Suchergebnisse

Rural communities in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) are vulnerable to climate-related disasters. In 2008, tropical cyclone Nargis killed 84,500 people and impacted the livelihood of 2.4 million people. In 2011, large-scale floods in Thailand affected 14 million people and caused $45.7 billion in damages. This report presents findings of a climate risk financing study conducted by the GMS Core Environment Program in 28 rural communities in Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Viet Nam. Learn more about how communities cope with climate-related disasters, how this study contributes to the knowledge base on rural climate risk financing in the GMS, and how it can become the basis for more comprehensive feasibility studies.

In 2010, the Asian Development Bank, the Government of the Cook Islands, and the World Wide Fund for Nature partnered to undertake a pilot adaptation project that could be replicated across the country's inhabited islands. The basic idea was to field-test a participatory approach that incorporates local knowledge and engages vulnerable communities in the formulation of adaptation plans that will be operable and most relevant to their circumstances. This publication captures and shares the process, tools, and lessons from the project. It hopes to provide insights into how climate change adaptation may be strengthened and accelerated through community-based risk assessment and participatory planning.

In 2010, the Asian Development Bank, the Government of the Cook Islands, and the World Wide Fund for Nature partnered to undertake a pilot adaptation project that could be replicated across the country's inhabited islands. The basic idea was to field-test a participatory approach that incorporates local knowledge and engages vulnerable communities in the formulation of adaptation plans that will be operable and most relevant to their circumstances. This publication captures and shares the process, tools, and lessons from the project. It hopes to provide insights into how climate change adaptation may be strengthened and accelerated through community-based risk assessment and participatory planning.

Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: The Historical Climatology of Late Medieval England -- Chapter 2: The Keeping of Agricultural Records in Late Medieval England -- 2.1 Late Medieval Agriculture and Manorial Accounts -- 2.2 Norwich Cathedral Priory -- 2.2.1 Norwich Cathedral Priory and Its Temporalities Until c.1300 -- 2.2.2 The Making of Manorial Accounts and Their Economic Context -- 2.2.3 Archival History of Norwich Cathedral Priory -- 2.3 Supplementary Series -- Chapter 3: The Medieval Grain Harvest -- 3.1 Climatological Significance -- 3.2 Management and Accounting Practices -- 3.3 Data Density and Security -- 3.4 Potential Non-climatic Influences on the Harvest Date -- 3.5 Dating the Harvest: Calendar, Work Management and Communication -- 3.5.1 The Ecclesiastical Calendar -- 3.5.2 The Working Week -- 3.5.3 The Harvest Date on Selected Manors of Norwich Cathedral Priory -- 3.5.4 Harvest Date and Calendar -- Chapter 4: Farming in Norfolk Around 1800 -- 4.1 Langham Farm -- 4.1.1 The Working Week -- 4.1.2 The Break in the Langham Series -- 4.2 Fritton Estate -- 4.3 Snettisham -- 4.4 Wymondham -- 4.5 Medieval Versus Early Modern Grain Harvests -- Chapter 5: A Reconstruction of Medieval April-July Temperatures for East Anglia -- 5.1 Reconstruction Methodology -- 5.2 Reconstructed Medieval April-July Mean Temperatures -- 5.3 Comparison with Other Documentary Reconstructions -- 5.4 Comparison with William Merle's Weather Diary 1337-1344 -- Chapter 6: Temperature Extremes 1256-1431: Independent Evidence and Context -- 6.1 Temperature Extremes and Agricultural Production -- 6.2 Warm Growing Seasons 1256-1431 -- 6.2.1 Weather Conditions in 1267 -- 6.2.2 Weather Conditions in 1297 and 1298 -- 6.2.3 Weather Conditions in 1304-1307 -- 6.2.4 Weather Conditions in 1318 -- 6.2.5 Weather Conditions in the Mid-1320s

Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events, making more geographic places inhospitable to human habitation and secure livelihoods. This report presents a detailed picture of the potential impacts of climate change on migration in Asia and the Pacific. It draws upon a wealth of research to provide policy makers with informed analysis of an emerging phenomenon requiring urgent attention by governments and the international community. The report also suggests that climate-induced migration should be seen not only as a threat to human well-being but also as a potential tool to promote human adaptation to climate change.

Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events, making more geographic places inhospitable to human habitation and secure livelihoods. This report presents a detailed picture of the potential impacts of climate change on migration in Asia and the Pacific. It draws upon a wealth of research to provide policy makers with informed analysis of an emerging phenomenon requiring urgent attention by governments and the international community. The report also suggests that climate-induced migration should be seen not only as a threat to human well-being but also as a potential tool to promote human adaptation to climate change.

I argue that our discipline is caught in a rut of irrelevancy on the grander scale. Much of our research is focussed on refining the basics of what we essentially already know well. While there will always be processes to understand, species to describe, and relationships to measure, our discipline can no longer afford to avoid the biggest sustainability issues, including inter alia increasing agricultural production without further destruction of ecosystem integrity, low-impact energy provision for electricity and fuels, human overpopulation and how to reduce it ethically and fairly, and massive ecosystem restoration at meaningful scales. While we argue about the best ways to conserve species, we are still losing our forests, coral reefs, climate regulation, and food-production efficiency with increasing speed. Most of us become comfortable with what we know, and therefore spend most of our time refining our area of expertise. Instead, more of us should jump out of our comfort zones and learn some physics, engineering, climatology, economics, and political science to expand our limited world view. This means that we must do more than just 'engage with stakeholders' post-publication; instead, we need to generate and test hypotheses that explicitly attempt to solve complex problems that transcend mere biological processes. Multidisciplinary teams can assist, but more relevant progress will require biologists themselves to adopt data, approaches, and communication strategies from other fields (many of them not residing within the sciences). Including policy implementers from the outset will potentially increase the probability of uptake in government and industry provided we examine the questions they deem most pertinent. This approach will probably require compromises, but tangible changes in policy arising from dedicated research will be more easily measured and demonstrated following this approach. With a little more effort, I think conservation biologists would be far more relevant and successful in turning some of the threatening unsustainability tide back towards more acceptable outcomes. ; peerReviewed

This publication showcases 100 projects and programs of the Asian Development Bank, development partners, governments, and the private sector to support cities across Asia and the Pacific in addressing the challenges of climate change. The climate actions were drawn from multiple sectors—renewable energy, carbon finance, transport, land use, information and communication technology, climate action plans, building energy efficiency, solid waste management, sustainable and low-carbon communities, and climate resilience. The stories featured demonstrate how city-level initiatives contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience, all while delivering economic, environmental, health, and social co-benefits.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a major global crisis requiring national, regional, and global intervention. The scale of the crisis and the associated size of the response mean that decisions governments make now will influence systems, create assets, and define development directions well into the future. The Asian Development Bank has developed this technical note to help its developing member countries accelerate climate and disaster resilience and low-carbon development through the design of COVID-19 recovery interventions. It proposes an assessment framework that decision-makers can use to select and prioritize a package of recovery interventions that will collectively achieve recovery, climate, and resilience objectives.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement enables countries to utilize market and nonmarket approaches to achieve their nationally determined contributions. Yet, international negotiations on Article 6 are complex and ongoing. The Parties of the Paris Agreement have made progress on many issues, but contentious matters on political and technical aspects remain unresolved. This publication presents the latest developments in negotiations, discusses the key outcomes, and highlights the remaining unresolved issues leading up to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Glasgow.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is an unprecedented and tragic global health crisis. To contain COVID-19, governments have implemented strict lockdowns and curbed mobility, stalling economies and leading to a potential global economic and financial crisis. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that the global economy could suffer between $5.8 trillion and $8.8 trillion in losses—equivalent to 6.4% to 9.7% of global gross domestic product. Policy makers are grappling with the often-competing interests of managing the public health risk and limiting the scale of the economic damage. Implementing the emergency response to COVID-19 has rightly taken priority. However, as developing member countries (DMCs) begin to emerge from the lockdowns and plan their recovery, attention must return to addressing the climate crisis and building resilience. We do not have the time or the financing to deal with each crisis separately. The impact of climate change is already being felt, and is becoming more severe every year. Pre-COVID-19 analysis showed that climate change could push an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030. By 2050, it could depress growth in global agriculture yields by up to 30%, and result in additional costs to coastal urban areas of more than $1 trillion each year. Current global emission reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement are also insufficient, and would lead to a temperature rise of 3.2°C this century—well over the 1.5°C target.3 Compounding this predicament, COVID-19 has exposed gaps in social protection systems and wider policies for delivering public goods, and has highlighted the underlying drivers of vulnerability—poverty, inequality, limited social safety nets, weak health systems, and structural gender inequality, among others. It has also heightened awareness of all types of risks, and made a strong case for adopting risk-informed decision making. There is an urgent need to address vulnerabilities and mainstream resilience to manage future shocks, including increasing climate- and disaster-related shocks.

This document aims to succinctly summarize the climate risks faced by Sri Lanka. This includes rapid onset and long-term changes in key climate parameters, as well as impacts of these changes on communities, livelihoods, and economies, many of which are already underway. This is a high-level synthesis of existing research and analyses, focusing on the geographic domain of Sri Lanka, therefore, potentially excluding some international influences and localized impacts. The core data is sourced from the database sitting behind the World Bank Group's Climate Change Knowledge Portal (CCKP), incorporating climate projections from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). This document is primarily meant for WBG and ADB staff to inform their climate actions and to direct them to many useful sources of secondary data and research. Due to a combination of political, geographic, and social factors, Sri Lanka is recognized as vulnerable to climate change impacts, ranked 100th out of 181 countries in the 2017 ND-GAIN Index.11 The ND-GAIN Index ranks 181 countries using a score which calculates a country's vulnerability to climate change and other global challenges as well as their readiness to improve resilience. The more vulnerable a country is, the lower their score, while the more ready a country is to improve its resilience, the higher it will be. Norway has the highest score and is ranked 1st.

Greta Thunberg has called on politicians to "listen to the science" and take climate change seriously. But climate communication strategies can be more effective when "listening to the science" is complemented with "listening to society".

Climate change has now become the defining issue of the time – and one of the biggest threats to humanity. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has proven to be a "reality check", making it clear that climate change is already affecting the world by laying out its various manifestations including temperature increases, sea level rise and changes in rainfall patterns.1 With the stress placed on the economic, social and political systems that underpin the international system, it is now becoming increasingly clear that climate change is a development, economic, health, and security risk,2 – essentially a human and national security risk. The impacts of climate change range from the direct, as seen by the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather phenomena, to the indirect, such as migration, resource scarcity and conflict – situations in which climate change acts as a 'threat multiplier'. As such, it is now imperative to take into account the ways in which climate change is discussed, moving the discourse beyond the environmental, scientific and securitisation framings, which have dominated academic and policy discussions, into one that is more humanistic, taking into account the present and emerging vulnerabilities that are being generated through "dynamic social, political, economic, institutional, cultural and technological conditions and their historical legacies".3 While the examination of human vulnerabilities in public policies is not quite a new phenomenon, the devastation wrought across the world by the COVID-19 pandemic has thrust human security back into the spotlight. The pandemic has revealed the insecurities and vulnerabilities that have already been facing individuals, communities, and populations around the world – with some having intensified during the pandemic as general tensions have built up throughout societies. Structural changes are needed to relieve these pressures. A human security perspective, with its core principles of freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom from indignities, would move climate change discussions beyond simply managing them as technocratic issues –one which can be solved with the right 'solution' – to examining and understanding the genesis of the risks faced by communities and populations. This would allow them to enhance their capabilities and resilience in order to adapt more effectively to climate change.

In 2020, the Paris Agreement is the pinnacle of international law on climate change. It orchestrates global climate action over the coming decades. Countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2ºC above preindustrial times, closer to 1.5ºC. Humankind will only achieve this temperature goal if we domesticate our international climate commitments. Judges have proven to be instrumental in holding their governments accountable for their climate pledges. Report Four of this four-part series explores the nature of the Paris Agreement, its history, and the framework of international instruments and international legal principles that support global and domestic climate action