The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands

The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands
Author: Ton Dietz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2004-06-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1402019521

People have learned to adapt to risk and uncertainty in fragile dryland environments.

The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands

The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands
Author: A.J. Dietz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2006-04-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1402021585

Sahelian West Africa has recovered from the disastrous droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. People have learned to adapt to risk and uncertainty in fragile dryland environments. They, as well as global change scientists, are worried about the impact of climate change on these West African drylands. What do the experiences of the last thirty years say about the preparedness for higher temperatures, lower rainfall, and even more variability? Detailed studies on Dryland West Africa as a whole, and on Burkina Faso, Mali and Northern Ghana in particular show an advanced coping behaviour and increased adaptation, but also major differences in vulnerability and coping potential. Climate change preparedness programmes have only just started and require more robust support, and more specific social targeting, for a population which is rapidly growing, even more rapidly urbanising, and further integrating in a globalised economy. This book is the first of its kind with a comprehensive analysis of climate change experiences in West African drylands, with attention for pathways of change and the diversity of adaptation options available. This book is of interest to scientists studying global and climate change, especially dealing with issues of adaptation. Social scientists, economists, geographers and policy makers concerned with West Africa should also read this book.

The Regional Impacts of Climate Change

The Regional Impacts of Climate Change
Author: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working Group II.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 1998
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780521634557

Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Loss and Damage from Climate Change

Loss and Damage from Climate Change
Author: Reinhard Mechler
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2018-11-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319720260

This book provides an authoritative insight on the Loss and Damage discourse by highlighting state-of-the-art research and policy linked to this discourse and articulating its multiple concepts, principles and methods. Written by leading researchers and practitioners, it identifies practical and evidence-based policy options to inform the discourse and climate negotiations. With climate-related risks on the rise and impacts being felt around the globe has come the recognition that climate mitigation and adaptation may not be enough to manage the effects from anthropogenic climate change. This recognition led to the creation of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage in 2013, a climate policy mechanism dedicated to dealing with climate-related effects in highly vulnerable countries that face severe constraints and limits to adaptation. Endorsed in 2015 by the Paris Agreement and effectively considered a third pillar of international climate policy, debate and research on Loss and Damage continues to gain enormous traction. Yet, concepts, methods and tools as well as directions for policy and implementation have remained contested and vague. Suitable for researchers, policy-advisors, practitioners and the interested public, the book furthermore: • discusses the political, legal, economic and institutional dimensions of the issue• highlights normative questions central to the discourse • provides a focus on climate risks and climate risk management. • presents salient case studies from around the world.

Shock Waves

Shock Waves
Author: Stephane Hallegatte
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2015-11-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464806748

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Adapting to Drought

Adapting to Drought
Author: Michael Mortimore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1989-03-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521323123

This book embodies the results of thirteen years of research in drought-prone rural areas in the semi-arid zone of northern Nigeria. It describes the patterns of adaptive behaviour observed among Hausa, Ful'be and Manga communities in response to recurrent drought in the 1970s and 1980s. The question of desertification is explored in an area where the visible evidence of moving sand dunes is dramatic blame are examined in relation to the field evidence. A critique is offered of deterministic theories and authoritarian solutions. Professor Mortimore demonstrates a parallel between the observable resilience of semi-arid ecosystems and the adaptive strategies of the human communities that inhabit them and suggests policy directions for strengthening that resilience.

Valuing Variability

Valuing Variability
Author: International Institute for Environment and Development
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Arid regions
ISBN:

Dryland Opportunities

Dryland Opportunities
Author: Michael Mortimore
Publisher: World Conservation Union
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Drylands cover 41 percent of the earth' s terrestrial surface. The urgency of and international response to climate change have given a new place to drylands in terms both of their vulnerability to predicted climate change impacts and their potential contribution to climate change mitigation. This book aims to apply the new scientific insights on complex dryland systems to practical options for development. A new dryland paradigm is built on the resources and capacities of dryland peoples, on new and emergent economic opportunities, on inward investment, and on the best support that dryland science can offer.

Global Warning. An ethnography of the encounter between global and local

Global Warning. An ethnography of the encounter between global and local
Author: de Wit, Sara
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2015-04-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 995679211X

Moving beyond existing approaches that largely deal with the biophysical consequences of climate change realities in Africa, this book explores an alternative perspective that traces climate change as a travelling idea. It focuses on how globally constructed discourses on climate change find their way to the local level in the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon, thereby seeking to understand how these discursive practices lead to social transformations, and to new configurations of power. In the translation process from the 'global' to the 'local' level a continuous modification and appropriation of the idea of climate change takes place that finally leads to a concrete implementation of climate change related projects and sensitization campaigns. Hence, it is argued that in this increasingly interconnected and mediated world people in Africa (and elsewhere in the world) do not solely adapt to a changing climate, but also adapt to a changing discourse about the climate. Travelling between traditional rulers and their palaces, to the world of NGOs, journalists and ordinary farmers this study brings the reader on a captivating journey, that reveals how climate change engages in a variety of ways with different lifeworlds, revitalizes local cosmologies, gives birth to a new development paradigm, and moreover how it evokes apocalyptic anxieties and trajectories of blame at the grassroots level.