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Welcome!
No Matter What, Joy
Beth Raps
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The Adaptation Network was founded to affirm human possibility in the face of planetary climatic change, especially as we experience it in the United States. Humans throughout history have felt the same way about winter. It is a time we affirm possibility amid profound challenge. Shallow joy is cheap this time of year. But the deep joy we know in winter percolates from the very ground of our being. We affirm possibility because good things have happened before when we were challenged. And sometimes, we ourselves are those good things. Joy to you, and joy in what you work for, and thank you for your warmth toward our work.
I can't tell you what a blessing it is to have Lynne Carter join me this year as co-director of the Adaptation Network. First of all, Lynne actually knows what she is doing with regard to adaptation to climate change in the US! She has the professional background, the skills and the savvy to lead us. Second, she is tremendous fun and absolutely solid to work with. Finally, she is passionate about adaptation as vital and doable, and she communicates that strongly. You'll find Lynne's writing below.
I'd like to point you to some exciting news from the US Senate: adaptation is gaining traction! Check out the discussion on the Climate Science Watch website at climatesciencewatch.org. There you'll also find an important article reprinted from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "An Inconvenient Assessment" on the suppression of the National Assessment, a model of participatory scientific assessment of how climate is changing at ground-level in the US and what to do about it. One reason our co-director Lynne Carter is a leader now is because, like the founder of Climate Science Watch, she has worked at the national level on climate change. Lynne staffed the National Assessment, supporting and coordinating the work of the regional teams around the country that comprised the national program. As the article goes, "Seven years ago, scientists published a pioneering study to help Americans understand the implications of climate change. Here's why you've never heard of it" It's important to note that in every region, National Assessment scientists worked with non-scientist stakeholders to develop understanding of regional impacts that made sense to people in that region. This is what we need now: science that makes sense of climate to help organized groups of citizens, planners, and decisionmakers in every town, county, state, and region of the US figure out what to do to adapt to projected changes as well as to mitigate them.
I'd also like to point out an irony, but a useful one. The Adaptation Network promotes guides to adaptation – you'll see a meta-guide (guide to the guides) reviewed by Lynne below, and our website links you to it and to the also very important NOAA-funded, Climate Impacts Group/ICLEI/King County, Washington co-produced guidebook Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments. Both of these are where you should start if you want to adapt to climate change in the US.
But my personal prize for most empirically based guide to adaptation funded by a federal agency goes to one designed for use outside the US: Adapting to Climate Variability and Change: A Guidance Manual for Development Planning. I like it because the four pilot studies on which it's based (Honduras, Mali, South Africa, Thailand) zero in on local vulnerabilities to most established climate impacts and focus on affordable, practical solutions. Download the pdf from usaid.gov here. For more information, contact John Furlow: jfurlow@usaid.gov; (202) 712-5274.
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Important New Adaptation Survey – Free of Charge!
Lynne Carter
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Earlier this fall, we announced the release of A Survey of Climate Change Adaptation Planning, (Bill Perkins and Dennis Ojima), from The H. John Heinz III Center For Science, Economics and the Environment. However, this document deserves a great deal more attention than just an announcement, as it is a wonderful resource in how to think about local and regional adaptation planning, and empowers people to begin adaptation activities. This document includes four significant parts: a review and assessment of the contents of eight guidebooks and frameworks; a brief description of 18 adaptation plans from around the US and the world; the start of a searchable database by topic (e.g. sea level rise); and contacts and additional information sources.
The review and assessment of the contents of the eight guidebooks and frameworks is around the following eight criteria:
- The included information is useful to different levels of government and applicable to a variety of environmental issues.
- There is enough detail to assist in policy development.
- The document includes a decision-making framework.
- Description is included around a method to assess sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability.
- Sample adaptive actions are included.
- There is a section that addresses implementation.
- The document provides links to additional resources.
- The framework or guidebook encourages stakeholder participation in the adaptation process.
The assessment process is not a measure of any document being "better" than any other document. Rather it is a measure of what is contained in the document that could assist in developing an adaptation plan for a location or region. Those eight criteria are considered important parts of the process and checklists indicate whether a significant (two checks), slight (one check), or no (no checks) description around those areas is included in each of the guides. These checklists are a quick way to point you in the direction of specific information that you may be seeking. For example, if you want assistance in assessing a variety of environmental issues, you might look to the King County/ICLEI document, and so on.
The brief descriptions of 18 Adaptation plans from around the US and around the world are helpful in understanding the issues that others are dealing with. They also give ideas that may prove useful because seeing what and how others are proceeding can encourage understanding, innovation, and provide ammunition to use in your community or locale to help get adaptation thinking into planning efforts.
The searchable database is just a start, but can be extremely helpful if your community is seeking options to address a particular problem. By using the database you may click on an issue and it will show you what adaptation plans and hence other communities are dealing with a similar issue and lead you to the description of what they are doing. By looking at a variety of options being undertaken by other communities, you may be able to find one that could be helpful or encourage you to think of other options that best suit your particular aspect of the issue.
Finally, the additional resources and contact information that allows sharing with others who have dealt with similar problems of juggling competing issues or convincing their administrations of the importance of including adaptation in their planning can be extremely empowering. Knowing that there is a national and international group of others willing to step forward to prepare for climate changes that we cannot avoid contributes to a confidence that is needed to push forward in the face of obstacles. Acknowledging this broad range of interested and willing others seems to support the recognition that this issue is real and we can prepare for it.
I have spoken about this resource numerous times this fall and always hear from the audience how excited they are to know about it and how they look forward to using it. I am grateful to the Heinz Center for focusing their summer intern on such a useful effort and producing such an easy to use document. Please see the link on the Adaptationnetwork.org website (in the publications tab) to download your own copy.
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Adaptation Network News
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The Adaptation Network: Building Resilience in a Changing Climate is a nonprofit, tax-exempt project of the Earth Island Institute. Earth Island is celebrating its 25th year of life, sponsoring now about 40 projects, and was founded by the renowned environmental activist and maverick, David Brower. For more information on Earth Island, see www.earthisland.org.
All donations are tax-deductible. You can make one simply to help us keep putting out this useful newsletter – and send us suggestions for making it more useful to you. Make checks out to Earth Island Institute, with "for the Adaptation Network" clearly indicated in the memo section of the check.
If you'd like to make an inkind gift to the Adaptation Network, airline credits are always useful and welcomed! Thank you!!!
We'd like you to know that we are funded by a wonderful combination of individuals, organizations, and consulting work. Thanks to:
- the Evergreen Foundation, who gave us $5000 this year!
- the Climate Change Science Program, who hired Lynne to facilitate a stakeholder meeting
- the Center for Humans and Nature, who hired us to create a scoping meeting on adaptation with and for them
- Martin Fowler, who created the nation's first undergraduate ethic syllabus centered on adaptation at Elon University (with some support from the Adaptation Network), and who is, we are grateful to note, one of our first individual donors!
- Michael Neely, who is responsible for the beauty of our email newsletter, and an inkind donor of his ample electronic design skills!
If you would like to make a holiday gift in honor of a co-worker, friend, or family member, please let us know: bethraps@earthlink.net. We'll create a spiffy personal gift notice for that person, and you'll both know you've made a significant investment in the future of resilience in the United States-and it's tax-deductible!!!
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New Resources Available from the Adaptation Network
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Adaptation Ethics Syllabus: Martin Fowler
of the Philosophy Department at Elon University has produced and piloted the nation's first ethics curriculum for undergraduate nonmajors in philosophy that takes the problems of adaptation seriously and helps undergraduates wrestle with them. Martin has allowed us to share his syllabus and assignments freely with those who would like to see and possibly to develop their own course materials based on them. Please contact bethraps@earthlink.net to receive a copy.
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Empirical Research in Adaptation Ethics: Martin Fowler
of Elon University has developed a three-year program of research he is willing for us to share with interested readers. Please contact bethraps@earthlink.net to receive a copy. Its title is "Who is My Climate Neighbor?" and it is guided by six evocative questions:
- Will climate change "re-regionalize" us into self-sustaining communities without much political sense of the common good beyond our community, or will these changes perhaps ground our humanity and common good more solidly than ever?
- Individually and collectively, how do we define our intergenerational selves when the future's Creation meets our grandchildren on very different terms than in the past?
- Does scientific materialism slow us down or obstruct our understanding of climate change?
- Will hope and resolve continue as renewable resources in the human condition?
- Can we recover our confidence in humanity's stability and endurance?
- Who are our neighbors? Can humanity and nature finally become good neighbors for each other?
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The Adaptation Network website
also contains links to the following three highly recommended
resources. Please, if you use them, send us your comments on them? The authors
have let us know they would very much appreciate comments and will use them in
revising these resources for future users:
- Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments by the Climate Impacts Group, ICLEI, and King County, Washington
- A Survey of Climate Change Adaptation Planning-see article on the Survey by Lynne Carter above
- Presentation by Adaptation Network Co-Director Lynne Carter, "Climate
Change and Cape Cod: Coastal Impacts and Adaptation Strategies"
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Foci: Adaptation and. . .
Agriculture
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The Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network had a special agricultural resources department which officially closed June 30, 2007. Before closure, the Agricultural department's co-ordinator sent this list of useful resources on agricultural adaptation to climate change:
A modified web site with documents, archived media items, and archived updates will be accessible for the near future: c-ciarn.uoguelph.ca.
A searchable bibliographic database, a series of adaptation posters, and other resources from all the C-CIARN offices (Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, North, Prairies, British Columbia, Coastal Zone, Fisheries, Forests, Health, and Water Resources) will be posted at: c-ciarn.ca.
Details about the book, Farming in a Changing Climate: Agricultural Adaptation in Canadian Agriculture are available through UBC Press (see here). This volume is based on material presented during the C-CIARN Agriculture 2005 meeting in Edmonton Alberta. C-CIARN feels it provides a wide-ranging synopsis of what climate change means for Canadian agriculture and explores different approaches to the topic with examples of current research.
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Ecosystems
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Australian scholar Brendan Mackey has written an important paper: "Climate Change, Connectivity, and Biodiversity Conservation," that may well be the first-ever on these three topics taken together. He has authorized us to send copies in pdf format to interested parties. Thank you so much, Brendan! |
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Coasts
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A USAID initiative on coastal climate change adaptation offers an international, electronic Newsletter called Basins and Coasts: imcafs.org/coastsheds. Adaptation Network co-directors have an article in the upcoming issue, which introduces adaptation and approaches around working with coastal climate change vulnerability.
Dedicated Adaptation Network member Sid Gale of Guilford, Connecticut, writes us: "The following two links may be of interest to you. The first is a link to a You Tube video, which was brought to my attention while attending a conference of Northeast Regional Coastal Zone Managers, convened by NOAA in Providence, RI last week:
watch. The second is my blog on that conference, including a brief description of the above video: click here. But the video speaks more than adequately for itself. If there were a Nobel prize for science teachers, I would recommend this gentleman, known only to God and You Tube as wonderingmind42."
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National Security
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A new report, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, from The CAN Corporation (2007) was recently released: SecurityAndClimate.cna.org. Developed through consultations with eleven three- and four-star admirals and generals, its findings are that climate change is a serious threat and highlights the worldwide concerns of resource problems and the resulting potential for widespread disasters. This report looks at likely trends and impacts and suggests a number of possible actions. One of those actions is a focus on adaptation. Recommendation three says: "The US should commit to global partnerships that help less developed nations build the capacity and resiliency to better manage climate impacts. . . The US government should . . . assist nations at risk [to] build the capacity and resiliency to better cope with the effects of climate change. Doing so now can help avert humanitarian disasters later" (pg.7). The report points out that climate change, national security, and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges (pg 7) and is a call to action, arguing that increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay (pg 3).
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Announcements
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Adapt Local provides guidance and both strategic and technical support in the use of Internet tools and techniques for those involved in adaptation planning. Applying over two decades of experience in using the Net as a social communications medium, Adapt Local can help bring citizens, stakeholders, activists and planners together in preparing their communities for the impacts of climate change. Adapt Local provides on-site advisory services, Net skills workshops and facilitated online planning communities. Visit them and learn more at adaptlocal.org.
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IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program 2008: Summer Fellowship in Austria for Graduate Students in Natural and Social Sciences, Math, Policy and Engineering: Each summer, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), located in Schloss Laxenburg near Vienna, Austria, hosts a selected group of graduate students, primarily doctoral, from around the world in its Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP). These students work closely with IIASA's senior scientists on projects within the Institute's 3 theme areas. Funding is available to cover travel to IIASA and a modest living allowance. Deadline to apply: January 15, 2008. iiasa.ac.at
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World Resources Institute
has a new program in Vulnerability and Adaptation where the focus is on reducing human and ecosystem vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. WRI has recently released a report and searchable database: Weathering the Storm: Options for Framing Adaptation and Development. Synopsis: Clarifies the relationship between adaptation and development by analyzing 135 projects, policies, and other initiatives from the developing world that have been labeled by implementers or researchers as "adaptation to climate change." Check it out.
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The ADAM project: Funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK, ADAM (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: supporting European climate policy) is an integrated research project running from 2006 to 2009 that will lead to a better understanding of the trade-offs and conflicts that exist between adaptation and mitigation policies. ADAM will support EU policy development in the next stage of the development of the Kyoto Protocol and will inform the emergence of new adaptation strategies for Europe. For more information see: adamproject.eu
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IUCN, IISD, SEI-US and Intercooperation
have developed and tested a project planning and management tool called CRiSTAL (Community-based Risk Screening Tool – Adaptation and Livelihoods). The tool seeks to help project planners and managers integrate risk reduction and climate change adaptation into community-level projects. To download a copy of the overview document: click here. For more information contact: Anne Hammill, Livelihoods and Climate Change Project Manager, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), ahammill@iisd.org
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Upcoming workshop
: from UKCIP: Sustaining Knowledge for a Changing Climate (SKCC) - Shaping Research for a Changing Climate, 28-29 January, West Bromwich (Booking deadline is Friday 11th January). This two-day workshop will help to shape the future of research into climate change adaptation within the UK's built environment. In anticipation of a call for proposals in spring 2008 this workshop will suggest how the new programme might be structured and what its priorities might be. The event will involve presentations and participative sessions. For more information, please see k4cc.org or contact graeme.sherriff@manchester.ac.uk
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Upcoming conference
: 'Living with climate change: are there limits to adaptation?', Royal Geographical Society, London, 7-8 February 2008.
This conference is being organized by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the University of Oslo, with the support of the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project. The conference will consider strategies for adapting to climate change, in particular the potential barriers to adaptation that may limit the ability of societies to adapt to climate change and to identify opportunities for overcoming these barriers. It is aimed at researchers and practitioners with an interest in understanding how societies adapt to climate change. The conference has 3 themes:
Theme 1: Adapting to thresholds in physical and ecological systems.
Theme 2: The role of values and culture in adaptation.
Theme 3: Governance, knowledge, and technologies for adaptation.
For further details please go here.
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Republicans for Environmental Protection
has a brand-new publication, "Good Stewards: A Conservative Citizen's Guide to Climate Change," as the centerpiece of an effort in South Carolina. The booklet and much more information can be found at the Good Stewards page of REP's website: repamerica.org/good_stewards.html.
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Desperately Seeking
fellow researchers/practitioners. . .
Your AD Here!
no photo necessary.
send all correspondence in care of the Adaptation Network.
If you are seeking colleagues, partners, or simply contacts in any area related to adaptation to climate change, please send us your "ad" and we'll publish it!
Thanks to. . .
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Energy Action Coalition for hosting us at Power Shift 2007.
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National Academy of Sciences, for holding a scoping meeting on adaptation and inviting our co-director Lynne Carter to be a part of it.
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NERRS -- the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve network -- as well as Massachusetts Coastal Training program through Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Coastal States Organization, and a NOAA convened Northeast Regional Coastal Zone Managers meeting for inviting co-director Lynne to speak on adaptation planning.
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To Sid Gale a special thanks for graciously replacing Lynne at the NRCZM meeting in Providence.
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South Carolina Lowcountry Center for Humans and Nature for inviting co-director Beth Raps to participate in a climate change and ethics think session.
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