brazil

One Talk, Two Heads: Bloviating on Climate Adaptation in Two Languages

This video is a fair representation of the overview adaptation talk I've been giving for the past few months, describing how climate adaptation differs from much of the economic development and conservation work up to now and how climate adaptation has some special challenges and opportunities for the water sector. Filmed on 3 August 2009 in Brasilia, DF, Brazil, this is a long flick at 25 minutes, so brace yourself. Although I appear visually a few times in the stream, most of what you see are the presentation slides filling the screen with me (in English) and Martin Charles (my most excellent Portuguese translator) delivering the substance of the keynote talk to a live audience of leading policy and resource management staff from various government and civil society groups. The event was billed as a climate adaptation workshop, spanning two days at a place called the LBV (very interesting in itself) but hosted by WWF-Brazil. Filmed in August 2009. Read More...
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Fixed video streaming! The Cerrado of Brazil

I’ve just returned from a trip to Brazil, where most of my time was spent talking in Brasilia with colleagues and policymakers working on climate adaptation issues from a freshwater perspective. While I will soon post a video of a talk that I gave (and perhaps some other video content), I’ve just finished a short video from I trip I made to the beautiful savannah or cerrado of interior Brazil a few hundred kilometers from Brasilia. Hope you enjoy! — JM Read More...
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Dead Time in the Aeroporto

I’ve heard for years about the “coffin hotels” of Japanese airports: you rent a tiny room in a hotel inside of a terminal in places like Tokyo. Most of the businessmen using these are between long-haul flights. Apparently Brazil’s Sao Paolo has something similar since I’ve checked in. The hotel charges by the hour (five hours comes to about the price of a regular hotel room). It’s about two meters wide, three meters long, and tall enough for me to stand up, assuming I duck under the TV suspended from the ceiling. There’s a mirror, a bunkbed, a wastebasket, and four blank walls. It’s a coffin, unfit for the claustrophobic or those in need of visual stimulation. Sitting in the basement, the only sound comes from the ceiling’s air vent. The warren of hallways leads to showers, a hair salon, and even a small gym. It’s a great idea, even if it provides further disorientation to the travel process. Read More...
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NEWS: climate adaptation case studies

A colleague closely affiliated with WWF who is now at Australian National University has just written an excellent series of climate adaptation case studies. Jamie Pittock, the author, is in the highest tier of international freshwater conservation and policy advocates. I highly recommend downloading the 6.5 mb file. A major recommendation behind this and a companion overview of climate adaptation that I wrote with another colleague, Tom LeQuesne, is maintaining healthy freshwater species and ecosystems is the key to keeping reliable and high-quality freshwater resources for societies, economies, and livelihoods Read More...
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