for economic diversification and few development options many small Caribbean islands have pursued tourism to generate income and employment. Human-induced changes resulting from tourism-oriented development generate a host of impacts in the coastal zone such as increased sedimentation rates from land clearance for development, and nutrient enrichment of coastal waters from inadequately treated waste. Small Caribbean islands which rely on their coastal zones for economic, social and ecological benefits and services therefore require effective management tools that can resolve existing use-conflicts and find a balance between conservation and development objectives.Several confounding constraints to coastal zone management exist, namely the trans-boundary nature of coastal zones, unclear property rights and management institutions, limited information about the costs and benefits of different uses and management approaches, uneven dissemination of that information, and diverse and often disorganised stakeholder groups. Achieving management goals therefore depends on these constraints being addressed. The paper supports the recent re-thinking that management approaches need to focus on the delineation of rights and responsibilities of coastal zone stakeholders, the range of possible institutional arrangements for management, the role of coastal stakeholders in management, the evolution of stakeholder preferences for management options, and the use and treatment of information, how information is presented, to whom it is disseminated and how it is disseminated
Planning for climate change in small islands: insights from national hurricane preparedness in the Cayman Islands
No full textThis paper examines contemporary national scale responses to tropical storm risk in a small island in the Caribbean to derive lessons for adapting to climate change. There is little empirical evidence to guide national planners on how to adapt to climate change, and less still on how to build on past adaptation experiences. The paper investigates the construction of institutional resilience and the process of adaptation to tropical storm risk by the Cayman Islands’ Government from 1988 to 2002. It explains the roles of persuasion, exposure and collective action as key components in developing the ability to buffer external disturbance using models of institutional economics and social resilience concepts. The study finds that self-efficacy, strong local and international support networks, combined with a willingness to act collectively and to learn from mistakes appear to have increased the resilience of the Cayman Islands’ Government to tropical storm risk. The lessons learned from building resilience to storm risk can contribute to the creation of national level adaptive capacity to climate change, but climate change has to be prioritised before these lessons can be transferre
Perceptions of the effectiveness of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in advancing national action on climate change
No full textThis paper aims to characterise the ways in which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is trickling down to affect national level action on climate change. State and non-state actors were interviewed at the 8th UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP8) during October and November 2002. The interviews revealed that, among interviewees, climate change was already perceived to be, or was becoming a priority issue. In a number of countries substantial legislation is already in place to facilitate climate change preparedness (both adaptation and mitigation), although respondents suggest that in the majority of cases these changes are not being developed in response to the UNFCCC, but to other drivers. While all respondents saw change occurring at the national level, mostly through planning and research, few saw climate change response actions at the local level. Respondents agreed that climate risks must be managed through various mechanisms, from finding ways to participate in the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms to managing the impacts of foreign direct investments. The majority of respondents focussed on in-country actions such as identifying the most vulnerable groups, but few identified the need for greater global cooperation.To conclude, the Convention plays a role in shaping the discourse of climate change and in generating national level responses. These responses are played out differently according to the geographic, environmental, economic, social and cultural conditions of each country. The Convention is clearly important, but perhaps it is not adequate to inspire national action to resolve the problems of climate change. There is scope for many additional initiatives, through collaboration, trade or aid, and through bilateral agreements
Observing adaptive capacity in Indian rice production systems
No full textTheoretically we understand the dimensions of both generic and specific adaptive capacity, however, there are few studies which document actual observed adaptive capacity. This study aims to address this gap by documenting the adaptive capacity of Indian rice production systems, an agro-socio-ecological system. We explore how Indian rice production systems have responded to historical climate shocks in order to assess their likely capacity to respond to current and future climate changes. Using a panel dataset of both Indian rice crop yield and extreme heat and drought shocks measured at the district level from 1980 to 2009, we sought to detect evidence of farmers: (i) adapting through reduced rice crop yield sensitivity to climate shocks over time, and (ii) responding to climate shocks by altering farming practices. We found that changes in average climate shock exposure over time was not linked to changes in average rice crop yields over time at a location. We also observed that rice crop yield sensitivity to year-to-year fluctuations in climate shocks has not decreased over time; this implies that over time the Indian rice production system has not increased its capacity to buffer inter-annual variation in shock exposure. We did not detect the presence of learning from exposure to climate shocks; in fact, greater exposure to extreme heat shocks eroded farmers’ capacity to respond to current heat events. There was no clear pattern of farmers in districts that experienced worsening average climate shock exposure responding with the uptake of plausible adaptive practices. In summary, there was not a clear signal of adaptive capacity being present in Indian rice production systems
Scenario-based stakeholder engagement: incorporating stakeholders preferences into coastal planning for climate change
No full textClimate change poses many challenges for ecosystem and resource management. In particular. coastal planners are struggling to find ways to prepare for the potential impacts of future climate change while dealing with immediate pressures. Decisions on how to respond to future risks are complicated by the long lime horizons and the uncertainty associated with the distribution of impacts. Existing coastal zone management approaches in the UK either do not adequately incorporate changing stakeholder preferences, or effectively ensure that stakeholders are aware of the trade-offs inherent in any coastal management decision.Using a novel method, scenario-based stakeholder engagement which brings together stakeholder analysis, climate change management scenarios and deliberative techniques, file necessary trade-offs associated with long term coastal planning are explored. The method is applied to two case studies of coastal planning in Christchurch Bay on the south coast of England and the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. A range of conflicting preferences exist on the ideal governance structure to manage the coast under different climate change scenarios. In addition, the results show that public understanding of the trade-offs that have to be made is critical in gaining some degree of public support for long term coastal decision-making. We conclude that scenario-based stakeholder engagement is a useful tool to facilitate coastal management planning that takes into account the complexities and challenges of climate change, and could be used in conjunction with existing approaches such as the Shoreline Management Planning process
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