Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

     

On the mechanism of X-ray production by dart leaders of lightning flashes

Radiation with energies up to about 250 keV associated with the dart leader phase of rocket-triggered lightning were reported by Dwyer et al. (2004). The mechanism of X-ray generation by dart leaders, however, is unknown at present. Recently, Cooray et al., in pressPlease provide complete bibliographic details for Ref. cooray e al., in press and Saleh et al., in press if available., Cooray et al., 2009a developed physical concepts and mathematical techniques necessary to calculate the electric field associated with the tip of dart leaders. We have utilized the results of these calculations together with the energy dependent frictional force on electrons, as presented by Moss et al. (2006), to evaluate the maximum energy an electron will receive in accelerating in the dart-leader-tip electric field. The main assumptions made in performing the calculations are: (a) the dart leader channel is straight and vertical; (b) the path of the electrons are straight inside the channel; and (c) the decay of the channel temperature is uniform along the length of the dart leader. In the calculation, we have taken into account the fact that the electric field is changing both in space and time and that the gas in the defunct return stroke channel is at atmospheric pressure and at elevated temperature (i.e. reduced gas density). The results of the calculation show that for a given dart leader current there is a critical defunct-return-stroke-channel temperature above which the cold electron runaway becomes feasible. For a typical dart leader, this temperature is around 2500 K. This critical temperature decreases with increase in dart leader current. Since the temperature of the defunct return stroke channel may lie in the range of 2000–4000 K, the results show that the electric field at the tip of dart leaders is capable of accelerating electrons to MeV energy levels.     

Environmental isotopic and hydrochemical study of water in the karst aquifer and submarine springs of the Syrian coast

The groundwater of major karst systems and submarine springs in the coastal limestone aquifer of Syria has been investigated using chemical and isotopic techniques. The δ¹⁸O values of groundwater range from ?6.8 to ?5.05‰, while those for submarine springs vary from ?6.34 to +1.08‰ (eastern Mediterranean seawater samples have a mean of +1.7‰). Groundwater originates from the direct infiltration of atmospheric water. Stable isotopes show that the elevation of the recharge zones feeding the Banyas area (400–600 m a.s.l.) is higher than that feeding the Amrit area (100–300 m a.s.l.). The ¹⁸O_extracted (¹⁸O content of the seawater contribution) for the major submarine springs suggests a mean recharge area elevation of 600–700 m a.s.l., and lower than 400 m a.s.l. for the spring close to Amrit. Based on the measured velocity and the percentage of fresh water at the submarine springs outlet, the estimated discharge rate is 350 million m³/year. The tritium concentrations in groundwater (1.6–5.9 TU) are low and very close to the current rainfall values (2.9–5.6 TU). Adopting a model with exponential time distribution, the mean turnover time of groundwater in the Al-sen spring was evaluated to be 60 years. A value of about 3.7 billion m³ was obtained for the maximum groundwater reservoir size.     

Harmonic analysis of cosmic microwave background data – I. Ring reductions and point-source catalogue

We present a harmonic model for the data analysis of an all-sky cosmic microwave background survey, such as Planck , where the survey is obtained through ring-scans of the sky. In this model, resampling and pixelization of the data are avoided. The spherical transforms of the sky at each frequency, in total intensity and polarization, as well as the bright-point-source catalogue, are derived directly from the data reduced on to the rings. Formal errors and the most significant correlation coefficients for the spherical transforms of the frequency maps are preserved. A clean and transparent path from the original samplings in the time domain to the final scientific products is thus obtained. The data analysis is largely based on Fourier analysis of rings; the positional stability of the instrument's spin axis during these scans is a requirement for the data model and is investigated here for the Planck satellite. Brighter point sources are recognized and extracted as part of the ring reductions and, on the basis of accumulated data, used to build the bright-point-source catalogue. The analysis of the rings is performed in an iterative loop, involving a range of geometric and detector response calibrations. The geometric calibrations are used to reconstruct the paths of the detectors over the sky during a scan and the phase offsets between scans of different detectors; the response calibrations eliminate short- and long-term variations in detector response. Point-source information may allow the reconstruction of the beam profile. The reconstructed spherical transforms of the sky in each frequency channel form the input to the subsequent analysis stages. Although the methods in this paper were developed with the data processing for the Planck satellite in mind, there are many aspects which have wider implementation possibilities, including the construction of real-space pixelized maps.     

Considerations for conducting incubations to study the mechanisms of As release in reducing groundwater aquifers

Microbial Fe reduction is widely believed to be the primary mechanism of As release from aquifer sands in Bangladesh, but alternative explanations have been proposed. Long-term incubation studies using natural aquifer material are one way to address such divergent views. This study addresses two issues related to this approach: (1) the need for suitable abiotic controls and (2) the spatial variability of the composition of aquifer sands. Four sterilization techniques were examined using orange-colored Pleistocene sediment from Bangladesh and artificial groundwater over 8 months. Acetate (10 mM) was added to sacrificial vials before sterilization using either (1) 25 kGy of gamma irradiation, (2) three 1-h autoclave cycles, (3) a single addition of an antibiotic mixture at 1× or (4) 10× the typical dose, and (5) a 10 mM addition of azide. The effectiveness of sterilization was evaluated using two indicators of microbial Fe reduction, changes in diffuse spectral reflectance and leachable Fe(II)/Fe ratios, as well as changes in P-extractable As concentrations in the solid phase. A low dose of antibiotics was ineffective after 70 days, whereas autoclaving significantly altered groundwater composition. Gamma irradiation, a high dose of antibiotics, and azide were effective for the duration of the experiment.