I am writing this post for ClimateChangeWater.org with the hope that you will sign on to a letter to policymakers to help us send a clear message to the US Congress on pending legislation about the importance of protecting our wildlife and natural resources from the impacts of climate change.
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Tags: policy, united states

WWF-International and GermanWatch have put together a briefing paper assessing the state of global adaptation discussions and the road forward to COP16:
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Tags: policy, unfccc, cop16, cop15

by Nick Sundt, WWF Communications Director for Climate Change
"While nations negotiate at international conferences about future global commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, and while Congress talks but continues to delay adoption of a strong greenhouse gas reduction program for the country, we're already seeing the effects of the pollution we put into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution" said  New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson at the summit.  "That's why we have to  begin adapting to climate change today -- not tomorrow."

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Tags: nick sundt, united states, policy

Red Eyes in Copenhagen: Climate Adaptation at COP15
7 mins, December 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark

In December 2009, representatives of 192 nations met in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a new international climate change agreement. Most of these efforts focused on climate mitigation — reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to slow down the rate of climate change. These results received widespread analysis. But there were also heated if less publicized negotiations to help the poor and vulnerable of the world adapt to the negative impacts of climate change. Filmed within hours of the conclusion of the Copenhagen Accord on 19 December 2009, this film shows the sleep-deprived thoughts of WWF staff about the impacts and efficacy of the Accord for international climate adaptation policy. These staff have worked on these issues for many years.

7 minutes, produced and directed by John Matthews. Read More...

Tags: cop15, unfccc, policy, video

World Water Week has come up several times here. Every August, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) hosts what is probably the most important water event of the year — certainly one that’s more fun and focused than World Water Week, which is ridiculously large. This week, SIWI has just pubbed their year-end review of World Water Week’s “results,” compiled by the rapporteur teams for each subject area. For 2009, I was the one of six rapporteurs for the climate change theme, which felt like a great honor to me. Our part of the report has what I think are some interesting implications for the state of the water and climate change policy dialog internationally. Which might be an encouraging contrast to the more disappointing news from Copenhagen. Some highlights:
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Tags: report, policy, sweden, world water week

The COP is finally over, and I’ve had about 36 hours to begin to absorb its truths and promises. Written so soon after the negotiations have ended, I have no doubt my reflections will achieve at best a facile and tenuous first draft of history (or a poor excuse for journalism). But I must write something to describe where climate adaptation — our efforts to prepare ourselves and other species for the coming climate — is headed since the conclusion of the Copenhagen sessions.
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Tags: unfccc, cop15, policy

Quick update: a video on the UNFCCC COP15 site of me speaking last week on water and climate from an event sponsored by the Global Water Partnership, Stakeholders Forum, and the Stockholm International Water Institute. 3 mins, UNFCCC official footage. In case the link doesn’t work, you can find the entire event here. Read More...

Tags: video, unfccc, cop15, water management, policy

My interest in knitting probably marks me as one of the more visibly peculiar members of the WWF delegation to the COP, but knitting is a great asset in a high-stress setting. Some of the oldest knitting in the world was found in bogs in this part of northern Europe — perhaps five or six thousand years old. Knitting is essentially the ability of taking a single length of yarn and looping it back against itself in order to make fabric and clothing. It was a simple, brilliant invention. And it can be quite beautiful. The idea of taking strands of yarn and creating something new, functional, and strong is a calming image as I listen to the needles clicking in my room. Especially given how the COP has been developing.
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Tags: cop15, unfccc, policy

At a recent event sponsored by TERI and the Yale School of Forestry, WWF-US CEO Carter Roberts spoke to a small distinguished group in Denmark’s Kronborg Castle about the vulnerability of freshwater species and ecosystems — and communities and their livelihoods — to climate change. His key message: the language of climate change is the language of water. Listen to the language of climate change. This message has largely been missing from current discussions about how to prioritize climate change adaptation actions. This video was produced over the weekend from the event. 5 mins. Read More...

Tags: video, unfccc, policy, cop15

The Dutch government and its environmental assessment agency organized a great series of events over two weeks here at the COP on climate adaptation issues. If you’re interested in water, it would be hard to leave the Holland Climate House. I’m involved in a total of four side events there, with one remaining. A video was produced from one of the events I participated in last week focusing on water, climate adaptation, and biodiversity issues in the negotiations (background material on the event itself is described here). Some nice quotes from a wide range of people!
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Tags: policy, unfccc, cop15, video

A week of prelude is over. The real work has begun in Copenhagen.

Last week was intense, fast paced, and frantic. Most people here are profoundly exhausted. But we’re at the hinge now. Negotiation teams are shifting from delaying and positioning to taking firm and often oppositional stands. More senior level staff are engaging in the government delegations — and more loudly. The hinge of the week has turned.
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Tags: cop15, unfccc, policy

Much of the practice of creating climate resilient, sustainable water management is already well known and described in policy statements such as the Dublin Principles of 1992, The Hague Ministerial Declaration on Water Security of 2002, the Brisbane Declaration of 2007, the Nairobi Statement on Land and Water Management for Adaptation to Climate Change of 2009, and the Stockholm Message to Copenhagen of 2009. I stand proudly with these documents and their authors. A comprehensive international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the rate of climate change is essential. But as we approach international efforts to reduce the negative impacts of climate change, especially the COP15, I ask negotiators and policymakers to focus their efforts on climate adaptation on these principles:
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Tags: unfccc, policy, cop15

Copenhagen is very open city. For instance, it’s really rare to see a bike in a stand that’s been locked. This is amazing, given the actual number of bicycles here in Copenhagen. There are counters at some of the major intersections that show the number of bikes that have passed by that day, and walking past one of these counters around noon I saw that over 10,000 bikes had passed. And this is in weather that has been hovering around freezing, very windy, and extremely wet for the past week.
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Tags: cop15, unfccc, policy

I’ve been thinking a lot about loss recently. Right now, there’s a hush of expectation globally right now around climate change. The world is preparing for what is probably the most important international climate change meeting since at least 1992. And everything seems up in the air — or, worse, like the agreement may go badly awry. Several key government players like the United States and Denmark have been reducing expectations for what might be reasonably achieved in the meeting in Copenhagen in December. And even the BBC’s news unit has announced that they plan to send a smaller number of reporters to Copenhagen.
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Tags: policy

Looking back across the last twenty years, there have been several notable climate change policy and science events. The 1992 Rio Convention helped define the shape of climate change policy for the next decade and created the IPCC as a science advisory board. The Ministerial Declaration of the Hague on Water Security in Twenty-First Century captured many key concepts on water and climate change, linking policy, water management, and the need for a new paradigm. And the Brisbane Convention on environmental flows in 2007 marked a major consensus between policymakers and ecologists and hydrologists that flow regime was the most important aspect of freshwater ecosystems to focus on for sustainable use. This is a good time for reflection on where we've come, and where freshwater conservation and development needs to go next. And fortunately, the Fuller Symposium on 3 and 4 November — titled Securing Water for People and Nature in a Changing Climate — is just in time.

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Tags: policy, conservation, Development

I had a bit of press coverage during World Water Week last August. I'll spare you from the article that appeared in the People's Daily Worker in China, but ThinkGloballyRadio.org conducted a nice 30-minute interview (and I didn't say "uh" too much either, which was a relief). You can stream the interview at the station's website and clicking on the episode listed (at the top right of the window) as 091011. I talk about the impacts of climate change on freshwater ecosystems, the ability of climate change to bring disparate groups together, and the state (as of August 2009) of international freshwater adaptation policy leading up to COP15. Read More...

Tags: impacts, policy, Development

Does the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change help anyone with adaptation practice on the ground now? Can we improve international adaptation policy? Here, I was asked to speak by the Stockholm International Water Institute on behalf of the CSO/NGO community to a group of minister/cabinent-level officials involved with water and development from six different countries. The "high-level panel" occurred in late August 2009 during World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. By way of backstory, I was pretty angry by the time I got to talk. Most of the ministers had gone way over their allotted 5 minutes, and it was clear they weren't very interested in listening to me anyway. I felt a bit of passion by the time the discussion came around to me. Their statements were deeply theoretical -- lacking in people and places, removed from practical issues. They were cold. I felt hot. 7.5 min. Below is the written text of my presentation. Read More...

Tags: policy, climate adaptation, sweden, video

The water community gathered in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2009 to discuss emerging and critical issues, and adapting to climate change was easily one of the most prominent topics discussed. Part of this prominence comes from the international climate change discussions that will occur in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. Here, a group of rapporteurs was asked by the World Water Week staff with SIWI to interview conference attendees about what they expect, if anything, will come out of the Copenhagen negotiations relevant to water, their home countries, and their families. 8.25 min. Read More...

Tags: video, unfccc, climate adaptation, policy

Lets take two scenarios.  On the 18th of December, the world walks away with a new global deal on climate change.  The agreement includes progressive emission targets for rich countries, nationally appropriate mitigation strategies for developing countries, financing for adaptation and a good institutional framework. Alternatively, on the 18th December the negotiations finally break down, no deal is struck and world leaders walk away with nothing.  In our second breakfast roundtable we tackle the implications of the UNFCCC negotiations on international water management policy.  Listen in here.  Read More...

Tags: podcasts, unfccc, climate adaptation, policy, Development, conservation

Stockholm’s World Water Week is one of the critical meetings each year for discussing water issues. I’m deeply involved this year personally both in presenting and in collecting and synthesizing information about coping with climate change in the water sector. I’ve also been interviewed on some of these issues -- available on the hosting organization’s website. The first interviews here is a personal profile of me and WWF’s work on freshwater climate adaptation. Read More...

Tags: podcasts, policy, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: brazil, climate adaptation, portuguese, policy, conservation, video, Development

Paul Fleming works on freshwater climate adaptation issues for the US City of Seattle, Washington. Seattle obtains much of its water from large rivers, and much of that water during the summer and fall is derived from the melting of annual snowpack — a process that is shifting rapidly as a result of climate change. Among his other responsibilities, Paul helps the city’s water supply utility think about how to manage their water resources in fiscally prudent, flexible ways, given that Seattle’s “normal” climate is altering rapidly. In early May, Paul spoke before the U.S. Congress in regard to the Waxman/Markey bill (discussed in several previous blogs here, most recently here) about the need for a National Climate Service — modeled in part on the existing National Weather Service. Such a group would likely focus on delivering analytical services for how climate is changing in critical parameters in particular regions — an excellent idea, which would be a great boon for facilitating and groundtruthing climate adaptation efforts. Below is his statement, as well as the statement of marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, who is now the head of NOAA, which is the agency that would host both the Weather Service and the Climate Service. Many thanks to Paul for supplying his remarks! — JM
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Tags: united states, waxman bill, climate adaptation, impacts, policy, water management

The next stage in the process leading up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Copenhagen meeting (usually referred to as a “cop” or council or consultation of the signatory parties) began this week in Bonn, Germany. I’m not able to attend, but the process is important and I’ve been receiving almost hourly updates from colleagues there. You can see some of their progress and concerns on a video blog in order to get an idea of what being there is like. The most obvious issues are US climate mitigation policy, such as the Waxman/Markey bill (discussed in previous entries). But climate adaptation finance — the “adaptation fund” — is showing up a big second topic as well. Some background on adaptation finance was covered as well in previous entries here indirectly and here for more general issues. However, a “side event” has been planned to continue the process associated with the Nairobi Guiding Principles for freshwater adaptation and the water sector. What are those goals? And why does Bonn matter? Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, climate mitigation, nairobi statement, finance, policy, unfccc, Development

The Wilson Center is a policy thinktank in Washington, DC. They’ve got a webinar planned on climate adaptation, presumably from a policy perspective, scheduled for 10 June. I’m not familiar with the speakers or their organization, so I can’t comment on any more on the presentation itself. Their notice below.
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Tags: outreach, news, adaptation training, education, policy

Late last night, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy Committee (the so-called Waxman committee, named after Henry Waxman, the current chair) managed to push an important climate change bill (usually referred to as the Waxman/Markey bill, after the sponsors of the legislation) out of the committee so the rest of the House can vote on it. This particular bill, discussed in an earlier entry here, is exclusively discussed in the media as a carbon cap and trade bill, but I believe it’s most noteworthy as the first climate adaptation bill to be considered in the U.S. Given the almost complete lack of coverage of this aspect of the bill’s language (representing roughly a fifth of the original bill’s word count), I can only imagine that the media doesn’t understand the implications of an adaptation bill. Getting out of committee is a critical step and was full of a lot of political drama. To those of you unfamiliar with U.S. federal legislative procedures (happy people that you are), a piece of legislation (a “bill”) has to get out of its designated committee before it can be considered by the whole of the House. And getting approved by the House is not final either: the US Senate has to move bills through committees before reaching the floor of the Senate too. Then there is a joining process to merge the House and Senate versions. And then the president has to sign the bill. Many a slip remains, but this move shows some progress in pushing the U.S. towards engaging in a serious conversation about climate adaptation. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, waxman bill, policy, news

So many critical issues surround climate change adaptation (and so much bad news keeps popping up from climate impacts science), I sometimes find knowing where to focus very difficult. But sometimes there is good news. I’ve just returned from a very fast meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, at the United Nations compound. Under the sponsorship of the Danish government, a new global framework and set of guiding principles for climate adaptation has been created (available as a PDF download). These principles are aimed at three distinct audiences: participants in and observers of the big UNFCCC CoP meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009, those institutions that are funding climate adaptation work right now, and the international movement to define climate adaptation theory, policy, and practice in coming decades. Here, I will provide personal reflections on my attendance on the discussions leading up to, at, and beyond the Nairobi meeting.

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Tags: climate adaptation, funding, climate mitigation, kenya, policy, africa, nairobi statement, unep

Climate adaptation is finally entering the consciousness of important policymakers, trickling up and through organizations. But these shifts are not occurring smoothly or without controversy and a lot of injured fingers and toes. And we seem to be moving towards two views of how to adjust to our emerging climate: “adaptation” and “Adaptation.” The state of conflict between these two views in the U.S. is globally important right now because the U.S. has been the silent watcher on climate issues for the last decade. The U.S. government has not substantively participated in climate talks, and because the U.S. economy is so large, competing economies must keep par — for good or ill. This rule is widely understood for climate mitigation issues (regulation of greenhouse gas concentrations), but it’s also true for climate adaptation costs as well, which will also become an increasingly major element of economic spending. Finally, U.S. policymakers are going to have this debate, probably as a result of the climate change bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives last fall.
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Tags: climate adaptation, policy, climate mitigation, north america, united states, united states

Of course, very few of us really claim to know the future with much certainty, and climate science has none of the pretensions or divine endorsement associated with those who make dramatic predictions. From a policy perspective, prognostication is fraught with much risk. How do you make important, costly decisions when you are unsure what the future will be like? Of course, uncertainty about the future is nothing new, and most policy can best be described as risk avoidance and minimization: how can we balance the probability of certain events with the costs of addressing them? But climate change puts a powerful new twist on the situation. Climate is important to much of what we do as a species, and we are very sure that the climate is rapidly changing. But knowing exactly how the climate is changing in a particular place by a particular time is extremely difficult — and arguably impossible. The most that scientists (such as those at the IPCC) are willing to endorse is that to provide a range of scenarios or a set of probabilities around one scenario. Read More...

Tags: modeling, synergies, policy

Those of us working in climate adaptation often work alone and in isolation within our organizations. It’s hard to find each other to learn and grow professionally. Moreover, we know we need support — emotional as well as professional, since climate adaptation is challenging and draining work whether you work in DRR, conservation, policy, or economic development. There have been a growing number of online communities that focus on climate adaptation. Here, we’re launching a new one called ClimateAdapt.Info. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, policy, conservation, Development, drr, community adaptation

I speak frequently in public. After a year and a half in this job, I estimate I’ve given something like seventy talks, whether as a formal presentations, running workshops, or sitting on panels. I am fortunate in that I do not get easily nervous, especially since I seem to have experienced everything from hecklers to total equipment failure in mid-speech — mic, projector, support staff. But the occasional fit of anxiety does hit, and then I comfort myself: this talk is not that important. Nothing really critical depends on the outcomes of my delivery. But this rationalization has its limits.
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Tags: ramsar, asia, korea, climate adaptation, policy

World Water Forum must be one of the largest conferences on the planet. Occurring every three years, the venue shifts through the developing world. Two weeks ago, the fifth Forum occurred in Istanbul, Turkey, couched between Europe, Africa, and Asia. I heard estimates of between 20,000 and 30,000 attendees for the week. Though we were all there nominally in the name of “water,” I’m not sure how unified or clear the focus the meeting is or even can be. Our conservation booth was located near the massive and predictably colorful “Italy” booth but also near a cluster of dam builders. On one adaptation panel, I sat between the representative of professional organization for water engineering and policy consultants and a labor union representative for water supply and sanitation workers. The conference had the coherence of a river that has reached its floodplain, spreading out and slowing down. Nonetheless, there were some interesting trends in water with climate change and climate adaptation. Read More...

Tags: turkey, asia, europe, climate adaptation, policy, conservation, finance, Dams

This entry will be the first in a series over the coming weeks. I have a series of talks and will be attending a number of unrelated events that are focusing on wetlands as a theme, so I will in turn inflict some of these thoughts on you, gentle reader. A serious contradiction exists with protected areas — places likes natural reserves and parks — and climate change. On one hand, these places have been designated because they are “special” and unusual parts of the landscape, having qualities that make them distinct from other places and thus worthy of being a protected area (or PA). Think of this as the spatial element of a PA. On the other hand, these areas are generally special because some mixture of climate, geology, and biological history combine to make them distinct during some window of time. At a different period in either of those three elements, the special qualities may exist in a very different combination at that place, or even over a different range of places. Think of this as the temporal element of a PA. Of all the most common types of PAs found worldwide, wetlands may be the most climate sensitive. And that has very important implications for how we define and protect wetlands PAs everywhere. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, wetlands, policy, climate refugia, ramsar

The past ten days in the U.S. have been quite dramatic politically, even by the standard of being near the end of a very long and tight presidential campaign. A financial crisis on a scale with the the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929 looms, our once-close ally Pakistan has exchanged shots with U.S. troops in a border skirmish, and the two presidential candidates have had their first and quite volatile debate. But climate change issues have not gone away, and we’ve seen important statements that carbon dioxide emissions are speeding up particularly in the developing world, and several articles (and an excellent editorial) in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (arguably in the highest tier of general-science journals) review the latest analyses of realistic paths and rates of climate change and suggest that we may need to “start panicking.” Unfortunately, all of these pieces of news are not isolated from one another. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, climate mitigation, policy, news

I’m a liberal (in the left-wing North American usage) and a conservationist by almost any standard definition. In fact, my commitment to obtain a conservation-oriented biology PhD is a searing indictment of how serious my intentions are. Given that my area of specialty is in aquatic/freshwater ecology, I might be expected to oppose all non-restoration human modifications of lakes, rivers, and wetlands under any circumstances. In truth, a year ago that was probably an accurate description. But I have recently drawn fire and ire for commenting positively on dams and the people who pay for them. I will attempt to explain myself here. Read More...

Tags: Dams, policy, conservation

A comment to a recent entry on this blog suggested that the single-most important environmental issue of our time was overpopulation. I’d like to take issue with that view here, which has been part of the mainstream of North American (or at least U.S.) conservation dogma for a few decades, though some of the old stalwarts are dying off. Paul Ehrlich put forward the argument most forcefully in books like The Population Bomb (1970): too many people were on the planet, populations were continuing to explode at ever-greater rates, and resources would soon be depleted. As humans reached some K carrying capacity (which we were just a few days or weeks away from), economic and population collapses would follow, mass starvation, warfare, and bad television would ensue. The last part came true, but somehow we’ve continued to struggle past the first two. This little idea is ethnocentric, simplistic, dangerous, and will result in policies that delay constructive action generally and foster North-South and East-West conflict in particular. Overpopulation as a global threat shows (at best) a lack of imagination and general knowledge. At worst, it is racist and forcefully ignores the real issues at stake in our time. There are more nuanced approaches (such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse). But they’re the exception, not the rule.
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Tags: conservation, policy, philosophy

Much of the emphasis about freshwater climate adaptation boils down to how we manage water through infrastructure like dams and water management plans like environmental flows. But someone has to pay for dams, and large dams are very expensive and complex building projects. In much of the developing parts of the planet, these projects are funded by lFIs: international financial institutions. In practice, this means large development banks. As a biologist, I have had little experience interacting with banks beyond my own checking account. But in the world of water, they’re important. And in Stockholm’s World Water Week, I had some enlightening perspectives on how they are engaging with climate adaptation as part of their business world. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, policy, funding

World Water Week in Stockholm is very policy oriented. This year, much of the focus was on sanitation, but two days were spent in a series of linked symposia on water and climate. Talks ranged from more details on emerging climate impacts with the IPCC’s new technical report on water and climate to regional and local adaptation strategies and tactics. Easily two of the most novel experiences for me as a scientist were interacting with the press as an “adaptation expert” and holding some introductory climate adaptation conversations with two international development banks. I’ll write more about the banks later, but the media interaction was a good if difficult experience. Read More...

Tags: media, travel, sweden, policy, climate adaptation

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...

Tags: news, climate adaptation, policy, india, africa, china, Danube, yangtze river, europe, mexico, north america, brazil, south america

I’m in Stockholm for World Water Week. I speak tomorrow with some colleagues as part of a larger series of talks on water and climate, though I’ve been here for several days. This is an unusual meeting for me: heavy on policy and programs, light on science and what I am used to thinking of as analysis. And being here captures some of the tension that a lot of us involved in climate adaptation work feel on a regular basis: How do we balance between being in a clean, well-appointed convention center, somewhere in the over-developed (even post-developed) world, talking about “issues” with people that are often several steps removed from where the action is -- places in the developing world, out of the air conditioning and the people sampling the smorgasboard of ideas and recommendations in the cold light of energy-efficient bulbs.
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Tags: policy, climate adaptation, europe, north america

My hotel in Stockholm is called the “Talk.” I assume this is because it joins a big convention center in the city, but the name also suggests the process of conversation, discourse, and discussion. From my perspective, that suggests making policy out of the science. After all, across the sea a little to the south stands Prussia, where Bismarck suggested that the making of politics and sausage were best left out of sight. Here in Sweden, I am trying to make a little sausage. Read More...

Tags: policy

Just published online today, the ides of August, is a flyer for policymakers and water resource managers that I wrote with a good friend and colleague. Intended as a primer on climate change and freshwater conservation and economic development, it’s an introduction to some of the basic of my work. On some level, it’s a crystallization of a series of talks I’ve given to a wide range of scientific, policy, and lay audiences now 40 or more times in the past eight months. Be forewarned: the download is about 3 mb. Download it yourself, read it onscreen, and save some trees. Read More...

Tags: publications, media, policy, news

One of my key hunches is that climate change alters the framework of economic development and conservation. My proprietary and parochial interest is in freshwater ecosystems, but the insight (if insight it be) extends more broadly. Here, I propose a list of some of the climate-related elements I think we should be debating in regard to freshwater management. It is not complete, but these cover many of the big points we should probably be resolving now and over the next few years. Read More...

Tags: policy, conservation, water management, climate adaptation, philosophy

E. O. Wilson is arguably the most famous living ecologist and conservation biologist of our time. He’s notable for many reasons, but here I am concerned about his recent move into discussing the approach we should take for climate adaptation work. I fear Wilson has just done a lot of damage to conservation policy. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, philosophy, policy, climate mitigation

Although I am an agnostic in fine standing today, I am certainly betraying my childhood as a Protestant and a man bound to the U.S. South when I use the word redemption — one of the signal ideas in the European Protestant tradition. This is the prodigal son, the slaver who was once lost but has now been found, the sheep who has returned to the flock and her relieved shepherd. It’s the second chance, with hope rekindled and fanned into open flame. The language of redemption drives many of us in conservation. Most of us seem daily aware that this point in history is special, pregnant with special losses and opportunities. Some of us in more extreme forms see the outlines of Armageddon and apocalpyse — an end of what we have known and the press of imminent and ultimate battle — but that’s not my personal sense of time. I am more keen to see struggle, even if manichean in form. That struggle has largely seen defeats for “our” side. But the victories are notable too. Read More...

Tags: philosophy, policy, species

In London in late July, I met a several people who represent government and private bodies that “manage”’ the river Thames. The UK government owns the water, at least in theory, and this ownership devolves onto private businesses that manage portions of the watershed, including treating river water and sewage and moving water to houses. It’s an old an complex process, and there are a lot legacy (i.e., inherited and old fashioned) components to the systems. For instance, not many homes or businesses in the UK have water meters, so usage rates are often estimated. Many much less developed countries have much better metering systems simply because they have newer water distribution systems. Also, many of the facilities and pipes themselve are well over a century old, designed for quite different times and usage levels. Read More...

Tags: united kingdom, thames, climate mitigation, policy, water management, climate adaptation

The Danube — the Donau in German — is not a Great River like the Mississippi, the Congo, or the Amazon. But in Europe, it is a critical resource, culturally and economically. And it is a complex place. I have just returned from Vienna and a swirling mixture of ideas, impacts, and people focused on the Danube. Read More...

Tags: europe, policy, impacts, Danube

Given that there are more than 45,000 large dams in place worldwide, the central problem of freshwater climate adaptation for the coming century is the best means of managing water infrastructure like dams, irrigation systems, water treatment plants, and hydroelectric power systems. Even conservation issues in most areas of the world are going to involve carefully managing water resources that (somehow) balance development and the integrity of natural systems.
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Tags: fish, Dams, policy, climate adaptation

Your local TV meteorologist seems like she or he should be my natural ally: a person in the local media market you trust, who is educated in climate science, and who can relate climate science and climate change trends to the daily news. These meteorologists should be the local evangelists of climate change. Sadly, they are often not. Read More...

Tags: research, policy, north america, skepticism

DC is very hot this week — it was 97 degrees F when I landed on Monday, and yesterday was much hotter. And very humid. On landing, I needed to get to my B & B quickly and decided to opt for a cab. Taxis are a little out of favor in the climate change world, especially in cities with a decent mass transit system like DC. But I didn’t see an alternative. Popping out of the terminal, I took the first cab in line. The small man in the front seat turned to me and said in a thick accent, Hello. Where are you going? Seventeenth and Lanier, near Adams-Morgan, I said. Where’s that? I leaned back, suddenly very hot and very tired.
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Tags: news, policy, north america

Yesterday news of Senator John McCain's very public stand with Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski at a wind generation site was all over the news. McCain of course is the Republican candidate for president, and he has a remarkable record of pushing climate change in the U.S. senate for many years now. He is almost as credible on this issue as former senator and vice-president Al Gore. McCain made a strong statement with Kulongoski for reducing U.S. emissions and for the U.S. taking responsibility for our role in current levels of greenhouse gases. His speech was apparently very passionate and seemingly heartfelt, and most commentators believe the speech was very directed to western moderates and progressives — such as myself — who are worried about climate change issues. Some sections of the speech were interpreted as attacks on Bush. And he was roundly attacked today by some conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh:

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Tags: news, rush limbaugh, policy

Last month I experienced perhaps my most interesting level of policymaker access to date when I was asked to speak at an embassy in the UK. Some 13 or 15 diplomats from across a large region were in attendance. They had not asked me per se to speak but they had approached our national office in that country. Two freshwater staffers were planning on going, and I was going to be arriving that morning in London on the day of the meeting. So my colleagues asked me to come speak as well.
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Tags: policy, united kingdom, climate adaptation

My favorite means of explaining the difference between climate adaptation and climate mitigation in talks for the past few months is a simple metaphor. Imagine, I begin, that you are in a car, and you realize that you will inevitably be hitting a solid object — a wall, a major obstruction on the highway, anything. You know you are going to hit it, and you know it will hurt you and your car.

That obstruction is a changed climate. You have two basic responses you can rely on. First, you press your brake as hard as you can to reduce the rate of impact. You want to hit the obstruction at a slower speed. That's climate mitigation — the process of trying to lower the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and the concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Both are essentially attempts to slow down the pace of climate change. But you will still hit the obstruction, even if you hit it less hard. Climate adaptation is the second type of response: Read More...

Tags: policy, climate adaptation, climate mitigation

Last Friday, Senator Barak Obama was on tour through Oregon. And Kerry managed to scarf some tickets to an Obama rally in Albany, just north of where we live. The crowd was almost exclusively white, with no obvious age bias in the attendees, was incredibly enthusiastic and cheered and clapped and yelled. People were obviously happy to be there and excited to see and hear Obama, who was a moving and inspiring speaker. We were much impressed with him. Read More...

Tags: policy, oregon

A lot of people have a romantic vision of the life of a conservation biologist, certainly for those who do fieldwork in exotic places. Perhaps I still share this vision, at least occasionally. But one reader of the first three entries here called and said, Your site is very depressing. I assume he meant it wasn’t romantic and charming.

He’s right, of course. Even by the root of the term, “conservation” is about a stopping loss, an attempt to keep from losing too much and about holding on to some notion of what’s “left” in a place -- an attempt to keep a place from passing from threatened to a state of crisis, or from a crisis to something even worse. Read More...

Tags: conservation, species, policy

At least one branch of my family arrived in North America in 1607 -- we are now entering our fifth century on the continent. And several family branches have lived in Texas for almost two centuries. We are truly of the South, intertwined with its colonial development and history. And I am clearly from the US and Texas.

But by my countrymen, I am almost universally considered a terrible example of all three categories and quite unrepresentative. Generally, this sense of being rejected by a region I love and feel electrostatically drawn to saddens me, but I've had a long time to get used to the feeling. About three decades now. Read More...

Tags: texas, ethnocentrism, policy