climate change

UNFPA Toolkit Focuses on Women, Population and Climate Change

carol — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:11:18 -0600

© UNFPA, WEDO14 October 2009: The UN Population Fund (UNFPA), together with the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), has launched a resource kit on climate change connections, focusing on gender and population and advocating that women are uniquely positioned as innovators, educators, caretakers, leaders and agents of change to address the risks of a changing climate.

The resource kit provides policy guidance, finance and adaptation plans, advocacy tools and best practices related to increasing educational opportunities for girls, economic opportunities for women, and access to reproductive health and family planning, recognizing their role in reducing vulnerability to climate change. Women, population and climate change are the focus of the UNFPA's flagship report, State of World Population, to be released on 18 November 2009. UNFPA Resource Kit: Climate Change Connections - Gender and Population https://www.unfpa.org/public/site/global/lang/en/pid/4028

Climate Change Connections

UNFPA and WEDO have developed a comprehensive resource kit on gender, population and climate change. Learn how gender equality can reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts and how women are uniquely positioned to help curb the harmful consequences of a changing climate.

Climate change is already impacting populations and ecosystems around the globe. Exacerbating poverty and leading to infrastructural breakdown, it threatens to set back development efforts by decades, profoundly affecting all of us.

But the impact won't be felt equally. Those with the fewest resources will be most susceptible to its negative effects - particularly women, the majority of the world's poor. At the same time, women's vulnerability can obscure the fact that they are an untapped resource in efforts to cope with the effects of climate change and reduce the emissions that cause it. As innovators, organizers, leaders, educators and caregivers, women are uniquely positioned to help curb the harmful consequences of a changing climate. Incorporating a gender perspective into climate change policies, projects and funds is crucial in ensuring that women contribute to and benefit from equitable climate solutions.

Overview: Women at the Forefront https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/documents/publications/2...
Policy that Supports Gender Equality https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/documents/publications/2...
Common Ground: In Bangladesh, Ghana, Nepal, Senegal and Trinidad and Tobago https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/documents/publications/2...
Making NAPAs Work for Women https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/documents/publications/2...
Financing that Makes a Difference https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/documents/publications/2...
Educate and Advocate https://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/documents/publications/2009/climateconnections_6_advocacy.pdf

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & the Environment

Leading the way: A role for regional institutions

carol — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:49:27 -0600

LEAD Africa, supported by the Royal Danish Embassy and COP 15, has just released a new report “Leading the way: A role for regional institutions” around African leadership on climate change that can be downloaded at the LeadInAfrica.org Website

Leadership is critical to addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change. The onset of climate impacts combined with new policy frameworks and funding mechanisms require the building of institutional and human capacity, the strengthening of governance and provision of an enabling environment for climate action. This is especially true for Africa, because of its unique vulnerability to climate impacts, its low resilience and its climate-dependent economic sectors. Whilst Africa is ‘clearly in peril, climate change also provides a unique opportunity to forge a new more sustainable and socially equitable developmental pathway. But this will need strong and visionary leadership, and particularly African leadership as opposed to our historic reliance on external agencies and bi-lateral partners to set the development agenda.

In recognition of this, LEAD Africa and ENDA Energy have begun to look at leadership on climate issues in Africa as part of our wider environment and development agenda. We are especially concerned with looking at the regional and sub-regional levels, as climatic responses by their very nature are trans-national and highly complex. Although this level of leadership in Africa has also historically been the weakest, we believe it can become a critical leverage point for leadership on climate issues in particular.

The potential of African institutions to provide leadership on climate issues, their unique responsibilities and their ability to act as climate response catalysts was the subject of a recent workshop on ‘African Leadership on Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for Regional Institutions”, held in Tunis in January 2009.

This paper is based on the discussions at the workshop and aims to highlight to a wider audience the urgent need for African Leadership on Climate Change, particularly at the regional level. It begins with an overview of the current situation vis a vis leadership on climate issues in Africa, then highlights opportunities to show leadership on climate issues, before finally summarizing recommendations from the workshop on how regional institutions can become climate leaders.

KM & the Environment

Population and reproductive health in National Adaptation Programmes of Action

carol — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:56:23 -0600

By : Clive Mutunga and Karen Hardee

This paper reviews 41 National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) submitted by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and identifies the range of interventions included in countries’ priority adaptation actions. The review found near-universal recognition among the NAPAs of the importance of population considerations as a central pillar in climate change adaptation.

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & the Environment

Dryland opportunities - A new paradigm for people, ecosystems and development

carol — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:55:06 -0600

Drylands cover 41 percent of the earth’s terrestrial surface. The urgency of and international response to climate change have given a new place to drylands in terms both of their vulnerability to predicted climate change impacts and their potential contribution to climate change mitigation. This book aims to apply the new scientific insights on complex dryland systems to practical options for development. A new dryland paradigm is built on the resources and capacities of dryland peoples, on new and emergent economic opportunities, on inward investment, and on the best support that dryland science can offer.

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & the Environment

Africa's Development in a Changing Climate

carol — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:18:19 -0600

Key policy advice from World Development Report 2010 and Making Development Climate Resilient: A World Bank Strategy for
Sub-Saharan Africa - Act Now, Act Together, Act Differently

"Over the past ten years, Sub-Saharan Africa has made a great deal of progress in terms of economic growth. In fact, Africa has the potential to emerge as an exciting new center of growth in the evolving global economy. However, to continue on an accelerated growth path, the region needs to tackle climate variability and climate change, which now pose a daunting risk to growth, development, and poverty reduction. Climate is hardly a new factor in the region's history, but with global warming, Africa's vulnerability is deepening, making it the most exposed region in the world to the impacts of climate change. The hard-won progress of recent years could be reversed with extreme weather, crop failures, and outbreaks of hunger and disease."

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & the Environment

Weathering the Storm: Options for Framing Adaptation and Development Share

carol — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:53:40 -0600

Attempts to clarify 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." Confusion about the relationship between adaptation and development has meant that funding mechanisms may create redundancies or leave gaps in the landscape of critical adaptation and development activities.

Drawing on Internet resources, Weathering the Storm attempts to clarify this relationship 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."

The report analyzes the objectives of initiatives and the strategies utilized in implementation to characterize some of the ways that adaptation and development overlap. A continuum of activities from "pure" development to "pure" climate change is proposed as a conceptual framework to understand when different "development" activities may play an "adaptation" function. Recommendations address governance challenges, funding implications, and next steps in analysis and policy development.

Author: Heather McGray, Anne Hammill, Rob Bradley, with E. Lisa Schipper and Jo-Ellen Parry
November, 2007 ISBN: 978-1-56973-672-2

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & the Environment

Call for Projects: the climate crisis

carol — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:24:18 -0600

Planet Action provides satellite imagery, geographic information and technology support to local projects that investigate and assess climate change issues focusing on human issues, drought & desertification, water resources, forestry, biodiversity,
oceans, ice, and awareness. This year, Planet Action will support additional projects while following up on current projects
and their results on the ground. Planet Action supports projects involved at least in one of the following domains:

Awareness
Biodiversity & Conservation
Drought & Desertification
Human Issues
Forest & Deforestation
Ice & Snow
Oceans & Coastlines
Water Resources

Projects are submitted online at the Planet Action Website , where you will need to create an account, log in and click on "Submit your project!" and complete the online form. Participation to special events organized by Planet Action partners is also kindly requested.

To be eligible for support from Planet Action, projects must:

Deal with a climate change related issue and propose a course of actions.
Deal with at least one of the Planet Action "domains".
Have a member of the organization who resides in the country where the project takes place or at least during the duration of the projects
Be proposed by a non-profit organization such as NGO's, a public laboratory or a university.
Confirm that the project has no commercial, religious or ideological content or objective.

Additional criteria:

The importance and usefulness of the project for local populations.
A focus on raising awareness, information, training or outreach programmes that will result from the project.
The solid methodologies supported by staff members or associated teams with an appropriate background for the work proposed.

User's Manual available for download from Planet Action Website

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & the Environment

Climate change and AIDS: A joint working paper

carol — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:40:05 -0600

AIDS and climate change (CC) are two of the most important "long wave" global issues of the recent past, the present and the future. They share similarities, interactions, and present possibilities for a more united response. Yet these links have received little analysis. This paper seeks to address that gap. It first focuses on scientific issues, identifying major, minor, and speculative pathways by which AIDS and CC are likely to interact. These interactions are, here, called the HIV and Climate Change Complex (HACC).

The maximum impact of CC is in the future, likely to occur decades after the peak incidence of HIV. The severity of the HACC will largely be determined by the temporal overlap of these ranges. The HACC will also have an uneven spatial distribution, modified by the regional impact of CC and the regional epidemiology of AIDS, each of which varies by physical and social elements. Populations with currently high rates of HIV are the most vulnerable to a worsening or prolongation of the epidemic due to CC.

This places the people of SSA at the greatest risk of the HACC, though outside Africa populations in north east India and New Guinea may also be significantly impacted.

There is agreement that the most important pathway in the HACC will be further deterioration of regional and global food security. At the individual level, nutrition is vital for good immune function, to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV if viral exposure does occur, and to slow the progression of HIV to AIDS and of AIDS to death. At larger scales, population nutrition is important for good governance, by helping to nurture and stimulate the "effective" demand populations need to reduce corruption and to more evenly distribute available resources. Any substantial decline in the availability and intake of calories or micronutrients brought about by CC is likely to increase poverty, impair learning and expand the number of migrants. The current decline in global food security, partly attributable to CC, is already causing disproportionate nutritional harm to migrants and otherwise impoverished populations, some of whom experience AIDS.

There is agreement that the second major pathway of the HACC is the CC-related alteration in the distribution of infectious diseases, which interact with AIDS. Of these, malaria is the most important, due to its high burden of disease (BOD). CC is projected to reduce malaria transmission in some regions, which experience a comparatively low rate of HIV, both now and in the future. This will reduce the beneficial impact to the BOD of AIDS for these populations. On the other hand, a large population with a high rate of HIV lives on the plateaus of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), an area as yet little affected by malaria. If the climatic, eco-systemic and other factors for malaria transmission alter sufficiently in these plateau cities then the HIV burden of this population is likely to be substantially higher, and will also be worsened by increased poverty and greater food insecurity.

There are several other plausible biological pathways in the HACC. Of these, the relationship between CC, air pollution and immunity, and CC, heat stress and immunity are likely to be the most important. More speculative is the possibility that that CC will harm infrastructure and governance on a scale sufficient to aggravate and prolong the BOD of AIDS. Again, the population of SSA is judged to be at the highest risk. This mechanism is plausible by interlinked pathways including more extreme weather events and "natural" disasters, increased mobility and additional migrants and refugees. These factors are also likely to aggravate gender inequalities, increasing the frequency of transactional and coercive sex - pathways likely to increase the BOD of AIDS among women and girls, via increased viral transmission and reduced access to treatment and prevention. At the global level, CC may exert an immense opportunity cost, diverting resources of the international community away from public health, including from HIV, poverty alleviation, and the other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Suggestions for a future research agenda include the more accurate assessment of the pathways within the HACC, and an improved conceptual understanding of the linkages between conflict, behaviour, governance and values, environmental factors including climate, and food production, and between each of these macro-elements and sea level rise. This would be best done by an interdisciplinary working group.

Another research gap is the effect of CC on human behaviour, including behavior related directly to HIV risk. From science, the paper moves to strategies and policies. The struggle to address AIDS and CC has generated two vigorous global social movements, with, as yet, little formal interaction or collaboration. We suggest this gap is a microcosm of a separation between two even larger communities - those concerned with the environment and those concerned with social justice. Of course, this is a simplification, but on the whole our perception is that the environmental movement is insufficiently aware of poverty, while the social justice movement is still poorly informed about the environment. The work, advocacy and activism of the leaders and actors within each community who do recognise these linkages will be strengthened by this report.

AIDS has already killed tens of millions of people, while CC may dwarf this number. Those concerned to reduce CC can apply many lessons learned by the AIDS community. These include the need to challenge conventions and to seek benefit for the poorest and most marginalised - and to widen the CC movement's emerging engagement with entrepreneurs, philanthropists and prominent personalities: tools instrumental in the growth of support for those with HIV. The AIDS constituency can benefit from the experience of humanitarian programmes, some of which already see AIDS and CC as cross-cutting issues.

Several actions to reduce the impact of CC on AIDS are proposed. These include the integration of HIV prevention and management into disaster management plans, particularly for populations in SSA, some of whom have already experienced extreme weather events. Means to enhance global and regional food security, especially in SSA, are vital, and much more can be done. A quarter of the world's population is over-nourished, and a more equitable distribution of global food production will go far to defusing any future food crisis, and is likely to improve health for both over and under-fed people. Malaria treatment and prevention in SSA can also be improved. The CC community might also consider strengthening the UNFCCC including with formal links with agriculture, health and security.

Finally, a risk is perceived whereby a relatively privileged stratum of people and interests argue that issues of global health and global social justice must be put aside in the effort to pursue partial CC adaptation. This approach is highly dangerous for global health and global social cohesion. It would also likely generate profound longer-term risks for currently privileged populations pursuing this strategy. A stronger alliance between the AIDS and CC communities will help thwart the emergence of such a policy. A focus on the interconnections between CC, food security, AIDS, health in general and the links between these and the MDGs is key to breaking out of this "either or" myopia."

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

Water resources, climate change and human vulnerability

carol — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:12:52 -0600

This paper focuses on the impact of climate change on water resources and the affect it has on human society. Millions of people are at risk from the impacts of climate change associated with the socio-political dimensions of global change and demographic changes.

A model to link the climate and social sciences is developed in a policy-oriented approach to make a holistic assessment of human vulnerability to climate and other drivers of social change. The Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) uses water as a focus as it is a key factor of human and ecological well-being. Though it is not a new concept, it has been developed to encompass variations within countries and it is not limited to specific communities.

By linking outputs from global climate modeling to the components which make up CVI, possible areas where vulnerability of water resources is likely to impact livelihoods and ecosystem services were identified. In order to examine those most at risk from the impact of climate and global change it is important to look beyond national assessments. On the other end of the scale, by using data at the sub-national level, it is possible to refine the CVI assessment to identify specific risks within a country which is useful for policy making.

The objective of this paper is to show how an intermediate scale of application - between national and community levels- could lead the way to finding an approach that can be applied over wide areas while taking into account spatial variations reflecting different aspects of vulnerability. How can the impacts of climate and other global changes be assessed so that the impacts on people can be understood and appropriate policies therefore developed? The assessment of vulnerability at the appropriate scale is a key step in developing effective adaptation responses and can be focused on development issues and the needs of the poor. This approach can also be extended to other areas affected by climate change such as disease incidence and
agro-ecological changes.

Authors: C.A. Sullivan; C. Huntingford
Publisher: National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, University of Canberra, 2009

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

Assessing the costs of adaptation to climate change: A review of the UNFCCC and other recent estimates

carol — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:35:56 -0600

The publication warns that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts. The real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Professor Martin Parry, a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and his co-authors look at the estimates from a range of perspectives, and conclude that:

the current cost assessments do not include some key sectors, such as ecosystems, energy, manufacturing, retailing, and tourism
some of the sectors included have been only partially covered in cost estimates
the additional costs of adaptation have sometimes been calculated as ‘climate mark-ups’ against low levels of assumed investment.

In some parts of the world, low levels of investment have led to an adaptation deficit, and this deficit will need to be made good by full funding of development, without which the funding for adaptation will be insufficient. Residual damages also need to be evaluated and reported because not all damages from climate change can be avoided. There is an urgent need for more detailed assessments of these costs, including case studies of costs of adaptation in specific places and sectors.

This report aims to demonstrate the need for the further and transparent refinement of cost estimates for responding to climate change.

By: Martin Parry, Nigel Arnell, Pam Berry, David Dodman, Samuel Fankhauser, Chris Hope, Sari Kovats, Robert Nicholls, David Sattherwaite, Richard Tiffin, Tim Wheeler

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges