The Economic, Social and Political Elements of Climate Change

The higher the adaptive capacity of a region, the lower its socio-economic vulnerability is. Regional adaptive capacity is dependent on conditions such as economic power, technology, knowledge, institutions, infrastructure, and social equity. Not only are the impacts of climate change regionally very diverse, but the regional conditions to adapt to climate change are too. The paper discusses the implication of knowledge, institutional and infrastructure conditions of adaptation and the interdependencies of these conditions. Empirical outcomes of the case study in Northern Hesse (Germany) give some examples for the challenges of establishing regional governance innovations to handle these interdependencies. Another dominant condition of adaptive capacity is the discursive frames of regional climate change. While in international agreements and policy advice, resource-intensive economies and lifestyles are criticized as the main polluters, climate change debates at the regional level stress the options of climate change to strengthen regional economic competition. The paper suggests a perspective on multi-level governance and a perspective on policy integration for climate change adaptation to create a wide analytical view on these complex factors.

This paper was designed to inform policymakers and stakeholders about the implications of climate change and the scarcity of water due to climatic and non-climatic factors. This scarcity in shared water resources could lead to a dispute over its distribution and use. Consequently, the study is specifically aimed at shedding light on negotiation as a mitigation tool for conflict resolution in water-stressed areas. Both historic and scientific data that shows the frequent occurrences of water dispute among African countries are used. A conflict resolution technique to disputing parties is proposed.

The results of the analysis suggested that threats to water security are already the primary cause of some of the most intractable conflict in Africa. Salinization of coastal aquifers due to heavy withdrawals of freshwater, pollution of rivers, lakes, and reduction in hydropower energy as direct consequences to climatic changes, as well as other abuses of water resources, could lead to extremely serious disputes. The study has also shown that even though technical solutions are now available for solving most of the existing problems related to water resources and other environmental issues, the social and political mechanisms for realistically implementing these solutions within the sustainable development paradigm are still unknown. Furthermore, conflict over the utilization of water resources within a sustainable development paradigm is especially pronounced in the context of transboundary river basins, as well as transboundary aquifers that cross international boundaries. Negotiation on water in areas of conflict could be used as a valuable tool to help negotiate policies, treaties and laws that promote sustainable development throughout the basin, and especially with respect to the equitable utilization of water from both quality and quantity viewpoints.

Climate change is one of the greatest social and economic challenges today. It is a global problem which needs a global solution and for this each country has to play its part in reaching that global solution through local actions.

Adverse weather conditions are impacting the society on all fronts, be it food, habitat, livelihood, or income. There is an urgent need to take into consideration input from all segments of society. This paper deals with one such segment: the indigenous communities who have the vast potential to adapt in response to climate change. The paper deals with a general review of the efforts of indigenous communities across Asia with a specialized focus on the capacity of indigenous communities in India in combating climate change. The recognition that many environmental problems are local in nature is a rationale behind including the indigenous communities in addressing this global issue. These communities constitute an insignificant percentage of the global population and their contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions is minimal. A collaboration between these communities and the climate scientists could evolve solutions which go beyond the need to mitigate emissions and development of clean development mechanisms.

Presenting a holistic approach of the indigenous communities in coping with climate change, the paper provides an input to the policy makers on including the views of stakeholders from this sector to deal with the local needs and adopt a balanced approach between adaptation and mitigation strategies. It also gives an insight to the general public into more alternatives to climate change solutions.

As Southeast Asia has registered an impressive economic growth in recent years, considerable stress to the environment in the form of an increasing level of emissions has also been paramount. Development failed to trickle down and energy poverty remains a significant issue in Asia. While it is important to amend the current emission trajectory and, at the same time, address issues about energy access, a colossal need to mobilize funding is necessary – a gap which multilateral development banks are expected to fill. This article explores and assesses the important role the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has in addressing these issues. Drawing on the assessment of ADB Country Strategies and the energy sector portfolio in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, the enquiry reveals, among other things, that only 42% of ADB energy financed projects contain renewable components, and that data on how ADB projects addressed on the issue of energy poverty remains unavailable. On top of the quantitative data presented, this article also presents a critical engagement of ADB’s policy environmental assumptions.

In the clamour to understand climate change and its inevitable impacts on environments and societal structures, the central notion of human capacity to effectively respond to altered human conditions has received little attention. Yet climate change has the potential to bring about undesirable shifts in the human experience on the social, economic, political and environmental fronts with the potential of negatively impacting the human social order on a substantial scale. Understanding past responses to shifts in the human living condition can help mitigate social upheaval in the wake of climate change disruption.

First Nations Peoples in Canada have valuable cultural resources and experiences that may be informative in confronting the social challenges presented by climate change. A research project was undertaken to document exposure sensitivities, adaptive strategies and adaptive capacities in two First Nation communities in Saskatchewan. The research was informed by past experiences the communities had with turbulent changes in their sociocultural environments and the nature of responses that cushioned them amidst the changes. The community people identified strengths, such as philosophy, indigenous knowledge, and practical approaches to visioning the future for the benefit of their youth, as important elements of survival and overcoming negative effects of change.

This paper proposes reflexive mitigation as an ecologically effective insurance system response to dangerous anthropogenic climate change. Reflexive mitigation is an adaptive approach to mitigating climate change recognizing (1) atmospheric CO

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e concentrations consistent with Earth system stability will vary over time in response to changes in the Earth system and the global economy, and in the relationship between them; and (2) relationships between the Earth system, the economy and the insurance system are evolving, and therefore understanding of them is necessarily incomplete. The paper presents a complex adaptive systems approach to anthropogenic climate change and demonstrates that the Earth system, the global economy and the insurance system are connected social–ecological systems. Current insurance system responses to anthropogenic climate change are generally adaptive and weakly mitigative rather than strongly mitigative. The paper argues successful insurance system adaptation to anthropogenic climate change depends on returning the climate to a stable, familiar and relatively predictable state: effective mitigation is therefore a necessary precondition for successful longer-term insurance system adaptation.

Urban agriculture has a definite role in food security in cities. This paper will explore the extent to which urban agriculture contributes to food security in cities with examples from different parts of the world. The paper will explore the potential of urban agriculture in biodiversity conservation in urban and peri-urban areas, its role in reducing the carbon footprint of agriculture, urban food needs and generation of organic waste. The potential for urban agriculture in securing carbon credits for cities will also be explored here.

Abrupt climate change has recently become the focus of significant attention. The belief that abrupt climate changes have not been given due weight in scientific reporting and policy discussion has become more vocal since the turn of the century. New research has incorporated these possibilities in terms of tipping points and tipping elements, and argued that projections of gradual change can lull society into a false sense of security. In this paper, I draw attention to the metaphorical quality of abrupt climate change discourse. I examine the discourse occasioned by such abrupt change warnings, and I illuminate how deeply embedded temporal assumptions orient evaluations of climate change danger. I suggest that many familiar points of dispute might be indexed to different visions of time and change, and I develop the role of metaphor for better understanding climate change communication on this matter, and more generally.

This paper consists of two independent research projects which were carried out through the use of the same questionnaire. The questionnaire was completed by students of the Department of Forestry and Management of the Environment and Natural Resources, Democritus University of Thrace and by students of the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education in Athens. The two groups of respondents were asked to assess on a scale from 1 to 10 the reasons for disagreement among scientists regarding the increase of global temperature as a result of the greenhouse effect. The most important reasons are (1) the interdependence of science and economic activity (mean 7.33 for the students of Forestry and mean 7.22 for the students of the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education) and (2) the dependence of scientists on employers (mean 7.17 and 7.92). Reasons for disagreement are also the desire for personal fame (mean 6.88 and 5.92), the different scientific background and skills of every scientist (mean 6.68 and 5.88), the complexity of climate issues (mean 6.58 and 6.84), approaching the problem through emotion or logic (mean 6.57 and 6.19), the subjective element in each scientist which means seeing different things in the same picture (mean 6.65 and 6.00), the difficulty of proving hypotheses (mean 6.64 and 6.42), and access of scientists to different data (mean 5.55 and 5.40). Through the use of hierarchical analysis in clusters we have the following groups of variables: “financial dependence of scientists”, “possibilities regarding human and material potential”, “personality of scientists”, and “nature of the problem”. Generally, the scientific information regarding the increase of global temperature as a result of the greenhouse effect receives low grades by both the students of Forestry and the students of the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (6.73 and 6.42). However, both groups believe that we should not wait for more convincing scientific information in order to adopt the necessary measures for confronting the problem (57.1% and 87.9%).

A social dilemma lies behind many environmental problems, such as climate change. Analytically separating temporal aspects from structural aspects of the environmental dilemma prevents wrong conclusions. This article concentrates solely on the structural aspects with different grades of complexity and different grades of ignorance in the dilemma. Dilemmas with sufficient complexity, such as climate change, and/or ignorance of the stakeholders are extremely vulnerable to individual defections. Therefore, governance is an absolute must and institutions are necessary. However, controls and sanctioning are key factors of institutions. Consequently, psychological approaches should not only target the individuals, but integrate in a multidisciplinary programme that focuses on governance tasks with respect to (1) the structural diagnosis of the social dilemma of climate change; (2) didactic instruments and methods that give addressees an insight into these structural problems; (3) the role of governance for the stakeholders on internalizing norms; and (4) the impact of structural knowledge on accepting institutions that help to solve the structural part of the sustainability problem. Psychological research in institutional ergonomics could help to create addressee-friendly governance, where the addressees know about the value and adequacy of certain restrictions for the sake of common welfare and sustainability.

This paper gives a structured overview about possible contributions of psychology to the climate change debate. As a starting point, it assumes that understanding people’s behaviour related to climate change (mitigation and adaptation) is crucial for successfully dealing with the future challenges. Climate change-related behaviour includes voting, support for climate lobbyists, individual consumption, adapting new technology, and taking adaptive actions. A framework model is presented that assumes the following psychological processes to be relevant for people’s climate related behaviour (1) experiencing climate change, (2) developing an understanding for climate change, (3) building up knowledge about climate change, (4) emotionally reacting to climate change, (5) the perception of risk, (6) making behavioural decisions, and (7) evaluating behavioural outcomes. Based on psychological theory and empirical findings, it is argued that climate change possesses certain features that make it hard for laypeople to develop an understanding, build correct knowledge, and react emotionally. Furthermore, explanations are presented for why the risk of climate change has a rather low perception among laypeople, and what possible factors there are that interfere with individual mitigation and adaptation. Finally, based on the presented findings, suggestions for climate policy are made.

Anthropogenic climate change is undoubtedly a complex phenomenon, measured and argued in detailed terminology indecipherable to all but the most educated of scientists; not typical fodder for global conversation (Elliott 2007). However, it is difficult today to find any source of mainstream media – print, television or digital – on any given day that fails to mention it. The sustained and mainstream interest indicates that anthropogenic climate change has hit a nerve deep within western society. Perhaps it is because its effects are so unpredictable and disrespectful of human-constructed borders [primarily through extreme weather and the resultant conflicts wrought by scarcities of water, arid land, and other natural resources (Ackerman and Stanton 2008; Heinz Center and CERES 2009)]; westerners can no longer rely on centralized policy and technology to keep them safe. Perhaps it is because climate catastrophe has been a common theme throughout past and current mythologies around the world, in which climate catastrophe is seen as a punishment for irresponsible human behaviour; climate change may strike some universal fear inherent in humankind. Perhaps it is because the majority of western society finally understands humankind is altering its very habitat and sees extreme weather as an assertion of nature’s power over man. Whatever the reason, just as the polar bear has become the poster child – or metaphor – for anthropogenic climate change, so has anthropogenic climate change itself become a metaphor in the west for humankind’s broken relationship with the natural world. A break that, if some of the more dire predictions are to be believed, has already crossed the “point of no return”. How could the most intelligent and socially developed species in the history of the earth have allowed this to happen? To what extent can anthropogenic climate catalyze the effective, long-term societal and behavioural changes needed to heal this break?

Latvia has the unprecedented opportunity to be the first country in the world to sell assigned amount units under Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol – International Emissions Trading. Negotiations are ongoing with a number of buyers for pilot transactions with a cumulative volume of 8–10 million assigned amount units (AAUs) out of 40 million AAUs earmarked by Latvia’s government for total sales. Signed agreements are expected in 2009. Latvia’s government has indicated their interest in exploring options to sell the full volume of available AAUs by the end of 2012. The main goal of these activities is “greening” – increasing the market value of Latvia’s AAUs and alleviating buyers’ concerns regarding the environmental integrity of transactions. The Latvian government has agreed to “green” the transaction and channel the revenues to projects or programmes with environmental benefits. The Ministry of Environment, representing the government, has indicated its interest to buyers in pursuing greening during the pilot transaction in the following areas: biomass and biogas heating, energy efficiency improvements in public sector buildings and residential buildings. Pilot transactions will be followed by other transactions for other renewable energy sources.

All activities are covered by Latvia’s Climate Change Financial Instrument (CCFI). This article focuses solely on programmes related to energy efficiency in buildings.

Carbon credits have the potential to be the next great currency. It might be almost mandatory to have carbon credits one day and there seems to be no alternative world currency that escapes local political intervention that we can all trust. Carbon credits are going to hold the same value wherever you are because CO

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has a global impact. The world carbon market grew by 37% in Q1 2009 compared to the previous quarter, reaching 1,927Mt. This was 128% higher than the first quarter in 2008. By the end of 2009, the carbon market is expected to be $121 billion. The carbon market is forecasted to touch $408 billion by 2012 and $2.1 trillion by 2020. This paper reviews the carbon market in terms of volume and value, market classification, and the future of the carbon market beyond 2012.

This report will discuss some results of a case study on climate change and agricultural production in Vietnam, showing the trend of agro-climate element changes such as average temperature; the dates of beginning and ending temperature through 20 and 25°C; absolute minimum temperature; sunshine duration; rainfall, by month, season and year in all agro-economical regions. Moreover, it aims to show that climate change and sea level rise have impacted on agricultural production such as rice crop areas and production of maize, soybean and groundnut in the Red river delta, Central Region, Mekong River Delta and other regions. Furthermore, it provides suggested strategies to cope with climate change and sea level rise by different scenarios in 2050 and after 2050.

Climate change poses challenges for many economic and societal sectors, particularly the wine sector. The wine sector is of particular importance to many economies, especially in the context of Chile, where it has contributed significantly to the country’s economic development, as in 2005, wine accounted for 10% of exports. This paper assesses the vulnerability of the wine sector to climate change in the context of other stresses via a case study of the Maule Region, Chile. The research used a vulnerability approach, which is based on the empirical documentation of exposures, adaptive strategies and adaptive capacity. Problematic climatic exposures, including spring frosts, wet falls and drought, were identified and placed in the context of other forces important to producers, including market price, currency fluctuations, national and international rules and regulations, and labour availability. Producers’ experiences with climate have not warranted the development of an extensive suite of adaptation strategies to manage climate risks. The results indicate that the current strategies may not be effective in the future because they are not suited to anticipated changes in water availability and the temperature regime. Although future climate change may be beneficial and create opportunities, many of the producer-identified climatic exposures are projected to be exacerbated in the future, and the current management systems may not have the capacity to address climate variations beyond the currently experienced regime. This has considerable implications for the sector’s viability and economic profitability. With this in mind, large producers have greater access to capital than their smaller counterparts, placing them in a better position to take advantage of opportunities and successfully manage risk.

Most economic models ignore specific information at industry or company level concerning impacts of low water situations on logistic chains and production processes of mass-cargo affine industries. But particularly mass-cargo affine companies are affected by these events, especially regarding their security of supply and transport costs. In order to identify these effects, a survey was conducted. The first results of this survey and of a media analysis on this topic are presented in this publication. The survey included, e.g. the quantity of transported goods, preferred ship sizes, storage capacity, and the perception of sensitivities. Interviewed persons were people in key positions from affected industries (e.g. pharmaceutical and chemical industry, steel production, and hard coal power plants), inland navigation, ports, associations, and research.

Based on these interviews, a flow chart of consequences of low water situations on these companies was developed. The most important critical parameters are water level, bearing capacity of ships, transport expenses, storage capacity, and potentials for traffic relocation. These parameters will be illustrated by giving practical examples of one exemplary company.

It can be assumed that nearly all interviewed firms have already had difficulties in terms of transport because of extreme events (e.g. storms, heat waves, low or high water levels). They anticipate further climate change-induced difficulties. Therefore, the analysis of existing measures and adaptation options is essential to be prepared for possible future changes.

It is now beyond reasonable doubt that climate change is happening. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4) concluded that even the most stringent mitigation efforts would not avoid further impacts of climate change in the next few decades. This makes adaptation essential, particularly in addressing near-term impacts. Yet mitigation also remains crucial: to rely on adaptation alone would lead to a level of climate change to which it is no longer possible to effectively adapt, or only at very high social, economic and environmental costs. Successful action on climate change therefore must include both mitigation and adaptation. For the last two decades or even more, the literature on climate change, its science, the role of human society, the physical and socio-economic impact has experienced an explosive growth and surge in research and policy analysis on ways in which technology and finance can support mitigation. Similar studies for adaptation are much more recent, and their results therefore less mature. As adaptation is deemed an urgent need, its financing issue is now at the centre of all discussions related to adaptation. Against this background, the major focus of this paper is the financing of adaptation measures in developing countries. Of course, it should be acknowledged that mere financing represents only a part of what is needed in order to adapt to climate change. But to keep the discourse limited to adaptation financing, this paper is organized into the following sections: describing the nature and scale of the adaptation challenge in developing countries, presenting the range of numbers that have been put on the table to estimate the developing countries’ actual need for adaptation funding. Subsequently, the current status of adaptation funding – how much money is currently being channelled through the multilateral adaptation funds as well as potential bottlenecks for post-Kyoto regimes – is particularly discussed in this paper.

Climate projections for the Upper Rhine Region describe a warmer atmosphere and higher evaporation capacity in winter. Therefore, a change to more frequent and more extreme runoff in winter may influence the infrastructure of adjacent power plants as they need to be protected against floods. In Germany, two different regulations exist to specify the flood protection of companies. For coal-fired power plants, the required flood protection level is a 100-year flood. For nuclear power plants, the level is a 10,000-year flood.

Several guidelines deal with risk handling; none of these contains a specific approach how to manage flood risk via Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Therefore, a general concept based on a GIS approach will be set up:

Problem analysis: Sites are supposed to be protected against flooding. Relevant data is implemented into a GIS.

Assessing alternatives: Different water levels are illustrated for the sites with a following comparison accomplished.

Decision-making: Based on the illustrated water levels, an emergency plan is established.

Implementation: Implementation of the site-specific emergency plan. Here, protection measures can be checked and improved.

In a next step, the suitability of embedding the concept into a GIS-based approach will be tested and implemented.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global climatic phenomenon causing redistribution of rainfall from Southeast Asia into the Pacific and to the western coast of South America. The climatic conditions during ENSO warm events in insular Southeast Asia are characterized by a decrease in precipitation which is assumed to contribute to a reduction of photosynthetic activity of vegetation during such periods. Against this background, the study analyses the release of carbon dioxide in terrestrial ecosystems over the Indonesian archipelago during the El Niño event of 1997–1998 using satellite-based measurements of net primary production (NPP) and an ENSO proxy. We used 10-day time series of the NPP product derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) by the Global Photosynthesis Ecosystem Monitoring (GLOPEM) group and the Multiple ENSO Index (MEI). Respiratory processes were estimated from complex mathematical models incorporating biome-dependent constants and climatic data. Using temporal correlation analysis (TCA), we were able to estimate statistically significant relations between dynamics of carbon dioxide exchange and the MEI variable, both at the scale of vegetation types and at per-pixel scale. The results revealed that the release of carbon dioxide caused by the 1997–1998 El Niño event differs between vegetation types and varies from one locality to another. Natural tropical rainforest experienced the weakest relative loss of carbon dioxide (mean value is 14.26gC/m²/month). For cropland, mosaics, and shrubland, the relative loss of carbon dioxide was 18.67gC/m²/month, 18.31gC/m²/month, and 17.05gC/m²/month respectively. These results confirm the hypothesis that, in general, tropical rainforest is better adapted to ENSO droughts than other land use systems. However, because of the largest area covered by the tropical rainforest in Indonesia (1.03 millionkm²), the total loss of carbon dioxide for this land cover category was the greatest (17.23 million tonnes). For cropland (0.16 million km²), mosaics (0.49 million km²), and shrubland (0.18 million km²), the total carbon dioxide release was 3.33, 13.31 and 7.33 million tonnes, respectively. The results of the study improve our understanding of ENSO impacts on the carbon cycle in tropical regions and demonstrate that the current conversion of tropical rainforest to other land use systems significantly increases the total discharge of carbon dioxide during ENSO warm events.

Climate change is recognized as one of the greatest environmental threats facing the world today. To tackle this problem, a protocol was adopted in Kyoto in 1997 which establishes legally binding commitments to developed countries to bring down the emissions of six major greenhouse gases by 5.2% compared to the year 1990. Three flexibility mechanisms have been provided to developed countries to achieve the target of emission reduction under this protocol and one of them is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows industrialized nations or private entities therein to implement emission reduction projects in developing countries and receive credits in the form of Certified Emission Reduction (CERs), which may be counted against their national reduction targets. The fund channelled through the CDM by developed countries can assist developing countries to achieve objectives contributing to sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Against this background, the paper discusses about the scope of hydroelectric and wind projects in the CDM market in India and also looked at the options available other than the CDM market, namely the Voluntary Carbon Market. It also identifies to what extent the potential of these projects could be harnessed and also presents the key challenges to making full use of these opportunities.

The Baltic Sea is located in northeastern Europe and is the largest brackish sea surrounded by nine countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Due to its fragile ecosystem, the Baltic Sea’s vulnerability in climate change has been studied by several international organizations by multidisciplinary groups. With the release of the recommendation from the white paper by the European Union in April of 2009, the need for adaptation strategies is reaffirmed in the area and today consensus on the need for national adaptation policy has been built among Baltic Sea countries. This paper offers an overall assessment of adaptation strategies in the Baltic Sea Region and outlines the results of a comparative analysis of two countries, namely Latvia and Sweden. The two countries’ advancements in terms of releasing official climate change adaptation strategies are presented, as well as the areas each of their policies or suggested policies cover. Finally, both countries are placed into context with Baltic Sea neighbours with similar socioeconomical characteristics to offer a more rounded view of the general situation in the region.

Climate change is probably the main challenge humanity is facing in the twenty-first century, and even though Bolivia belongs to the nations least responsible for global greenhouse gas output, the impacts of climate change and global warming (glacier retreat in the Cordillera mountain range; droughts in the Altiplano, the inner Andean dry valleys, and the Chaco region; inundations in the Beni lowlands) are affecting an ever increasing number of people. Thus, to tackle the impacts of climate change in Bolivia is not only a task for political authorities at national, departmental, municipal, or communal level, but also one that has to be taken up by the management practitioners of the country’s protected areas. Nonetheless, the impacts of climate change are not yet a central issue in the management of the Bolivian National Protected Area System.

This article shows how protected areas are “victims” of climate change, since their biodiversity is being affected by rising temperatures and changes in the hydrological regime; we also analyse in what ways Bolivia’s protected areas are a fundamental element in the drafting of mitigation and adaptation strategies, considering the importance they have in maintaining ecosystem resilience and the provision of environmental services.

Climate change is a reality and forest trees are a major mitigating factor since they can sequester carbon dioxide and store carbon. Current climate change policy frameworks should address increased wood production in developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol (Article 3.3) should emphasize afforestation and reforestation while promoting increased use of wood products via wood recycling and good forest management. Sustainable forest management in Nigeria arising from global concern for climate change has led to increased afforestation programmes with the intensive taungya system and private establishment of many hectares of teak plantation in Nigeria. Ethiopia, Turkey, Kenya, and Mexico have planted 100–700 million trees under the UNEP tree planting programme initiative from 2006 to 2008. Legislation on Kyoto Protocol implementation may have to place emphasis on higher prices for trees that are to be given off (carbon trading) instead of being cut. A carbon tax incentive for tree planters will increase wood production and possible environmental protection. Those who contributed least to the atmospheric build-up of greenhouse gases are the least equipped to deal with the negative impacts; therefore, policies and issues in climate change should promote increased wood production in developing nations. The need to make policy issues in climate change to address increased wood production in developing nations is addressed in this paper.

Climate change is an issue that cuts across several policy domains, from the environment to transport, industry, agriculture, and health, among others. It follows that responses to climate change need to cut across the various policy fields also. The phenomenon of incorporating or mainstreaming climate policy into other policy fields is often termed “climate policy integration”, and it is a policy requirement that has not yet been extensively explored, especially at EU level. With the agreement on the EU’s integrated climate and energy package in December 2008, it is clear that climate policy integration is considered important for the Union’s strategy to combat climate change. Can it be said that climate policy integration is already in place in the EU? How can we identify climate policy integration? How can we ensure that climate policy integration is effective? The aim of this paper is to examine the extensive research already carried out on environmental policy integration (EPI) in order to draw out lessons that could help, firstly, to conceptualize climate policy integration, and, secondly, to identify a framework for analysis or a set of criteria that could aid the analysis of climate policy integration at EU level. EPI is an area of literature that rarely deals with climate policy in particular. However, its focus on policy processes, administrative structures and communication channels, for example, can provide lessons for the study and implementation of climate policy integration. This paper contributes to the development of an analytical framework for assessing and studying climate policy integration at EU level, and concludes by highlighting some areas for further research.

Politicians and high-level officials from all over the world will meet in Copenhagen in December 2009 to reach a global agreement on climate. Mitigation policies aiming at radical cuts in emissions, starting now, deepening over time, and widening their geopolitical coverage, will require domestic and international consensus, if they are to be agreed and implemented in the months and years to come.

The paper explores the drivers for adoption of mitigation policies, with a special emphasis on those arising from the International Symposium on Innovative Economic Policies for Climate Change Mitigation, held in July 2009 at the Subiaco Monastery of St Scholastica (Italy).

Instead of framing climate change mitigation as a burden, these policies are meant to generate a conducive environment for innovation, profits, employment, wages, and improvement of real quality of life.

An exploration of their economic and environmental effectiveness is conducted, together with a limited analysis of possible political factors influencing the decision to adopt them. In the conclusions, the need to reframe the discourse on climate change is put forth for the success of climate negotiations.

If climate change mitigation is a right of humanity and planet Earth, “Global Risk”, as an index – the combined world political, economic, social and warfare risk that is rapidly resulting from the unparalleled planetary ecological degradation with strategic natural-resource scarcity, over pollution and contamination, drastic climate change, ozone layer depletion, excessive biodiversity loss, as well as nuclear weapons and waste build-up – needs to be thinned down as a political and economic priority of the world to mitigate both climate change and economic recession.

It proposes a politically viable and integrative policy framework for a new climate treaty beyond Kyoto to unite all nations in a financially feasible way to achieve global scale climate change mitigation; that is, a fundamental shift in policy and tools, of moving out of a cost approach towards a profit-seeking one for the gradual build-up of the “Green Capitalist Economy”, through vital enhancements of the Kyoto Protocol, including capital market instruments such as the “Ecological” stock in the climate change mitigation process within the short term, so that there will be no reason to wait until after 2012 to start profiting within the climate change mitigation process.

Voluntary initiatives undertaken across private and public sectors have enabled innovative national and regional ICT practices, however fragmented and localized in scope these collaborations are. Policy proposals for an enabling environment have emerged from the voluntary actors, highlighting the need for a framework to spur adoption of carbon-friendly ICT practices. By exploring the links between ICT and climate change, this paper intends to highlight the policy gaps that exist to enable a wider use of ICT for climate change solutions. The study explores the potentials of climate change mainstreaming into global ICT policy platforms at the ITU, as it moves towards a framework regarding ICTs and climate change. A combination of supply and demand side policy analysis identified the forces that present both risk and opportunity for ITU to become a more meaningful player in this context. It was identified that ITU can enable greater coherence and catalysis among stakeholders and policy areas given the potentials across climate change mitigation, monitoring, and adaptation.

The use of bioenergy for the generation of electricity and heat, as well as for the production of biofuels, is growing at an impressive pace. While some ecological advantages of the use of biomass are well-known, critics stress the negative ecological and social impacts of intensive use of biomass. Existing legal regulations, whether on a European or national level, do not seem to solve these problems. The role sustainability criteria play in overcoming the ambivalences of global bioenergy use naturally is a limited one, as these criteria are not suited to accurately reflecting the complexity of the matter. Also, sustainability criteria may not avoid effects of shifting or indirect land-use, i.e. the production of e.g. meat or non-regulated biomass instead of regulated biomass in areas that do not match sustainability criteria. Finally, some of the most important aspects, as for example the world’s nourishment problems, are not representable at all in sustainability criteria – and especially not in the current EU criteria. Instead, a radical policy shift to energy efficiency and strict greenhouse gas caps would prove a lot more effective in overcoming these ambivalences in the use of bioenergy. A far-reaching policy of energy efficiency and strict caps would reduce global energy consumption and thus lead the way to a future zero carbon economy run exclusively on renewable energies. The text analyses the ambivalences of the use of bioenergy and at the same time provides a short overview of the law of bioenergy in the EU (also including some aspects of WTO law).

A systemic approach on the elaboration of adaptation policy systems was begun in 2008 by the approval of the Report on Adaptation to Climate Change by the Latvian Government and a new task was put forward – to elaborate national strategy on adaptation. Several examples of sectoral adaptation policies and measures are already being implemented in Latvia (flood risk assessment and management, risk management and insurance in agriculture, coastal zone management, etc.) and research is being conducted on climate change impacts. A systemic approach is required for decision-making to solve such a huge, global, and unstructured problem as climate change impacts and risks. This involves facilitating work of different partners and stakeholders involved in decision-making to reach a common basis for efficient action, normative principles, and appropriate criteria (sustainability, and others subordinated to it – precautionary measures, solidarity and cooperation, dematerialization, sustainable resource use, triple bottom line, diversification, “polluter pays”). This paper analyses some key aspects integral to the development of a national system of adaptation to climate change, discusses practical considerations (policies and measures) already being implemented in Latvia, and proposes a new policy design approach for more efficient elaboration and implementation of adaptation policy.

Atmospheric CO

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background levels are sampled and processed according to the standards of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Earth System Research Laboratory mostly at marine environments to minimize the local influence of vegetation, ground or anthropogenic sources. Continental measurements usually show large diurnal and seasonal variations, which makes it difficult to estimate well mixed CO

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levels.

Historical CO

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measurements are usually derived from proxies, with ice cores being the favourite. Those done by chemical methods prior to 1960 are often rejected as being inadequate due to poor siting, timing, or method. The CO

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versus wind speed plot represents a simple but valuable tool for validating modern and historic continental data. It is shown that either a visual or a mathematical fit can give data that are close to the regional CO

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background, even if the average local mixing ratio is very different.

A large part of the world’s freshwater resources is contained in river basins and groundwater systems that are shared by two or more countries. As climate change essentially changes the hydrological situation in many basins, increasing the number of extreme situations of flooding and drought, transboundary management of these water resources in order to prevent negative effects of unilateral adaptation measures and in order to choose the most effective measures has become highly urgent.

Transboundary water management is in essence more complex than national water management because the water management regimes usually differ more between countries than within countries. Transboundary water management requires coordination over different political, legal and institutional settings as well as over different information management approaches and financial arrangements.

A Guidance on Water and Climate Adaptation has been developed under the UNECE Water Convention with the objective to support cooperation and decision making in transboundary basins, addressing adaptation to climate change impacts on water resources, such as flood and drought occurrences, water quality, and health related aspects, as well as practical ways to cope with the transboundary impacts. It illustrates steps and adaptation measures that are needed in order to develop a climate-proof water strategy, starting from the transboundary context.

In all the work towards adaptation to climate change, the major challenge for politicians is to have a vision of how to implement the ideas, as well as the courage to withstand criticism and to share power with other actors.

Purpose

: REDD is being criticized on several fronts and thus, there is a need for an integrated, comprehensive paradigm that incorporates emissions reduction, biodiversity conservation, and community development, and is leveraged towards sustainability in forests and livelihoods rather than narrower goals such as emissions reduction or conservation.

Design/methodology/approach

: A SWOT analysis of REDD is conducted and based on the results of the analysis, a new framework is proposed.

Findings

: Although REDD has enormous potential to not just reduce emissions but also provide significant co-benefits, there has also been criticism on various fronts. A new theoretical framework with carbon, conservation, and community as the three pillars has been proposed.

Originality/value

: The paper proposes a new paradigm that addresses GHG emission reduction, conservation of forests and biodiversity, community livelihoods support, and valuation of environmental services provided by forests. Forests, covering one-third of the earth’s surface, are home to more than half of the biodiversity on earth, provide multiple ecosystem services, and contribute to more than a billion livelihoods globally. However, forests have largely been mismanaged and remain one of the key challenges in international as well as national policy and governance. The dual role of forests in climate change, both as a source and sink of GHG emissions, adds to the urgency for action. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is being intensely discussed for its likely role in climate change mitigation. The argument had originated with avoided deforestation, subsequently broadened to REDD and is currently being discussed around REDD+, an indication that there is more to this debate than just incentivizing emissions reduction. Although REDD has enormous potential to not just reduce emissions but also provide significant co-benefits, there has also been criticism on various fronts. The author proposes the climate, community, conservation, and sustainability (C3S) paradigm which would include objectives such as GHG emissions reduction, valuation of environmental services provided by forests, conservation of forests and biodiversity, and community livelihoods support.

I analyse the jargonized climate change language used in very common material including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), recent economic policy papers (Stern, The economics of climate change, 2006 and Garnaut, Garnaut climate change review, 2008), government responses, and the full set of abstracts for the Climate Congress held in Copenhagen in March 2009. Despite the best efforts of experts who try explain messages of climate action urgency, the fact of climate change seems to still suffer from a credibility shortfall. At least part of this problem are the climate change communication “code words” as described by Hassol, Eos 89(11):106, 2008. She explains that words such as “anthropogenic”, “bias”, “debate”, “enhance”, “positive” (as in positive feedback and trend), and, perhaps most dangerous of all, “theory” have common language meanings very different from their climate change meaning. She says that terms that now seem perfectly reasonable to global change scientists are still jargon in the wider world and always have simpler substitutes. For example few people say “spatial” and “temporal,” they say “space” and “time”. Surely, in day-to-day speech, people say “caused by us (or people)” rather than anthropogenic. The very terminology we have developed to talk about this diabolical challenge for humanity may be slowing down our ability to galvanize the actions so urgently required.

Starting from some key outcomes of the first agreement on the Protocol on ICZM (Integrated Coastal Zone Management) in the Mediterranean Region recently signed in Madrid, the paper seeks to contribute to an evaluation of what the application of climate change adaptation policies along Italian coasts really could mean.

This research aims to provide a concrete comparison between the present coastal land use and substantive obligations stated in the Protocol. Among these, we have mainly considered building limitations in an area of at least one hundred metres from the sea. In this context, the paper analyses the present land use and its spatial features regarding the coastal vulnerability to climate change and the feasibility of adaptation strategies.

An index-based evaluation of the aptness of application of the Protocol along Italian coasts has been prepared, showing substantial differences in regional potential.

The research presents methods to select zones where the Protocol could be applied and used to consider non-standard solutions, such as converting the impact of the railways into a coastal protection perspective.

This study intends to offer a concrete stimulus for a national coastal adaptation programme that is still lacking in Italy, suggesting innovative methods for a national comparison of regional particularities regarding coastal adaptation.

Africa contains about one-fifth of all known species of plants, mammals, and birds, as well as one-sixth of amphibians and reptiles. These species make up some of the world’s most diverse and biologically important ecosystems, such as savannahs, tropical forests, coral reef marines and freshwater habitats, wetlands, and montane ecosystems. These globally important ecosystems provide the economic foundation that many Africa countries rely on, by providing water, food, and shelter. However, because of climate change, these ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them are threatened. The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the major impacts of climate change on conservation for East African countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. As this paper illustrates, climate change in Africa is not only a conservation problem, but a socio-economic issue that must be dealt with on a global scale.

Translating public concern for global warming into effective action requires knowledge about the causes and risks of climate change. The aim of this study is a theory-guided analysis of everyday and scientific conceptions of global warming. These conceptions will be the basis for the design of communicating strategies in a separate study.

Framed by the model of educational reconstruction, scientific concepts of global warming were compared with everyday conceptions that were identified in interviews and a re-analysis of empirical studies. The analysis of conceptions of climate change based on the theory of experientialism (Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To Western Thought, 1999) shows that laypeople and scientists refer to the same schemata: the use of the container-flow schema is omnipresent in conceptions on the global carbon cycle as well as in conceptions of the radiative equilibrium between earth and space. To explain the causes of global warming three principles were found: global warming by (a) an imbalance in the global carbon cycle, (b) man-made carbon dioxide, and (c) natural vs. man-made carbon dioxide. Laypeople explain the processes leading to global warming either through warming by more input or warming by less output.

Climate policy assessments often appear to lack a multi-analytical approach capable of considering different dimensions of sustainability during policy design. This paper presents an integrated assessment framework of climate policy instrument interactions by reconciling environmental, socio-economic, political, and institutional aspects for the initial stage of policy development. Selected interacting policy instruments are categorized into their policy design characteristics, referring to parameters that describe the institutional context of each instrument. Criteria covering specific environmental, sociopolitical, macroeconomic, financial, and technological objectives for assessing the policy instruments are identified and selected. Complementarities and overlaps between different combinations of instruments are identified. These affect subsequently the likely values (scores) of policy instruments against the evaluation criteria. By applying an interactive weighting method, policy makers are able to assign weighting factors on the criteria expressing their perceptions and objectives. An overall assessment of combined instruments from these steps is therefore determined based on the input from policy makers. We found that the developed framework provides a transparent tool to stakeholders capable of highlighting potential synergies and conflicts between environmental, socio-economic, political, and technological criteria during the stage of climate policies design. The method merits further attention in group decision-making for mapping stakeholders’ preferences with diverse objectives.

This article discusses the impacts of aviation on global climate change, and shows attempts by the aviation industry to mitigate those impacts by means of alternative fuels. Special respect in this paper is given to the use of hydrogen as aviation fuel. Examples of practical and theoretical research projects on the application of hydrogen are presented and the current outlook towards an introduction of hydrogen into practice is presented. From a technological point of view, hydrogen as an aircraft fuel is feasible. However, in the current attempts by the aviation industry to improve environmental friendliness, hydrogen is not included as a measure within the foreseeable timeframe due to large financial and technical efforts.

Whereas the literature on adaptation is rich in detail on the impacts of, vulnerability to, and constraints of climate adaptation, less is known about the conditions that facilitate adaptation in practice. We examined the constraints and opportunities for adaptation in water and land use planning in three regions: the Guadiana River Basin in Spain and Portugal, the Tisza River Basin in Hungary and western Inner Mongolia in China. We analysed the conditions that either facilitate or constrain adaptation in relation to (1) adaptation actors, (2) adaptation strategies, and (3) adaptation objectives. Many adaptation assessments concentrate on climate impacts and the potential of adaptation strategies. The conditions that enable people to act on adaptation are less studied. Yet these have been identified as particularly important for successfully implementing adaptation. We find that adaptation is enhanced by pilot projects that test and debate new ideas through collaboration between recognized actors from civil society, policy, and science. Promising for adaptation is the integration of (traditional) agro-environmental land use systems that regulate regional climate impacts with new technologies, organizational responsibilities and financial instruments. A key challenge is to create flexible and equitable financial instruments that facilitate benefit and burden sharing, social learning, and that support a diverse set of potentially better adapted new activities rather than compensate for climate impacts on existing activities.

The university system can be conceived as an institution that nurtures, trains, educates, and monitors students in the understanding of myriad bodies of knowledge about the Earth system and all other natural and human activities. With particular reference to climate change education, it also engages students in research activities as a way of learning science, understanding climate change, contributing to climate change studies and participating in several local and international workshops, seminars, and conferences. This paper focuses on how climate change projects within the university system can be used to develop and build capacities in the field of climate science. The study develops a triadic model of capacity building built around training, mentoring, and networking. A case of Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC) project in sub-Saharan West Africa is used to illustrate this model. Considering the fact that many developed and developing countries are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, albeit with different intensities, it is recommended that these countries adopt this triadic model so as to increase capacity, as well as reduce their levels of vulnerabilities to climate change impacts.

Global circulation models all forecast that climate change will increase mean temperatures and change precipitation regimes. As a result, traditional coffee growing regions may disappear and new regions may appear. At the same time, demand for high quality, responsibly sourced coffee continues to grow globally. For sustainable sources of coffee, participants in the global coffee supply chain need to know where coffee will grow in the future and how the suitability of these areas will change over time. With this information, the supply chain then needs to develop appropriate site-specific mitigation and adaptation strategies for both the short and the long term, to guarantee coffee supply as well as to support improved livelihoods for rural communities. In this paper, we firstly quantify the impact of climate change on the suitability of land to grow coffee in a case study in Nicaragua and on acidity content of beverage coffee in a case study in the Veracruz Department of Mexico. Secondly, we propose site-specific adaptation strategies and finally identify critical potential impacts of climate change on the overall supply chain and the implications for all actors in the system. We conclude the paper by identifying key directions for future research to seek mitigation and adaptation strategies at both the community and the supply-chain level.

No matter how fast society reduces greenhouse gases, rising temperatures will produce significant ecological, social, health, and economic consequences. Few public or private organizations in the US, however, have the capacity to effectively prepare for or adapt to these inevitable changes. Unless the public and private sectors begin now to prepare for these impacts, great harm and high costs will result. The Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon, with partners, instituted a multi-year programme to develop a model that can be replicated nationwide for (a) analysing potential climate impacts at the basin scale; (b) engaging government agencies and stakeholders involved with natural (e.g. landscapes, streams, and biodiversity), human (e.g. emergency response, health care, education), built (e.g. transport, irrigation, communications infrastructure and buildings), and economic (e.g. forestry, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism) systems in assessing what those likely impacts mean for their sectors; (c) helping the agencies and stakeholders develop strategies and policies to prepare their systems to withstand and adapt to climate change through methods that enhance, and not undermine, climate preparation efforts in the other sectors.

We began with pilot programmes in the Rogue and Upper Willamette river basins of Oregon. We are now working in the Klamath Basin of Oregon and California and will soon move to the national level with model programmes in three to four locations across the country. Our goal is to dramatically increase climate preparation and adaptation literacy and to build and deliver the tools and resources needed to assist all levels of governments, institutions and non-profits across the nation to proactively prepare for climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC (2007), “Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability”, Working Group II contribution to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK) describes warming of the climate system as “unequivocal”. In future, global warming will influence the frequency and severity of extreme events and in response, local councils around the world must take adaptive measures. In this paper we focus on an investment tool that relates adaptation strategies to climatic extremes for the local government jurisdiction, Ku-ring-gai Council, Australia. The impacts of climatic extremes cannot be solely viewed in terms of economic losses, but should also be considered with regard to their social and environmental implications. Bayesian inference, a method usually used in operational risk analysis is used to assess the economic cost and benefit of adaptation options. The use of this method helps in accounting for the uncertainties and absence of observations for extreme events. Economic modelling is done with selected discount rates considering the economic constraints of local councils. Social and environmental ranks for adaptation options are obtained by drawing ideas from the Delphi approach that elicits expert opinion and tries to obtain consensus in a number of iterative steps. Through this paper we introduce a method to obtain a prioritized set of adaptation options for local scale climate extreme events.

As many crops are sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation, agriculture is especially vulnerable to climate events. This may prove critical in tropical regions where most agriculture is in rain-fed systems and climate change may have a potentially large influence on productivity. By adversely affecting food and water resources, climate change thus threatens progress and efforts made in poverty reduction, economic growth, and achievement of further Millennium Development Goals, such as ending hunger on our planet and achieving environmental sustainability.

The intensification of food production transformed formerly small-scale traditional systems to modern large-scale monocultures, e.g. in Latin America. However, banana monoculture production by smallholders is also found in many parts of the world, for example in countries such as St Lucia, which is a major banana-producing country in the Caribbean Windward Islands.

Mono-cropping farmers increasingly need to deal with the fact that modern intensive agricultural systems which are characterized by increased need for fertilizers and irrigation, i.e. nutrients and water, may become more sensitive to climate change in terms of lower productivity, higher vulnerability, and reduced sustainability in the future. Moreover, food systems in developing countries are currently experiencing enormous organizational changes, reflected in the ongoing reorganization of supply chains, ranging from farm to fork. Being at the end of the chain, particularly the small-scale producers have to cope with global consumers’ demands, reflected in the necessity to deliver high-quality products on time and at competitive prices. These high requirements can represent a serious barrier to small farmers’ participation in higher value chains, e.g. in the Caribbean Island of St Lucia. St. Lucia’s farmers therefore need to diversify their production, e.g. by adopting fair trade production standards, and tap new domestic as well as niche markets by means of improved commercialization to sustain food security and poverty reduction endeavors.

Considering that small island developing states like St Lucia, where agriculture still represents the backbone of a society increasingly have to face these two global challenges – globalized markets and climate change – and recognize their impacts already today, this paper will explore the future impacts of climate change on the Caribbean region, discuss the potential impacts of climate change for smallholder agriculture in St Lucia, and elaborate on the importance of information, training and capacity building, not only in terms of improved diversification and commercialization of agricultural produce, but also for raising the adaptive capacity of small-scale farmers in St Lucia by providing sustainable adaptation options for farm-level diversification in the light of climate change.

Instead of the notion that “developing countries will be able to use emissions-backed currency units to pay off their debts”, we find “developing countries must forgive developed countries their United States of America dollar debts so that the emissions-backed currency unit-based climate regime can be introduced”. Looking at foreign debt as it stands, India may not yet have an interest in an emissions-backed currency unit (ebcu), and other developing countries might or might not either, not until the dollar mess is sorted out. Before the introduction of the ebcu, it is important to have the demise of the dollar economies, and their demise cannot be hastened by the introduction of the ebcu because the quantum of ebcu bears no relation at all to the quantum of foreign exchange circulating in the developed country economies today. The data suggests that the old international economy based on dollars is finished. There is no way these countries can ever pay back their debt, nor should they, because they would need fossil fuels to do so. Therefore, all debts in all currencies in all countries must be forgiven. This is the same as saying the economies have to collapse. Once these economies have agreed to collapse, a new climate bank is established. Every person in developing countries gets 8.63 emissions-backed currency units and 8.63 permits (Assigned Amount Units) in the first year, declining to net zero in line with the science. Developed countries must buy their permits by selling renewable energy technology and reduce their demand for permits by eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from over-consumption. In this period, the world thus trades gently, prudently, as India has been doing, just to get what we need from the international markets, which are basically renewable energy systems.

The polar regions, defined as sentries, are a necessary part of scientific experimentation concerning global climate change; they constitute the engine and the archives of climate development. The polar juridical systems have recognized the importance of such research.

This essay deals with some features of the protection of the marine oceanic environment considering three main coordinates: features of the juridical regulation applicable to the polar regions; juridical problems related to Arctic sea navigation; need for strengthening cooperation between scientific research and legal regulations and international law.

The north polar states can best achieve widespread global support for management of their maritime Arctic by acknowledging the international importance of the north pole and then working through the regional framework set out by the Multilateral Agreements and the IMO to develop comprehensive regulations.

Located in western Sudan, Darfur covers 500,000km

2

, and has a population of 7.4 million. The Darfur crisis started in 2003, with a tragic cost in human life and population displacement. Climate change is the root cause of the crisis. This is not to diminish the political, socio-economic, and ethnic factors. The Darfur crisis is so complex because a multitude of factors are operative simultaneously. The impact of climate change has been well documented in several other ecosystems. The sedentary farmers of the Fur tribe and the nomadic tribes have enjoyed peaceful coexistence for centuries. The Fur and other sedentary tribes own the land and the nomads have the right to use the rangeland; when minor clashes arose, they were quickly diffused by tribal leaders.

Conflicts gradually developed from low to high intensity, fuelled by shrinkage in natural resources caused primarily by climate change. While precipitation in Northern Darfur has dropped by 30% over the last 80 years, resulting in repeated bouts of drought, livestock and human populations increased significantly. A political solution to the crisis, though essential, will not remove the underlying causes of the conflict driven by climate change. The solution is robust development of the region based on strategies of adaptation to climate change, which will reduce poverty and provide alternative livelihoods. The industrialized nations, who caused climate change, are obliged to fund such an endeavour. Lessons learned from Darfur will hopefully prevent such a tragedy from happening elsewhere.

As the carbon dioxide concentration in the air is increasing, the oceans are changing: they are getting warmer (global warming) and more acidic (ocean acidification). These threats are very likely to have substantial impacts on marine ecosystems and on terrestrial species that depend on the oceans (e.g. human beings). To prevent the most dramatic consequences of such changes to the climate, citizens need to take collective actions. In that respect, education is a key factor to increase our awareness and understanding of climate change. Within the educational project Inquiry-to-Insight (I2I) we have developed, implemented, and tested Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools addressing the climate change issue with high school students.

One such tool that we have developed is an open access virtual animation and laboratory on ocean acidification (OA). This tool allows students to improve their background knowledge of OA and to become virtual scientists, conducting and analysing research on the effect of ocean acidity on a key and well known marine organism: sea urchin. Our results from a pilot study in two high schools in Sweden and California indicate that the OA I2I activities in particular, and other I2I tools in general, increase students’ awareness and understanding of OA.

It is widely recognized that although climate change impacts will affect all countries, marginalized communities in the South will be disproportionally affected. Poor people in the developing world have limited capacity to cope and adapt, and are highly dependent on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. The Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP) is strengthening communities and working with civil society to respond to climate change while addressing their pressing development needs. Communities can act on global climate change concerns through the application of local solutions that generate local benefits. GEF SGP is the delivery mechanism by which the GEF and UNDP support the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the community level. Much planning and policy making on addressing the adverse effects of climate change is based on “top-down” assessments (such as modelling data, economic assessments, National Communications, and National Adaptation Programmes of Action), which provide relevant macro-level guidance; however, this can significantly benefit from bottom-up governance. The paper will provide case studies on how empowerment of local communities provides critical guidance to national planning and policy making and consequently ensures calibration and relevance to end beneficiaries. The paper will show how local communities can be in the driver’s seat to leverage systemic policy changes at a national level, thereby accelerating the pace of change.