Adoptive management of climate change impacts

Effects of Climate Change

The projected effects for the environment and for human life are numerous and varied. The main effect is an increasing global average temperature. The average surface temperature could increase by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century if carbon emissions aren't reduced. This causes a variety of secondary effects, namely, changes in patterns of precipitation, rising sea levels, altered patterns of agriculture, increased extreme weather events, the expansion of the range of tropical diseases, the opening of new trade routes.

Potential effects include sea level rise of 110 to 770 mm (0.36 to 2.5 feet) between 1990 and 2100, repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, and the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

Adaptation mechanisms

9 fundamental principles to be considered when designing adaptation policy

1. The effects of climate change vary by region.
2. The effects of climate change may vary across demographic groups.
3. Climate change poses both risks and opportunities.
4. The effects of climate change must be considered in the context of multiple stressors and factors, which may be as important to the design of adaptive responses as the sensitivity of the change.
5. Adaptation comes at a cost.
6. Adaptive responses vary in effectiveness, as demonstrated by current efforts to cope with climate variability.
7. The systemic nature of climate impacts complicates the development of adaptation policy.
8. Maladaptation can result in negative effects that are as serious as the climate-induced effects that are being avoided.
9. Many opportunities for adaptation make sense whether or not the effects of climate change are realized.

Methods of adaptation

Examples of adaptation include defending against rising sea levels through better flood defenses, and changing patterns of land use like avoiding more vulnerable areas for housing.

 

Enhancing adaptive capacity

Enhanced adaptive capacity would reduce vulnerability to climate change. In their view, activities that enhance adaptive capacity are essentially equivalent to activities that promote sustainable development. These activities include:

• improving access to resources
• reducing poverty
• lowering inequities of resources and wealth among groups
• improving education and information
• improving infrastructure
• improving institutional capacity and efficiency
• Promoting local indigenous practices, knowledge, and experiences

Adaptation through local planning

Local landuse and municipal planning represent important avenues for adaptation to global warming. These forms of planning are recognised as central to avoiding the impacts of climate related hazards such as floods and heat stress, planning for demographic and consumption transition, and plans for ecosystem conservation. This type of planning is different from the National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) which are intended to be frameworks for prioritizing adaptation needs. At the local scale, municipalities are at the coal face of adaptation where impacts are experienced in the forms of inundation, bushfires, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Cities are planning for adapting to global warming and climate change. Projects include changing to heat tolerant tree varieties, changing to water permeable pavements to absorb higher rainfalls and adding air conditioning in public schools. Carefully planned water storage could help urban areas adapt to increasingly severe storms by increasing rainwater storage (domestic water butts, unpaved gardens etc.) and increasing the capacity of stormwater systems (and also separating stormwater from blackwater, so that overflows in peak periods do not contaminate rivers). Gardeners can help mitigate the effects of climate change by providing habitats for the most threatened species, and/or saving water by changing gardens to use plants which require less.

Adaptation through local planning occurs in two distinct modes. The first is strategic planning, which is important but not unique to local governments. At the local scale it fosters community vision, aspirational goals and place-making, along with defining pathways to achieve these goals. The second form is land-use planning, and is focused on the allocation of space to balance economic prosperity with acceptable living standards and the conservation of natural resources. Although these two types of planning are quite different in practice, and in many cases are managed by different departments, we propose that both are highly important to climate change adaptation, and can contribute to achieving adaptation at the local scale. Significant constraints are recognised to hinder adaptation through planning, including limited resources, lack of information, competing planning agendas and complying with requirements from other levels of government.

 

Agricultural production

A significant effect of global climate change is the altering of global rainfall patterns, with certain effects on agriculture. Rainfed agriculture constitutes 80% of global agriculture. Many of the 852 million poor people in the world live in parts of Asia and Africa that depend on rainfall to cultivate food crops. As the global population swells, more food will be needed, but climate variability is likely to make successful farming more difficult. Extended drought can cause the failure of small and marginal farms with resultant economic, political and social disruption. However, such events have previously occurred in human history independent of global climate change. In recent decades, global trade has created distribution networks capable of delivering surplus food to where it is needed, thus reducing local impact.

Drought tolerant crop varieties

Agriculture of any kind is strongly influenced by the availability of water. Climate change will modify rainfall, evaporation, runoff, and soil moisture storage. Changes in total seasonal precipitation or in its pattern of variability are both important. The occurrence of moisture stress during flowering, pollination, and grain-filling is harmful to most crops and particularly so to corn, soybeans, and wheat. Increased evaporation from the soil and accelerated transpiration in the plants themselves will cause moisture stress. As a result, there will be a need to develop crop varieties with greater drought tolerance.

More spending on irrigation

The demand for water for irrigation is projected to rise in a warmer climate, bringing increased competition between agriculture—already the largest consumer of water resources in semi-arid regions—and urban as well as industrial users. Falling water tables and the resulting increase in the energy needed to pump water will make the practice of irrigation more expensive, particularly when with drier conditions more water will be required per acre. Other strategies will be needed to make the most efficient use of water resources. For example, the International Water Management Institute has suggested five strategies that could help Asia feed its growing population in light of climate change. These are:

• modernising existing irrigation schemes to suit modern methods of farming
• Supporting farmer's efforts to find their own water supplies, by tapping into groundwater in a sustainable way
• Looking beyond conventional 'Participatory Irrigation Management' schemes, by engaging the private sector
• Expanding capacity and knowledge
• Investing outside the irrigation sector

Forest resources

The forestry resources are most crucial means of adaptation to forest dependent people whose lives have been depending on it. If long duration of drought persist, definitely affect to rain-fed agricultural system. In this situation, people can collect the edible fruits, roots and leaves for their life survival. Similarly, forest resources provides not only goods but also services such as regulation of ecosystem, maintain linkage of upstream-downstream through watershed conservation, carbon sequestration and aesthetic value. These services become crucial part of life sustained through increased adaptive capacity of poor, vulnerable, women and socially excluded communities.

Rainwater storage

Providing farmers with access to a range of water stores could help them overcome dry spells that would otherwise cause their crops to fail. Field studies have shown the effectiveness of small-scale water storage. For example, according to the International Water Management Institute, using small planting basins to 'harvest' water in Zimbabwe has been shown to boost maize yields, whether rainfall is abundant or scarce. In Niger, they have led to three or fourfold increases in millet yields.

Weather control

Russian and American scientists have in the past tried to control the weather, for example by seeding clouds with chemicals to try to produce rain when and where it is needed. A new method being developed involves replicating the urban heat island effect, where cities are slightly hotter than the countryside because they are darker and absorb more heat. This creates 28% more rain 20–40 miles downwind from cities compared to upwind. On the timescale of several decades, new weather control techniques may become feasible which would allow control of extreme weather such as hurricanes.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through its Commission for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) has issued a "STATEMENT ON WEATHER MODIFICATION" as well as "GUIDELINES FOR THE PLANNING OF WEATHER MODIFICATION ACTIVITIES" in 2007, stating among others that "Purposeful augmentation of precipitation, reduction of hail damage, dispersion of fog and other types of cloud and storm modifications by cloud seeding are developing technologies which are still striving to achieve a sound scientific foundation and which have to be adapted to enormously varied natural conditions."

Damming glacial lakes

Glacial lake outburst floods may become a bigger concern due to the retreat of glaciers, leaving behind numerous lakes that are impounded by often weak terminal moraine dams. In the past, the sudden failure of these dams has resulted in localized property damage, injury and deaths. Glacial lakes in danger of bursting can have their moraines replaced with concrete dams (which may also provide hydroelectric power).

Geoengineering

These include

• Solar radiation management may be seen as an adaptation to global warming. Techniques such as space sunshade, creating stratospheric sulfur aerosols and painting roofing and paving materials white all fall into this category.
• Hydrological geoengineering - typically seeking to preserve sea ice or adjust thermohaline circulation by using methods such as diverting rivers to keep warm water away from sea ice, or tethering icebergs to prevent them drifting into warmer waters and melting. This may be seen as an adaptation technique, although by preventing Arctic methane release it may also have mitigation aspects as well.

Adaptation Finance

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change runs a program called the Global Environmental Facility, which provides some funding for adaptation to least developed countries and small island states. Under the GEF umbrella, the GEF Trust Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) operate to carry out the climate change adaptation financing goals of the GEF. Another mechanism has been implemented through the Adaptation Fund, as a result of negotiations during COP15 and COP16, which provides funds for projects that prove to have additional benefits for adaptation to climate change. There are several other climate change adaptation finance proposals, most of which employ official development assistance or ODA. These proposals range from a World Bank program, to proposals involving auctioning of carbon allowances, to a global carbon or transportation tax, to compensation-based funding. Other proposals suggest using market-based mechanisms, rather than ODA, such as the Higher Ground Foundation's vulnerability reduction credit (VRC™) or a program similar to the Clean Development Mechanism, to raise private money for climate change adaptation. The Copenhagen Accord, the most recent global climate change agreement, commits developed countries to goal of sending $100 billion per year to developing countries in assistance for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation through 2020. This agreement, while not binding, would dwarf current amounts dedicated to adaptation in developing countries. This climate change fund is called the Green Climate Fund from the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

National Adaptation Programme of Action

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) helps least developed countries (LDCs) identify climate change adaptation needs by funding the development of National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). NAPAs are meant to provide LDCs with an opportunity to identify their “urgent and immediate needs” for adapting to climate change. As part of the NAPA process, LDC government ministries, typically assisted by development agencies, assess their countries’ vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather events. They then develop a prioritized list of adaptation projects that will help the country cope with the adverse effects of climate change. LDCs that submit NAPAs to the UNFCCC then become eligible for funding through the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDC Fund) for NAPA projects. The LDC Fund was designed through the UNFCCC to specifically assist least developed countries, as they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. To date, forty five LDCs have written and submitted NAPAs to the UNFCCC, with Nepal as the latest country to submit its NAPA in November 2010. Three more countries (Angola, Myanmar, and Timor Leste) are scheduled to complete their NAPAs by the end of 2011