Books on the topic 'Future climate information'
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Switzerland)), World Climate Conference ((3rd 2009 Geneva. Report of the World Climate Conference 3: Better climate information for a better future, 31 August-4 September 2009, Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva, Switzerland: WMO, 2009.
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Raucher, Robert S. The future of research on climate change impacts on water: A workshop focusing on adaptation strategies and information needs. Denver, Colo: Water Research Foundation, 2010.
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Raucher, Robert S. The future of research on climate change impacts on water: A workshop focusing on adaptation strategies and information needs. Denver, Colo: Water Research Foundation, 2010.
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Anderson, John E., Christian Bucher, Bruno Briseghella, Xin Ruan, and Tobia Zordan, eds. Sustainable Structural Engineering. Zurich, Switzerland: International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE), 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.2749/sed014.
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<p>Sustainability is the defining challenge for engineers in the twenty-first century. In addition to safe, economic, and effi-cient structures, a new criterion, sustainable, must be met. Furthermore, this new design paradigm–addressing social, economic, and environmental aspects–requires prompt action. In particular, mitigation of climate change requires sustainable solutions for new as well as existing structures. Taking from both practice and research, this book provides engineers with applicable, timely, and innovative information on the state-of-the-art in sustainable structural design. <p>This Structural Engineering Document addresses safety and regulations, integration concepts, and a sustainable approach to structural design. Life-cycle assessment is presented as a critical tool to quantify design options, and the importance of existing structures–in particular cultural heritage structures–is critically reviewed. Consideration is also given to bridge design and maintenance, structural reassessment, and disaster risk reduction. Finally, the importance of environmentally friendly concrete is examined. Consequently, structural engineers are shown to have the technical proficiency, as well as ethical imperative, to lead in designing a sustainable future.
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Culture Politics And Climate Change How Information Shapes Our Common Future. Routledge, 2014.
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Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes our Common Future. Routledge, 2014.
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Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Deserai A. Crow. Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes Our Common Future. Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
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Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Deserai A. Crow. Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes Our Common Future. Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
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Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Deserai A. Crow. Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes Our Common Future. Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
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Boykoff, Maxwell T., and Deserai A. Crow. Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes Our Common Future. Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
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Pittock, A. Barrie. Climate Change. CSIRO Publishing, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/9780643098381.
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It is widely accepted in the scientific community that climate change is a reality, and that changes are happening with increasing rapidity. In this second edition, leading climate researcher Barrie Pittock revisits the effects that global warming is having on our planet, in light of ever-evolving scientific research.
Presenting all sides of the arguments about the science and possible remedies, Pittock examines the latest analyses of climate change, such as new and alarming observations regarding Arctic sea ice, the recently published IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, and the policies of the new Australian Government and how they affect the implementation of climate change initiatives.
New material focuses on massive investments in large-scale renewables, such as the kind being taken up in California, as well as many smaller-scale activities in individual homes and businesses which are being driven by both regulatory and market mechanisms. The book includes extensive endnotes with links to ongoing and updated information, as well as some new illustrations.
While the message is clear that climate change is here (and in some areas, might already be having disastrous effects), there is still hope for the future, and the ideas presented here will inspire people to take action. Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions is an important reference for students in environmental or social sciences, policy makers, and people who are genuinely concerned about the future of our environment.
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Dunn, Peter O., and Anders Pape Møller, eds. Effects of Climate Change on Birds. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198824268.001.0001.
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Climate change issues are attracting rapidly increasing interest from a wide range of biologists due to their unprecedented effects on global biodiversity, although there remains a lack of general knowledge as to the environmental consequences of such rapid change. Compared with any other class of animals, birds provide more long-term data and extensive time series, a more geographically and taxonomically diverse source of information, a richer source of data on a greater range of topics dealing with the effects of climate change, and a longer tradition of extensive research. The first edition of the book was widely cited and this new edition continues to provide an exhaustive and up-to-date synthesis of our rapidly expanding level of knowledge as it relates to birds, highlighting new methods and areas for future research. Effects of Climate Change on Birds is aimed at professional avian biologists and ornithologists as well as graduate students of avian ecology, evolution, and conservation. It will also be of relevance and use to a more general audience of climate change biologists, administrators, and conservationists because of the potential relevance of its theoretical and empirical content to other organisms including ourselves.
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Takahashi, Bruno, and Alejandra Martinez. Climate Change Communication in Peru. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.574.
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Peru is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. More than 65% of the country is covered by the Amazon rainforest, and the Andes region is home to more than 70% of the world’s tropical glaciers. This abundance of natural resources also makes the country highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.The Peruvian government therefore requires the development and implementation of action plans to adapt to the present and future impacts of climate change. At the same time, it requires the development of sound communication strategies that include collaboration with stakeholders such as the media and nongovernmental organizations. Media coverage of climate change can have important implications for policy decision making. This is especially salient in a context of low information availability where media reports play an important role in filling knowledge gaps that in turn can affect the way policies are developed.Climate change, as an environmental and social issue in Peru, is not highly politicized, as it is in countries such as the United States and Australia. There is no major debate about the reality of climate change, the scientific evidence, or the need for political action and technological and policy innovations. This approach is also reflected in the media’s coverage of the issue. Peru’s media tend to focus on climate change mostly during key policy events. Among these major events was the capital city of Lima’s hosting in 2010 of the V meeting of Latin American, Caribbean, and European Union countries, where the main topics of discussion were climate change and poverty. In addition, Lima hosted the COP20, which preceded the Paris meeting in 2015 that led to a major global agreement. The media’s coverage of these events was intense. These were the exceptions: A good proportion of Peru’s newspaper coverage comes from international news wire agencies. Coverage from those sources focuses mostly on mitigation actions, instead of adaptation, which is more relevant to vulnerable countries such as Peru. This coverage is in line with the government’s view of mitigation as a business opportunity. There is, however, a lack of studies that explore, first, the factors that affect this coverage, and, second, the way other mediums such as television or radio cover the issue.Strategic communication by governmental organizations, as well as accurate and fact-based media reporting about climate change, is necessary to better communicate the urgency and magnitude of the problem to the general public, grassroots organizations, industry, and international agencies, among others.
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Gao, Yanhong, and Deliang Chen. Modeling of Regional Climate over the Tibetan Plateau. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.591.
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The modeling of climate over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) started with the introduction of Global Climate Models (GCMs) in the 1950s. Since then, GCMs have been developed to simulate atmospheric dynamics and eventually the climate system. As the highest and widest international plateau, the strong orographic forcing caused by the TP and its impact on general circulation rather than regional climate was initially the focus. Later, with growing awareness of the incapability of GCMs to depict regional or local-scale atmospheric processes over the heterogeneous ground, coupled with the importance of this information for local decision-making, regional climate models (RCMs) were established in the 1970s. Dynamic and thermodynamic influences of the TP on the East and South Asia summer monsoon have since been widely investigated by model. Besides the heterogeneity in topography, impacts of land cover heterogeneity and change on regional climate were widely modeled through sensitivity experiments.In recent decades, the TP has experienced a greater warming than the global average and those for similar latitudes. GCMs project a global pattern where the wet gets wetter and the dry gets drier. The climate regime over the TP covers the extreme arid regions from the northwest to the semi-humid region in the southeast. The increased warming over the TP compared to the global average raises a number of questions. What are the regional dryness/wetness changes over the TP? What is the mechanism of the responses of regional changes to global warming? To answer these questions, several dynamical downscaling models (DDMs) using RCMs focusing on the TP have recently been conducted and high-resolution data sets generated. All DDM studies demonstrated that this process-based approach, despite its limitations, can improve understandings of the processes that lead to precipitation on the TP. Observation and global land data assimilation systems both present more wetting in the northwestern arid/semi-arid regions than the southeastern humid/semi-humid regions. The DDM was found to better capture the observed elevation dependent warming over the TP. In addition, the long-term high-resolution climate simulation was found to better capture the spatial pattern of precipitation and P-E (precipitation minus evapotranspiration) changes than the best available global reanalysis. This facilitates new and substantial findings regarding the role of dynamical, thermodynamics, and transient eddies in P-E changes reflected in observed changes in major river basins fed by runoff from the TP. The DDM was found to add value regarding snowfall retrieval, precipitation frequency, and orographic precipitation.Although these advantages in the DDM over the TP are evidenced, there are unavoidable facts to be aware of. Firstly, there are still many discrepancies that exist in the up-to-date models. Any uncertainty in the model’s physics or in the land information from remote sensing and the forcing could result in uncertainties in simulation results. Secondly, the question remains of what is the appropriate resolution for resolving the TP’s heterogeneity. Thirdly, it is a challenge to include human activities in the climate models, although this is deemed necessary for future earth science. All-embracing further efforts are expected to improve regional climate models over the TP.
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Goldie, Jenny, and Katharine Betts, eds. Sustainable Futures. CSIRO Publishing, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/9781486301904.
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Sustainable Futures explores the links between population growth, diminishing resources and environmental challenges, and the implications for Australia's future. Written by leaders in their field, and based on presentations from the 2013 Fenner Conference on 'Population, Resources and Climate Change', this book is a timely insight into the intertwined challenges that we currently face, and what can be done to ensure a sustainable and viable future.
The book identifies the major areas of concern for Australia's future, including environmental, social and economic implications of population growth; mineral and natural resources; food, land and water issues; climate change; and the obstacles and opportunities for action.
Accessible, informative and authoritative, Sustainable Futures will be of interest to policy makers, students and professionals in the fields of sustainability and population growth.
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Busuioc, Aristita, and Alexandru Dumitrescu. Empirical-Statistical Downscaling: Nonlinear Statistical Downscaling. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.770.
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This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article.The concept of statistical downscaling or empirical-statistical downscaling became a distinct and important scientific approach in climate science in recent decades, when the climate change issue and assessment of climate change impact on various social and natural systems have become international challenges. Global climate models are the best tools for estimating future climate conditions. Even if improvements can be made in state-of-the art global climate models, in terms of spatial resolution and their performance in simulation of climate characteristics, they are still skillful only in reproducing large-scale feature of climate variability, such as global mean temperature or various circulation patterns (e.g., the North Atlantic Oscillation). However, these models are not able to provide reliable information on local climate characteristics (mean temperature, total precipitation), especially on extreme weather and climate events. The main reason for this failure is the influence of local geographical features on the local climate, as well as other factors related to surrounding large-scale conditions, the influence of which cannot be correctly taken into consideration by the current dynamical global models.Impact models, such as hydrological and crop models, need high resolution information on various climate parameters on the scale of a river basin or a farm, scales that are not available from the usual global climate models. Downscaling techniques produce regional climate information on finer scale, from global climate change scenarios, based on the assumption that there is a systematic link between the large-scale and local climate. Two types of downscaling approaches are known: a) dynamical downscaling is based on regional climate models nested in a global climate model; and b) statistical downscaling is based on developing statistical relationships between large-scale atmospheric variables (predictors), available from global climate models, and observed local-scale variables of interest (predictands).Various types of empirical-statistical downscaling approaches can be placed approximately in linear and nonlinear groupings. The empirical-statistical downscaling techniques focus more on details related to the nonlinear models—their validation, strengths, and weaknesses—in comparison to linear models or the mixed models combining the linear and nonlinear approaches. Stochastic models can be applied to daily and sub-daily precipitation in Romania, with a comparison to dynamical downscaling. Conditional stochastic models are generally specific for daily or sub-daily precipitation as predictand.A complex validation of the nonlinear statistical downscaling models, selection of the large-scale predictors, model ability to reproduce historical trends, extreme events, and the uncertainty related to future downscaled changes are important issues. A better estimation of the uncertainty related to downscaled climate change projections can be achieved by using ensembles of more global climate models as drivers, including their ability to simulate the input in downscaling models. Comparison between future statistical downscaled climate signals and those derived from dynamical downscaling driven by the same global model, including a complex validation of the regional climate models, gives a measure of the reliability of downscaled regional climate changes.
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Hayes, Andrew F., and Jörg Matthes. Self-censorship, the Spiral of Silence, and Contemporary Political Communication. Edited by Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199793471.013.31.
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This chapter introduces the tenets of spiral of silence theory as a theory of group dynamics as it relates to the interplay among the media, interpersonal talk, and political discussion. After reviewing some of the findings related to its key propositions, its applicability to modern political communication and mass media research is questioned and fine-tuned. An argument is made that future researchers should abandoned the quest for evidence whether public opinion expression is guided by perceptions of the opinion climate, especially using ad hoc measures that have not been validated. Rather attention should be directed toward examining the role of social pressures in motivating information seeking about the opinion climate and how individual differences such as fear of isolation, attitude certainty, and moral conviction can influence the effect of those perceptions on publicly-observable political behavior.
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Parker, Leslie. International Law and the Renewable Energy Sector. Edited by Kevin R. Gray, Richard Tarasofsky, and Cinnamon Carlarne. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/law/9780199684601.003.0017.
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This chapter examines key legal instruments and mechanisms relevant to international renewable energy regulation. These play an important role in governing unified action and enhancing collaboration and information-sharing on effective policies and investment frameworks aimed at reducing barriers and risks to investments in renewable energy. The mechanisms that are analysed are the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Statute, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol and related international climate change negotiations and declarations, the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), and various sector-specific treaties. The chapter also turns its attention to the primary international organizations that influence present and future directions in international renewable energy policy, such as the Nairobi Programme of Action for the Development and Utilization of New and Renewable Sources of Energy, International Energy Agency, Development Banks, and the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership.
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Busch, K. C. Framing of Climate Change in United States Science Education. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.572.
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Although future generations—starting with today’s youth—will bear the brunt of negative effects related to climate change, some research suggests that they have little concern about climate change nor much intention to take action to mitigate its impacts. One common explanation for this indifference and inaction is lack of scientific knowledge. It is often said that youth do not understand the science; therefore, they are not concerned. Indeed, in science educational research, numerous studies catalogue the many misunderstandings students have about climate science. However, this knowledge-deficit perspective is not particularly informative in charting a path forward for climate-change education. This path is important because climate science will be taught in more depth as states adopt the Next Generation Science Standards within the next few years. How do we go about creating the educational experiences that students need to be able to achieve climate-science literacy and feel as if they could take action? First, the literature base in communication, specifically about framing must be considered, to identify potentially more effective ways to craft personally relevant and empowering messages for students within their classrooms.
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Dodds, Klaus, and Mark Nuttall. The Arctic. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/wentk/9780190649814.001.0001.
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As the threat of global climate change becomes a reality, many look to the Arctic Ocean to predict coming environmental phenomena. There, the consequences of Earth's warming trend are most immediately observable in the multi-year and perennial ice that has begun to melt, which threatens ice-dependent microorganisms and, eventually, will disrupt all of Arctic life. In The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall offer a concise introduction to the circumpolar North, focusing on its peoples, environment, resource development, conservation, and politics to provide critical information about how changes there can and will affect our entire globe and all of its inhabitants. Dodds and Nuttall shed light on how the Arctic's importance has grown over time, the region's role during the Cold War, indigenous communities and their history, and the past and future of the Arctic's governance, among other crucial topics. The Arctic is an essential primer for those seeking information about one of the most important regions in the world today.
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Manitoba and the north-west of the Dominion: Its resources and advantages to the emigrant and capitalist, as compared with the western states of America : its climate, soil, agriculture, and manufacturing facilities : its unparalleled salubrity, growth, and productiveness, and the elements of its future greatness and prosperity, the land policy, latest information, cheapest and best way to get to Manitoba, what is required, and how to farm, &c. 2nd ed. Ottawa: Free Press, 1993.
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Hamylton, Sarah, Pat Hutchings, and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, eds. Coral Reefs of Australia. CSIRO Publishing, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/9781486315499.
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Australia’s coral reefs stretch far and wide, covering 50 000 square kilometres from the Indian Ocean in the West to the Pacific Ocean in the East. They have been viewed as a bedrock of coastal livelihoods, as uncharted and perilous nautical hazards, as valuable natural resources, and as unique, natural wonders with secrets waiting to be unlocked. Australia’s coral reefs have sustained a global interest as places to visit, and as objects of study, science, protection and conservation.
Coral Reefs of Australia examines our evolving relationship with coral reefs, and explores their mystery and the fast pace at which they are now changing. Corals are feeling the dramatic impacts of global climate change, having undergone several devastating mass coral bleaching events, dramatic species range shifts and gradual ocean acidification.
This comprehensive and engaging book brings together the diverse views of Indigenous Australians, coral reef scientists, managers and politicians to reveal how we interact with coral reefs, focussing on Indigenous culture, coastal livelihoods, exploration, discovery, scientific research and climate change. It will inform and inspire readers to learn more about these intriguing natural phenomena and how we can protect coral reefs for the future.
Cultural sensitivity
Readers are warned that there may be words, descriptions and terms used in this book that are culturally sensitive, and which might not normally be used in certain public or community contexts. While this information may not reflect current understanding, it is provided by the author in a historical context.
This publication may also contain quotations, terms and annotations that reflect the historical attitude of the original author or that of the period in which the item was written, and may be considered inappropriate today.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that this publication may contain the names and images of people who have passed away.
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Scheidel, Walter, ed. The Science of Roman History. Princeton University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691195988.001.0001.
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This book provides the first comprehensive look at how the latest advances in the sciences are transforming our understanding of ancient Roman history. The book explores novel types of evidence that enable us to reconstruct the realities of life in the Roman world. Chapters discuss climate change and its impact on Roman history, and then cover botanical and animal remains, which cast new light on agricultural and dietary practices. They exploit the rich record of human skeletal material—both bones and teeth—which forms a bio-archive that has preserved vital information about health, nutritional status, diet, disease, working conditions, and migration. There is an in-depth analysis of trends in human body height, a marker of general well-being. The book also assesses the contribution of genetics to our understanding of the past, demonstrating how ancient DNA is used to track infectious diseases, migration, and the spread of livestock and crops, while the DNA of modern populations helps us reconstruct ancient migrations, especially colonization. Opening a path toward a genuine biohistory of Rome and the wider ancient world, the book offers an accessible introduction to the scientific methods being used in this exciting new area of research, as well as an up-to-date survey of recent findings and a tantalizing glimpse of what the future holds.
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Durch, William, Joris Larik, and Richard Ponzio, eds. Just Security in an Undergoverned World. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198805373.001.0001.
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This book is about how humankind can manage global problems to achieve both security and justice in an age of antithesis. Global connectivity is increasing, visibly and invisibly—in trade, finance, culture, and information—helping to spur economic growth, technological advance, and greater understanding and freedom, but global disconnects are growing as well. Ubiquitous electronics rely on high-value minerals scraped from the earth by miners kept dirt-poor by corruption and war. People abandon burning states for the often indifferent welcome of wealthier lands whose people, in turn, pull in on themselves. International bucket brigades are too little, too late—and some throw gas on the flames. Humanity’s very success, underwritten in large part by lighting up gigatons of long-buried carbon for 200 years, now threatens humanity’s future. The global governance institutions established after World War Two to manage global threats, especially the twin scourges of war and poverty, have expanded in reach and impact, while paradoxically losing the political support of their wealthiest and most powerful members. Their problems mimic those of their members in struggling to adapt to new problems and maintain trust in institutions. This volume argues, however, that a properly mandated, managed, and modernized global architecture offers unparalleled potential to midwife solutions to vexing issues that transcend borders and capacities of individual actors, from conflict and climate change to poverty and pandemic disease. The volume offers “just security” as a new conceptual framework for evaluating innovative solutions and strategies for institutional reform.
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Vuorinen, Ilppo. Post-Glacial Baltic Sea Ecosystems. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.675.
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Post-glacial aquatic ecosystems in Eurasia and North America, such as the Baltic Sea, evolved in the freshwater, brackish, and marine environments that fringed the melting glaciers. Warming of the climate initiated sea level and land rise and subsequent changes in aquatic ecosystems. Seminal ideas on ancient developing ecosystems were based on findings in Swedish large lakes of species that had arrived there from adjacent glacial freshwater or marine environments and established populations which have survived up to the present day. An ecosystem of the first freshwater stage, the Baltic Ice Lake initially consisted of ice-associated biota. Subsequent aquatic environments, the Yoldia Sea, the Ancylus Lake, the Litorina Sea, and the Mya Sea, are all named after mollusc trace fossils. These often convey information on the geologic period in question and indicate some physical and chemical characteristics of their environment. The ecosystems of various Baltic Sea stages are regulated primarily by temperature and freshwater runoff (which affects directly and indirectly both salinity and nutrient concentrations). Key ecological environmental factors, such as temperature, salinity, and nutrient levels, not only change seasonally but are also subject to long-term changes (due to astronomical factors) and shorter disturbances, for example, a warm period that essentially formed the Yoldia Sea, and more recently the “Little Ice Age” (which terminated the Viking settlement in Iceland).There is no direct way to study the post-Holocene Baltic Sea stages, but findings in geological samples of ecological keystone species (which may form a physical environment for other species to dwell in and/or largely determine the function of an ecosystem) can indicate ancient large-scale ecosystem features and changes. Such changes have included, for example, development of an initially turbid glacial meltwater to clearer water with increasing primary production (enhanced also by warmer temperatures), eventually leading to self-shading and other consequences of anthropogenic eutrophication (nutrient-rich conditions). Furthermore, the development in the last century from oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) to eutrophic conditions also included shifts between the grazing chain (which include large predators, e.g., piscivorous fish, mammals, and birds at the top of the food chain) and the microbial loop (filtering top predators such as jellyfish). Another large-scale change has been a succession from low (freshwater glacier lake) biodiversity to increased (brackish and marine) biodiversity. The present-day Baltic Sea ecosystem is a direct descendant of the more marine Litorina Sea, which marks the beginning of the transition from a primeval ecosystem to one regulated by humans. The recent Baltic Sea is characterized by high concentrations of pollutants and nutrients, a shift from perennial to annual macrophytes (and more rapid nutrient cycling), and an increasing rate of invasion by non-native species. Thus, an increasing pace of anthropogenic ecological change has been a prominent trend in the Baltic Sea ecosystem since the Ancylus Lake.Future development is in the first place dependent on regional factors, such as salinity, which is regulated by sea and land level changes and the climate, and runoff, which controls both salinity and the leaching of nutrients to the sea. However, uncertainties abound, for example the future development of the Gulf Stream and its associated westerly winds, which support the sub-boreal ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic, in the Baltic Sea area. Thus, extensive sophisticated, cross-disciplinary modeling is needed to foresee whether the Baltic Sea will develop toward a freshwater or marine ecosystem, set in a sub-boreal, boreal, or arctic climate.
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Thurston, Anne, ed. A Matter of Trust. University of London, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.14296/1220.9781912250356.
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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals initiative has the potential to set the direction for a future world that works for everyone. Approved by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2016 to help guide global and national development policies in the period to 2030, the 17 goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, but also include new priority areas, such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice. Assessed against common agreed targets and indicators, the goals should facilitate inter-governmental cooperation and the development of regional and even global development strategies. However, each goal presents considerable challenges in terms of collecting and analysing relevant data and producing the statistics needed to measure progress. Most governments in lower resourced countries simply do not yet have the systems and controls in place to produce high quality, reliable data and statistics, and it is questionable whether the quality and integrity of the available information is adequate to support meaningful decisions and set direction for the future. There are substantial implications: where progress cannot be measured accurately because of inadequate or flawed statistics, the result can be misguided decisions, doubts about achievement of the goals and significant wasted resources. Getting statistics ‘right’ depends upon the quality and integrity of the data used to produce them and on the quality of the processes for collecting, manipulating and analysing the data. Without a documentary records as evidence of how the data were gathered and analysed or how statistics were produced and disseminated, it is not possible to confirm that the statistics are complete, accurate and relevant. Various global organisations do recognise the importance of high quality data and statistics for measuring the SDG indicators reliably, but there has been little attention to the role of records in providing the evidence needed to trust the data and statistics. There is, moreover, a lack of awareness that digital information simply will not survive without policies and procedures to manage and preserve it through time. As a result, digital data, statistics and records are being lost regularly on a large scale, particularly in lower resource countries, where the structures needed to protect and preserve them are not yet in place. This book explores, through a series of case studies, the substantial challenges for assembling reliable data and statistics to address pressing development challenges, particularly in Africa. Hopefully, by highlighting the enormous potential value of creating and using high quality data, statistics and records as an interconnected resource and describing how this can be achieved, the book will contribute to defining meaningful and realistic global and national development policies in the critical period to 2030.