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Resources: Climate Digest

Climate Digest for January 2010

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Policy

1. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: overview and implications for policy makers

This paper begins by expressing that climate change threatens the health of human populations across the globe, but those particularly at risk are those in the less developed countries. The main focus of the paper is to highlight a major, and yet often over looked point concerning mitigation measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases; that such actions can have immediate and potentially very large beneficial impacts on human health and development in many cases, but may also have some drawbacks.

The paper discusses these health co-benefits and how they can help to address existing global health priorities such as combating respiratory infections and heart disease as well as delivering improvements in access to cleaner, more affordable sources of energy. It provides, in tabular form, a breakdown of mitigation actions alongside the associated ‘ancillary’ benefits and the approximate costs. Four sectors are used to explain this: household energy, transport, food & agriculture and electricity generation.

Quantification of these ancillary benefits can be imprecise. However, the discipline of “impact science” such as the WHO’s ‘Comparative Quantification of Health Risks’ can provide some ways and means to make some estimates.

This paper suggests that the wider implications on health should be expounded more, with a cross-disciplinary approach where science informs policy. This is so that such mitigation strategies can be put forward in a way that will make them more widely accepted by highlighting the immediate positive impacts as well as the longer term climate change mitigation goals.

Source: Haines, A., McMichael, A.J., Smith, K.R., Roberts, I., Woodcock, J., Markandya, A., Armstrong, B.G., Campbell-Lendrum, D., Dangour, A.D., Davies, M., Bruce, N., Tonne, C., Barrett, M., Wilkinson, P. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: overview and implications for policy makers. Lancet 2009; 374: 2104–14

Climate impacts

2. Expert views on biodiversity conservation in an era of climate change

Adapting conservation policy to the impacts of climate change is not a simple process. The long term benefits are hard to define and the methods contentious in an environment where science is split by many opinions. Implementation may be driven by socio-economic influences where empirical science struggles with the uncertainties of climate change and the complexities of biodiversity.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the ecological and social challenges of adapting conservation policy to the impacts of climate change. It does this by looking at the results of 21 in-depth interviews on the implications of climate change for conservation policy with biodiversity and climate change adaptation experts. The analysis of their responses provides an understanding of the diversity of expert views on the options and complications that make it hard to reach conclusive strategies. Amongst the issues raised are:

changing conservation objectives,

conservation triage (cutting your losses to save resources for more achievable goals) and the criteria used to make such decisions,

increased management interventions in protected areas,

the role of uncertainty in decision-making,

evolving standards of conservation success, and

cross jurisdiction management.

Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to:

the identification of future research and integration needs such as more scholarships in biogeography focussed disciplines; and

insights into the process of policy adaptation in the context of biodiversity conservation and the uncertainties associated. Scientific information should inform policy development along with value-based commitments.

Source: Hagerman, S., Dowlatabadi, H. , Satterfield, T., McDaniels, T. Expert views on biodiversity conservation in an era of climate change. Global Environmental Change, February 2010, Vol 20, Issue 1, , Pages 192-207. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.10.005

3. The association of mortality with high temperatures in a temperate climate: England and Wales

The authors explore the nature of mortality associated with high temperature in England and Wales to further clarify and inform policy aimed at reducing adverse health effects of heat. They propose models that capture variation in the temperature-mortality associations in relationships with climate for regions in England and Wales. The method used daily counts of all-cause mortality and ambient temperature during summers between 1993 and 2006 in the nine English government regions and Wales. The focus was on all-cause mortality and two-day mean temperature.

Through their analysis, the authors found that there was clear evidence of increased mortality at the highest temperatures for all regions except the coolest – Northeast. The specifics of those increases in mortality, particularly the threshold temperature at which adverse effects (increased mortality) started, however varied by region. Up to 20ºC, none of the regions had clear positive slopes (increment in mortality per degree temperature change). By 22.5ºC, most regions did have positive slopes, with the slopes in the hottest regions (Southwest, Southeast, East and London) being the lowest. At 25ºC all regions, except the Northeast, had positive and broadly similar slopes, and by 27.5ºC there is a clear pattern (for those cities experiencing this temperature) of higher slopes in hotter regions. Additionally, there is a clear pattern of higher thresholds (temperature at which adverse affects started) and slopes in regions with higher mean summer temperatures.

The authors found that the best-fitting threshold, if fixed to be at the same centile in each region, was at the 92nd centile of two-day mean temperature. Furthermore, on average mortality was found to increase by 2% per degree Celsius above the 92nd centile threshold, but the slope was higher in hotter regions.

The authors concluded that their results suggest that cities adapt to climate: the portion of days affected was found not to depend on climate. However, the implication of higher incremental risk per degree (slope) in hotter cities suggests that the adaptation is partial (there were higher attributable percentages of deaths in hotter cities).

Source: Armstrong, B.G., Chalabi, Z., Fenn, B., Hajat, S., Kovats, S., Milojevic, A., Wilkinson, P. (2010) The association of mortality with high temperatures in a temperate climate: England and Wales. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, in press.

Adaptation

4. Climate change and the resilience of the domestic lawn

This paper makes the point that as people understand things better when they can make close associations between the potential consequences of climate change and aspects of their personal life. Domestic grass lawns could now become a vehicle by which climate change becomes ‘real’ for many urban and suburbanised people.

This paper reports the findings of a trail on lawns in Cambridge University Botanic Garden looking at resilience to drought conditions. The browning and greening of field trial lawn plots was measured to assess the resilience under combinations of induced warming to +3 degrees Celsius and drought conditions together with varying fertiliser and grass clippings managements.

The paper reports that all replicate plots recovered to pre-drought green colour after a 3-month induced summer drought. Using fertiliser in spring tended to make the lawn more susceptible to browning during periods of drought, but application post drought aided recovery. Returning grass clippings to the lawn surface led to an increased resistance to browning during drought, aided faster recovery and lowered levels of nitrate leaching.

The paper concludes that under the conditions tested, the lawn plots showed a high degree of physical resilience which could be enhanced by management approaches.

Source: Trudgill, S., Jeffery, A., Parker, J. Climate change and the resilience of the domestic lawn. Applied Geography (2010). Vol. 30, pp177-190. Doi: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2009.08.002

5. Adaptation to climate change and climate variability in European agriculture: The importance of farm level responses

Agriculture in all its forms is heavily influenced by climatic variables with specific areas and regions associated with type of climate and certain types of agriculture. But socio-economic and international markets are strong influences also and are likely to be key influences for agricultural adaptation to climate change. This paper establishes that studies aimed at addressing climate change vulnerability within agriculture have been driven by potential impacts with little consideration for adaptation, and where adaptation strategies are considered, socio-economic conditions and farm management are often ignored.

This study analysed the adaptation of farmers and regions in the European Union to prevailing climatic conditions, climate change and climate variability in the last decades (1990–2003) in the context of other conditions and changes. The following comparisons were made:

responses in crop yields with responses in farmers’ income;

responses to spatial climate variability with responses to temporal climate variability;

farm level responses with regional level responses; and

potential climate impacts (based on crop models) with actual climate impacts (based on farm accountancy data)

Results reported in this research indicate that impacts on crop yields cannot directly be translated to impacts on farmers’ income, as realised impacts of climate change are largely dependent on farm characteristics such as productive land area, land use type and intensity. Also farmers adapt by changing crop rotations and methods in response to market forces and mechanisms and may have a range of options for adapting to climatic impacts. A greater diversity of farm types in a region make the regional agricultural sector more resilient, but individual farms might still be vulnerable. With these issues mind, this paper suggests that assessments should consider responses at different levels of organization and in a wider socio-economic context in order to more fully understand agricultural vulnerability.

Source: Reidsma, P., Ewert, F., Lansink, A.O., Leemans, R. Adaptation to climate change and climate variability in European agriculture: the importance of farm level responses. European journal of Agronomy, (2010), Vol 32 pp91-102. Doi: 10.1016/j.eja.2009.06.003