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Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

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01.06.2007 | Original Article

Integrated strategies to reduce vulnerability and advance adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development

verfasst von: Indur M. Goklany

Erschienen in: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change | Ausgabe 5/2007

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Abstract

Determinants of adaptive and mitigative capacities (e.g., availability of technological options, and access to economic resources, social capital and human capital) largely overlap. Several factors underlying or related to these determinants are themselves indicators of sustainable development (e.g., per capita income; and various public health, education and research indices). Moreover, climate change could exacerbate existing climate-sensitive hurdles to sustainable development (e.g., hunger, malaria, water shortage, coastal flooding and threats to biodiversity) faced specifically by many developing countries. Based on these commonalities, the paper identifies integrated approaches to formulating strategies and measures to concurrently advance adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development. These approaches range from broadly moving sustainable development forward (by developing and/or nurturing institutions, policies and infrastructure to stimulate economic development, technological change, human and social capital, and reducing specific barriers to sustainable development) to reducing vulnerabilities to urgent climate-sensitive risks that hinder sustainable development and would worsen with climate change. The resulting sustainable economic development would also help reduce birth rates, which could mitigate climate change and reduce the population exposed to climate change and climate-sensitive risks, thereby reducing impacts, and the demand for adaptation. The paper also offers a portfolio of pro-active strategies and measures consistent with the above approaches, including example measures that would simultaneously reduce pressures on biodiversity, hunger, and carbon sinks. Finally it addresses some common misconceptions that could hamper fuller integration of adaptation and mitigation, including the notions that adaptation may be unsuitable for natural systems, and mitigation should necessarily have primacy over adaptation.

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In this paper, GDP per capita is measured in constant (1995) US dollars at market exchange rates (MXR), unless otherwise noted. The general approach used to construct these (and subsequent) figures is from Goklany (2001a), and summarized in Appendix A. For brevity’s sake, I will refer to GDP per capita as “income” or “wealth.” Unless otherwise noted, data used in the analyses presented here are from various versions of the World Bank’s World Data Indicators.

See Ausubel (1991) and Goklany (1995) for the definition of technology employed here.

Prevalence of malnutrition is measured as the percentage of children under five whose height is less than two standard deviations below the median for an international reference population of ages 0–59 months (World Bank 2001).

While the indicators in Appendix A seem to improve with both wealth and time, this is not necessarily true for all indicators at all times, nor is it inevitable (see, e.g., Goklany 2002b).

For instance, Parry et al. (2004) apparently consider that higher incomes translates into less hunger and greater use of fertilizers but it’s unclear whether it directly or indirectly incorporated the other technologies that might be used more frequently if income levels rise (see Fig. 1). Similarly, Tol and Dowlatabadi, (2001) did not examine how malaria prevalence changed over time (i.e., with past technological change). Although over the long term technological change has reduced vulnerability to malaria (Cassman and Dowlatabadi 2002), there was a resurgence of malaria in the 1980s and 1990s that may be continuing to this day (WHO 1999; Yamey 2004). Reasons for this resurgence include increased resistance of the disease to established drugs, increased resistance of mosquitoes to insecticides, and increased institutional resistance toward the indoor spraying of DDT for mosquito control (Goklany 2000, 2001b; Yamey 2004). The last shows that technological (and institutional) change can sometimes lead to maladaptation.

The following is adapted from Goklany (2001a, 2002b).

This explanation is consistent with the notion that economic development is the means to the end of advancing human well-being rather than an end in itself.

It is, nevertheless, possible to have hunger in the midst of plenty if individuals lack sufficient incomes and livelihoods, or if there are severe distribution problems that cannot be surmounted by the marketplace (Goklany 1995, and references therein).

Caulfield et al. (2004). estimate that an adequate diet for children worldwide would prevent about 1 million deaths a year from pneumonia, 800,000 from diarrhea, 500,000 from malaria and 250,000 from measles.

HUCID/LSHTM (2000) estimates, for instance, that had malaria been eradicated in 1965, Africa’s GDP would have been 32% higher in 2000.

A similar table could be constructed showing whether the determinants in the extreme left column contribute to the indicators (on the right). Such a table would have an entry in virtually each cell.

With respect to hunger, the drop in P(REF,t) from 1990 to 2085 occurs because the growth in population is projected to be more than offset by greater food production and higher incomes.

What is true for terrestrial biodiversity is also true for freshwater biodiversity since agriculture is also responsible for 66% of freshwater withdrawals and 85% of freshwater consumption worldwide (Goklany 2002a). And although I will not address the issue of water use here (since there is no obvious tie-in between water use and GHG emissions), the general approach to adaptation presented here with respect to land use (and its effects on terrestrial biodiversity and hunger) is also appropriate for water use (and its effects on freshwater biodiversity and hunger) (Goklany 1988, 1995, 2003).

In the following, I will use the term “food productivity” to mean the productivity of the entire food and agricultural sector, from the farm to the plate and, beyond, to the palate. Food productivity can be enhanced by reducing loss and wastage in each link of the chain from farm to palate. With respect to land use, such productivity would be measured by the amount of food energy ingested per unit area of cropland. Factors that would enhance this productivity are higher crop yield; reductions in post harvest losses; reductions in wastage and losses during transportation, processing, marketing, preparation and cooking before it reaches the consumer’s plate as well as after, in case it is stored for reuse (Goklany 1998).

This logic holds even in cases where hunger is not caused by physical shortages of food but by inadequate purchasing power and/or distribution problems (for whatever reason; Goklany 1995). Greater productivity can either lead to greater food production at the same cost or the same amount of production at a lower cost. In either case, overall prices would drop, and hunger would be reduced.

Goklany (2003) notes that with respect to hunger, comparing P(UCC,2085) to P(REF,2085) can be misleading in some ways because small reductions in agricultural production usually result in disproportionate increases in food prices and, therefore, in P(UCC, 2085). Comparing P(UCC,t) to P(T,t), in 2085, climate change would constitute as much as 30.3% of the hunger problem (Table 3). However, this is the result of a relatively small (2–4%) reduction in crop yields.

Coastal flooding is, however, an exception, but see Goklany (2003)

Since the Protocol is an initial step in mitigation, it should have a larger risk-reduction-to-cost ratio than other more ambitious mitigation regimes with the same target dates (assuming full trading and no threshold effects).

This argument is valid even if WHO’s estimates are too rosy by an order of magnitude.

World Bank (2002b) proposes that the additional sums come from foreign aid.

Reducing subsidies introduces market forces to bear, which then provides greater incentives for researching and developing conservation technologies (e.g., Goklany 1998, 2002a).

See Sect. 5.

“Purely” mitigation actions would be in contrast to actions that would provide a combination of mitigation and adaptation benefits. To the extent such mitigation measures pay for themselves (considering opportunity costs), they should, of course, be implemented. One of the functions of technology research and development is to constantly increase the universe of affordable measures.

This greater access arises because not only the economic and human resources available to society ought to increase but also the cost of technologies should decline, particularly if R&D is focused on making them more cost-effective (Goklany 2001a).

Coastal flooding, as noted, is an exception to this rule.

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Titel: Integrated strategies to reduce vulnerability and advance adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development
verfasst von: Indur M. Goklany
Publikationsdatum: 01.06.2007
Verlag: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Erschienen in: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change / Ausgabe 5/2007
Print ISSN: 1381-2386
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-1596
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-007-9098-1

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Foreword