气候变化影响与适应研究中的若干问题

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气候变化影响与适应问题的谈判进展

 从《气候变化框架公约》（以下简称《公约》）第一次缔约方会议到目前为止,几乎历次会议都涉及气候变化影响与适应的谈判内容,但谈判进展甚微。通过综述《公约》谈判进程中与适应气候变化有关的主要决定,分析了适应气候变化影响与适应问题谈判的制约因素,最后提出了我国在气候变化影响与适应问题谈判中应持的立场。     

气候变化适应行动实施框架

气候变化适应对脆弱地区和贫困群体更为重要。尽管我国急需采取适应行动,但由于缺乏可操作性的模式和评估方法,目前实际的适应行动还略显滞后。本文建立了一个适应行动实施框架,主要包含六个核心步骤,从气候风险、适应目标、适应措施、技术优化、实施示范到监测评估,基本涵盖了适应行动的关键内容。框架的构建具有一定的通用性和借鉴性,可以帮助适应实施者开发综合和战略性的适应措施。适应行动框架是一个开放和可更新的体系,可根据实践过程中新的认识,对适应行动做一定的再设计和调整,实施过程中还可提炼适应的基本信息和确定适应的优化技术。     

国际气候变化适应战略与态势分析

在对国际气候变化适应行动进行回顾和展望的基础上,介绍了以《联合国气候变化框架公约》为主的国际气候变化适应政策的发展轨迹和趋势,分析了欧盟主要国家、澳大利亚、美国、加拿大、日本、俄罗斯和印度等国所采取的气候变化适应战略,总结出国际气候变化适应行动选择主要集中在极端气候事件与自然灾害、安全的淡水供应、基础设施建设、粮食安全,以及应对气候变化的协调机制等方面。     

将灾害风险管理和适应气候变化纳入可持续发展

IPCC发布的《管理极端事件和灾害风险,推进气候变化适应》特别报告(SREX)指出,极端事件和灾害的影响很大程度上取决于社会经济系统的风险暴露程度及其脆弱性特征。这意味着,不合理的发展过程将加剧灾害风险及其损失,另一方面,采取积极的减灾和适应行动,能够减小灾害风险并促进社会、经济、环境的可持续发展。SREX报告有助于启发决策者与社会公众,为充满不确定风险的未来进行合理规划,包括关注未来因人口和社会财富增长导致的暴露度和脆弱性增加,在国家和部门层面整合适应、减灾与发展政策,利用多种政策工具加强决策的科学性和灵活性,发挥不同主体在适应治理与灾害风险管理中的作用等等。     

气候变化国家评估报告（II）：气候变化的影响与适应

已经观测到的气候变化影响是显著的、多方面的。各个领域和地区都存在有利和不利影响,但以不利影响为主,未来的气候变暖将会对中国的生态系统、农业以及水资源等部门和沿海地区产生重大的不利影响。采取适应措施可以减轻气候变化的不利影响,应将适应气候变化的行动逐步纳入国民经济和社会发展的中长期规划中。由于我国科学研究的相对不足和科学认识能力的局限,目前的气候变化影响评估方法和结果还存在很大的不确定性。应当加强区域适应气候变化的案例研究、扩大研究领域、加强极端天气、气候事件影响的研究,以降低影响评估的不确定性,并提出切实可行的适应对策。     

气候变化适应行动进展及对我国行动策略的若干思考

 巴厘岛会议,即《联合国气候变化框架公约》（简称《公约》）第13次缔约方会议,明确了将气候变化适应和减缓并重的立场,并对适应工作进行了一系列的安排和部署。通过介绍《公约》下适应认识的发展过程,阐述了巴厘岛会议针对适应行动的一些进展,讨论了我国在适应方面可开展的行动和关注的领域。分析认为,目前适应已成为和减缓并重的关注议题,适应行动的呼声越来越强烈,但行动的落实还需要经过漫长的过程,适应基金募集和分配在发达国家和发展中国家之间、发展中国家内部也将有一个艰难而激烈的谈判交锋。     

国际适应气候变化政策保障体系建设

适应气候变化政策体系由适应气候变化行动方案、保障体制、保障机制和保障法制4个部分组成,是为了提高国家或地区的适应能力以及达成适应目标而形成的政策体系。在对国家气候变化适应政策进行调研的基础上,系统梳理了欧盟、美国、日本、俄罗斯及印度等主要国家和组织所采取的适应气候变化政策保障体系,总结了国际适应气候变化政策保障体系对中国的经验启示。     

《巴厘行动计划》以来适应气候变化谈判进展及未来需求分析

回顾了《巴厘行动计划》以来形成的与适应气候变化议题相关的国际决议及谈判进展,分析了这些决议对推动发展中国家适应气候变化进程的可能作用和面临的障碍,综述了发展中国家和发达国家对“2015气候协议”的利益诉求和建议。作者认为：《巴厘行动计划》以来,《联合国气候变化框架公约》下适应气候变化方面的谈判取得了较明显的进展,建立了适应委员会、国家适应计划进程和应对损失与危害的国际机制等;资金、技术研发、推广和使用、政策法规、机构设置与能力、信息等是提高发展中国家适应气候变化的限制因素;资金、技术转让和能力建设仍是“2015气候协议”谈判的重点和难点。针对非洲集团和小岛屿国家联盟全球适应目标和应对气候变化造成的损失与危害的补偿的提议,作者建议加强科学研究,开发评估方法和工具,探讨气候自然变率和人类活动导致的气候变化影响的归因;同时建议中国进一步加强适应气候变化的南南合作。     

适应气候变化谈判的焦点问题与趋势分析

综述了近两年在《联合国气候变化框架公约》(简称《公约》)下关于适应气候变化谈判的进展,分析了适应气候变化谈判的焦点问题及各利益集团的立场,结合《公约》第十五次缔约方大会的进展,提出了我国今后在适应气候变化问题上的谈判对策建议。     

Community level adaptation to climate change: The potential role of participatory community risk assessment

This paper explores the value of using community risk assessments (CRAs) for climate change adaptation. CRA refers to participatory methods to assess hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities in support of community-based disaster risk reduction, used by many NGOs, community-based organizations, and the Red Cross/Red Crescent. We review the evolution of climate change adaptation and community-based disaster risk reduction, and highlight the challenges of integrating global climate change into a bottom-up and place-based approach. Our analysis of CRAs carried out by various national Red Cross societies shows that CRAs can help address those challenges by fostering community engagement in climate risk reduction, particularly given that many strategies to deal with current climate risks also help to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Climate change can also be explicitly incorporated in CRAs by making better use of CRA tools to assess trends, and by addressing the notion of changing risks. However, a key challenge is to keep CRAs simple enough for wide application. This demands special attention in the modification of CRA tools; in the background materials and trainings for CRA facilitators; and in the guidance for interpretation of CRA outcomes. A second challenge is the application of a limited set of CRA results to guide risk reduction in other communities and to inform national and international adaptation policy. This requires specific attention for sampling and care in scaling up qualitative findings. Finally, stronger linkages are needed between organizations facilitating CRAs and suppliers of climate information, particularly addressing the translation of climate information to the community level.     

Landscape adaptation to climate change: Local networks,social learning and co-creation processes for adaptive planning

The development of legitimate, operative, and feasible landscape adaptation planning for climate change is dependent on the specific characteristics of the landscape and its inhabitants. Spatial patterns, culture, governance systems, socio-economic structures, planning methods, history, and collectively envisioned futures need to be accommodated. The literature suggests that landscape is a complex and dynamic socio-ecological system, the management and adaptation of which requires systemic and integrative approaches to respond to a wide variety of drivers of change, challenges, and interests. Based on activities developed in 15 European pilot landscapes, we identify some of the key factors and conditions affecting the generation of representative local networks for landscape adaptation to climate change. We illustrate how social learning and co-creation processes can be implemented in them and how their co-produced outcomes can help local communities overcome barriers and address critical issues in adaptive planning. Our results provide a framework for the creation of similar networks in other landscapes, exploring at the same time the interactions between the composition of networks, social learning, and the quality of the co-produced outputs as a fundamental step for the development of Landscape Adaptation Plans to Climate Change.     

National-level factors affecting planned,public adaptation to health impacts of climate change

Our understanding of whether adaptive capacity on a national level is being translated into adaptation policies, programs, and projects is limited. Focusing on health adaptation in Annex I Parties to the UNFCCC, we examine whether statistically significant relationships exist between regulatory, institutional, financial, and normative aspects of national-level adaptive capacity and systematically measured adaptation. Specifically, we (i) quantify adaptation actions in Annex I nations, (ii) identify potential factors that might impact progress on adaptation and select measures for these factors, and (iii) calculate statistical relationships between factors and adaptation actions across countries. Statistically significant relationships are found between progress on adaptation and engagement in international environmental governance, national environmental governance, perception of corruption in the public sector, population size, and national wealth, as well as between responsiveness to health vulnerabilities, population size and national wealth. This analysis contributes two key early empirical findings to the growing literature concerning factors facilitating or constraining adaptation. While country size and wealth are necessary for driving higher levels of adaptation, they may be insufficient in the absence of policy commitments to environmental governance. Furthermore, governance and/or incentive frameworks for environmental governance at the national level may be an important indicator of the strength of national commitments to addressing health impacts of climate change.     

Social capital,trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when designing interventions for climate adaptation.     

Emerging meta-organisations and adaptation to global climate change: Evidence from implementing adaptation in Nepal,Pakistan and Ghana

As developing countries move from policy to implementing adaptation to climate change, formal operational structures are emerging that exceed the expertise of any one actor. We refer to these arrangements as ‘meta-organisations’ that comprise many autonomous component organisations tackling adaptation. The meta-organisations set standards, define purposes, and specify appropriate means-ends criteria for delivering adaptation. Using empirical data from the three cases, Nepal, Pakistan and Ghana, the study identifies and analyses six attributes of the meta and component organisational structures. We argue that organisational structures are crucial to understanding adaptation, specifying policy and implementation. Our analysis demonstrates that while each country promotes similar objectives, the emerging structures are quite distinct, shaped by country-specific attributes and issues that lead to different outcomes. Nepal’s priority for a formal process has come at the cost of delayed implementation. Pakistan’s devolved approach lacks legitimacy to scale up the process nationally. Ghana’s use of existing decentralised structures and budgets relegates adaptation below other development priorities. These divergent structures arise from the different needs for legitimacy and accountability, and the relative priority attached to adaptation against other needs.     

The use of scenarios as the basis for combined assessment of climate change mitigation and adaptation

Scenarios are used to explore the consequences of different adaptation and mitigation strategies under uncertainty. In this paper, two scenarios are used to explore developments with (1) no mitigation leading to an increase of global mean temperature of 4 °C by 2100 and (2) an ambitious mitigation strategy leading to 2 °C increase by 2100. For the second scenario, uncertainties in the climate system imply that a global mean temperature increase of 3 °C or more cannot be ruled out. Our analysis shows that, in many cases, adaptation and mitigation are not trade-offs but supplements. For example, the number of people exposed to increased water resource stress due to climate change can be substantially reduced in the mitigation scenario, but adaptation will still be required for the remaining large numbers of people exposed to increased stress. Another example is sea level rise, for which, from a global and purely monetary perspective, adaptation (up to 2100) seems more effective than mitigation. From the perspective of poorer and small island countries, however, stringent mitigation is necessary to keep risks at manageable levels. For agriculture, only a scenario based on a combination of adaptation and mitigation is able to avoid serious climate change impacts.     

Observed adaptation to climate change: UK evidence of transition to a well-adapting society

This paper investigates whether and to what extent a wide range of actors in the UK are adapting to climate change, and whether this is evidence of a social transition. We document evidence of over 300 examples of early adopters of adaptation practice to climate change in the UK. These examples span a range of activities from small adjustments (or coping), to building adaptive capacity, to implementing actions and to creating deeper systemic change in public and private organisations in a range of sectors. We find that adaptation in the UK has been dominated by government initiatives and has principally occurred in the form of research into climate change impacts. These government initiatives have stimulated a further set of actions at other scales in public agencies, regulatory agencies and regional government (and the devolved administrations), though with little real evidence of climate change adaptation initiatives trickling down to local government level. The sectors requiring significant investment in large scale infrastructure have invested more heavily than those that do not in identifying potential impacts and adaptations. Thus we find a higher level of adaptation activity by the water supply and flood defence sectors. Sectors that are not dependent on large scale infrastructure appear to be investing far less effort and resources in preparing for climate change. We conclude that the UK government-driven top-down targeted adaptation approach has generated anticipatory action at low cost in some areas. We also conclude that these actions may have created enough niche activities to allow for diffusion of new adaptation practices in response to real or perceived climate change. These results have significant implications for how climate policy can be developed to support autonomous adaptors in the UK and other countries.     

Extreme weather exposure and support for climate change adaptation

Policy efforts to address climate change are increasingly focused on adaptation, understood as adjustments in human systems to moderate the harm, or exploit beneficial opportunities, related to actual or expected climate impacts. We examine individual-level determinants of support for climate adaptation policies, focusing on whether individuals’ exposure to extreme weather events is associated with their support for climate adaptation policies. Using novel public opinion data on support for a range of adaptation policies, coupled with high resolution geographic data on extreme weather events, we find that individuals experiencing recent extreme weather activity are more likely to support climate change adaptation policy in general, but that the relationship is modest, inconsistent across specific adaptation policies, and diminishes with time. The data thus suggest that experiencing more severe weather may not appreciably increase support for climate adaptation policies.     

Two measures of progress in adapting to climate change

Adaptation will play a key role in determining the economic and social costs of climate change. One important measure of adaptation is reductions in deaths caused by climate events. This paper uses two new data sets to test the hypothesis that, in recent years, climate events cause less deaths than in the past. Using data on deaths caused by natural disasters and data on skin cancer death rates in warmer and cooler US states, this paper reports evidence in favor of the adaptation progress hypothesis.