Multi-level governance of climate change adaptation through regional partnerships in Canada and England

Adaptation to climate change is widely recognized as a multi-level governance challenge because expected impacts and respective measures cut across governmental levels, sectors and societal domains. The present paper analyses the role of regional adaptation partnerships in Canada and England in the multi-level governance of climate change adaptation. We describe and compare three partnerships per country with regard to their evolution, membership and governing structures, coordination across levels and societal domains, and their adaptation activities and outputs. Although both partnership schemes represent new collaborative approaches, their genesis and governance differ. While the Canadian collaboratives are a government-centred approach that originated and partly operated top-down through a national programme for the period 2009–2012, the English partnerships follow a more pluralistic stakeholder-centred approach that evolved bottom-up already in the early 2000s. Both schemes have in common that they mediate between governmental levels, foster networking between public and private actors, and eventually build adaptive capacities and inform adaptation policies. We conclude that regional adaptation partnerships represent a new governance approach that facilitates climate change adaptation, albeit with limits. Since state actors play(ed) key roles in both partnership schemes, they do not represent a new sphere of authority outside the state. Instead of blurring or destabilizing governmental levels they complement (and perhaps even stabilise) them with multi-level interactions.     

Circulating climate services: Commercializing science for climate change adaptation in Pacific Islands

In order to address the impacts of climate change, global multilateral institutions, development organizations, and national and regional science organizations are creating climate services – packages of useful climate information intended to help decision makers. This diffuse collection of actors and institutions suggest that producing climate services will help bridge gaps between climate scientists and decision-makers and will therefore help vulnerable countries and people manage the risks and optimize the impacts of climate change. This article examines this global science-policy ecosystem using the case of climate services produced by Australian science agencies for consumption in adaptation programming in the Pacific Island countries of Kiribati and Solomon Islands. Linking research on geographies of marketization and the neoliberalization of science, I demonstrate that within the climate service movement a focus on usefulness is paired with an emphasis on commercialization. As a result, this case shows the inherent tensions in the climate service model: first, a focus on competition and circulating service products at the expense of collaborative relationships; second, difficulties in negotiating uncertainty; and third contradictions between ‘objective’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ science. In each of these instances, the commercialized mechanisms through which climate services are governed, and the political economic circumstances within which they are produced, magnify rather than ameliorate gaps between science and policy.     

Hot-topics and Prospects of Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction: Based on 2017 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Cancun,Mexico

A brief introduction to the Fifth Session of Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, which was held in Cancun, Mexico, organized by United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) and hosted by the Government of Mexico from 22 May to 26 May 2017, was firstly provided. Combined with “Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030”, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, and related work on natural disaster risk reduction at global, regional, country and local scales, some hot-topics and prospects of global platform for disaster risk reduction were put forward. Some findings were concluded, consisting of understanding disaster risk, disaster risk governance, building and enhancing resilience to disasters, coherence between the Sendai Framework, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA). Implementing the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) through cross-sectoral collaboration, removing barriers and promoting public-private cooperation in DRR and other types of partnership among multi-stakeholders will become the main force pattern of DRR in the near future. Large-scale disaster risk governance caused by multi-hazards (disaster cluster), disaster chain and disaster compound will be the main trend in scientific research of DRR. Building regional disaster risk reduction platform (e.g. the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21^st-Century Maritime Silk Road) and sharing the technologies and information of disaster risk reduction will be the main contents of DRR practices. Building and optimization of institutional mechanisms on DRR will be the trend of DRR idea. Improving and enhancing the support to communities, vulnerable groups and locals on DRR will be the main trend in DRR achievements’ application and demonstration in China.     

Climate finance governance in hazard prone riverine islands in Bangladesh: pathway for promoting climate resilience

Bangladesh is one of the topmost climate vulnerable countries in the world where the riverine island (char) dwellers are the most victims of climate change. Climate finance is perceived as the key instruments to address the issues related to climate change impacts and improve the livelihood resilience of the rural people. This article examines the role of climate finance governance at the vulnerable hazard-prone chars in Bangladesh. Climate finance adaptation governance has been assessed through measuring the climate service intervention, behavioral changes and impacts at the local level. The study reveals that the mechanism of climate finance in Bangladesh is good enough, but implementation is not satisfactory. It also observed that there is a lack of participatory governance for disaster management, and there is no direct contribution of climate finance governance in the village level which causes to fail the existing implementation strategy. The study suggests that a riverine island-based long-term development program should be implemented through ensuring effective monitoring system so that climate finance governance can contribute a lot and improve the food security and livelihood resilience of char dwellers.

     

Power and politics in climate change adaptation efforts: Struggles over authority and recognition in the context of political instability

Throughout the world, climate change adaptation policies supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have provided significant sources of funding and technical support to developing countries. Yet often the adaptation responses proposed belie complex political realities, particularly in politically unstable contexts, where power and politics shape adaptation outcomes. In this paper, the concepts of authority and recognition are used to capture power and politics as they play out in struggles over governing changing resources. The case study in Nepal shows how adaptation policy formation and implementation becomes a platform in which actors seek to claim authority and assert more generic rights as political and cultural citizens. Focusing on authority and recognition helps illuminate how resource governance struggles often have very little to do with the resources themselves. Foundational to the argument is how projects which seek to empower actors to manage their resources, produce realignments of power and knowledge that then shape who is invested in what manner in adaptation. The analysis adds to calls for reframing ‘adaptation’ to encompass the socionatural processes that shape vulnerability by contributing theoretical depth to questions of power and politics.     

Social license to operate: Not a proxy for accountability in water governance

With the emergence of more collaborative, watershed governance arrangements and the engagement of various actors in decision-making processes, new questions emerge about the potential roles for these organizations and agencies in both upholding accountability, and in being held accountable. Therefore, this study explores the intersection between alternative collaborative watershed governance approaches, and the simultaneous emergence of the concept of social license as an accountability instrument in relation to water governance. Based on an empirical analysis of a case study in southeast British Columbia, where water quality contamination is primarily the result of coal mining, this study seeks to: (1) examine how social license is understood by a range of watershed actors; (2) better understand whether social license may be useful as a watershed-based or community accountability instrument as new collaborative modes of watershed governance emerge; and, (3) explore how social license may be enforced or enabled. Findings show how industry efforts to earn social license have created benefits, such as enabling community-based water monitoring, thereby building capacity for deeper community engagement in governance processes and a greater ability for the community to uphold accountability. However, we confirm that social license is not a proxy or silver bullet for enhancing accountability in collaborative watershed governance. Our findings reveal four specific limitations regarding the use of social license as a principle for accountability in collaborative watershed governance.     

Flows of sediment,flows of insecurity: Climate change adaptation and the social contract in the Ebro Delta,Catalonia

To avoid dominant positivist explanations of links between climate change and security, I use alternative, human security approaches to study how climate security is managed in one of Spain’s most endangered coastal ecosystems, the Ebro Delta. I find that increasing the downstream flow of sediments retained in upstream dams is a crucial measure for dealing with climate change threats (sea-level rise) in the Delta. Yet, state policies do not increase sediment flow, but instead implement incremental adaptation at the site of climate impact (coast), which, at times, requires executing small-scale land expropriations. Refraining from improving human security via increasing sediment flow benefits corporate interests upstream. At the same time, expropriation silences mild farmer protest downstream and adds insult to injury by conveying to farmers a sense of blame for their vulnerability to climate change. Meanwhile, using expropriation at the service of incremental adaptation goes against the very rationale of expropriation established by Spanish legislation and creates a fundamental contradiction between what the practice is meant to deliver, namely security and the social contract from the part of the state, and what it actually does, i.e. permit the state to evade providing human security. I conclude that, under climate change, achieving human security, the delivery of the social contract, and corporate rent-seeking at the same time may not be possible. Moreover, rather than the social contract been threatened by state incapacity to respond to the effects of climate change and breached social contract expectations of vulnerable communities, it is the actual mobilisation of the contract in order to respond to climate change that diminishes human security.     

Adapting to climate change: a comparison of two strategies for dike heightening

In the Netherlands the current dike design policy is to design flood defence structures corresponding to an agreed flooding probability with an extra safety board of at least 0.5 m. For river dikes a return period of 1,250 years is used to determine the design water levels. A problem with this strategy is that it builds on assumptions with regard to the intrinsically uncertain probability distributions for the peak discharges. The uncertainty is considerable and due to (1) the measuring records that are limited to about 100 years and (2) the changing natural variability as a result of climate change. Although the probability distributions are regularly updated based on new discharge data the nature of the statistics is such that a change in the natural variability of the peak discharge affects the probability distribution only long after the actual change has happened. Here we compare the performance of the probabilistic dike design strategy with the older strategy, referred to as the ‘self-learning dike’. The basic principle of the latter strategy is that the dike height is kept at a level equal to the highest recorded water level plus a certain safety margin. The two flood prevention strategies are compared on the basis of the flooding safety over a 100-year period. The Rhine gauge station at Lobith serves as case study. The results indicate that the self-learning dike performs better than the probabilistic design in terms of safety and costs, both under current and climate change conditions.     

Locating international REDD+ power relations: Debating forests and trees in international climate negotiations

The Reduction of Deforestation and Forest Degradation initiative (REDD+) was initially hailed widely as a smart and cost-effective way to mitigate climate change and has moved quickly compared to other strands of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. Much of the initiative’s original appeal – and a good deal of subsequent controversy around it – relates to framing the world’s tropical forests as carbon sinks and compensating developing countries that manage to reverse or avoid deforestation. REDD+ negotiations can thus be seen a site where the standard divisions between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 (‘developed’ and ‘developing’) were being challenged and interrogated by the negotiating parties and the broader network of actors around the climate regime. This article suggests that such complex and changing global governance policy fields need to be analysed as ‘places’ in their own right, populated by actors engaged in field-specific power relations that may not reflect international hierarchies or power relations manifested in other international settings. Based in a unique set of interviews supplemented by primary data analysis, this article unpacks the power relations of REDD+ negotiations by examining how those involved seek to assume competence, designate and recognize leadership, and shape outcomes. In tracing the dynamics of claiming competence, the ‘competition’ between two disciplinary milieus around forests as an international policy object and also delegates’ shifting between reliance on expert knowledge and political ‘know-how’ in the negotiations themselves are identified. To understand the politics of recognition – that is to have a claim to competence or position acknowledged by others – the perceived qualities and resources of recognized leadership are examined and the absence of global superpowers amongst REDD+ leadership is problematized and discussed. Finally, in terms of wielding influence over outcomes, the fate of two quite similar ideas – one that has become incorporated into REDD+ methodology and another that is failing to be – further illustrate how the field is marked by internal power practices and that not all actors are equally well-positioned to achieve desired outcomes.     

A review of observed and projected changes in climate for the islands in the Caribbean

Observed and projected changes in climate have serious socio-economic implications for the Caribbean islands. This article attempts to present basic climate change information—based on previous studies, available observations and climate model simulations—at spatial scales relevant for islands in the Caribbean. We use the General Circulation Model (GCM) data included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) and the UK Hadley Centre regional climate model (RCM) data to provide both present-day and scenario-based future information on precipitation and temperature for individual island states. Gridded station observations and satellite data are used to study 20th century climate and to assess the performance of climate models. With main focus on precipitation, we also discuss factors such as sea surface temperature, sea level pressure and winds that affect seasonal variations in precipitation. The CMIP3 ensemble mean and the RCM successfully capture the large-scale atmospheric circulation features in the region, but show difficulty in capturing the characteristic bimodal seasonal cycle of precipitation. Future drying during the wet season in this region under climate change scenarios has been noted in previous studies, but the magnitude of change is highly uncertain in both GCM and RCM simulations. The projected decrease is more prominent in the early wet season erasing the mid-summer drought feature in the western Caribbean. The RCM simulations show improvements over the GCM mainly due to better representation of landmass, but its performance is critically dependent on the driving GCM. This study highlights the need for high-resolution observations and ensemble of climate model simulations to fully understand climate change and its impacts on small islands in the Caribbean.     

Exploring the health context: A qualitative study of local heat and climate change adaptation in Japan

Extreme temperature events and global climatic changes may put human health at risk. Urban centers are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change. Japan is a densely populated and highly urbanized island frequently exposed to natural hazards and heat episodes. Japanese governments and practitioners design heat adaptation strategies to protect health and reduce risks. Are these strategies implemented at the local level? How do policymakers and researchers perceive heat and climate change adaptation measures? How are these strategies evaluated? In short: what is happening in Japan “on the ground”? This critical review briefly outlines heat adaptation solutions and challenges from three Japanese prefectures. It draws attention to implementation and evaluation barriers, and highlights creative approaches to adaptation, such as involving civil society volunteers.     

We are not all the same!: Comparative climate change vulnerabilities among fishers in Old Harbour Bay,Jamaica

There is a general consensus that Small Island Developing States are among the most vulnerable to experience climate injustices. Vulnerability studies of climate change effects on communities have often focused on differences between communities given these climate injustices. However, there is a need to also focus on vulnerability within communities, referred to here as comparative vulnerabilities. Climate justice therefore becomes even more important with more focused attention given to the nuances within groups that fall within the vulnerable category. This article examines comparative vulnerabilities for the fishing community in Jamaica. A survey of 241 fishers from Old Harbour Bay, the largest fishing village in Jamaica, was conducted to examine the level of vulnerability of different fishers to climate change. A vulnerability index was constructed for the community and then comparative vulnerabilities were determined based on socio-demographic characteristics. Overall for the sample 46.9% of respondents would be considered as experiencing a comparatively high level of vulnerability to climate change. Climate change vulnerability was influenced by a number of socio-demographic variables with unique profiles emerging for groups that can be ranked as low, moderate, and high vulnerability. The paper therefore argues that within vulnerable populations there are comparative vulnerabilities based on economic factors and social capital, which must be taken into consideration for adaptation strategies to be implemented. Given these comparative vulnerabilities a more targeted approach to coping and adaptation strategies can then be taken. This will assist in building resilience of these communities that must now adjust to a new normal with climate change effects currently occurring.     

Ambivalent climate of opinions: Tensions and dilemmas in understanding geoengineering experimentation

Due to the fear of the consequences of climate change, many scientists today advocate the research into—but not deployment of—geoengineering, large-scale technological control of the global climate, to reduce the uncertainty around its efficacy and harms. Scientists propose in particular initiating field trials of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This paper examines how the meanings of geoengineering experimentation, specifically SAI field trials, are reconfigured in the deliberation of the lay public. To this end, we conducted focus groups with Japanese citizens in June 2015 on the geoengineering concept and SAI field trials. Our main findings are as follows: the ‘climate emergency’ framing compelled the lay public to accept, either willingly or reluctantly, the need for ‘geoengineering research’; however, public discourse on SAI field trials was ambiguous and ambivalent, involving both tensions and dilemmas in understanding what the SAI field trial is for and about. Our results exhibit how the lay public wrestles with understanding the social, political, and ethical implications of SAI field trials in multiple dimensions, namely, accountability, controllability, predictability, and desirability. The paper argues that more clarity in the term ‘geoengineering research’ is needed to facilitate inclusive and pluralistic debates on geoengineering experimentation and not to preemptively arrive at a consensus that ‘we need more research.’ We conclude that ambivalence about both the pros and cons of geoengineering experimentation seems to be enduring; thus, instead of ignoring or repressing it, embracing ambivalence is required to keep the geoengineering debate democratic and inclusive.     

A social justice framing of climate change discourse and policy: Adaptation,resilience and vulnerability in a Jamaican agricultural landscape

It is now widely recognized that climate change is likely to have detrimental impacts across the Caribbean region, with the burden likely to fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable segments of society. It is therefore an appropriate time to ask whether the frameworks that lie behind climate change discourse and policy are consistent with the demands of social and environmental justice. In this paper, we use climate justice as a lens for evaluating three prominent frameworks for addressing climate change, those of adaptation, resilience, and vulnerability. Each of these discursive frameworks, we argue, can contribute to our understanding of climate change, but they do not all incorporate justice concerns to the same degree. In order to illustrate this, we examine the justice implications of using each of the three frameworks to assess a case study of agricultural transformation in Southwestern Jamaica. Farmers in this region have adapted to changing climate conditions in a variety of ways, including the use of new agricultural technology. The ability of many farmers to take advantage of such innovations, however, is constrained by the underlying landscape of vulnerability within the region. After interpreting this example from the perspectives of adaptation, resilience and vulnerability, we conclude that all three paradigms are capable of calling attention to climate justice issues, but only in the vulnerability perspective are such issues intrinsic. We believe, therefore, that a greater attention to vulnerability within Caribbean climate policy holds the potential to advance the goals of climate justice within the region.     

Neoliberalising subjects: The legacy of New Labour’s construction of social exclusion in local governance

Analysis of ‘neoliberalism’ in recent geographical work has usefully drawn attention to the manner in which certain political-economic ideas resonate with a diverse range of state projects, policy objects and socio-political imaginaries. Positioning neoliberalism as a multifaceted political phenomenon, scholars have explored its local manifestations: the embodiments of an express commitment to market exchange in specific geo-historical contexts. Key to this process, it is argued here, is the attempt to instil a series of values and social practices in policy subjects. This process can have lasting effects by virtue of being embedded in practices of governance at the local level, a dimension that has been given less attention in existing research. Using the implementation of the New Deals for the Unemployed and New Deal for Communities in Bristol as an illustrative case, this paper investigates this potentiality by positioning New Labour’s construction of social exclusion as a mechanism of neoliberalisation and exploring the legacy of the neoliberal values espoused in and through its social exclusion policies.     

Snowmelt runoff prediction under changing climate in the Himalayan cryosphere: A case of Gilgit River Basin

There are serious concerns of rise in temperatures over snowy and glacierized Himalayan region that may eventually affect future river flows of Indus river system. It is therefore necessary to predict snow and glacier melt runoff to manage future water resource of Upper Indus Basin(UIB). The snowmelt runoff model(SRM) coupled with MODIS remote sensing data was employed in this study to predict daily discharges of Gilgit River in the Karakoram Range. The SRM was calibrated successfully and then simulation was made over four years i.e. 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 achieving coefficient of model efficiency of 0.96, 0.86, 0.9 and 0.94 respectively. The scenarios of precipitation and mean temperature developed from regional climate model PRECIS were used in SRM model to predict future flows of Gilgit River. The increase of 3 C in mean annual temperature by the end of 21 th century may result in increase of 35-40% in Gilgit River flows. The expected increase in the surface runoff from the snow and glacier melt demands better water conservation and management for irrigation and hydel-power generation in the Indus basin in future.     

Building deliberative public-private partnerships for waste management in Asia

Public-private partnerships in environmental policy should not simply be viewed in instrumental terms as means of providing environmental infrastructure and services, but also as sites where norms of environmental concern and political accountability are formulated and replicated. Deliberative public-private partnerships--or partnerships that allow greater public participation in the formulation of these norms--may therefore become an important new form of local environmental governance and help make partnerships more relevant to local environmental needs. This paper examines case studies of public-private partnerships in waste-to-energy projects in the Philippines and India to identify how principles of institutional design may enhance the deliberative nature of public-private partnerships in environmental policy. The paper argues that current approaches to deliberative, or cooperative environmental governance concerning public-private partnerships need to acknowledge insights from network theory concerning the communication of environmental and political norms before they can be successfully transferred to developing countries.     

Timing and prediction of climate change and hydrological impacts: periodicity in natural variations

Hydrological impacts from climate change are of principal interest to water resource policy-makers and practicing engineers. Predictive climatic models have been extensively investigated to quantify the impacts. Palaeoclmatic investigations, on the other hand, show unequivocal and strong periodicity of climate variations in proxy evidence. Yet how to use the periodicity in future hydroclimatic timing and forecasting has received less attention. This paper examines the periodicity in Pleistocene–Holocene glacial–interglacial events and in modern precipitation records, and discusses a way in which the periodicity is used for hydroclimatic predictions. The analysis, based on published CO₂, ΔT (δ²H) and δ¹⁸O proxy data of polar ice cores and deep oceanic benthic fossils, shows a periodicity in a ~100, ~40 or 25 kyear duration consistent with Milankovitch orbital regulations during the glacial–interglacial periods. On a fine time scale, millennium and multi-decadal periodicity is observed in high-resolution proxy variations of Greenland ice cores and in instrumental precipitation records of the contiguous USA. A basic periodicity of decadal and multi-decadal changes in ~20 and ~10–15 year duration is apparent in wavelet frequency analysis of both ice core proxy and precipitation data. While the kyear-scale periodicity is found of global prevalence, the millennium and decadal variations vary in space and are region-specific. Based on these findings, a generalized time-downscaling hierarchy of periodicity is proposed as a potential approach for timing and forecasting future hydroclimatic conditions at a resolution relevant to the water resources engineering and management.     

Communicating uncertainty: lessons learned and suggestions for climate change assessment

Assessments of climate change face the task of making information about uncertainty accessible and useful to decision-makers. The literature in behavior economics provides many examples of how people make decisions under conditions of uncertainty relying on inappropriate heuristics, leading to inconsistent and counterproductive choices. Modern risk communication practices recommend a number of methods to overcome these hurdles, which have been recommended for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports. This paper evaluates the success of the most recent IPCC approach to uncertainty communication, based on a controlled survey of climate change experts. Evaluating the results from the survey, and from a similar survey recently conducted among university students, the paper suggests that the most recent IPCC approach leaves open the possibility for biased and inconsistent responses to the information. The paper concludes by suggesting ways to improve the approach for future IPCC assessment reports. To cite this article: A. Patt, S. Dessai, C. R. Geoscience 337 (2005).