There have been several critiques of geoengineering as a climate mitigation tool.  Two of the most incisive, in my opinion, come from science and ethics.

The first is a 2007 paper in PNAS by Matthews and Caldeira showing that if we establish aerosol clouds or space reflectors while doing nothing to reduce carbon emissions, we run the risk of catastrophic rates of warming (2-4 degrees C per decade) if these systems were to fail.

The second is a recent piece in Slate by my colleague, Dale Jamieson, who argued that there is no moral and legal authority to know how and when to deploy geoengineering or by how much.

One proposed geoengineering tool is fertilizing the world’s oceans with iron.  The premise behind this idea was developed by John Martin in 1990, who is often quoted as saying something like, “Give me a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age.” Micronutrients like iron and zinc are extremely limiting to phytoplankton growth in the open ocean—orders of magnitude moreso than nutrients we typically think of in common fertilizers, like nitrogen and phosphorus.  Dumping iron into the oceans has been shown to stimulate algal blooms, and the creation of this biomass consumes CO2 from the surface waters and atmosphere, thereby helping to mitigate rising CO2 from fossil fuels.  In theory, some of this biomass should sink to the deep ocean where it is sequestered for centuries, but this has yet to be shown definitively on a wide scale.

In a forthcoming paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mary Silver and colleagues show that there is another potential risk of geoengineering resulting from ocean iron fertilization…

It turns out that some of the phytoplankton stimulated by these iron additions secrete toxins in the water at concentrations that are potentially harmful to marine life:

Near-surface waters ranging from the Pacific subarctic (58°N) to the Southern Ocean (66°S) contain the neurotoxin domoic acid (DA), associated with the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia. Of the 35 stations sampled, including ones from historic iron fertilization experiments (SOFeX, IronEx II), we found Pseudo-nitzschia at 34 stations and DA measurable at 14 of the 26 stations analyzed for DA. Toxin ranged from 0.3 fg·cell−1 to 2 pg·cell−1, comparable with levels found in similar-sized cells from coastal waters. In the western subarctic, descent of intact Pseudo-nitzschia likely delivered significant amounts of toxin (up to 4 μg of DA·m−2·d−1) to underlying mesopelagic waters (150–500 m). By reexamining phytoplankton samples from SOFeX and IronEx II, we found substantial amounts of DA associated with Pseudo-nitzschia. Indeed, at SOFeX in the Antarctic Pacific, DA reached 220 ng·L−1, levels at which animal mortalities
have occurred on continental shelves. Iron ocean fertilization also occurs naturally and may have promoted blooms of these ubiquitous algae over previous glacial cycles during deposition of iron-rich aerosols. Thus, the neurotoxin DA occurs both in coastal and oceanic waters, and its concentration, associated with changes in Pseudo-nitzschia abundance, likely varies naturally with climate cycles, as well as with artificial iron fertilization. Given that iron fertilization in iron-depleted regions of the sea has been proposed to enhance phytoplankton growth and, thereby, both reduce atmospheric CO2 and moderate ocean acidification in surface waters, consideration of the potentially serious ecosystem impacts associated with DA is prudent.

Mary W. Silvera, Sibel Bargu, Susan L. Coale, Claudia R. Benitez-Nelson, Ana C. Garcia, Kathryn J. Roberts, Emily Sekula-Wood, Kenneth W. Bruland, and Kenneth H. Coale (2010). Toxic diatoms and domoic acid in natural and iron enriched waters of the oceanic Pacific Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences : 10.1073/pnas.1006968107

___

Photo credit: emdot

Water security is making a bit of a splash this week.  CNBC ran this story on the water crises in western U.S. states, where the region is possibly closing in on a day of reckoning, as described by Felicity Barringer in the NY Times, and creating a climate of pessimism among some western water managers.

The scientific community is also weighing in.  C.J. Vörösmarty and colleagues published a review paper in this week’s issue of Nature in which they evaluate the worldwide risk of water security and threats to aquatic biodiversity (edited slightly to remove citations and statistics):

We find that nearly 80% (4.8 billion) of the world’s population (for 2000) lives in areas where either incident human water security or biodiversity threat exceeds the 75th percentile. Regions of intensive agriculture and dense settlement show high incident threat, as exemplified by much of the United States, virtually all of Europe (excluding Scandinavia and northern Russia), and large portions of central Asia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and eastern China. Smaller contiguous areas of high incident threat appear in central Mexico, Cuba, North Africa, Nigeria, South Africa, Korea and Japan. The impact of water scarcity accentuates threat to drylands, as is apparent in the desert belt transition zones across all continents (for example, Argentina, Sahel, Central Asia, Australian Murray–Darling basin).

What is the disparity of risk between rich vs. poor nations?

Most of Africa, large areas in central Asia and countries including China, India, Peru, or Bolivia struggle with establishing basic water services like clean drinking water and sanitation, and emerge here as regions of greatest adjusted human water security threat. Lack of water infrastructure yields direct economic impacts. Drought- and famine-prone Ethiopia, for example, has 150 times less reservoir storage per capita than North America and its climate and hydrological variability takes a 38% toll on gross domestic product (GDP). The number of people under chronically high water scarcity, many of whom are poor, is 1.7 billion or more globally, with 1.0 billion of these living in areas with high adjusted human water security threat.

They also argue that as wealth increases in a nation, the apparent ability to deal with water security issues improves, leading to the perception that threat level is declining:

Contrasts between incident and adjusted human water security threat are striking when considered relative to national wealth. Incident human water security threat is a rising but saturating function of per capita GDP, whereas adjusted human water security threat declines sharply in affluent countries in response to technological investments. The latter constitutes a unique expression of the environmental Kuznets curve, which describes rising ambient stressor loads during early-to-middle stages of economic growth followed by reduced loading through environmental controls instituted as development proceeds. The concept applies well to air pollutants that directly expose humans to health risks, and which can be regulated at their source. The global investment strategy for human water security shows a distinctly different pattern. Rich countries tolerate relatively high levels of ambient stressors, then reduce their negative impacts by treating symptoms instead of underlying causes of incident threat.

Biodiversity threats from river use appear to be significant globally:

The worldwide pattern of river threats documented here offers the most comprehensive explanation so far of why freshwater biodiversity is considered to be in a state of crisis. Estimates suggest that at least 10,000–20,000 freshwater species are extinct or at risk, with loss rates rivalling those of previous transitions between geological epochs like the Pleistocene-to-Holocene.

And what about future prospects?

We remain off-pace for meeting the Millennium Development Goals for basic sanitation services, a testament to the lack of societal resolve, when one considers that a century of engineering know-how is available and returns on investment in facilities are high. For Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries alone, 800 billion US dollars per year will be required in 2015 to cover investments in water infrastructure, a target likely to go unmet. The situation is even more daunting for biodiversity. International goals for its protection lag well behind expectation and global investments are poorly enumerated but likely to be orders of magnitude lower than those for human water security, leaving at risk animal and plant populations, critical habitat and ecosystem services that directly underpin the livelihoods of many of the world’s poor.

…with a not-so-comforting conclusion:

Left unaddressed, these linked human water security–biodiversity water challenges are forecast to generate social instability of growing concern to civil and military planners.

Vörösmarty, C., McIntyre, P., Gessner, M., Dudgeon, D., Prusevich, A., Green, P., Glidden, S., Bunn, S., Sullivan, C., Liermann, C., & Davies, P. (2010). Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity Nature, 467 (7315), 555-561 DOI: 10.1038/nature09440

___

Photo credit: suburbanbloke

I remember driving on a freeway in Phoenix after midnight in 1990.  The temperature was a cool 102 degrees F after breaking the all-time heat record of 126 F that day.  Deserts are good at cooling off at night.  But with all of the built environment in Phoenix storing heat from the day, the sidewalks, roads, and even swimming pools felt like they were being heated.

We all have probably experienced urban heat islands—the mass of dark asphalt and concrete absorbing solar radiation and radiating it back to space as heat.  The lack of water exacerbates the situation because there is little-to-no evaporative cooling.  Waste heat from cars, machines, air conditioners, and even human bodies also heat up the air.  And the warmer it gets, the stronger the tendency to crank up the air conditioners, generating even more waste heat.

The problem is potentially large in areas like the Middle East, India, parts of Africa, and the American Southwest, where rapid urbanization in warm, dry environments has the potential to make some urban areas much warmer at night than surrounding rural areas.

In a forthcoming article in Geophysical Research Letters¹, Mark McCarthy and colleagues at the Met Office, Hadley Centre, UK used a climate model that examines what climate might look like in a doubled CO₂ world and calculates the added warming caused by urbanization and wasted heat.

Their results were eye-opening:

• Urban regions in places like the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, and India may experience night time warming by as much as 3-5 degrees C above and beyond that caused by doubled CO₂ alone.
• The number of hot nights per year (defined as temperatures in the 99th percentile of nonurban areas) increase in the following cities:
  • London: 1-2 hot nights now vs. up to 10 hot nights in 2050
  • Sydney: 1-2 hot nights now vs. up to 15 hot nights in 2050
  • Delhi: 5-10 hot nights now vs. up to 30 hot nights in 2050
  • Beijing: 3-6 hot nights now vs. up to 50 hot nights in 2050
  • Los Angeles: 8-12 hot nights now vs. up to 40 hot nights in 2050
  • Tehran: 20 hot nights now vs. up to 60 hot nights in 2050
  • Sao Paulo: <5 hot nights now vs. up to 80 hot nights in 2050
  • Lagos (Nigeria): <5 hot nights now vs. up to 150 hot nights in 2050

As mentioned in an earlier post, we only need to remember Chicago in 1995 to recall the deadly impact that heat waves can have on urban people.  And as we saw in that unfortunate example, the victims were disproportionately the elderly and African American.

Although we may not be able to mitigate this warming, basic adaptation steps should be set into motion, including re-thinking urban design, making cities more resilient to hot environments, developing better energy and technology solutions (including cooling), installing green roofs, and putting into place emergency disaster plans and social safety nets for vulnerable populations.

¹Mark McCarthy, Martin Best, and Richard Betts (2010). Climate change in cities due to global warming and urban effects Geophysical Research Letters : 10.1029/2010GL042845

_____
Photo Credit:

The IPCC 2007 report projected a conservative sea level rise of about 18-59 cm by the year 2100.

Why conservative?  Because it mainly accounted for things we know are happening and can measure well—like thermal expansion of the ocean and melting of land glaciers (see here for a discussion of the Kilimanjaro example).  What it doesn’t do so well is account for all of the potential ways that the big ice sheets (Greenland and Antarctica) can contribute to sea level rise.  Things like ice flow and mass loss are generally assumed to be constant, even though recent research papers discussed in previous posts (here and here) suggest they are accelerating.

Since the publication of the IPCC report in 2007, there have been several studies suggesting that sea level rise will be 1-2 meters or more by 2100 (one example here).  One study looked at geological evidence for sea level rise during the previous interglacial period 125,000 years ago, which was 1-2 degrees C warmer than today.  Their work indicated that there was a 95% chance that sea level rose by 6 meters (22 feet).

In a forthcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters,  Svetlana Jevrejeva and colleagues used statistical models to project sea level rise by 2100.¹ But they also did something else interesting.  They looked back several thousands of years to the most extreme events that could cause climate cooling—things like severe volcanic eruptions, which create stratospheric dust clouds that block sunlight.

If events like this were to happen again, they asked, would they cause enough cooling to be able to slow sea level rise caused by greenhouse gases?

The answer is no.  There appears to be no natural factors like vulcanism that will significantly slow greenhouse-gas-driven sea level rise that we are already committed to or future sea level rise that we may experience if we continue to emit fossil fuels.

Excerpts (emphasis mine):

• With the assumption that sea level will continue to respond over the next 100 years to the same forcings that have influenced it during the past 1000 years, we estimate 0.6 -1.6 m of global sea level rise in the 21st century using a statistical model driven by projected natural and anthropogenic forcings.
• In contrast to the 20th century sea level rise that was associated with a significant contribution of 25% from natural (solar and volcanic) forcing, 21st century sea level rise will be clearly dominated by the changes in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
• Alternative scenarios for solar forcing with a potential decrease in solar irradiance of 1W/m2 (using the lowest level recorded throughout the last 9300 years) only produce a 10-20 cm reduction in our estimate of 21st century sea level rise.
• If we utilize the 13th century past volcanic forcing to estimate a possible (but unlikely) contribution from volcanic activity, then an almost negligible 8 cm decrease is projected in the estimated sea level rise.
• The suggested reduction of radiative forcing by injections of SO2 into atmosphere (equivalent to a Pinatubo eruption every 4 years) would be equivalent to delaying sea level rise by 12 -20 years.
• A “no changes in radiative forcing” scenario produced 16-22 cm (with lower limit of 10 cm and upper limit of 31 cm) sea level rise in the 21 century due to the inertia of the climate system, providing evidence that conditions established during the past centuries have already committed us to a considerable global sea level rise during the next 100 years.

¹Jevrejeva, S., J. C. Moore, and A. Grinsted (2010). How will sea level respond to changes in natural and anthropogenic forcings by 2100? Geophysical Research Letters : 10.1029/2010GL042947

UPDATE:  RealClimate provides more explanation of the IPCC being too cautious about sea level rise.

_____

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/ / CC BY 2.0

When reviewing the most popular words of 2009, I was surprised to see that “albedo” didn’t crack the top 5—Tweet, Obama, H1N1, Stimulus, and Vampire.  I bet you were equally shocked.

Albedo is a simple concept—the reflectivity of a landscape—but it’s hugely important in understanding how the surface of the Earth impacts climate.  As we saw in a recent post, things like thawing sea ice, northward advancing treeline, and asphalt paving all darken landscapes, causing more solar radiation to be absorbed and temperatures to climb—one of the reasons for the so-called urban heat island effect.

So what would happen if we were to install white roofs?  In a forthcoming article¹ in Geophysical Research Letters (subscription required), Keith Oleson and colleagues use biophysical models to address this.

Their answer:  White roofs reflect more sunlight and cool buildings.  Averaged over all urban areas in the world, the urban heat island effect declines by 33%, causing maximum and minimum daily temperatures to decrease by 0.6 and 0.3 degrees C, respectively.

At face value, this sounds great.  But, there’s a potential hidden cost of cool buildings—heating.  Interestingly, they found that white roofs caused space heating to increase more than air conditioner use declined, suggesting that energy use might actually increase with white roofs!

¹Oleson, K. et al. (in press) The effects of white roofs on urban temperature in a global climate model. Geophysical Research Letters.

Related post:   New ideas about how changing vegetation at high latitudes can cause climate warming to accelerate

______

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/ / CC BY 2.0

Happy New Year, everyone.  Sorry for the lag in posts, but there wasn’t a lot happening in the news or journals over the past week.

A few years ago, I saw a talk by Thomas Schelling (Nobel laureate in economics) who argued that we need to accelerate the economic development of poor countries so that they are able to cope with climate change.  This analysis is interesting, if not fraught with additional challenges, such as development in a carbon-based energy world hastening the very problem to which these nations are attempting to adapt.

In an article¹ in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (open access), Anthony Patt and colleagues argued that the need for assistance by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is dependent on vulnerability, which, in turn, depends on both exposure to climate change and how socioeconomic factors affect the sensitivity of LDCs to climate change.

To assess this hypothesis, they first examined how deaths caused by disasters (floods, droughts, and storms) varied across the level of development in several LDCs.  They used the UN Human Development Index—HDI, a composite metric of income, education, and life expectancy—as a proxy for development.

Here’s what they found…

As you might expect, they found that deaths declined with increased HDI, but interestingly, the relationship had a peak in the middle, suggesting that as the least-developed countries become more developed, they may actually exacerbate vulnerability to climate change at mid levels of HDI before eventually reducing vulnerability at high levels of HDI.

Next, they focused on Mozambique as a case study.  Using the model of deaths vs. HDI they developed for other countries, they projected how Mozambique’s HDI might change over the next 50 years.  To do this, they linked the HDI to different development scenarios outlined by the IPCC’s Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES):

The A2 storyline describes high population and economic growth but low globalization, whereas the B1 storyline describes greater globalization
tied to improvements in environmental quality and sustainability, as well as lower population growth.

Under both scenarios, carbon increases in the atmosphere, but at different rates and to different degrees.  The authors assumed a linear increase in storms/disasters with rising temperatures, indicating that greater warming in the A2 scenario will lead to more disasters and more potential death than the B1 scenario where warming is not as great.

Following the B1 scenario caused the HDI to rise more quickly than the A1 scenario.  Simply put, society on a more-sustainable path (B1) leads to higher social welfare than under a more fossil-fuel intensive path with higher levels of human population (A2).

Similar to what they found by examining many countries, Mozambique will become more vulnerable to increased deaths as HDI rises over coming decades (by 2030-2040).  However, after 2050, vulnerability declined significantly in the B1 scenario, less so in the A2 scenario.

A few excerpts of their conclusions:

The results suggest that vulnerability may rise faster in the next two decades than in the three decades thereafter. Importantly, the overall need for adaptation measures will continue to rise… However,
assuming that their development paths fall somewhere close to the range bounded by the A2 and B1 scenarios, by the second quarter of the century LDCs will likely engage in a greater share of this adaptation autonomously, thereby reducing both their losses, and their need for financial assistance. This is especially the case if socio-economic conditions change in a manner close to that described in the B1 scenario.

….Looking beyond 2060 and the crossing of temperature thresholds such as 2 °C, it may well be that steadily rising climate impacts—such as sea level rise or the effects of cumulative changes on ecosystems—create problems that go well beyond the ability of any country, rich or poor, to adapt. Until that point, a primary argument for ramping up assistance slowly—namely, that adaptation needs can only increase as climate change continues—is incomplete, because it ignores the role that socio-economic development and the concurrent changes in adaptive capacity will have to play. Although there are important caveats to our results, they provide a first estimate of how vulnerability will unfold over the next 50 years, if one assumes, as do all of the SRES scenarios, that
incomes will continue to rise. They suggest that the urgency of efforts to reduce vulnerability, including the provision of international financial assistance, is high.

One thing the authors acknowledge is that nobody really has a good explanation for the humped relationship of HDI vs. deaths from disasters.  That’s an important part of their results, which suggests that the very poorest nations may experience more suffering in the initial steps of development.  Understanding this would make a great PhD in development economics.

¹Patt, A. et al. (in press) Estimating least-developed countries’ vulnerability to climate-related extreme events over the next 50 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

_____

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/breadfortheworld/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

In the Online First edition of Climatic Change, Tyler Tarnoczi and Fikret Berkes assess^1,2 the sources and availability of information about climate adaptation to farmers in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

Farmers rely on several information sources for agricultural practices, which will likely be vital in helping food producers learn how to adapt to climate warming:

• social networks/experiential learning
• government
• industry (e.g., seed, machinery)
• producer and conservation organizations
• media

Here’s what they found…

Actions taken to reduce vulnerability to climate change are ultimately determined by the perception of impacts and the cost of the adaptation response, but there has to be information available on possible adaptation responses. Of the five general sources of information described above, there is not one single dominant information source used by Prairie farmers to learn about climate change adaptation. While the most common source of information was social sources and personal experience, industry played a large role; by contrast, government information, direction and coordination for climate change adaptation was lacking.

There is potential for producer organizations to play a role as knowledge brokers, or bridging organizations, facilitating open dialogue between producers at the farm-level and policymakers at the government-level. With appropriate capacity building, these organizations could help facilitate bottom-up flow of producer-level
information, enable self-organization among producers, and provide platforms for information exchange.

Barriers to adaptation are many. Long-term benefits of climate change adaptation may be hidden when producers are faced with significant short-term costs or financial crises. National-level adaptation options are difficult to prioritize even in countries with high levels of economic and technical capacity. Information and capacity are not the only factors; “what is known, understood and disseminated as information” and issues of power and control of knowledge are also important. Sources of information most likely to be useful for farmers are farm organizations, with accountability to farmers, and…not those that have their own profit motives. Programs that involve observable trials, two-way dialogue, and implementation at the producer level would allow for the co-production of knowledge that can lead to learning and adapting to a changing climate.

The authors convey the importance of bottom-up networking and organization among farmers rather than simply relying on top-down approaches—like government support, which they argue has diminished in recent years because of the decline of agricultural extension offices.   This may be bad, however, because large-scale efforts by government may be needed in terms of basic research and sheer scaling power (although see below).   Adaptation is going to require a cohesive integration of top-down and bottom up approaches.

It’s also worth pointing out that the diversity of these information sources means that farmers could get mixed messages in terms of what’s best for adaptation–messages subject to the influences of money and power.  For instance, seed companies may advocate genetically modified crops less susceptible to drought while, at the same time, the government is subsidizing increased irrigation and advocating its use through the extension services.  Conservation organizations might suggest shifts to more sustainable forms of agriculture or to crop types more suitable to new climatic conditions.

These potential differences aren’t necessarily bad in terms of assembling and considering all possible types of responses.  But power and influence could alter the process in ways that constrain future options.  In The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry described how agricultural extension offices were a power multiplier in that they advocated many of the technological innovations that played a large role in causing the industrialization of American farms, concentrating wealth and power into the hands of a few, and leading to attendant degradation of cultural and ecological systems.  What institutions advocate in terms of adaptation practices should therefore also be scrutinized in terms of their contribution to long-term sustainability.

¹Tarnoczi, T.J. and F. Berkes (in press) Sources of information for farmers’ adaptation practices in Canada’s Prairie agro-ecosystem. Climatic Change

²Bowdoin people can access the article here.

_____

Photo Credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/larachris/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Human actions are having large and accelerating effects on the climate, environment and ecosystems of the Earth, thereby degrading many ecosystem services. This unsustainable trajectory demands a dramatic change in human relationships with the environment and life-support system of the planet. Here, we address recent developments in thinking about the sustainable use of ecosystems and resources by society in the context of rapid and frequently abrupt change.

To deal with these challenges, they advocate “ecosystem stewardship,” which has three core principles.  Here are excerpts of these principles (slightly condensed/adapted by me); please check out the paper for details:

(Principle 1) Reduce vulnerability to known stresses

(A) Reduce exposure to hazards and stresses
• Minimize known stresses and avoid or minimize novel hazards and stresses
• Develop new institutions that minimize global-scale stresses
• Manage in the context of projected changes rather than in the historical range of variability

(B) Reduce social–ecological sensitivities and adapt to adverse impacts
• Sustain the capacity of ecosystems to provide multiple ecosystem services
• Sustain and enhance crucial components of well-being, particularly of vulnerable segments of society
• Plan sustainable development to address the tradeoffs among costs and benefits for ecosystems, multiple segments of today’s society and future generations

(Principle 2) Develop stewardship strategies to prepare for, and shape, uncertain change

(A) Maintain a diversity of options
• Subsidize innovations that foster socio-economic novelty and diversity
• Renew the functional diversity of degraded systems
• Prioritize conservation of biodiversity hotspots and pathways that enable species to adjust to rapid environmental change
• Sustain a diversity of cultures, languages and knowledge systems that provide multiple approaches to meeting societal goals.

(B) Enhance social learning to facilitate adaptation
• Broaden the problem definition and knowledge co-production by engaging multiple disciplinary perspectives and knowledge systems
• Use scenarios and simulations to explore consequences of alternative policy options
• Develop transparent information systems and mapping tools that contribute to developing trust among decision-makers and stakeholders, and build support for action
• Test understanding through comparative analysis, experimentation and adaptive management
• Exercise extreme caution in experiments that perturb a system larger than the jurisdiction of management

(C) Adapt governance to implement potential solutions
• Provide an environment for leadership and respect to develop
• Foster social networking that builds trust and bridges communication and accountability among existing organizations
• Enable sufficient overlap in responsibility among organizations to allow redundancy in policy implementation

(Principle 3) Transform from traps to potentially more favorable trajectories

(A) Preparing for transformation
• Engage stakeholders to identify dysfunctional states and raise awareness of problems
• Identify thresholds, plausible alternative states, pathways and triggers
• Identify the barriers to change, potential change agents and strategies to overcome barriers

(B) Navigating the transition
• Identify potential crises and use them as opportunities to initiate change
• Maintain flexible strategies and transparency
• Foster institutions that facilitate cross-scale and cross-organizational interactions and stakeholder participation

(C) Building resilience of the new regime
• Create incentives and foster values for stewardship in the new context
• Initiate and mobilize social networks of key individuals for problem solving
• Foster interactions and support of decision makers at other levels

Bottom line:  This paper provides a useful framework for the continuing conversation on sustainability.  Some of the ideas are not new, but it’s a good synthesis, and it makes progress towards the difficult task of integrating natural and social systems. I would like to see a comprehensive list of examples compiled for all of these strategies as a clearinghouse for ideas, including ideas that do (did) not work.

We are going to see a lot more on these ideas over the next decade:

• interdependence of natural and social systems
• reducing vulnerabilities (a key component of adaptation)
• fostering innovation in all sectors of society
• maintain diversity in ecological and social systems as a form of resilience (another key component of adaptation)
• being proactive to shape the trajectory of change

¹Chapin F.S. et al (in press) Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet. Trends in Ecology and Evolution

²Bowdoin people can access the article here.

_____
Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/blvesboy/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

We don’t ordinarily think about climate change and land use change as being a synergistic threat to society.  However, the combination of impervious surfaces that increase runoff, declining wetlands, levees, and more severe storms pack a quadruple whammy that could lead to some major flooding in the future.  From the cool adaptation work done in Keene, NH, we know that much of our infrastructure (roads, bridges, culverts) can’t handle the added stress of streams and rivers with higher discharge.  We’re looking at a potential nightmare of increased costs associated with infrastructure damage.

In this week’s issue of Science, Jeffrey Opperman and colleagues argue¹ that our historical paradigm of flood control with levees needs to fundamentally change to  achieve a more sustainable socioecological system.

Their solution?  Tear down some of the levees to allow some floodplains to flood.  This can accomplish several goals:

(1) Flood risk reduction

• Move to flood-tolerant activities in floodplains so that we don’t have to spend so much on disaster relief.
• Storing water in floodplains takes the strain off downstream regions because floodwaters can naturally spill to where they are supposed to rather than swelling channelized rivers.  Small amounts of land can accomplish this—they cite a study of the Illinois River showing that a floodplain of 8,000 hectares would drop the likelihood of flooding 26,000 hectares of cropland by 50%.

(2) Increased floodplain goods and services

• Several economic activities are conducive to periodic flooding:  pasture, timber, and flood-tolerant biofuel crops, such as willow.
• Periodically flooded soils can also assist with reducing erosion and storing nutrients that would otherwise reach and pollute coastal oceans.

(3) Building resiliency to climate change

• They argue that reconnecting rivers to floodplains can help us adapt to climate change in ways that are socioeconomically beneficial.  For instance, we presently have to keep some reservoirs partially empty to accommodate periodic flood waters.  But partially filled reservoirs can’t generate as much hydropower or provide as much drinking water.  If we used floodplains as a natural pressure relief valve, we can operate reservoirs closer to capacity and benefit economically.

Opperman and colleagues acknowledge that there are political hurdles, such as convincing some private landowners that flooding their land can be useful.

But there are creative solutions that have already been deployed.  They cite Sacramento as an example:  Some farmers allow their crops to flood, serving as a pressure-relief valve when rivers swell, thereby preventing more expensive damage.  In return, the farmers are compensated for their crop loss.  It’s a win-win situation that presumably costs less than dealing with infrastructure damage or having to build new infrastructure that handles greater flooding.

Another idea is to allow some of these areas to become wetlands and compensate people as part of a wetlands banking system to mitigate the loss of wetlands elsewhere.   This would most likely have several ecological benefits, including increasing habitat for wetland-dependent species such as waterfowl and other migrating birds.  It would also likely increase vegetation productivity and carbon storage.

It’s interesting to note that they don’t call for an end to economic activity or human use in floodplains.  Sure, we probably want to stop building McMansions in flood-prone regions.  However, there are several ways we can use floodplains for ecological and economic benefit.  These will likely require compensation, but in the long run, it’s cheaper than having to re-tool major infrastructure to handle greater discharge with climate warming.

¹Opperman, J.J. et al (2009) Sustainable floodplains through large-scale reconnections to rivers. Science 326:1487-1488.

_____

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/doblonaut/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Lydia DePillis has an interesting article over at The New Republic based on a new report from the United Nations.

Is climate change gender-neutral? Not according to the U.N. Population Fund, which earlier today released a report arguing that women suffer disproportionately from the impacts of global warming. Especially in developing countries, they can’t flee changes like desertification and sea-level rise as easily as young men, who aren’t as tied to children and households. They’re often caught up in civil conflicts ignited by scarce resources. And they’re more likely to fall victim to diseases caused by wetter weather patterns.

But on the flipside, the report argues, women are also in the best position to help mitigate both the causes and effects of rising temperatures—which is why policies to empower women, like targeted microloans and reproductive healthcare, shouldn’t be treated as separate from climate policy.

…Think of it as Nick Kristof meets Tom Friedman: keeping “women’s issues” separate from “climate issues” is a huge missed opportunity.

I love this conclusion.  It’s one of the things that environmental studies (ES) programs in higher education need to focus on—better connections to groups not traditionally affiliated with ES, such as Gender and Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, Psychology, Religion, visual and performing arts, etc.  For major environmental challenges like climate warming, everyone needs to be part of this conversation.

_____

Photo credit:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0