Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Pacific climate change adaptation'
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Schwebel, Michael Bryan. "Climate change adaptation and policy in Pacific small island states| Safe havens or adrift at sea?" Thesis, Temple University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3703089.
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Pacific Small Island States (PSIS) are in the precarious position as some of the first jurisdictions to grapple with the current and forecasted effects of climate change, such as forced migrations and loss of culture. Yet, islanders' viewpoints are neither often fully understood nor heeded by those at the international decision making levels. Therefore, how and to what extent are PSIS successfully preparing for climate change?
This completed study used a mixed methods approach that examines nissology — how islanders view and understand themselves — and its relationship with successful (discussed and defined within the study) adaptation planning. The study also used a mixed methods approach to juxtapose the findings of the nissological and success analyses with a second research question: an in-depth study and analysis of regional and global policymaking entities, and the degrees to which they may influence islanders' preparation for climate change.
The study examined 18 PSIS and their Climate Change Adaptation Plans (CCAPs) and then interviewed PSIS' representatives at their respective Missions to the United Nations in New York City to evaluate how PSIS view and foresee current and future policies regarding climate change at the global, regional, and local levels. Then, fieldwork was performed within the United States Territories in the Pacific: American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands to obtain on-the-ground information regarding implementation of plans, policies, and projects.
The study attempted to address two specific gaps in the literature via the triangulation of methods and data: the relationship between an island-centric viewpoint of CCAPs and successful climate change as well as how policymaking in the Pacific at the local, regional, and global levels either assisted or hindered successful climate change adaptation policy.
The results suggested answers to these two key questions as well as several unexpected or emergent findings. Regarding the two principal research questions, PSIS that crafted their CCAPs in a more nissological or island-centric manner were indicative of states that were foreseen to be more successful in adapting to current and future climate change effects. Next, PSIS that were part of AOSIS, the various regional associations, and those PSIS that had complete sovereignty (independent) were indicative of those PSIS expressing greater overall success at preparing for climate change than those PSIS not meeting these criteria. However, not all PSIS had the opportunity to become members of AOSIS or certain regional organizations for various reasons.
Finally, a policy document was created at the end of the study to illustrate some of the best practices based upon this study's findings. Immediately preceding the policy document are other emergent findings indicative of future areas of research and exploration within the realms of nissology, regional associations and partnerships, and successful climate change adaptation.
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Webber, Sophie Rachel. "Adaptation ecologies : circuits of climate change finance, policy, and science in the Pacific Islands." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54381.
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In order to address the expected impacts of climate change, international development institutions have instigated adaptation projects and policies. These efforts promise to mitigate anticipated harms in vulnerable-to-climate-change social and ecological systems. This dissertation examines the operation and dissemination of adaptation projects and policies in the context of small island states in the Pacific region. It also explores the important role that the pre-eminent development institution, the World Bank, plays in programming adaptation. The research questions explored here are: i) How do finance, policy and science circulate in the name of adaptation? ii) What do the circulation of finance, policy and science achieve for adaptation in Kiribati and Solomon Islands? and iii) Why is the World Bank invested in adaptation, or what does adaptation do for the World Bank and other developmental actors? In answering these questions, I draw from multi-sited primary fieldwork, participant observation, and documentary analysis: at the World Bank in Washington, DC and Sydney, within the public bureaucracies of Australia, Kiribati, and Solomon Islands, and with regional organizations and development partners in the Pacific region. This dissertation posits the emergence of a Pacific Adaptation Complex. The analytical concept of the Pacific Adaptation Concept recognizes the vast institutional arrangements, configurations of expertise, and project technologies that come together to make adaptation happen. Within the Complex, experimental nodes are key, as are multi-directional flows. Yet, I find that, overwhelmingly, flows and investments for adaptation are dogged by persistent stickiness, and a rhetorical attention to mobility and success that is indifferent to practical outcomes. However, the promise of adaptation finance, policy, and science works through failing development institutions and imaginaries, allowing reinvention in an era of development crisis.Arts, Faculty of
Geography, Department of
Graduate
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MacKendrick, Katharine. "Climate Change Adaptation Planning for Cultural and Natural Resource Resilience: a Look at Planning for Climate Change in Two Native Nations in the Pacific Northwest U.S." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10022.
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xii, 172 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.The literature indicates that for indigenous peoples the environmental impacts of climate change and some proposed solutions threaten lifeways, subsistence, economic ventures, future growth, cultural survivability, rights, land ownership, and access to resources. However, limited understanding and awareness of the vulnerability and capacity of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and of climate change impacts at the local level affect climate policymaking, planning, and equity. Case studies with the Coquille and Hoopa Valley Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest U.S. explore the key considerations in planning for climate change adaptation, particularly for cultural and natural resource resilience. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews offer insight on the risks the tribes face and the role of traditional and local knowledge and experience in planning for climate change adaptation. Conclusions offer information useful in planning for climate impacts, local-level climate adaptation research, and climate policy development at the local to global levels.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Michael Hibbard, Chair; Dr. Cassandra Moseley; Kathy Lynn
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Cauchi, John Paul. "Climate change, food security and health in Kiribati; investigating community resilience and opportunities for adaptation in Kiribati." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2021. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/214100/1/John%20Paul_Cauchi_Thesis.pdf.
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This thesis examines the interactions between climate change, food security and public health outcomes in Kiribati. Food security is known to be a strong determinant of health outcomes. This study found Kiribati to be overly reliant on imported food of low nutritious quality, with strong negative public health outcomes such as increasing prevalence of diabetes and hypertension. Identified environmental problems are worsening with climate change; these affect and imperil domestic food production. This study also identifies the strengths of Kiribati communities, providing recommendations on improving food security and climate resilience based on suggestions of islanders and scientific evidence.
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Kies-Ryan, Samantha L. "Water is life: Using creative visual methods to facilitate community cultural engagement in water management in the Solomon islands." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2022. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/228031/1/Samantha_Kies-Ryan_Thesis.pdf.
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This practice-led participatory action research project applied and adapted visual research methods such as photo voice and cultural mapping to facilitate community engagement in water management in the Solomon Islands. The insights and processes that were developed through the research led to the creation of an interactive community cultural map that documents cultural knowledge that traditionally protects the water sources. The creation of the map generated a conversation between the generations about the ways that cultural knowledge from the past can inform the present and future that could be used as model for dialogical community engagement in other contexts.
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Longépée, Esméralda. "La résilience des systèmes socio-écologiques des États atolliens dans le contexte du changement climatique : le cas de Kiribati (Pacifique Sud)." Thesis, La Rochelle, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014LAROS007/document.
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La menace représentée par le changement climatique, et en particulier l’élévation du niveau de la mer, sur les pays entièrement composés d’atolls est largement médiatisée. La République de Kiribati est un pays atollien situé dans l’océan Pacifique, peuplé par 100 000 habitants. Au cours des derniers siècles, les communautés atolliennes de Kiribati ont développé un système de gestion des ressources naturelles qui a assuré leur survie. Depuis quelques décennies, la mondialisation est cause de mutations rapides, en particulier dans le mode de vie et dans la relation des communautés atolliennes à leur environnement naturel. Étant donné le caractère fortement intégré du système sociétal et de l’écosystème dans les atolls, cette thèse aborde la question de l’avenir des pays atolliens dans le contexte du changement climatique par l’étude de la résilience de leurs systèmes socio-écologiques. La résilience d’un système correspond à sa capacité à absorber des perturbations et à se réorganiser tandis qu’il subit des changements tout en conservant la même fonction, structure, identité et les mêmes rétroactions. Cette thèse postule qu’une estimation de la résilience des systèmes socio-écologiques aux perturbations d’origine météo-marine nécessite au préalable une analyse de leur résilience générale. De telles estimations s’appuient sur des modèles conceptuels réalisés à partir de résultats d’entretiens et d’enquêtes menés à Kiribati, et sur l’analyse d’images aériennes. L’avenir des pays atolliens est discuté en envisageant différents scénarios : l’adaptation, la transformation, la migration et l’effondrementThe threats to states entirely composed of atolls from climate change and associated sea-level rise have been widely publicized. The Republic of Kiribati is an atoll country situated in Pacific Ocean settled by 100,000 inhabitants. Over the past centuries, the atoll communities of Kiribati have developed natural resource management systems that have enabled their survival. Over the past decades, globalization has caused rapid changes, especially regarding lifestyles and relationships of atoll communities to their natural environment. Given the highly integrated nature of the societal system and the ecosystem in the atolls, this thesis addresses the question of the future of atoll countries in the context of climate change by studying the resilience of their social-ecological systems. Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. This thesis postulated that an assessment of social-ecological resilience of climate- and marine-related disturbances required a preliminary analysis of their general resilience. Such assessments are based on conceptual models made from interviews and surveys and from the analysis of aerial imagery. The future of atoll countries is discussed considering different scenario: adaptation, transformation, migration and collapse
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Mashila, Thabang. "Spatial planning for climate change adaptation : developing a climate change local area adaptation plan for Khayelitsha." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13332.
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Includes bibliographical references.Climate change is now widely seen as a major challenge of this time and the future of cities. However, the most vulnerable will be the urban poor particularly those located on the urban fringes in high risk areas with limited access to basic services and economic opportunities. In South Africa, although progress has been made to reduce socio-economic and environmental challenges created by apartheid legislations, inequalities still exist where the privileged live in safer and well located and serviced parts of the city while he poor are still located in settlements created by apartheid in urban fringes. Spatial Planning presents an opportunity to increase resilience to climate change in vulnerable areas of cities. Through integrating planning and climate adaptation actions, future spatial decisions will add to resilience to climate change and enhance wellbeing of people. The dissertation includes a case study that was conducted to learn about the status quo of the study area to effectively recommend relevant interventions that seek to create resilience to climate change in the area. A local area adaptation plan was then formulated including the framework for implementing proposed interventions in a 20 year timeframe.
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Hoang, Lan Ngoc. "Adaptation planning under climate change uncertainty." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2013. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/5567/.
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This project explores the uncertainty factors in drought planning for a water resource zone in Sussex. Nine planning options from the 2009 Sussex Water Resource Management Plan were assessed using four climate products: the 2009 UK Climate Projections Change Factors, the Spatial Coherent Projections, the 11 runs of the HadRM3 regional climate model and their subsequent downscaling by the Future Flows Project. The varying drought statistics from these four climate products reflect post-processing uncertainty - the uncertainty stemming from the process of converting original climate model outputs into products of different formats, variables and temporal/spatial scales. Overall, the study has integrated a cascade analysis of climate uncertainty, climate post-processing uncertainty, hydrological uncertainty, water resource model uncertainty and demand uncertainty on water resource planning. The study combines Robust Optimisation, Decision-Scaling and Robust Decision Making into Robust Decision Analysis, a decision making framework for dynamic adaptation pathways in response to different levels of uncertainty and risk averseness. Post-processing uncertainty is the dominate uncertainty until 2030s; 2050s is then dominated by demand and socio-economic uncertainty. The most severe droughts within the Spatial Coherent Projections and the 2009 UK Climate Projection products are variations of the 1975-1976 and the 1988-1989 droughts, two of the worst historic droughts currently used as the design events for drought planning in Sussex. The system appears to be robust to variations of these past droughts. Yet, under different sequences of droughts from the HadRM3 and Future Flows products, the system demonstrated frequent supply failures in the 2050s, unless water demand is maintained at the 2007 level or lower. While operational costs in the 2030s are generally within the region of 4 to 5 million GBP per year, those in the 2050s Market Forces jumped to the region of 5 to 15 million GBP per year and with supply deficit from 0 to 1100 Ml/year. When demand grows by 35% from the 2007 baseline level, universal metering becomes a key option. Despite climate post-processing uncertainty, the main hotspots of water deficits remains similar across the climate products and are driven by network bottlenecks and the continually high dependence of the system on water sources a round the Hardham area. The study also indicates that inter-regional transfers might not be as reliable as assumed.
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Hemingway, Jessica. "U.S. Local Government Adaptation to Climate Change:." Doctoral thesis, Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2018. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-232723.
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The desire for local governments to adapt to climate change seems logically relevant as weather extremes inhibit the ability of local governments to protect public health and safety and to ensure delivery of public services. By conducting planned adaptation to climate change local governments enable themselves to minimize risk and increase adaptive capacity to deal with climate change impacts. In the midst of a federal government, minus the Obama administration, that has tended to downplay the importance of climate change, action by local level governments - cities in particular - in the U.S. have been at the forefront of action on climate change. Little attention has been given to local government adaptation in rural areas by both researchers and policy makers alike. Rural areas are at risk to changes in climate because they tend to be reliant on climate sensitive industries, comprised of vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and very young and to possess few resources to conduct land-use and other planning. This dissertation expands upon previous research by examining the decision to conduct planned adaptation by both urban and rural local government adaptation to climate change (RQ1) and by identifying the influences on the decision of local governments in both urban and rural areas to conduct planned adaptation to climate change (RQ2).
New York State was selected as an appropriate case study to answer research questions because of the drastic contrast between urban and rural areas of the state. On the one hand, it has been one of the most progressive states in terms of climate change policy including its largest local government New York City; on the other hand, it is comprised of many rural local governments suffering from population and economic decline. An online survey was distributed to all New York State local governments in November/December 2011 and supplemented by informant discussions conducted before and after the survey. While a considerable amount of time has passed since the survey was conducted, it took place during what appears to be a particular timeframe in political history where the U.S. president supported action on climate change. Results of this study show strong differences in resource availability and the likelihood of urban vs. rural elected officials to conduct planned adaptation.
One hundred and forty-two responses were received from large and small cities, towns, villages and counties. A traditional deductive research design was deployed to answer research questions. To examine the influences on the decision of local elected officials to conduct planned adaptation hypotheses were developed based on previous empirical studies and Mohr’s 1969 hypothesis that “Innovation is related to the motivation to innovate, inversely related to the strength of obstacles to innovation, and directly related to the availability of resources for overcoming such obstacles” (Mohr, 1969, p. 111). Two dependent variables were measured (1) planned adaptation or conscious decisions to adapt to climate change and an alternate dependent variable (2) formal and informal discussion of climate change within the local government. Independent variables measured related to local elected official motivation to conduct planned adaptation in the form of climate weather related concerns in New York State (i.e. extreme weather, water quality, and ecological changes), resource availability within the local government (i.e. budget, staff, climate change expertise) and the existence of obstacles toward planned adaptation external to local governments (i.e. public support, federal and state informational and financial support).
The results of the survey showed that a small minority of local governments in New York State had decided to conduct planned adaptation to climate change. Over half of the sample was identified as conducting some form of spontaneous or reactive adaptation which consisted mostly of actions to minimize flood risk (i.e. update storm-water infrastructure, manage flood plains, promote open space). However, no local government surveyed had been identified as having successfully implemented an adaptation plan. Informal discussions were found to be occurring among half of the sample surveyed with a small number of local governments discussing climate change formally. According to informant discussions, the low level of planned adaptation among New York State local governments can be explained by a number of factors including a non-requirement to conduct planned adaptation, varying policy, resource and incentive conditions throughout the state, a lack of urgency to adapt to climate change and, finally, the absence of a support system to conduct planned adaptation.
Results of hypothesis testing indicate that local governments are more likely to conduct planned adaptation to climate change where: A) climate change concerns are water related, B) budget, staff and climate change expertise are available and C) public support to address climate change impacts as well as state and federal informational support are available. Financial support from state and federal governments did not appear to influence the decision to conduct planned adaptation. Rural local governments were found less likely than urban local governments to be discussing climate change and to be conducting planned adaptation which is likely to be related to organizational size and the availability of resources to conduct planned adaptation measures.
This dissertation contributes to understanding how local governments are adapting to climate change in New York State, what influences the decision of elected officials to conduct planned adaptation to climate change and how experiences may differ from municipality type — especially related to urban vs. rural local governments.
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Slagle, John T. "Climate change in Myanmar: impacts and adaptation." Thesis, Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/44672.
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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimitedMyanmar is a Least Developed Nation, according to the UN, and therefore is highly vulnerable to the negative effects of a changing climate. To assess the relationship between Myanmar and climate change, this thesis analyzes projected impacts on the nation and its people, the current state of adaptation, and how Myanmar’s government has prepared. Projected impacts are viewed through the lens of the most recent IPCC reports and climate models, and discussed in relation to vulnerable areas in Burmese society and governance. This thesis concludes that Myanmar’s environment, people and society are at a significant risk; higher temperatures, altered precipitation rates, and higher sea levels will lead to reduced agriculture output, the spread of disease, and loss of habitable land. Though recent governmental action has laid the framework for suitable adaptation measures, slow progress in past decades has left Myanmar highly vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. Myanmar’s next election is scheduled for 2015, and the emerging leaders have the opportunity to make significant progress in climate change adaptation. Cooperation between Myanmar’s new leaders and the international community could accelerate the nation’s adaptation efforts and result in significant progress on climate change preparedness projects.
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Dessai, Suraje Xembu Rauto. "Robust adaptation decisions amid climate change uncertainties." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.426254.
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Dapilah, Frederick. "Climate change adaptation in the Global South." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/21309.
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Die Folgen des Klimawandels, sowie damit einhergehende Verluste und Schäden nehmen weltweit zu. Der damit verbundene globale Anstieg von Treibhausgasemissionen, zunehmende Verstädterung sowie ausufernder Konsum machen die Suche nach Anpassungsstrategien zur Vermeidung schädlicher Auswirkungen gegenwärtig wie zukünftig zu einer erheblichen Herausforderung. Diese erfordert ein tiefgehendes Verständnis der Komplexität vom Klimawandelfolgen für landwirtschaftsbasierte Existenzgrundlagen. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es zu einem solchen Verständnis beizutragen. Die vorliegende Forschungsarbeit fragt daher danach, wie etwaige Umstellungsprozesse die Anpassungsfähigkeit sowie Resilienz der Bewohner_innen von Bagri, einem kleinen Dorf im Norden Ghanas, erweitern. Die Ergebnisse dieser Dissertationsschrift basieren auf empirischen Erhebungen, die zwischen Februar und Juli 2017 in Lawra District in Nordghana unter Heranziehung qualitativer Fallstudieninstrumente durchgeführt wurden. Zum Einsatz kamen semi-strukturierte Interviews, Fokusgruppendiskussionen, Umfragen sowie ethnographische teilnehmende Beobachtungen. Die so gewonnenen Daten wurden kodiert und mit SPSS (Version 20) kreuztabellarisch sowie anhand verschiedener Variablen ausgewertet. Außerdem wurden Häufigkeiten interpretiert und die Ergebnisse schließlich in Tabellen, Graphen und Prozentsätzen verarbeitet. Des Weiteren wurden inhaltlichen Analysen der qualitativen Daten vorgenommen, die es erlaubten, Muster und Themen aus den Interviews und Diskussionen weiter zu verfolgen. Die Resultate zeigen, dass die Bewohner_innen in der untersuchten Gemeinde über die letzten drei Jahrzehnte eine Reihe klimatischer Veränderungen mit negativen Folgen für die Landwirtschaft erfahren haben. Um sich beispielsweise an die klimawandelbedingte kürzere Dauer der Regenzeit sowie niedrige Niederschlagsmengen anzupassen, greifen Kleinbauern auf schrittweise Anpassungsstrategien wie verbessertes Saatgut und weitere unterstützende Maßnahmen zurück. Paradoxerweise, untergraben Klimawandelextreme derlei Strategien auf mehreren Ebenen und reduzieren Erträge um ein Vielfaches ihres Potenzials, was wiederum finanzieller Verschuldung Vorschub leistet. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie zeigen daher, dass die Überwindung nicht-klimatischer Barrieren landwirtschaftlicher Anpassungsstrategien eine notwendige wenn auch nicht ausreichende Bedingung für eine erfolgreiche Umstellung darstellt. Immer neu aufkommende Schwierigkeiten machen Anpassung zu einem langfristigen Prozess. Eine zweite Erkenntnis dieser Arbeit ist, dass die sich wandelnden klimatischen Verhältnisse zu einer Diversifizierung der Lebensgrundlagen weg von landwirtschaftlicher Produktion hin zu Aktivitäten jenseits der Höfe in Bagri geführt haben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Prozess der Diversifizierung abhängig ist von der Einbindung der Haushalte in Gruppenaktivitäten sowie in formelle und informelle Netzwerke. Zusammenfassend gilt, dass Haushalte, die engmaschig in soziale Netze eingebettet sind eine höhere Resilienz gegenüber wahrgenommenen klimatischen Veränderungen aufweisen. Dies liegt darin begründet, dass sie zumeist über einen besseren Zugang zu kritischen – materiellen wie immateriellen – Ressourcen verfügen, welche Diversifizierung maßgeblich ermöglichen. Zudem deuten die Befunde an, wie Gruppenaktivitäten und soziale Netzwerke Marginalisierung und widersprüchlichen Ressourcenumgang befeuern können, die zugleich die Gefahr bergen, soziale und ökologische Resilienz im Dorf zu verringern. Darüber hinaus zeigt diese Arbeit die Mechanismen kollaborativer Anpassungssteuerung auf, indem sie den Fragen nachgeht, warum und wie diese Steuerungsformen Anpassungsfähigkeit befördern. Die Ergebnisse verweisen auf die Beziehungsdynamiken zwischen den relevanten Akteuren sowie Nutzen und Misserfolge und die Herausforderungen nachhaltiger kollaborativer Anpassungsstrategien in Nordghana. Ergänzend, stellt diese Studie heraus, wie machtvolle Akteure Agenden setzen, Problematisierungen generieren sowie Regeln und Anreize schaffen, die im Widerspruch zu den normativen Grundsätzen der kollaborativen Anpassungstheorie stehen können. Ausgehend von der Fallstudie in Nordghana stellt diese Arbeit auch Überlegungen dazu an, wie kollaborative Anpassungssteuerung erfolgreichen Umgang mit klimawandelbedingten Veränderungen weltweit befördern kann. Zusammenfassend, leistet diese Arbeit einen Beitrag zur Schließung theoretischer wie empirischer Wissenslücken im wachsenden Bereich der Forschung zur Anpassung an den Klimawandel. Sie illustriert darüber hinaus den unschätzbaren Wert qualitativer Fallstudien und zeigt auf, wie diese einen Beitrag leisten können zu oftmals abstrakten und schwer fassbaren Themen in der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion und damit ein Fundament für informierte politische Entscheidungen sowohl auf lokaler als auch globaler Ebene legen.Climate change impacts, related losses and damages are increasing globally. When these consequences are coupled with increasing global greenhouse gas emission, urban expansion and unsustainable consumption, the pursuit of adaptation to avoid adverse outcomes is a present necessity and a significant future challenge. The overarching aim of this doctoral dissertation is to gain a better understanding of the complexity of climate change impacts on agricultural livelihoods and how adaptation processes enhance adaptive capacity and resilience in Bagri, a small village in northern Ghana. The results presented in this doctoral thesis are based on empirical data obtained between February and July, 2017 in the Lawra District of northern Ghana using qualitative case study research methods: semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, survey and ethnographic participant observation. Data from the survey were coded and inputted into Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 20 and cross tabulation and analysis of different variables and interpretation of frequencies were done and processed into tables, graphs and percentages. Content analyses of qualitative data were done which allowed patterns and themes in interviews and discussions to be derived and interpreted. The findings show that, people in the studied community have experienced a range of climatic changes with negative impacts on agriculture in the last three decades. In order to adapt to the short duration of the rainy season and low rainfall amounts associated with climate change, smallholder farmers use incremental adaptation strategies such as improved crop varieties and other support strategies. Paradoxically, however, climate change extremes (CCEs) undermined these strategies in several instances, causing crop yields to fall short of their actual potential leading to financial indebtedness. The results therefore, showcase that surmounting non-climatic barriers to the uptake of agricultural adaptation strategies is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieving successful outcomes, as new barriers in the adaptation process beyond uptake are constantly emerging with CCEs being one example. Secondly, the findings show that climatic changes have necessitated livelihood diversification away from crop production and into off-farm and non-farm activities in Bagri. The results highlight how the process of diversification is dependent on household participation in various group activities and formal and informal social networks. Generally, households in dense social networks were found to be more resilient to perceived climate changes because they had access to the critical resources (material and non-material) essential for diversification. Importantly, the findings shed light on how group activities and social networks can create marginalization and conflicting resource use with the potential of undermining social and ecological resilience in the village. Moreover, this dissertation explores the mechanics of collaborative adaptation governance (CAG) addressing questions of why and how this mode of governance facilitates adaptive capacity. The findings illuminate stakeholder relational dynamics, benefits and failures, and the sustainability challenge of collaborative adaptation governance (CAG) in northern Ghana. More importantly, this study unveils how powerful actors set the agenda, frame problems, and implement rules and incentives contrary to the normative tenets of collaborative governance theory. Ultimately, the results highlights the failures, successes and sustainability challenges of CAG in northern Ghana, while also providing insight into the extent to which CAG approaches can facilitate adaptation to climate change globally. In conclusion, this doctoral dissertation responds to both theoretical and emperical knowledge gaps in the burgeoning climate change adaptation research, and illustrates how invaluable, qualitative case studies can contribute to illuminate some of the elusive themes in the literature and provide evidence for policy making at both local and global levels.
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Kalungu, Jokastah Wanzuu. "Gender and climate change adaptation in Kenya." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2014. http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/612167/.
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Climate change and variability is a major threat to sustainable development across the globe. Paradoxically, smallholder farmers to a great extend contribute to the spread and also hold the key to effective management of climate change and variability. Despite their centrality in climate change and variability, not much is known about smallholder farmers and climate change adaptation. As a contribution towards addressing this need, the present study analysed the role played by gender in climate change adaptation among smallholder farmers in semi-arid and sub-humid agro-ecological zones in Kenya. The study was conducted in two agro-ecological zones (analogue sites) – one in the semi-arid region, and the other in the sub-humid region, each comprising a pair of cooler and warmer sites. Data for the study were collected at different intervals between June 2011 and June 2013, using multiple approaches including household interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and personal observations. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed a high level of awareness on climate change and variability among smallholder farmers. The results also reveal that both male and female farmers perceive climate change and variability as a serious threat to their crop and livestock production. There were also demonstrable impacts of climate change and variability on smallholder agricultural practices, a number of which differed across the analogue sites. The adjustments in the agricultural practices were significantly different (p≤0.001) between the regions (analogue sites) for methods of land preparation, planting practices, crop management, weed control and pest and disease control. In the semi-arid region, farmers in the warmer areas significantly differed (p≤ 0.001) with those in cooler areas in the timing of land preparation, increased use of manure and fertiliser, crop management and increased use of pesticides. In the sub-humid region smallholder farmers in warmer sites significantly (p ≤ 0.001) differed with their counterparts in cooler sites in use of manure and fertiliser use and crop management. There were comparatively low levels of adoption of appropriate technologies among women than men. Generally, female farmers preferred low cost measures when dealing with the impacts of climate change and variability such as planting tree crops, use of manure and mixed farming as well as use of soil and water conservation measures. Pest and disease control measures, use of improved crop varieties and crop diversification were the common adaptation measures used by the male farmers. Adaptation measures are likely to be insufficient in some cases, particularly for the smallholder farmers in semi-arid region given the high food insecurity. Smallholder farmers are central to climate change and variability management. The farmers in warmer sites offer an important knowledge base that can be of invaluable help to those in the cooler sites in both agro-ecological zones. This therefore means that the success of effective adaptation to climate change variability lies in building on the existing knowledge base and incorporating gender considerations in a participatory research process. The study provides data that can be considered for action agenda by the county governments.
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Shi, Linda Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "A new climate for regionalism : metropolitan experiments in climate change adaptation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111370.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-175).
Climate change threatens the function and even existence of coastal cities, requiring them to adapt by preparing for near-term risks and reorienting long-term development. Most policy and academic interest in the governance of climate adaptation has focused on global, national, and local scales. Their efforts increasingly revealed the need to plan for adaptation at the scale of metropolitan regions. This dissertation is the first academic comparative analysis of U.S. regional adaptation initiatives. Drawing on multi-method qualitative research of five coastal regions, I ask: are collaboratives to coordinate adaptation at the regional scale a new form of regionalism? What roles do state policies on climate change and regional governance play? I argue that adaptation collaboratives are an ecological variant of new regionalism that recenters the role of public agencies in advancing adaptation efforts. Adaptation champions have helped overcome limited local adaptation, even where states are antagonistic to climate action, by sharing knowledge, providing technical assistance, and fostering political support. However, most have yet to tackle the limitations of local adaptation. Instead, they have deployed narratives of climate change as predictable and manageable, and of regional adaptation as localized and ecological in ways that mask the need for more transformative developmental and governance paradigms. Only places with regional agencies or county governments that have land use authority, fiscal leverage, or state mandated targets have advanced region-wide zoning and long-term developmental changes. This indicates that state policies towards regional planning institutions are more influential in shaping regional adaptation than those focused on adaptation. Scholarship has shifted away from debates around forms of regional government, but these findings highlight the need to strengthen regional government in order to overcome difficulties in coordinating, implementing, and enforcing multi-sector and multi-jurisdictional responses to climate change. I conclude by calling for a renewed ecological regionalism that articulates a vision of regions functioning as an ecological whole, rather than as the sum of individual parts. I offer recommendations for how collaboratives and other advocates could build awareness and open dialogue about regional interdependence, conflicts, responsibility, and accountability. These processes become pathways to envisioning local preferences for regional governance, build buy-in and coalitions, and advocate for state enabling legislation.
by Linda Shi.
Ph. D.
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Kalantari, Zahra. "Adaptation of road drainage structures to climate change." Licentiate thesis, KTH, Miljöbedömning och -förvaltning, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-90888.
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Climate change is expected to lead to more frequent extreme precipitation events, floods and changes in frost/thawing cycles. The frequency of road closures and other incidents such as flooding, landslides and roads being washed away will probably increase. Stronger demands will be placed on the function of road drainage systems. The overall aim of this thesis was to produce scientifically well-founded suggestions on adaptation of road drainage systems to climate change involving more frequent floods. The work began by examining current practice for road drainage systems in Sweden and gathering experience from professionals working with various problems concerning surface and subsurface drainage systems. Various hydrological models were then used to calculate the runoff from a catchment adjacent to a road and estimate changes in peak discharge and total runoff resulting from simulated land use measures. According to these survey and hydrological modelling studies, adaptation of road drainage systems to climate change can be grouped into two categories: i) institutional adaptation; and ii) technical adaptation. The main approaches in institutional adaptation are to: i) raise the awareness of expected climate change and its impact on drainage systems in transport administration and relevant stakeholders; ii) include adaptation measures in the existing funding programme of the transport administration; and iii) develop an evaluation tool and action plans concerning existing road drainage systems. Technical adaptation will involve ensuring that road constructions are adapted to more frequent extreme precipitation events and responsive to changes in activities and land use in areas adjacent to roads. Changes in climate variables will have effects on watershed hydrological responses and consequently influence the amount of runoff reaching roads. There is a great need for tools such as hydrological models to assess impacts on discharge dynamics, including peak flows. Improved communication between road managers and local actors in the forestry and agriculture sectors can be a means to reduce the impacts of, e.g., clear-cutting or badly managed farmland ditches.QC 20111214
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Andre, Kreie. "The adaptation of supply chains to climate change." Thesis, Heriot-Watt University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10399/2700.
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Today, more and more organisations recognise that climate change is happening and have already begun to suffer from the impacts of this change. However, the predominant response to this challenge has been one of mitigation, not necessarily to protect companies and supply chains from the impacts of climate change, but rather to reduce the impact of business and logistics on the environment. In order to prepare organisations and their supply networks for the projected impacts, the concept of adaptation to climate change has recently attracted increasing attention amongst scientists and practitioners. As most research has been conducted in the public sector, this thesis aims to determine how supply networks in the private sector can adapt to climate change and its related risk factors. The field research is designed as a single large case study and investigates a global coffee supply network. As the coffee industry is very sensitive to climate change it has already taken actions to make the supply network more resilient and can therefore offer valuable insights into the concept of adaptation to climate change. Multiple interviews were conducted and the information received was analysed using two developed a priori models concluded from literature. This research contributes to the literature in supply chain risk management by adding supply chain climate risk (SCCR) as a new sub category of external supply chain risk and extends the literature in ‘learning’ by proposing a process model of network learning as a solution to enable supply networks to adapt to climate change. This thesis also offers a number of mechanisms to provide decision makers with practical recommendations that should be implemented throughout the coffee supply network. Therefore, for the first time, this research addresses the contemporary problem of climate change by taking a supply network perspective and proposing a network learning process that enables an adaptation to the identified and location-specific climate risk. Besides its contribution to theory, this thesis is also highly relevant for practitioners as it offers clear managerial guidance of how the researched coffee supply network can become more resilient to climate change.
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Fenton, Adrian Francis. "Microfinance and climate change adaptation : insights from Bangladesh." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/17707/.
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Climate change is one of the biggest environmental problems facing humanity, particularly for developing countries which are highly vulnerable to environmental and climate hazards. If citizens of these countries are to adapt there must be sufficient incentives, knowledge, resources, skills, and an absence of market failures and barriers that discourage adaptation. Growing interest exists in how microfinance can facilitate adaptation. However, much of the existing literature remains conjectural, positively biased, and insufficiently uses adaptation concepts. Additional studies of microfinance-adaptation linkages adopting an adaptation lens are needed to address knowledge gaps. The aim of this thesis has been to contribute to microfinance-adaptation literature by examining conceptual arguments and exploring empirical data. To achieve this, a pragmatic philosophy, mixed-methods approach, and an abductive strategy were adopted. The research location was Noapara Village, Bangladesh, providing a representative case-study of the local area. The unit of analysis was the household, facilitating understanding of relationships between microfinance, livelihoods, autonomous adaptation, and environmental and climate hazards. Methods included a household survey, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions. The fieldwork was iterative and sequenced to facilitate subsequent research and triangulation. Analytical categorisation was undertaken iteratively, building on initial descriptive coding and drawing on literature themes to interpret the material. The first thesis objective was to explore features and patterns of autonomous household livelihood adaptation to better understand responses to environmental and climate hazards. Most households were found to have implemented reactive measures reducing livelihood risk. Two forms of transformational adaptation linked to socioeconomic status emerged: low-cost involuntary measures which reduce income, and high-cost voluntary measures taking advantage of emerging opportunities. The second objective was to explore the influence microfinance had on household efforts to reduce vulnerability to environmental and climate hazards. Households used credit to cope and adapt but credit limits prevented many households from adopting transformative opportunities. Often credit usage sacrificed longer term prospects for livelihood improvement for short-term security and at times led to over-indebtedness. The third objective was to explore how local-level microfinance institution representatives have responded to environmental and climate hazards and their ability to foster adaptation. Branch managers have done little in response to the problems posed by flooding, and are unable to screen clients or effectively manage aggregated risk. Reducing vulnerability by encouraging adaptation among clients holds promise but climate proofing products and partnering with other institutions is required. The thesis demonstrates that the existing literature relies on an overly simplistic view of potential microfinance-adaptation linkages, arguably due to insufficient consideration of adaptation concepts. However, the microfinance-adaptation literature is in its early stages. This thesis has contributed by providing a more nuanced study, producing different types of data, employing different data collection and interpretation approaches, and exploring both positive and negative linkages. This thesis arguably represents the first in-depth empirical study using an adaptation lens. Several important research findings were uncovered which show both signs of promise and concern. Future research can build upon this thesis, deepening understanding of how and under what conditions microfinance can reduce vulnerability. In summary, this thesis found that microfinance currently does not provide the necessary ingredients households require to transformationally adapt. Considering that future projections estimate non-marginal change to be ever more necessary, adaptation planners cannot rely upon the microfinance system to facilitate sufficient adaptation levels. The microfinance system can arguably benefit as much from adaptation planning as adaptation planning can benefit from microfinance. However, microfinance offers a potential conduit to support vulnerable communities. Microfinance programmes need climate proofing, so that investment patterns incentivised are ‘climate-compatible’. Additionally, microfinance institutions need to partner with other development actors to ensure households receive the holistic support required to adapt and thus reduce institutional vulnerability.
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Lidsell, Karolina. "Women and climate change adaptation : A qualitative research of a gender perspective on climate change adaptation for national authorities in Sweden." Thesis, Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping, HLK, Globala studier, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-34899.
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The purpose of this thesis was to investigate if, and how, national authorities integrate a gender perspective into climate change adaptation in Sweden. The study was completed by using qualitative text analysis and content analysis of documents and reports, of two chosen national authorities currently active in the Swedish society. Particularly Yvonne Hirdmans gender system were used as a theoretical framework. The result of the study reveals that national authorities mention gender as an important aspect to climate change, and an important factor of vulnerability in any outcome of a climate disaster. It is also revealed that a gender perspective on climate change adaptation could enlighten the differences between how men and women are affected by climate change, as well as providing solutions to prevent women’s vulnerability in future extreme weather events. A conclusion of the study is that the authorities analysed do integrate a gender perspective in their climate change adaptation work. However, the overall lack of material of a gender perspective on climate change makes it clear that a gender perspective is not fully integrated among national authorities currently active in Sweden.Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka om, samt hur, nationella myndigheter integrerar ett genusperspektiv i klimatanpassning i Sverige. Studien utfördes genom att använda kvalitativ text analys och innehållsanalys av dokument och rapporter från två utvalda nationella myndigheter aktiva i det svenska samhället. I studien användes genusteori och särskilt Yvonne Hirdmans teori Genussystemet. Resultatet av studien visar att nationella myndigheter nämner kön som en viktig aspekt i klimatförändringarna, men även att kön är en avgörande faktor i resultatet av en klimatkatastrof. Studien förtydligar även att ett genusperspektiv i klimatanpassning kan bevisa hur män och kvinnor påverkas olika av klimatförändringarna, samt bidra med lösningar för att undvika kvinnors utsatthet i ett förändrat klimat. En slutsats av studien är att de valda myndigheterna har integrerat ett genusperspektiv i sitt klimatanpassningsarbete. Övergripande brist på information och material kring ett genusperspektiv i klimatanpassning tydliggör dock att ett genusperspektiv inte är helt integrerat i klimatanpassningsarbetet för myndigheter aktiva i Sverige.
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Christoffersson, Moa. "Climate Change Adaptation as Disaster Risk Reduction : A global study of the relationship between exposure to natural hazards and climate change adaptation." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-431519.
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In this thesis, I conduct a global event-data study investigating the relationship between exposure to natural hazards and climate change adaptation. Exposure to natural hazards has previously been linked to actions aimed at reducing risks related to future natural hazards. With climate change, and predicted increase in hazard frequency and intensity, a feasible approach to risk mitigation is climate change adaptation, which can thus be considered a disaster risk reduction strategy. I investigate the effects of disaster frequency and severity on the amount of climate change adaptation actions taken on a subnational level of government, using disaster data from the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) and data on adaptation actions from CDP. Disaster severity is operationalised in three separate ways to distinguish between different kinds of disaster impacts: in terms of (1) economic damage, (2) how many are affected, and (3) fatalities. I hypothesise that all independent variables are positively related to climate change adaptation, and test the hypotheses using OLS regression. The result depicts a positive correlation between the number of disasters experienced and adaptation actions. I do not see a positive relationship between climate change adaptation actions and the two impact variables total affected and total fatalities. The relationship between economic damages and adaptation actions indicates that economic damages could have different impacts depending on the level of economic development in a country. This study contributes to the integration of the two research fields climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction by studying climate change adaptation as a form of disaster risk reduction, and deepening the knowledge of what can drive adaptation. Finally, this study contributes by showing that the level of economic development could be an important aspect of the exposure-adaptation relationship.
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Di, Nezio Pedro. "Mechanisms of Tropical Pacific Climate Change: Beyond the Bjerknes Feedback." Scholarly Repository, 2011. http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations/567.
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Mechanisms of tropical Pacific climate variability and change are studied in numerical experiments of future anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) 21,000 years ago, and decadal variability (PDV). According to these mechanisms the equatorial Pacific does not become either El Niño- or La Niña-like as the tropics warm up in response to increasing greenhouse gases. Because humidity increases much faster than precipitation as the tropical atmosphere warms up, theory and models anticipate a slowing-down of the Walker circulation in order to keep a balanced flow of water vapor into areas of convection. On long time scales characteristic of climate change, ocean dynamics oppose these changes in the Walker circulation. First, equatorial adjustment theory indicates that changes in the Walker circulation are not amplified via the Bjerknes feedback, as during El Niño or La Niña events. Second, during AGW, the ocean becomes more thermally stratified resulting in enhanced cooling of the equatorial cold tongue opposing the warming there. These ideas can be applied to interpret proxies of the LGM for which El Niño and La Niña analogies have been made. However, the LGM tropics are not an opposite analogue to future AGW because the Walker circulation is also sensitive to changes in the geography of the Maritime continent associated with lower sea level. Models simulate a stronger Walker circulation when the tropics cool in order to compensate for the decrease in moisture due to a cooler/drier atmosphere. However, this response is opposed by a weakening of the ascending branch of the Walker circulation because convection is suppressed over vast areas of the Maritime Continent exposed due to lower sea level. In general, the patterns of warming or cooling for AGW and LGM are not El Niño- or La Niña-like because of the opposing mechanisms presented here. As such, adherence to an ENSO analogy for interpreting tropical Pacific climate change can lead to serious misconceptions. However, proxies of the thermocline tilt can provide unequivocal evidence of changes in the Walker circulation because the pressure gradient associated with the thermocline tilt has to be in balance with the trade winds at all timescales.
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Furtado, Jason C. "On the uncertainties and dynamics of Pacific interannual and decadal climate variability and climate change." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/37302.
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Tropical and extratropical Pacific decadal climate variability substantially impact physical and biological systems in the Pacific Ocean and strongly influence global climate through teleconnection patterns. Current understanding of Pacific decadal climate variability centers around the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Aleutian Low (AL), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). However, recent literature has highlighted the emerging roles of secondary modes of variability of the tropical and extratropical Pacific atmosphere and ocean in global climate change: the Central Pacific Warming (CPW) phenomenon, the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO), and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO). This work analyzes the statistics and uncertainties behind Pacific interannual and decadal-scale climate variability, and focuses on better understanding the roles of the CPW, NPO, and NPGO in the climate system.
The study begins by examining the dynamics of the NPO and its role in Pacific interannual and decadal climate variability. Results illustrate that the individual poles of the NPO have relations at high frequencies, but only the southern node contains a deterministic low-frequency component, which is forced by tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) variability, as shown with a modeling experiment. The NPO-induced variability by the tropical Pacific SST is then integrated by the underlying ocean surface to form the decadal-scale NPGO signal. Thus, a new link between the CPW, the NPO, and the NPGO is formed, expanding the current framework of Pacific decadal variability and its implications for weather and climate.
The new framework of North Pacific decadal variability (NPDV) is then evaluated in 24 state-of-the-art coupled climate models. Results indicate that the models in general have difficulty reproducing the leading modes of NPDV in space and time, particularly the NPGO mode and its connection to the NPO. Furthermore, most models lack the proper connections between extratropical and tropical Pacific, for both the ENSO/AL/PDO and CPW/NPO/NPGO connections. Improvements in these teleconnections are thus needed to increase confidence in future climate projections.
The last part of the dissertation explores further the importance of the CPW mode by comparing and contrasting two popular paleoclimate SST anomaly reconstruction methods used for tropical Indo-Pacific SSTs. The first method exploits the high correlation between the canonical ENSO mode and tropical precipitation; the second method uses a multi-regression model that exploits the multiple modes of covariability between tropical precipitation and SSTs, including the CPW mode. The multi-regression approach demonstrates higher skill throughout the tropical Indo-Pacific than the first approach, illustrating the importance of including the CPW phenomenon in understanding past climates.
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André, Karin. "Climate change adaptation processes : Regional and sectoral stakeholder perspectives." Doctoral thesis, Linköpings universitet, Tema vatten i natur och samhälle, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-90500.
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This thesis analyses how societal adaptation processes in public and private sectors at the regional to local level in Sweden are enacted. The thesis pays particular attention to critical factors that constrain or enable adaptation by focussing on: who are the stakeholders, how do different stakeholders perceive their capacity to adapt, and the role of stakeholder interaction in facilitating adaptation processes A combination of two analytical perspectives is used where one is based on key concepts within adaptation literature, and the other draws on boundary crossing and transdisciplinary knowledge production (stakeholders, adaptive capacity, and science-based stakeholder dialogues). The study is conducted within the scope of two overall case studies of local adaptation processes within an urban region, and a land-use based sector, the private forestry sector. The cases are setting the scene for the collection of empirical material which is achieved through qualitative methods, primarily focus groups discussions with local and regional, public and private stakeholders with an interest in, and responsibility for adaptation. The focus groups meetings are organized as a series of meetings to which different participatory techniques are applied. The study also builds on a comprehensive stakeholder mapping. First, the results suggest a systematic method for identifying stakeholders in adaptation research, policy, and planning applicable in both sectors and regions that combines top-down knowledge with experience and knowledge based on bottom-up processes. Second, the analysis of perceived adaptive capacities reveal several facilitating and constraining factors that relates both to the characteristics of climate risks, experience of climate variability and extreme weather events, and responsibility- and decision-making structures. Third, the analysis of the interaction between local experts and scientists show that there is potential for the boundary spanning function of science-based stakeholder dialogues in facilitating adaptation through stimulating questions and sharing different knowledge bases and experiences among the participants. However further attention needs to be taken to the institutional environment and the role of so called anchoring devices that help local experts to contextualise, discus and thus anchor scientific knowledge in their own decision-making context. In conclusion, there are both commonalities between adaptation processes in the two case studies and some marked differences, e.g., regarding the concept of adaptation, what type of adaptation actions that are identified, the perceived opportunities for adaptation and degree of complexity.Denna avhandling analyserar hur klimatanpassningsprocesser inom privata och offentliga sektorer på regional till lokal nivå i Sverige initieras, utvecklas och genomförs. Avhandlingen ägnar särskild uppmärksamhet åt identifiering av vilka intressenter (”stakeholders”) som är involverade i att underlätta och genomföra anpassning, uppfattningar om anpassningsförmåga samt vilken roll interaktion mellan olika intressenter kan ha för att underlätta anpassning. En kombination av två analytiska perspektiv används som bygger på tidigare forskning om klimatanpassningsprocesser samt transdisciplinär kunskapsproduktion. Studien genomförs inom ramen för två övergripande fallstudier av anpassningsprocesser i en urban region samt den privata skogssektorn. Fallstudierna utgör grunden för insamlingen av det empiriska materialet som bygger på kvalitativa metoder. Den främsta metoden är fokusgruppsdiskussioner med lokala och regionala, privata och offentliga aktörer med intresse av, eller ansvar för klimatanpassning. Fokusgrupperna organiseras som en serie möten där olika deltagandetekniker tillämpas. Studien bygger också på en omfattande intressentkartläggning. I avhandlingen utvecklas och ges förslag på en stegvis metod för att identifiera intressenter för anpassningsprocesser som kan användas inom forskning och praktik. Studien analyserar också hur olika intressentgrupper upplever förmågan att hantera klimatförändringar. Ett antal möjliggörande och begränsande faktorer identifieras så som karaktären på de upplevda klimatriskerna, erfarenhet av klimatvariationer och extrema väderhändelser, samt ansvar- och beslutsstrukturer. Slutligen, analyseras om och i så fall hur interaktionen mellan lokala experter och forskare som deltar i intressantdialoger (”science-based stakeholder dialogues”) kan underlätta anpassning. Resultaten visar att det finns potential genom att deltagarna ges möjlighet att ställa frågor tillvarandra och dela med sig av sina olika kunskapsbaser och erfarenheter, samt utforska olika anpassningsalternativ. Däremot behövs vidare studier för att undersöka betydelsen av det institutionella sammanhanget samt hur olika verktyg (”anchoring devices”) kan bidra när det gäller att förankra och omsätta kunskap om klimatförändringar i olika beslutskontexter. Avslutningsvis visar denna studie på att det finns både likheter och skillnader i hur anpassningsprocesser kommer till uttryck bland de olika aktörsgrupperna inom fallstudierna, t.ex. när det gäller hur begreppet anpassning används, vilken typ av anpassning som identifieras, upplevda möjligheter för anpassning samt graden av komplexitet.
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Cooper, Sarah Jane. "Rural transformations : livelihood adaptation to climate change in Uganda." Thesis, University of Reading, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.590142.
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Adaptation to climate change is difficult because of uncertainties about the future climate and its impacts, the multitude of contexts affected and the dynamic nature of future impacts. Adaptive governance and social learning may provide institutions with the flexibility to tackle this challenge. This study aimed to explore how these processes assist smallholder farmers in Uganda. A mixed methods approach was used. Farmers' perception of the climate, livelihood adaptation and social learning was explored using semi-structured interviews (n=160), and social networks of learning was investigated using an actor-network analysis (n=62). Processes of livelihood resilience were documented with guided interviews and focus group discussions. Farmers perceived a change in the local climate. There were differing perceptions of change in seasonality, but conclusive perceptions of decreasing trends in rainfall and increased variability in intra-seasonal rainfall. No perceptions were supported by meteorological data, except for the rising trend in temperature. Farmers implemented many livelihood coping and anticipatory responses to perceived climate risk, including livestock maintenance, food storage, and planting drought-resistant varieties. Adaptive capacity and perception of farmers differed with their access to assets, entitlements and endowments. Wealthier farmers had more effective responses than marginalised farmers, and perceived drought as higher risk, whereas marginalised farmers perceived extreme rainfall as riskier. Agricultural extension stimulated social learning and contributed to livelihood innovation increasing food security and income. Informal knowledge exchange at other learning platforms, e.g. church, supported marginal farmers and learning was assisted by strong, local leadership and shadow networks at local scales. Reflexivity and multi-stakeholder collaboration were evident in governing institutions. Limited self-organisation and vertical communication among farmers demonstrated few opportunities for shifts in governance and learning was challenged by inequity and elite capture. Livelihood resilience would be improved by further farmer inclusivity, the mainstreaming of adaptation into policy and improved collaboration amongst stakeholders.
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CHEN, CHEN. "Mitigation, Adaptation and Climate Change: Policy Balance under Uncertainty." Doctoral thesis, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10280/1062.
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Mingliang, Lu. "Coastal Community Climate Change Adaptation Framework Development and Implementation." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/30425.
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As the impacts of climate change become more severe, coastal communities are required to prepare plans for adaptation to the invasive environmental changes. A well-prepared adaptation plan can effectively reduce the overall risks of coastal communities. However, a plan is not the final solution for the climate change on coastal communities. How to take the plan into action and implement it in the local communities and find the opportunities for the enhanced preparedness and development of coastal communities is the primary consideration of this thesis research. Many organizations are engaged in developing adaptation tools and guidebooks. For completing their adaptation plans, communities need to develop clear, operational, action plans, and discover the opportunities to enhance the sustainability of coastal communities. To make coastal communities more sustainable in the face of the changing climate, the public’s attention and community participation is critical. The purpose of this study is to develop an adaptation framework and action plan process system for coastal communities and at the same time, provide the general public with an enhanced opportunity to contribute their understanding about what is being done for their costal community around them and how to react when an event happens. The research is applied to the coastal communities of Richmond County, Cape Breton, Canada as a case study. The result of the work develops an adaptation “Action Plan” website for Richmond County. The website features the development, application, and simulation of a mobile communication “Action plan” application designed and implemented with the action website along to provide coastal community with communication options that exploit the local community network and enhance the community’s capacity for climate change adaptation. The emergency response community mobile app and the accompanying website are models for other communities especially those that from the coastal communities in Canada and the Caribbean as part of the C-Change ICURA project to which this research is affiliated.
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Higbee, Melissa (Melissa Aura). "Climate change adaptation in the U.S. electric utility sector." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81632.
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Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-101).
The electric utility sector has been a focus of policy efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but even if these efforts are successful, the sector will need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. These are likely to include increased heat waves, drought, extreme precipitation events, and sea level rise. Electric utilities play a key role in providing electricity services in cities that will be facing all of these difficulties. Cities depend on electricity service for public health, safety and economic development. This thesis examines how electric utilities in the United States are approaching climate change adaptation and the factors enabling and constraining these efforts. The thesis draws on an analysis of electric utility responses to surveys distributed by the Carbon Disclosure Project as well as case studies of Consolidated Edison, Entergy, and Pacific Gas & Electric. The case study utilities are incorporating climate change projections into their risk management and capital planning activities. Integrating climate change projections into risk management efforts helps utilities use replacement opportunities to build greater resilience into infrastructure systems and ensure that adaptation strategies take competing demands on resources into account. Both approaches to adaptation are generally recommended by adaptation experts. However, existing internal decisionmaking may not be well suited for incorporating the uncertainties of climate change impacts. The case study utilities could be using Scenario Planning to develop strategies likely to be effective given a range of possible futures, but they are not. I argue that state utility regulatory commissions should consider taking a more active role in providing guidance and oversight to utilities regarding climate change adaptation. They should consider (1) requiring utilities to submit climate change vulnerability assessments and detailed adaptation plans; (2) incorporating climate change risk and adaptation considerations into existing electricity plans; and (3) convening joint climate change planning efforts with utilities, municipal governments, and a range of other stakeholders. Cities and states that would like to see electric utilities put more emphasis on climate change adaptation should consider sharing climate change projections and forecasts of potential climate change impacts. Provision of such information has been effective in encouraging adaptation planning in the case studies. The actual adaptation strategies that utilities have adopted depend largely on the risks they face and the regulatory and policy environment in which they find themselves.
by Melissa Higbee.
M.C.P.
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Matus, Kramer Arnoldo. "Climate change adaptation and tourism in the Mexican Caribbean." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:548c18c7-e3da-4c12-8389-608b8f18909c.
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The Mexican Caribbean tourism sector is highly exposed to hurricane activity, yet coastal tourism is also a major driver influencing regional biophysical and social vulnerability to climate risks. Drawing on a political ecology approach and a vulnerability assessment, this study asks how experiences with extreme hurricane events in the Mexican Caribbean shape climate change adaptation in the regional tourism sector. This study uses multiple methods, scales and field sites to (a) examine how biophysical vulnerability to extreme hurricanes affects the tourism sector, (b) explain the changing conditions of social vulnerability linked to hurricane damage in the tourism sector and (c) assess the present and future opportunities and obstacles for adaptation planning. The main findings show that the region is experiencing a phase of unprecedented high intensity hurricanes. It is uncertain, however, whether changes in hurricane activity exceed natural multi-decadal variability. Tourism is one major driver of land use changes which have resulted in some of the world’s fastest increase in coastal urban sprawl. Most tourism infrastructure is located in areas with the greatest exposure to hurricanes. Hurricane Wilma which hit the region in 2005 is the most expensive natural disaster in the history of the Mexican insurance industry. Hotels have showed a high ability to recover operations after hurricanes. There is a high penetration of insurance ownership in hotels and there is substantial mobilization of public and private financial and human resources during hurricane disasters. Hotel responses to hurricanes, however, tend to be reactive and autonomous. One important consequence of hurricanes is that hoteliers in the interest to reduce operational costs, fire those workers with the weakest labour rights. Thus, hotel workers suffer from ‘double exposure’, a situation where hotel workers are confronted with the consequences of climate change while simultaneously suffering the consequences of globalization and neoliberal policies which have reduced the power of unions and weakened access to social security. The Mexican government has created a national climate change strategy and its operational programme which has led to the consolidation of an adaptation organizational structures at the national and state levels. I conclude, however, that adaptation planning may not result in the necessary actions on the ground since local actors are not well integrated yet into such efforts. This study shows the importance of regional adaptation research that takes into account perspectives from both the physical and social sciences. This study highlights the importance of interactions between local actors, the larger socioeconomic and political economy context to inform adaptation planning and policy.
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Dowiatt, Matthew. "Urban Adaptation Planning in Response to Climate Change Risk." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598284306542077.
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Мельник, Леонід Григорович, Леонид Григорьевич Мельник, Leonid Hryhorovych Melnyk, and D. Uchelor. "Challenges of agricultural adaptation to climate change in Nigeria." Thesis, Сумський державний університет, 2013. http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/31649.
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Climate change is one of the most serious environmental threats facing mankind worldwide. It affects agriculture in several ways, including its direct impact on food production. Climate change, which is attributable to the natural climate cycle and human activities, has adversely affected agricultural productivity in Africa
When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/31649
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Cheng, Cheng. "Adaptation of buildings for climate change : A literature review." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för byggnadsteknik, energisystem och miljövetenskap, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-36143.
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In September 2020, Northeast China suffered three unprecedented typhoons in half a month, and there was freezing rain in early November, all of which led to the large-scale urban power failure. The occurrence of these phenomena makes people directly see climate change and its impact on the living environment of human beings. Many studies have shown that the cause of climate change is the increase of artificial greenhouse gas emissions since industrialization. In addition to the increase of extreme weather disasters, the most direct manifestations of climate change are the rising temperature, droughts, and rising sea levels. The building sector accounts for 39% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 36% of energy consumption. To ensure the long-term integrity and normal operation of buildings, we need to understand the impact of climate on buildings, and how to deal with it. This paper reviews the literature on climate change and building energy by searching search engines and literature databases. For extreme weather, most literature talks about the impact of power failure, the main strategy is to improve reliability, resilience, sustainability, and robustness, it can help reduce losses and recover as soon as possible. On the other hand, the methods of adaptation to and mitigation of non-disaster weather are reviewed from the perspective of sustainability. This paper mainly reviews the methods of passive technology and strategy for exemplary buildings, building envelope, passive ventilation, lighting/shading, solar energy, bioenergy, dehumidification, passive cooling, and design strategy. According to the local climate, the geographical characteristics of the building, to develop comprehensive passive technology and strategy, can meet or close to meet their energy saving, emission reduction, comfort needs. This paper can provide a technical and strategic reference for the building sector to deal with climate change.Via online ZOOM meeting Presentation
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Serrat, Capdevila Aleix. "Climate Change Impacts in Hydrology: Quantification and Societal Adaptation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194702.
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The research presented here attempts to bridge science and policy through the quantification of climate change impacts and the analysis of a science-fed participatory process to face a sustainability challenge in the San Pedro Basin (Arizona). Paper 1 presents an assessment of a collaborative development process of a decision support system model between academia and a multi-stakeholder consortium created to solve water sustainability problems in a local watershed. This study analyzes how science-fed multi-stakeholder participatory processes lead to sustainability learning promoting resilience and adaptation. Paper 2 presents an approach to link an ensemble of global climate model outputs with a hydrological model to quantify climate change impacts in the hydrology of a basin, providing a range of uncertainty in the results. Precipitation projections for the current century from different climate models and IPCC scenarios are used to obtain recharge estimates as inputs to a groundwater model. Quantifying changes in the basin's water budget due to changes in recharge, evapotranspiration (ET) rates are assumed to depend only on groundwater levels. Picking on such assumption, Paper 3 explores the effects of a changing climate on ET. Using experimental eddy covariance data from three riparian sites, it analyzes seasonal controls on ET. An approach to quantify evapotranspiration rates and growing season length under warmer climates is proposed. Results indicate that although atmospheric demand will be greater, increasing pan and reference crop evaporation, ET rates at the studied field sites will remain unchanged due to stomatal regulation. However, the length of the growing season will increase, mainly with an earlier leaf-out and at a lesser level by a delayed growing season end. These findings - implying decreased aquifer recharge, increased riparian water use and a lesser water balance - are very relevant for water management in semi-arid regions. Paper 4, in which I am second author, explores the theory relating changes in area-average and pan evaporation. Using the same experimental data as Paper 3, it corroborates a previous theoretical relationship and discusses the validity of Bouchet's hypothesis.
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Huda, Fakir Azmal. "Economic assessment of farm level climate change adaptation options." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Lebenswissenschaftliche Fakultät, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/17277.
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Biophysikalische Veränderungen der Produktionsbedingungen zwingen Landwirte zur Anpassung ihrer klimasensiblen Produktionsprozesse. Eine ökonomische Bewertung dieser strategischen Alternativen ist angesichts der Unsicherheiten durch den Klimawandel von hoher Bedeutung. Mit nur wenigen empirischen Studien befindet sich die Forschung in diesem Bereich jedoch noch im Anfangsstadium. Die vorliegende Studie zielt auf die Entwicklung eines integrierten ökonomischen Rahmens für die Bewertung von Anpassungsoptionen ab. Die theoretische und ökonometrische Analyse wird dabei anhand (1) einer prozessorientierten Analyse von Produktionsverfahren und Anpassungsoptionen auf Basis der Theorie der Betriebslehre sowie (2) eines hedonischen (Ricardianischen) Ansatzes, basierend auf der Theorie zu Landrenten und Veränderungen des Nettobetriebseinkommens, in Abhängigkeit von klimatischen Variablen durchgeführt. Die Analyse von Input-Output-Verhältnissen der Reisproduktion basiert auf einer umfassenden Befragung von 300 „klimaangepassten“ Landwirten über acht Jahre in Bangladesch. Es werden insgesamt 14 Anpassungsoptionen für zwei Anbauperioden von Reis identifiziert. Eine Kombination der Methoden ermöglicht dabei drei Vorteile: (1) Eine geringere Ressourcennutzung in Kombination mit einer moderaten produktiven Leistung und einem hohen Nettoeinkommen, (2) eine Verringerung von Treibhausgasemissionen sowie (3) einen klimaangepassten Betrieb. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich Temperaturänderungen in beiden Perioden negativ auf das Betriebseinkommen auswirken. Niederschlagsänderungen sind in allen Modellen signifikant und positiv zu bewerten. Die Studie zeigt eindeutig, dass eine sukzessive Anpassung das Betriebsergebnis signifikant erhöhen und zu einer Steigerung des Betriebseinkommens beitragen kann. Durch die Modellierung der Auswirkungen verschiedener Szenarien des Klimawandels auf das Nettobetriebseinkommen werden die nachteiligen Effekte auf zukünftige Betriebseinkommen aufgezeigt.The bio-physical change in the production environment has directed farmers towards strategic alternatives for farming practices. The economic assessment of these adaptation options is of great importance in facing the uncertainty of climate change. However, the economic assessment of farm-level adaptation options remains in its infancy with few empirical studies. The study framework analyzes economic implications of alternative farming activities relating to climate change in several dimensions. The theoretical and empirical economic approach of the study can be characterized in two distinct ways: (1) the process-based approach following farm management theory by production performance analysis and the appraisal of adaptation and (2) the hedonic (Ricardian) approach based on land rent theory and the change in net farm income in relation to climatic variables. The analysis of input-output relations of rice farming was done based on an intensive survey of 300 adapted farmers in Bangladesh over 8 years at different climate thresholds. The study assesses different adaptation options for two rice growing seasons, namely Boro and Amon. These options are (1) low resource use, moderate productive performance and high farm net income, (2) minimum GHG production and (3) farms coping with changing climatic conditions. The study reveals that marginal impacts of temperature on farm net income are negative for all seasons. The marginal impacts of rainfall were found to be positive and significant for all models in the study. It is also evident from the analysis that successive adaptation significantly increases farm productivity and contributes to the revival of farm revenue up to a threshold level. Finally, based on estimated climate variability models of farm net income, the study presents a model that simulates according to future climate change scenarios. It indicates adverse effects of climate change on future farm income.
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Rasheed, Ashiq Mohamed. "Adaptation of water sensitive urban design to climate change." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2018. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/122960/1/Ashiq%20Mohamed_Rasheed_Thesis.pdf.
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This research developed mathematical models to generate reliable future rainfall data in small spatial and temporal scales, and used them to estimate future floods and water quality scenarios. Outcomes of the study suggested a substantial increase in the occurrences and the extent of future floods and the amount of pollutant that they carry. Outcomes will be highly valued in future-proofing urban flood mitigation measures and water sensitive urban design infrastructure.
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Pariartha, I. Putu Gustave Suryantara. "Optimisation of climate change adaptation for urban stormwater management." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2019. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/127643/1/I%20Putu%20Gustave%20Suryantara_Pariartha_Thesis.pdf.
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This project was a step forward in developing new knowledge relating to the optimisation of the flood mitigation measures adaptation against climate change and urbanisation impacts by considering their uncertainty. The generic outcomes of this study are expected to contribute to the optimisation of design of flood mitigation measures into the future based on costs and the capability to reduce the flood damage.
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Taylor, Anna. "Urban climate adaptation as a process of organisational decision making." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/27554.
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In a world that is increasingly urbanised, cities are recognised as critical sites for tackling problems of climate change, both by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the impacts of changing climate conditions. Unlike climate change mitigation, adaptation does not have one clear, commonly agreed collective goal. Governing and making decisions on climate adaptation in cities entails contestation over knowledge, values and preferences. Currently, the two dominant conceptualisations of adaptation are as cycles or pathways. Do these models adequately theorise what can be empirically observed in cities as to how climate adaptation is undertaken? Most research on urban climate adaptation emanates from the Global North, where political, scientific, economic and administrative systems are well established and well resourced. There is a dearth of empirical research from cities of the Global South contributing to the development of urban climate adaptation theory. This thesis contributes to addressing this gap in two ways. Firstly, by drawing on both conceptual and methodological resources from the field of organisational studies, notably the streams and rounds models of decision making, organisational ethnography and processual case research. Secondly, by conducting empirical case study research on three processes of city scale climate adaptation in Cape Town, South Africa, a growing city facing many development challenges where the local government began addressing climate adaptation over ten years ago. The three adaptation processes studied are: the preparation and adoption of city-wide sectoral climate adaptation plans; the creation of a City Development Strategy with climate resilience as a core goal; and the inclusion of climate change projections into stormwater masterplans. Data were gathered through interviews, participant observation, focus groups and document review, through embedded research within a formal knowledge co-production partnership between the University of Cape Town and the City of Cape Town government. Processual analysis and applied thematic analysis were used to test models of adaptation and decision making against data from the three case studies. The findings suggest that both the cycles and pathways models of climate adaptation inadequately represent the contested and contingent nature of decision making that prevail within the governance systems of cities such as Cape Town. Based on ethnographic knowledge of how Cape Town's local government undertakes climate adaptation, it is argued that the rounds model of decision making provides conceptual tools to better understand and represent how the process of climate adaptation in cities is undertaken; tools that can be used to enhance the pathways model. The study concludes that progress in adapting cities to a changing climate is currently constrained by both the problems and potential solutions or interventions being too technical for most politicians to deal with and prioritize and too political for most technical and administrative officials to design and implement. It calls for urban climate adaptation to be understood as distributed across a multitude of actors pursuing concurrent, discontinuous processes, and thereby focus needs to be on fostering collaboration and coordination, rather than fixating on single actors, policies, plans or projects.
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Ayers, Jessica. "Understanding the adaptation paradox : can global climate change adaptation policy be locally inclusive?" Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2010. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/393/.
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The governance of climate change adaptation presents a paradox: Climate change is a global risk, yet vulnerability is locally experienced. In order to address this paradox, debates in environmental governance need to find ways of integrating local perceptions of risk with global risk assessments. But how can local inclusiveness be achieved in the context of global environmental risks, and what kinds of institutions are needed? Accordingly, this thesis looks at three inter-related concepts from the social sciences that address the challenge of inclusive policy making, but are as yet under-examined in the context of climate change adaptation: (i) Participation, drawing from development studies; (ii) Expertise, drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS); and (iii) Deliberation, drawing from political science. It is argued that these concepts have not been sufficiently advanced to take account of the challenges raised by the ‘adaptation paradox.’ The hypothesis of this thesis is that this paradox gives rise to a globalised discourse on adaptation that restricts discussion of risk to ‘global’ and technical expertise, and is not open to localised vulnerability-based knowledge about how risks are experienced. This hypothesis is tested by asking: i) What is the evidence that conflicting definitions of climate risk inhibit inclusive adaptation policy making? And ii) Under what circumstances is local inclusiveness achieved under global climate change policy frameworks? This study collects and analyses a new set of data on the main avenue for the inclusion of vulnerable groups in adaptation policy making: National Adaptation Programmes of Actions (NAPAs). Through a detailed empirical case study analysis of the NAPA process in Bangladesh and Nepal, this study examines the evidence that NAPAs achieved inclusiveness, and the circumstances of more inclusive decisionmaking. This data suggests Nepal took a more inclusive approach to NAPA preparation than Bangladesh; and that this was a result of the choices around how to ‘do inclusiveness’ that were in turn influenced by the historical and political contexts within which these decisions were made. Based on these findings, the thesis argues that current approaches to ‘local inclusiveness’ in global adaptation policy need to pay more attention to the deliberative component of participatory policy making, in terms of how deliberative institutions can shape participatory spaces, and how history and politics have in turn shaped how deliberation takes place in each location.
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Najafi, Mohammad Reza. "Climate Change Impact on the Spatio-Temporal Variability of Hydro-Climate Extremes." PDXScholar, 2013. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1114.
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The rising temperature of the earth due to climate change has shown to alter the variations of hydro-climate variables, including their intensities, frequencies and durations. Extreme events such as floods are, in particular, susceptible to any disturbances in climate cycles. As such it is important to provide policymakers with sufficient knowledge about the probable impacts of climate change on hydrologic extremes and most importantly on floods, which have the highest impacts on the societies. For this reason analysis of hydro-climate extremes is commonly performed using data at each site (or grid cell), however due to the limited number of extreme events, these analyses are not robust. Current methods, such as the regional frequency analysis, which combine data from different locations are incapable of incorporating the spatial structure of the data as well as other explanatory variables, and do not explicitly, assess the uncertainties. In this thesis the spatial hierarchical Bayesian model is proposed for hydro-climate extreme analyses using data recorded at each site or grid. This method combines limited number of data from different locations, estimates the uncertainties in different stages of the hierarchy, incorporates additional explanatory variables (covariates), and can be used to estimate extreme events at un-gaged sites. The first project develops a spatial hierarchical Bayesian method to model the extreme runoffs over two spatial domains in the Columbia River Basin, U.S. The model is also employed to estimate floods with different return levels within time slices of fifteen years in order to detect possible trends in runoff extremes.
Continuing on the extreme analysis, the impact of climate change on runoff extremes is investigated over the whole Pacific Northwest (PNW). This study aims to address the question of how the runoff extremes will change in the future compared to the historical time period, investigate the different behaviors of the regional climate models (RCMs) regarding the runoff extremes, and assess the seasonal variations of runoff extremes.
Given the increasing number of climate model simulations the goal of the third project is to provide a multi-model ensemble average of hydro-climate extremes and characterize the inherent uncertainties. Outputs from several regional climate models provided by NARCCAP are considered for the analysis in all seasons. Three combination scenarios are defined and compared for multi-modeling of extreme runoffs. The biases of each scenario are calculated and the scenario with the least bias is selected for projecting seasonal runoff extremes.
The aim of the fourth project is to quantify and compare the uncertainties regarding global climate models to the ones from the hydrologic model structures in climate change impact studies.
Various methods have been proposed to downscale the coarse resolution General Circulation Model (GCM) climatological variables to the fine scale regional variables; however fewer studies have been focused on the selection of GCM predictors. Additionally, the results obtained from one downscaling technique may not be robust and the uncertainties related to the downscaling scheme are not realized. To address these issues, in the fifth study we employed Independent Component Analysis (ICA) for predictor selection which determines spatially independent GCM variables (as discussed in Appendix A). Cross validation of the independent components is employed to find the predictor combination that describes the regional precipitation over the upper Willamette basin with minimum error. These climate variables along with the observed precipitation are used to calibrate three downscaling models: Multi Linear Regression (MLR), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Adaptive-Network-Based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS).
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Kim, Kyungwoo. "Effects of Disasters on Local Climate Actions: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Actions." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1062866/.
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This dissertation investigates the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate change policies. Although most theoretical frameworks on policy adoption highlight the roles of extreme events as exogenous factors influencing policy change, most studies tend to focus on the effects of extreme events on policy change at the national level. Additionally, the existing theoretical frameworks explaining local policy adoption and public service provision do not pay attention to the roles of extreme events in local governments' policy choices. To fill those gaps, this dissertation explores the roles of natural disasters and political institutions on municipal governments' climate change policies. It does this by applying the theory of focusing events to local climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Based on the policy change framework, the political market model, and the institutional collective action frameworks, this dissertation develops and tests hypotheses to examine the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate mitigation and adaptation policies. The dissertation uses 2010 National League of Cities (NLC) sustainability surveys and the 2010 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) sustainability survey to test the hypotheses. Analytical results show that floods and droughts influence local climate change policies and suggest that local governments can take advantage of extreme events when initiating a policy change. The results also suggest that political institutions can shape the effects of natural disasters on municipalities' climate mitigation and adaptation actions.
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Moniruzzaman, Shaikh. "Climate change adaptation and recovery from climate hazards : microeconometric evidence from rural Bangladesh." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3682/.
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This thesis addresses two important issues of environmental and resource economics: how agricultural households adapt to climate change (CC) and how the households recover from climate hazards. Chapter 1 attempts to enunciate the perspective of the overall research and the rationale for researching on Bangladesh. It summarizes the global evidences of CC and disaster, their impacts, vulnerabilities in agriculture sector, significance of adaptation and poverty impact of disaster. Chapter 2 examines whether crop choice is affected by CC and the extent to which households switch their crops in response to the CC scenarios. It finds that crop choice is climate-sensitive and a shift in crop choices will take place in Bangladesh in response to CC scenarios. This research also finds that crop choice will be more sensitive to change in temperature than change in rainfall. Chapter 3 examines the effect of CC on crop diversification and the households’ response to CC scenarios. It finds that crop diversity is climate sensitive and this diversity in different locations varies with climatic conditions. Effects of rainfall scenarios on crop diversity are much lower compared to the effects of temperature. Chapter 4 investigates the impact of cyclone on consumption and income dynamics in a quasi-experimental setting and finds that low income people are more sensitive of their asset loss to income generation compared to the high income people, and disaster causes income loss, but, people show their resilience in accelerating higher income growth compared to the non-affected areas. Chapter 5 examines poverty group dynamics in the post-shock period and the existence of a poverty trap in the cyclone affected coastal region of Bangladesh. It finds that asset loss or asset holding impacts the dynamism of the poverty groups and poverty traps exists at low levels of income in the disaster affected areas compared to the unaffected areas.
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Drenkard, Elizabeth Joan. "Exploring the climate change refugia potential of equatorial Pacific coral reefs." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97339.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), 2015.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
Global climate models project a 21st century strengthening of the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC). The consequent increase in topographic upwelling of cool waters onto equatorial coral reef islands would mitigate warming locally and modulate the intensity of coral bleaching. However, EUC water is potentially more acidic and richer in dissolved inorganic nutrients (DIN), both widely considered detrimental to coral reef health. My analysis of the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation product indicates that the EUC has indeed strengthened over the past 130 years. This result provides an historical baseline and dynamical reference for future intensification. Additionally, I reared corals in laboratory experiments, co-manipulating food, light and CO2 (acidity) to test the role of nutrition in coral response to elevate CO2 conditions. Heterotrophy yields larger corals but CO2 sensitivity is independent of feeding. Conversely, factors that enhance zooxanthellate photosynthesis (light and DIN) reduce CO2 sensitivity. Corals under higher light also store more lipid but these reserves are not utilized to maintain calcification under elevated CO2 My results suggest that while mitigation of CO2 effects on calcification is not linked to energetic reserve, EUC fueled increases in DIN and productivity could reduce effects of elevated CO2 on coral calcification.
by Elizabeth Joan Drenkard.
Ph. D.
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Huy, Luong Quang. "Climate change adaptation : Engaging local society in the research process." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.522275.
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Oh, Yu Kyung. "Climate change adaptation in London through resilient ecosystem services management." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2018. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/climate-change-adaptation-in-london-through-resilient-ecosystem-services-management(c1b8b3aa-04d5-4151-83da-9971ed59f95f).html.
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As urban populations continue to grow around the world, cities and their residents become increasingly vulnerable to climate change risks. Detrimental impacts on natural ecosystems have been observed in the built environment, as well as poorer quality of life. As urban areas are characterised by complex adaptive systems, the concept of ecosystem services represents an important tool for the management of urban socio-environmental quality and can be applied to climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. This thesis investigates London’s potential resilience to climate changes through ecosystem services management. In particular, the socioecological capacity of the All London Green Grid for contributing to climate change resilience via patterns of green spaces, and carbon storage and sequestration through urban street trees, will be the central focus in the research. This capacity was assessed firstly by conducting an evaluation of the landscape metrics of Greater London’s green spaces to determine the extent and quality of green infrastructure, and how this varies according to relevant socioeconomic variables. This was achieved using GIS and the spatial analysis programme FRAGSTATS. This broad-scale evaluation was then supported by greater in-depth field measurements, focusing specifically on street trees, within selected eleven Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), which are an important vehicle for the local management of the ALGG and thereby climate resilience. This local-scale assessment also incorporated greater evaluation of ecosystem service provision by vegetation, and in particular street trees and their capacity for carbon storage and sequestration. Finally, governance of green spaces within BIDs and broader understanding of resilience and climate change was assessed with qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews of different agents and agencies involved in the ALGG network. This included investigation of decision-makers’ perspectives on vulnerabilities and the prospects for further developing London green spaces, to determine the feasibility of different management options.
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Patel, Toral. "Funding for adaptation to climate change : the case of Surat." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90100.
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Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-84).
The need for cities to adapt to climate change is widely acknowledged, yet the question of adaptation finance remains uncertain. Unable to access global climate funds, cities must seek out alternative sources to support their adaptations to climate change. This is particularly challenging for local governments in India, where incomplete fiscal decentralization has resulted in severe developmental deficits and resource constraints. Using Surat, Gujarat, as a case study, this research examines how cities in India might fund climate adaptation despite limited fiscal and administrative autonomy. It furthermore explores how the urban finance system might affect the implementation of climate adaptation strategies at the city level. Evidence comes interviews with key officials, municipal budget data, and public planning documents. The case study suggests that cities can effectively marshal funds from international, national and state sources to invest in climate adaptation. Some of these funding sources explicitly support adaptation, whereas others are linked to broader urban development or disaster risk reduction objectives. The research findings indicate that relying on external sources has required trade-offs between policy agendas, resulting in a fluid understanding of "climate adaptation" on the ground. While the urban finance system appears to have encouraged experimentation in Surat, it may constrain the effectiveness of climate adaptation at the city level. Dependence on intergovernmental transfers and grant aid limits the ability of cities in India to set and maintain local priorities, thereby narrowing the scope for effective and sustainable climate adaptation outcomes. Limited fiscal autonomy has hindered access to alternative sources to finance, such as public-private partnerships and municipal bonds. It has also contributed to a project-based approach that may compromise a longer-range and more comprehensive vision for adapting to climate change. In this setting, experimentation and innovation in financing climate adaptation at the city level will be crucial to moving forward. Keywords: urban climate adaptation, municipal finance, multilevel climate governance, India.
by Toral Patel.
M.C.P.
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Deryng, Delphine. "Climate change and global crop yield : impacts, uncertainties and adaptation." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2014. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/50712/.
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As global mean temperature continues to rise steadily, agricultural systems are projected to face unprecedented challenges to cope with climate change. However, understanding of climate change impacts on global crop yield, and of farmers' adaptive capacity, remains incomplete as previous global assessments: (1) inadequately evaluated the role of extreme weather events; (2) focused on a small subset of the full range of climate change predictions; (3) overlooked uncertainties related to the choice of crop modelling approach and; (4) simpli�ed the representation of farming adaptation strategies. This research aimed to assess climate change impacts on global crop yield that accounts for the knowledge gaps listed above, based on the further development and application of the global crop model PEGASUS. Four main research topics are presented. First, I investigated the roles of extreme heat stress at anthesis on crop yield and uncertainties related to the use of seventy-two climate change scenarios. I showed large disparities in impacts across regions as extreme temperatures adversely a�ects major areas of crop production and lower income countries, the latter appear likely to face larger reduction in crop yields. Second, I coordinated the �rst global gridded crop model intercomparison study, comparing simulations of crop yield and water use under climate change. I found modelled global average crop water productivity increases by up to 17�20.3% when including carbon fertilisation e�ects, but decreases to {28�13.9% when excluding them; and identi�ed fundamental uncertainties and gaps in our understanding of crop response to elevated carbon dioxide. Third, to link climate impacts with adaptation, I introduced the recently developed concept of representative agricultural pathways and examined their potential use in models to explore farming adaptation options within biophysical and socio-economic constraints. Finally, I explored tradeo�s between increasing nitrogen fertiliser use to close the global maize yield gap and the resulting nitrous oxide emissions. I found global maize production increases by 62% based on current harvested area using intensive rates of nitrogen fertiliser. This raises the share of nitrous oxide emissions associated with maize production from 20 to 32% of global cereal related emissions. Finally, these results demonstrated that in some regions increasing nitrogen fertiliser application, without addressing other limiting factors such as soil nutrient imbalance and water scarcity, could raise nitrous oxide emissions without enhancing crop yield.
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Mulwa, Chalmers Kyalo. "Climate change adaptation and sustainable agricultural intensification in developing countries." Doctoral thesis, Faculty of Commerce, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/32847.
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The recent threat of climate change has exacerbated the inherent risks in smallholder farming such as soil degradation, resulting in an unprecedented decline in agricultural yields in developing countries. This has threatened the livelihoods of large segments of populations that are heavily dependent on agriculture for survival in these regions. This dissertation focuses on identifying barriers and enablers of effective management of these risks, with an aim of coming up with potential policy interventions that can reduce vulnerability to the mentioned risks. To achieve this, the dissertation utilizes various methods and approaches as well as diverse datasets in two countries in sub Saharan Africa i.e. Namibia and Kenya. Diversification into non-farm activities is seen by many as a risk management strategy in rural areas where highly variable low farm incomes are transformed into stable high non-farm incomes, thus improving the welfare of the rural populations. While this theory of change is uncontested, the importance that the agricultural sector plays as a source of livelihood for rural populations, as well as food provisioning for urban populations, cannot be downplayed. This is more so given the limited non-farm opportunities in developing countries and the exponential population growth in these countries. The two factors combined impede on the envisioned transformation of rural production sectors and also create a sub-population of food insecure urban poor due to rural-urban migration. To mitigate these problems, rural agricultural development is still paramount and strategies that enhance resilience to risks in the sector are still vital. Chapter 2 of this dissertation focuses on this issue and addresses how farm diversification can be leveraged for improved food security in the rural areas, which has potential spill-over effects to other segments of the population. Focusing on northern Namibia, the study evaluates how different levels of diversification in both crop and livestock farming affect household food security outcomes i.e. per capita food expenditure and dietary diversity score. The study employs relatively new econometric methods in these type of studies to evaluate the joint determinants to both crop and livestock diversification, as well as their singular and joint effect on mentioned food security outcomes. The results show that high levels of diversification in either enterprise leads to high food security outcomes. Combined with climate change adaptation strategies that create resilience of agricultural production to climatic shocks, the use of sustainable agricultural intensification practices can further enhance productivity in the sector. Inputs like inorganic fertilizer, organic manure and improved seeds can further build on resilient systems to improve yields. Chapter 3 of this dissertation addresses this issue by looking at whether changes in the larger agri-food systems can be used to incentivize take up of such practices at the farm level. The study evaluates how the emergence of large traders in smallholder grain markets can drive the uptake of inorganic and organic fertilizer and improved seeds. The study thus expands the intervention space available to policy makers who have in the past resorted to potentially distortionary direct policies in the input markets e.g. through subsidy provision, as well as in the output markets e.g. through regulation of prices. To achieve this, the study uses a large panel dataset from Kenya spanning over a decade to evaluate how engagements between farmers and these market actors can be leveraged to drive adoption of these sustainable intensification inputs. Results show that engagements between large grain traders and farmers enhance use of inorganic fertilizer. There is no evidence that these engagements lead to enhanced use of improved seeds or manure. However, past use of improved seeds and manure are shown to affect their subsequent use, implying path dependency in the use of these sustainable inputs hence low dis-adoption rates. Traditional technology adoption studies show that access to information is a critical success factor for the uptake of new technology. Proxy variables for information access, for example proximity to extension services or frequency of extension contact, have consistently been shown to be positively correlated with technology adoption. In the context of climate change, access to weather information can be a critical factor to adoption of adaptation technology. Chapter 4 of this dissertation deals with this issue and assesses whether provision of weather information to farmers can enhance adoption of improved farming technologies that are resilient to climatic shocks. The study focuses on northern Namibia where access to such information, as the study shows, is very limited. A framed experiment approach is utilised to evaluate how climate change-induced uncertainty affects farmers' decision making in a farming season, based on their elicited behavioural attitudes towards risk and uncertainty. Further, the study tests whether providing weather information that reduces this uncertainty leads to adoption of technologies that are welfare improving. Lastly, the demand for weather information is assessed by eliciting the willingness to pay for information under various levels of weather uncertainty. Results indicate that high levels of uncertainty dampen uptake of welfare improving technologies, regardless of individual attitudes towards uncertainty. Availing of weather information leads to welfare improving technology choice, given the prevailing levels of weather uncertainty. There is also a high demand for weather information which is shown to increase with increase in the level of weather uncertainty. The chapters in the dissertation therefore identify key policy variables that can be used to manage vulnerability to risks emanating from climate change and unsustainable production in smallholder farming. Access to comprehensive climate information encompassing weather information and climate change-specific management information on both crop and livestock farming is shown to be a key factor in the uptake of adaptation strategies like use of resilient inputs and farm diversification. Interventions along the value chain like teaming up with large market actors in a private-public engagement is shown to be a potential pathway towards enhancing uptake of sustainable intensification inputs. Other policy variables like credit provision, high education and access to off-farm incomes are also key in explaining uptake of risk management strategies by smallholder farmers in Namibia and Kenya.
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Komey, Audrey N. K. "Institutional Adaptation to Climate Change and Flooding in Accra, Ghana." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1438820921.
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Rafael, Sandra Isabel Moreira. "Urban air quality and climate change: vulnerability, resilience and adaptation." Doctoral thesis, Universidade de Aveiro, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10773/23029.
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Doutoramento em Ciências e Engenharia do AmbienteAs cidades, áreas que albergam cerca de 70% da população europeia, enfrentam hoje um conjunto de desafios associados a alterações do metabolismo urbano, que num contexto de alteração climática (AC), afectam o microclima urbano e a qualidade do ar (QA). Compreender a interação entre as AC, qualidade do ar e fluxos urbanos de calor (FUC) é um tópico de investigação emergente, reconhecido como área de interesse para a definição e implementação de políticas locais. O principal objetivo do presente trabalho é promover uma avaliação integrada das interações entre medidas de resiliência urbana e as AC, e respectiva influência no microclima urbano, QA e FUC, tendo como caso de estudo a cidade do Porto (Portugal). Pretende-se ainda impulsionar o desempenho dos modelos numéricos para que estes representem realisticamente os fenómenos físicos que ocorrem nas áreas urbanas. Para atingir este objetivo, o sistema de modelos WRF-SUEWS foi aplicado para a área de estudo para avaliar a influência de diferentes níveis de área urbanizada nas trocas de calor entre a superficie e a atmosfera. O modelo foi validado mediante a comparação dos seus resultados com dados medidos obtidos em campanhas de monitorização de fluxos. A influência das variáveis meteorológicas nos FUC, e a forma como estas, por sua vez, são influenciadas pela superfície urbana foi também avaliada. Para tal, o sistema WRF-SUEWS foi aplicado para 1-ano representativo de um período de clima presente (1986-2005) e de clima futuro de médio prazo (2046-2065). O cenário climático futuro foi projetado tendo por base o cenário RCP8.5. Esta análise permitiu quantificar e mapear os efeitos das AC nos FUC na cidade do Porto. Face à necessidade corrente de aumentar a resiliência urbana a futuros eventos meteorológicos extremos (e.g. ondas de calor), o sistema WRF-SUEWS foi ainda aplicado (com uma resolução espacial de 200 m) para avaliar a influência de medidas de resiliência nos FUC. Conhecendo a importância da morfologia urbana para as características do seu próprio clima, um conjunto de parameterizações urbanas (LSM, SUEWS e UCM) foram analisados para área de estudo, por forma a obter uma representação realista das características urbanas no modelo WRF e, consequentemente, obter um melhor desempenho na modelação da QA à escala local. Os resultados revelaram que o modelo UCM é a parameterização urbana que melhor representa os fluxos turbulentos de calor, a temperatura e velocidade do vento à superfície. Como resultado, o modelo CFD VADIS, inicializado pelo modelo WRF-UCM, foi aplicado com uma elevada resolução espacial (3 m) a um bairro típico da cidade do Porto. As simulações realizadas permitiram caracterizar o estado atual da QA na área de estudo, bem como avaliar a influência de diferentes medidas de resiliência nos padrões de velocidade do vento e na concentração de poluentes atmosféricos (PM10, NOX, CO e CO2). Este trabalho constitui uma ferramenta científica inovadora no que diz respeito ao conhecimento dos processos físicos que ocorrem à escala urbana, proporcionando uma visão integradora entre AC, QA e FUC. Estes resultados são relevantes para o apoio à decisão política do que respeita à implementação de estratégias que permitam aumentar a resiliência urbana, nas suas diversas vertentes, a um clima em mudança
Cities, home of about 70% of the European population, are facing important challenges related to changes in urban structure and its metabolism, and to pressures induced by climate change (CC) effects, which are affecting urban microclimate and air quality. The better understanding of the interactions between CC, air quality and urban surface energy balance (USEB) is an emerging priority for research and policy. The main objective of the current study is to provide an integrated assessment of the interaction between resilience measures and CC effects, and its influence on the urban microclimate and air quality as well as on the USEB, having as case study the city of Porto (Portugal). The ultimate goal is to improve the accuracy of numerical modelling to better represent the physical processes occurring in urban areas. For this purpose, the relevant parameters to both USEB and air quality were analysed. The WRF-SUEWS modelling setup was applied to the study area to assess the influence of different levels of urbanization on the surface-atmosphere exchanges. To validate the modelling setup, the results were compared with measurements carried out on field campaigns. The way of how the meteorological variables affect the USEB and how, in turn, these variables are themselves affected by urban surface was also assessed. The modelling setup was applied for 1-year period statistically representative of a present (1986-2005) and medium-term future (2046-2065) climate. The climate projection was produced under the RCP8.5 scenario. This analysis gives insights of how the urban-surface exchanges will be affected by CC, allowing the mapping of the FUC over the study area. As result of the need of increase cities resilience to future extreme weather events (e.g. heat waves), the WRF-SUEWS model (with a spatial resolution of 200 m), was applied to Porto city to evaluate the influence of a set of resilience measures on the USEB. Knowing the importance of urban surfaces to its own microclimate, a set of urban parameterization schemes (LSM, SUEWS and UCM) were analysed for the study area, to achieve a more accurate representation of urban features in the WRF model and, in consequence, to improve the capability of air quality modelling at urban/local scale. The results point out that the UCM is the urban parameterization that provides a more realistic representation of the turbulent energy fluxes and the near-surface air temperatures and wind speed. As result, a CFD modelling (VADIS), forced by WRF-UCM, was used to provide a set of numerical simulations with a high spatial resolution (3 m) over a typical neighbourhood in the Porto city. These simulations allow the characterization of the current air quality status over the study area, as well as the assessment of the influence of different resilience measures in the wind flow and air pollutants dispersion (PM10, NOX, CO and CO2). Overall, this research work is a step forward in understanding the physics of urban environments, providing also a linkage between CC, air quality and USEB. These findings are highly advantageous to support policy makers and stakeholders helping them to choose the best strategies to mitigate extreme weather events and air pollution episodes and so increase cities resilience to a future climate.
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Araujo, Brandon. "Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change: How Risk Influences Decision-Making." UNF Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/744.
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Climate change is currently threatening the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries. Psychological models have been developed to identify factors associated with adapting to climate change; however, little work has investigated the role of farmers’ risk attitudes in these models. We assessed perceptions of adaptation cost and adaptation intentions for five drought- specific adaptive behaviors among 550 farmers from 12 villages in the dry zone of Sri Lanka, as well as their attitudes toward risk. Results suggest that perceived adaptation cost and risk attitude are negatively associated with adaptation intentions. The conditional effect of adaptation cost on adaptation intention as a function of risk attitude was also investigated. Results showed that only farmers with risk averse attitudes were impacted by their perceptions of adaptation costs. These findings have implications for those interested in increasing adaptive practices of farmers in developing countries who face increasingly scarce water supplies.
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Knapp, Corrine Noel. "Engaging local perspectives for improved conservation and climate change adaptation." Thesis, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3607055.
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Climate change is a global process that will impact local places in heterogeneous and unpredictable manners. This dissertation considers whose knowledge and observations could contribute to conservation and climate adaptation planning, how perceptions influence social-ecological feedbacks, and how science could be more relevant to decision-makers and local residents. In Chapter 2, I report on interviews (n=36) conducted with ranchers and recreation-based business owners in Colorado to understand their self-perceptions of resilience and vulnerability. I find that ranchers perceive more exposure and sensitivity to climate change and they also demonstrate more adaptive capacity than recreation businesses. In Chapter 3, I convey results from interviews (n=83) completed with various long-term residents of the region surrounding Denali National Park and Preserve. I find that people who have more direct and ongoing experience with natural resources (subsistence users, bus drivers, business owners) have a greater number and more diverse observations of change than Park employees or scientists. In Chapter 4, I describe results from interviews (n=26) with community-defined Gunnison Sage-grouse experts. I find that formal and observational experts had very different explanations of the decline of Gunnison Sage-grouse and disagreed about potential conservation strategies. In Chapter 5, I describe multi-method surveys (41) conducted with ranchers in the Gunnison Basin to understand their perceptions of the potential listing of the Gunnison Sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act, and their planned responses. I find that ranchers tend to have negative perceptions of the listing and that they plan to take actions, including sales of land and water and decreased participation in conservation efforts, which may result in harm to the Gunnison Sage-grouse. In Chapter 6, I review stakeholder-generated climate change needs assessments (63) to assess the suggestions made to make science more relevant to decision-making. Their suggestions include: interdisciplinary approaches, place-based focus, increased data-sharing and collaboration, and user-driven research. This dissertation demonstrates the importance of understanding perceptions for effective conservation and adaptation, identifies the existence of proactive adaptation strategies, highlights the value of local knowledge in specific situations, and reveals how failure to engage local people may lead to inequitable outcomes.
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Saritas, Alan. "Perceptions of barriers to climate change adaptation by Uppsala farmers." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-398615.
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Current emissions are likely to produce substantial impacts for the agricultural sector and the salience for adapting to these changes in the agricultural sector is increasing. While Nordic agriculture is faced with both opportunities and challenges from climate change, a still developing political and institutional structure in combination with an extreme drought during the summer of 2018 is exacerbating existing long-term trends of financial pressure in the sector, particularly for meat and dairy farmers. Previous research has highlighted that there is a relative lack of studies attempting to understand the decision-making process of climate change adaptation and there is a currently a growing field of research focusing on the barriers to adaptation faced by farmers. This study primarily used Grothmann and Patt’s MCCAPP model in order to determine what factors influenced farmers decision-making when deciding to adapt to climate change. The results of this study found that the predominant barrier to adaptation among farmers were uncertainty regarding future climatic impacts, which resulted in a lower confidence in adaptation strategy efficacy to produce financial stability and returns. Climate mitigation was also identified as a potential trade-off when pursuing adaptation strategies. To a lesser degree, farmers also attested to farm-level differences, such as the availability of water resources as impacting the strategies that they were able to pursue. Opportunities to facilitate adaptation through institutional support was identified, as farmers both require better information regarding adaptation strategies and subsequent trade-offs and synergies it might create in relation to farmers priority issues such as financial viability and climate mitigation. More effective means of financial assistance to counteract the effects of extreme climatic conditions was also identified. Lastly, social capital was an important facilitator of adaptation implementation, but one that is threatened due to the continuingly deteriorating socio-economic conditions that farmers experience in their sector.