Third
Annual Environmental Policy Conference:
Adaptive Research and Governance in Climate Change
October 30-31, 2003
Room
202, Pfahl Executive Conference Center
Click
Here to Access Conference Presentations
Conference Schedule
The
Official ARGCC Brochure with Conference Information (PDF File)
How might society adapt to climate change or to the
large-scale mitigation and sequestration projects often proposed? What
institutional barriers will limit our ability to recognize new opportunities or
threats that may arise as climate changes? Can concepts from adaptive
management aid policy-makers as they decide which alternatives are “best” for
adaptation or mitigation? If local land use activities become a global concern,
how will local communities adapt and adjust to changing incentives and
institutional frameworks?
These questions and others will be explored at a refereed
conference on October 30-31, 2003 in Columbus, Ohio organized by the Adaptive
Research and Governance in Climate Change (ARGCC) group and the Environmental
Policy Initiative at the Ohio State University. The goal of the conference
is to critically assess the possibilities for applying the concepts of adaptive
management and adaptive capacity to the problem of research and policy in global
climate change and to do so at multiple scales.
Conference themes:
- Adaptive approaches for climate policy and management
- International institutions and climate change
- Informal markets and climate change adaptation
- Communities and livelihoods under climate change
including adaptation, autonomy, and coalition.
Several keynote speakers will headline each of the
conference themes. The keynote speakers include Hadi Dowlatabadi of the
Sustainable Development Research Institute at the University of British
Columbia, Roger Kasperson of the Stockholm Environmental Institute, Ronald
Mitchell of the Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, Robert
Mendelsohn of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and B.L.
Turner of the Department of Geography, Clark University.
The conference will be held in Room 202 of the Pfahl
Executive Conference Center adjacent to the Blackwell Hotel on the OSU campus.
The Blackwell and Pfahl Center is located on the Ohio State campus on Tuttle
Park Place between Neil Avenue and Woody Hayes Drive. Public parking is
available at the Tuttle Park Garage, on Tuttle Park Place just south of Woody
Hayes Drive. Please email April Luginbuhl (luginbuhl.6@osu.edu)
for more detailed directions, or go to the following link:
http://www.theblackwell.com/Directions/
Conference Sponsors:
The Ohio State University Mershon Center,
Environmental Policy Initiative
(EPI), Climate Change and
Environmental Research Initiative, and the
Cluster for Interdisciplinary Research on International Themes (CIRIT).
Questions about the conference may be directed to Paul Robbins
robbins.30@osu.edu.
Conference Schedule (Names link to the
authors' abstracts)
Thursday, October 30th, 2003
8am: Welcome and Introductory Remarks
8:30-10:15: Session I: Adaptive Approaches for Climate Policy and Management
8:30-9:00
Keynote Speaker:
Hadi Dowlatabadi, Sustainable Development Research Institute
Title:
Adaptive Approaches for Climate Policy and Management
9:00-9:15 Philippa Shepherd, James Tansey,
University of
British Columbia, and Hadi Dowlatabadi
Title: Adaptation in response to multiple stressors in the
Okanagan region of British Columbia
Title: Adaptive Dynamics - Technology, Institutions and Global Change
9:30-9:45
Frans Berkhout,
Julia Hertin Science and Technology Policy Research- University of Sussex,
David Gann Innovation Studies Centre- Imperial College London
Title: Learning to adapt: Organizational adaptation to climate change impacts
9:45-10:00
Steven Manson,
Department of
Geography, University of Minnesota
Title: Adaptive integrated assessment
of land use in Mexico
10:00-10:15
Question and Answer
10:15-10:30: Break
10:30-12:15: Session II: The Role of Markets as Society Adapts to a Changing
Climate
10:30-11:00
Keynote Speaker:
Robert Mendelsohn, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science
Title:
The Role of Markets as Society Adapts to a Changing Climate
11:00-11:15
Erin Baker-
University of Massachusetts, Department of Mechanical and Industrial
Engineering; Leon Clarke,
Lawrence
Livermore- National Laboratory; John Weyant- Stanford University
Title: R&D as Greenhouse Insurance
11:15-11:30
Molly E. Brown, Jorge E. Pinzon-
Science Systems and
Applications, NASA-Goddard; Stephen Prince- University of Maryland, College Park
Title: Impact on Food Security of extreme climatic events in three Sahelian
Countries
11:30-11:45
Heather Kohls,
University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee
Title: Controlling Externalities in Firms with Market Power
11:45-12:00
Question and Answer
12:15-2:00: Lunch- Keynote Address on Climate Change and
Risk
Roger Kasperson, Stockholm Environmental Institute
2:00-3:45: Session III: Adaptation and Institutions in Climate Change
2:00-
2:30 Keynote Speaker:
Ronald Mitchell, University of Oregon, Department of Political Science
Title:
Adaptation and Institutions in Climate Change
2:30-2:45
Alex Thompson, Department of Political
Science-
Ohio
State
University
Title: TBA
2:45-3:00
Nives Dolsak, University of Washington- Bothell
Title: TBA
3:00-3:15
Barbara Koremenos,
UCLA
Title: “International Environmental Cooperation: Learning through Flexibility”
3:15-3:30 Itay
Fischhendler,
Department of Geography; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Title: Legal and
Institutional Adaptation to Climate Uncertainty: A Study of International Rivers
3:30-3:45
Question and Answer
3:45-4:00: Break
4:00-5:45: Session IV: Adapting Policy, Governance, and Industry
4:00-4:15
Eric Taylor, C-CIARN
National Coordinator; Natural Resources Canada
Title: The Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network
4:15-5:45
Panel discussion with government and industry representatives
Jackie Bird- The Ohio Coal Development Office
Dale Heydlauff- American Electric Power
Klaus Lambach- Ohio Public Utilities Commission
Kurt Waltzer- The Ohio Environmental Council.
6:30: Reception and Dinner
Friday, October 31st, 2003
8:30-10:15 am: Session V: Building and Sustaining
Adaptive Capacity under Climate Change
8:30-9:00
Keynote Speaker:
B. L. Turner, Clark University, Department of Geography
Title:
Building and Sustaining Adaptive Capacity under Climate Change
9:00-9:15
Jamie Benidcikson,
Philippe Crabbé, Barham Danefshar, Ron Droste, Daniel
Lagarec, David Lean, Roberto Narbaitz, Roger Needham, and Michel Robin-
University of Ottawa, Canada
Title: Institutional Adaptation of Water-related Infrastructures under Climate
Change in Eastern Ontario.
9:15-9:30
Kenneth R. Young, Jennifer Lipton
Department of Geography, University of
Texas at Austin
Title: Tropical Andean Climate Change: Implications for
Agriculture, Biodiversity, and their Respective Institutions
9:30-10:00
David SG Thomas and Chasca Twyman,
Department of Geography, University of
Sheffield, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Title: Equity in climate change adaptation amongst
natural-resource dependant societies
10:00-10:15
Question and Answer
10:15-10:30: Break
10:30-12:15: Session VI: Discussion featuring the Keynote Speakers
Hadi
Dowlatabadi
Roger
Kasperson
Robert
Mendelsohn
Ronald
Mitchell
B.L. Turner
12:15: Lunch and Adjournment
Abstract List with Presentations
(Click on the Titles to Download
Presenations)
Erin Baker,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Co-authors: Leon Clarke, Lawrence
Livermore National
Laboratory; John Weyant, Stanford University.
Erin Baker; 220 Elab; Department
of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering; University of Massachusetts;
Amherst, MA 01002;
edbaker@ecs.umass.edu
Title: R&D as Greenhouse
Insurance
This paper explores optimal R&D
in response to uncertain climate change damages caused by the build up of
greenhouse emissions. R&D may provide insurance in the following sense:
environmentally friendly technologies may allow dramatic abatement at minimal
cost should it be learned that damages from climate change will be severe. The
role of learning is crucial. In an “act, then learn” scenario, R&D into
radical technologies has very little value. If we consider the possibility of
a mid-course correction in abatement policies, however, there is some
probability that currently non-economic technologies will be extremely
valuable. Thus, investments into R&D represent an adaptive approach to climate
policy, increasing the flexibility for acting in the future.
The R&D planning problem is
complicated, however, by the fact that there are many possible R&D programs
involving very different changes in technology and, therefore, different costs
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, a research program to
improve the efficiency of coal-fired electricity generation will create a very
different abatement cost structure than an R&D program into photovoltaic
cells. The first program will lower the cost for moderate reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions, whereas the second program will reduce the costs of
severely reducing emissions if climate change appears to be especially
deleterious. This paper explores optimal R&D in the context of these two
issues: (1) uncertainty and learning about the damages from climate change and
(2) the choice of R&D program.
We address these issues in three
steps. First, we consider the manner in which different R&D programs impact
the costs of abatement, and specifically the shape of the abatement cost
function. We then show, theoretically, how these different R&D programs imply
different investment responses to uncertainty, some leading to an increase in
R&D spending under uncertainty, others leading to a decrease. Finally, we test
the implications of the theoretical analysis, and obtain broader policy
insights, by adding R&D investment to a stochastic version of the DICE model.
We compare three common
assumptions for R&D and link them to real R&D programs—into sequestration,
cost reduction, and emission reductions. We show that the optimal amount of
R&D into sequestration or emissions-reductions will generally decrease in
uncertainty. On the other hand, the optimal amount of R&D into cost-reduction
will increase for moderate increases in uncertainty, and thus may be
considered as a hedge against some kinds of climate uncertainty.
While the literature on
endogenous technical change has considered the impact of abatement policies on
technical change, we consider optimal R&D. As Carraro et al
has pointed out, technical change is a policy variable in its own right—there
is more to climate change policy than prices and quantities. Hence, optimal
R&D expenditures and the optimal allocation of R&D expenditures among
competing technologies is an important climate change policy question. The
key focus of this paper is on the relationship between these policy questions
and uncertainty and learning about the damages from climate change.
Jamie Benidcikson,
Philippe Crabbé, Barham Danefshar. Ron Droste, Daniel Lagarec, David Lean,
Roberto Narbaitz, Roger Needham, and Michel Robin
University of Ottawa, Canada;
crabbe@uottawa.ca
Title: Institutional
Adaptation of Water-related Infrastructures under Climate Change in Eastern
Ontario.
This climate change adaptation
community-based research project aims at identifying for small rural
municipalities institutional strategies related to water resources
infrastructures. The term infrastructure is understood in the broad sense of
“capital” with its four components: natural, manufactured, human and social.
The epistemic partners in this
research were the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which regroups the
major municipalities in Canada, leads a climate change mitigation program for
municipalities and is interested in the replication of the present study, and
local groups focused on water resources. One of the latter, the Eastern
Ontario Water Resources Committee, has just completed an inventory of the
water resources (mainly groundwater) in the United-Counties of Prescott and
Russell and of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry, both located near the Quebec
border. Our study complements this engineering inventory and other local
initiatives by bringing to the latter both a climate change and an
institutional dimension on top of other stresses such as demographic ones (in
the vicinity of Ottawa) and land-use changes (larger scale agriculture leading
to significant non-point pollution of local rivers and groundwater).
Institutional barriers and
bridges to adaptation were systematically identified. From the Great-Lakes
climate change studies combined with our regional temperature/precipitation
scenarios, it appears that, except for extreme events and water treatment
plants, climate change does not appear to constitute a major problem for
Eastern Ontario. However, many climate change impacts on water-related
infrastructures are poorly known and early adaptation strategies are bound to
be cheaper to adopt than reactive ones. Barriers and bridges, both internal
and external to the municipalities, were identified through interviews with
municipal staff and councillors.
Both barriers and bridges
pertain to information (consistency of the climate change information),
jurisdictional and enforcement municipal responsibilities, planning, financial
resources, liability, and health and education.
Concrete steps for
the development of a climate change municipal adaptation strategy are
suggested.
This study was
funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,
Community-University Research Alliance program.
Frans Berkhout*, Julia
Hertin* and David Gann+
* SPRU-Science and Technology
Policy Research, University of Sussex
+
Innovation Studies Centre, Imperial College London
Title:
Learning to adapt: Organisational adaptation to climate change impacts
This paper sets out a framework
for analysing adaptation by organisations to the direct and indirect impacts
of climate change. Organisations such as business firms are the primary social
units within which processes of adaptation will take place, even if their
vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity will be largely determined by
the institutional and cultural contexts in which they operate. Our analysis
takes the perspective of the organisation, and views climate stimuli as one
among many stimuli for change that the organisation will face. This contrasts
with much climate-related literature which takes as its starting point climate
stimuli, making an implicit assumption that some form of adaptation is likely
to be induced by them (cf. Smit and Pilifosova, 2001). For us, adaptation and
adaptive capacity are features of all organisations. The critical research and
policy issue is whether and how organisations respond to these stimuli, given
what we know about the ways in which organisations learn and innovate.
Drawing on evolutionary theories
of economic change and organisational learning literatures, we argue that
processes of adaptation involve changes to organisational ‘routines’ (Cyert
and March, 1963; Nelson and Winter, 1982). Routines represent much of an
organisation’s on-going activity. They come to be adjusted or disrupted in
processes of learning, initiated partly in response to the recognition of
environmental stimuli. On the basis of empirical research in the UK
house-building and water services sectors, we argue that many characteristic
signals and mechanisms that play a role in market-induced organisational
learning and adaptation are absent or attenuated with regard to climate change
stimuli. In particular, because of long time-scales and the intrinsic
variability of climate change stimuli, opportunities for feedback and learning
are infrequent and hard to recognise for the organisation. This has
implications for how adaptation processes are likely to unfold, and draws
attention to the importance of organisational adaptive capacity. We
characterise adaptive capacity as being composed of two things: the capacity
to cope with climate variability; and the capacity to make adjustments to
organisational routines that either reduce organisational vulnerability or
increase its resilience.
The paper begins by discussing
how adaptation and its related concepts have been treated in the academic and
policy literature related to climate change. We then discuss how ideas about
learning and innovation in organisations can be usefully applied in
understanding processes of adaptation to changing climate impacts and
variability. We draw out some conclusions about processes of adaptation, the
relationship between adaptation and adaptive capacity, and the adaptation
pathways that are likely to be followed by different organisations. We
introduce two new concepts: adaptation space (the aggregate set of adaptation
options that are available to a group of organisations, like an industrial
sector); and adaptation strategy (the explicit or implicit strategy followed
by an organisation in the process of adapting). These two concepts are used
to develop a ‘model’ of adaptation by organisations embedded within economic,
governance and cultural contexts. Our aim is to propose a simplified and
integrated set of concepts that serve as the basis for the observation and
measurement of adaptation and adaptive capacity.
Author: Molly E. Brown,
Science Systems and
Applications, NASA-Goddard, Jorge E. Pinzon,
Science Systems and
Applications, NASA-Goddard, Stephen Prince,
University of Maryland, College
Park
Title: Impact on Food Security
of extreme climatic events in three Sahelian Countries
Since the
catastrophic famines of the 1970s and 1980s, intensive efforts have been made
to find operational metrics for food security and its geographical variation
in the West African Sahel. Environment and price have been used as proxies of
food insecurity. Here we employ vegetation indicies derived from the Advanced
Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) carried on the NOAA series of
meteorological satellites and millet prices in markets. Our previous work has
shown that there is a relationship between the price of the primary
subsistence crop, coarse grain millet, and seasonal fluctuations in
satellite-derived vegetation indices in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Price
and NDVI function at different time scales, making direct determination of the
influence of NDVI on price difficult. This research uses a new time series
decomposition technique, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), to split the
price and NDVI time series into components of different temporal scales.
Although Sahelian NDVI has 80% of its variance in an annual (12 month
oscillation) component, only 7% of the variance of the price was accounted for
by this component. Using these EMD components instead of the raw time series
in a multilinear model, the errors in the estimation of price per kilogram
were reduced from an average RMSE of 13.2 CFA/kg to 7.9 CFA/kg. By building
on the new information generated from the decomposition and modelling effort,
historical and future price movements were estimated. Images of vegetation
condition were integrated with known historical behavior of prices in Mali,
Niger and Burkina Faso in order to derive maps of annual anomalies from mean
millet prices. To estimate the impact on prices by extreme climatic events,
the model was forced using the driest and wettest years on record for each
location and the impact on price examined. Analysis will be presented on the
ability of price-NDVI models to forecast extreme events and the use of such
information by organizations such as the Famine Early Warning System.
Nives Dolsak,
University of Washington- Bothell
Click Here for
Presentation
Abstract:
This paper
analyzes factors affecting countries' international commitment to
international cooperation in mitigating global climate change and relates it
to the actual domestic implementation of the negotiated agreements. The
commitment level is operationalized as an ordinal variable expressing
commitment with ever increasing requirements of the international community.
Implementation is operationalized as an ordinal variable ranging from
implementation of the internationally negotiated modes of behavior (enactment
of domestic environmental policies) to actual emission reductions. A
theoretical model of governments' decision making is presented and tested for
91 countries at different levels of economic development with different
domestic institutions. A given national government selects its level of
cooperation depending on its: (a) incentives and (b) ability to affect global
emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). An ordered logistic regression model is
employed to analyze the factors affecting the levels of national commitment
and actual implementation.
Hadi Dowlatabadi
Click Here for Presentation
Itay Fischhendler
Department of Geography; The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Email:
fishi30@hotmail.com
Title: Legal and
Institutional Adaptation to Climate Uncertainty: A Study of International
Rivers
Under review in Water Policy
This study seeks to understand
why nations find it difficult to include climate-uncertainty mechanisms in
treaties regulating international rivers. It also aims to examine the
implications of not adopting these mechanisms, particularly during a crisis.
The study focuses on the negotiation process of three water treaties, and
seeks to identify the underlying reasons behind the inclusion – or exclusion –
of such mechanisms. Second, it review how the treaties performed and evolved
during drought. The first case study is the current drought along the lower
Rio Grande and the 1944 water treaty between Mexico and the U.S; the second is
the 1961-1964 drought along the Great Lakes and the 1909 water treaty between
Canada and the U.S. and, finally, it examines the 1997-2000 water shortage in
the Jordan Basin and the 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan. It was found
that issues of sovereignty, water stress, power asymmetry, optimistic water
scenarios, and the nature of the treaties as “package deals” impede riparians
from adopting some of these mechanisms. Among them is a joint institution with
wide scope and geographical jurisdiction, escape clause, allocating water
according to percentage of flow, balance mechanism and a binding arbitration
procedure. By excluding these mechanisms the anticipated political cost of an
agreement decreases. However, this exclusion process limits the ability of
these treaties and their institutions to manage a crisis situation, which may
in turn engender controversy between the riparians as to how to divide the
water in such a situation. Yet, it was found that during crisis treaties tend
to evolve as the different parties supplement them with new legal and
institutional measures that provide only partial immediate remedy to the
crisis at hand. This stress the need to incorporate the mechanisms that are
simultaneously politically feasible and hydrologically effective.
Roger Kasperson
Keynote Speaker
H. H. Kohls,
University of
Wisconsin—Milwaukee;
hhkohls@uwm.edu
Title: Controlling
Externalities in Firms with Market Power (presentation file one)/(presentation
file two)
This paper investigates the case
of a polluting firm with market power in both its product and factor
markets. As multinational firms get larger, regulators are left to choose
between jobs and the environment. New ideas for dealing with these firms must
be investigated. Furthermore, as recent publications in labor economics
suggest, factor markets are in fact far from competitive, making the options
available to the regulator less appealing.
By extending a model originally
presented by Paul Burrows in 1981, the model reveals that a combination of tax
and offsetting subsidy implemented by the regulator would alleviate two of the
three externalities present in a scenario of pollution, under production and
under employment. Thus, assuming a preferable production process exists, the
regulator could initially tax the polluting portion of the firm’s process and
offer to the firm a subsidy to increase the use of other factors. As long as
the tax and subsidy are offsetting, the cost structures for the firm would
remain, allowing the firm to switch processes.
Once the equilibrium outcome is
established, the question of information available to the regulator is
investigated. The significance of the model, linked to the prevalence of
firms with imperfect factor markets is presented in the context of some
current theory and examples.
Barbara Koremenos, UCLA
Title:
“International Environmental Cooperation: Learning through Flexibility”
International agreements and
institutions are consequential and their specific design features are, in
great part, what make them stable and hence consequential. These features
vary in systematic ways and are deserving of focused research. Like scholars
in international law, I take seriously the actual provisions and details of
international agreements and organizations. Importantly, however, I go beyond
the descriptive work that characterizes much of international law to show
theoretically that the careful choice of these provisions makes international
cooperation both more likely and more robust.
My sole-authored work shows that uncertainty
in the international environment – uncertainty that is of varying forms and
degrees across issue contexts – leads states to choose particular flexibility
provisions. For example, in
“Loosening the Ties that
Bind: A Learning Model of Agreement Flexibility” (International Organization,
Spring 2001), I explain why
many non-nuclear weapon states made a limited duration a necessary condition
for their participation in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The
uncertainty in this context was related to what the true division of security,
economic, and political gains under the agreement would turn out to be. By
incorporating flexibility into the agreement, the parties gave themselves a
chance to resolve this uncertainty over time as they gained experience with
the agreement. Unlike the conventional wisdom, I argue that credible
commitments require a tradeoff between hand-tying and flexibility.
In this paper, I propose to address
international environmental cooperation. This particular issue area is
characterized by various kinds of uncertainty – including scientific. Can
cooperation proceed despite this? I argue that it can if the terms of
cooperation incorporate learning and flexibility. Provisions that call for
systematic information collection, reviews, planned renegotiation, and the
possibility of amendment allow countries to learn what works and what doesn’t,
and thereby adapt the terms of an cooperation to take such information into
account. These provisions also allow agreements to be adapted as various
kinds of uncertainties are lessened or even resolved. Hence they represent a
very important tool that states use to build and then manage effective
cooperation. My project will help us to understand when states choose to make
their environmental agreements flexible and what types of flexibility they
choose in particular circumstances. Such an understanding aids in the design
of new international agreements and in the modification of existing ones.
I will also present original data collected
with the support of a National Science Foundation CAREER award. I have
developed a coding instrument to record the characteristics of both a random
sample of environmental agreements as well as the 20 most important
environmental agreements. Among the provisions coded are flexibility
provisions (e.g., Does the agreement have a limited duration and/or a
renegotiation provision? Can a subset of states amend the agreement? If so,
is it binding on all members? Can states temporarily opt out of their
commitments? Must they seek permission?)
Steven Manson
Department of
Geography, University of Minnesota,
manson@umn.edu, http://www.umn.edu/~manson
Title:
Adaptive integrated assessment of land use in Mexico
This paper
describes the development and use of innovative computer simulation methods to
integrate multidisciplinary perspectives of land-use and land-cover change in
Mexico. This work is an example of integrated assessment methods that support
adaptive management in the face of global change.
While much
attention is paid to global warming and climate change, it is increasingly
apparent that humanity confronts a more broadly defined global environmental
change that is occurring at a rate and magnitude unprecedented in human
experience (NRC 2001). The wild card in the game of global warming, and the
trump in almost all other global environmental change, is human activity that
impinges on land-use systems and surficial features, known collectively as
land-use and land-cover change(LUCC).
In addition to contributing roughly a quarter of anthropogenic carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse gas, LUCC effects biodiversity, changes ecosystem services, and
governs the vulnerability of hundreds of millions of people. The NRC has
deemed understanding land change one of the most pressing scientific “grand
challenges” (2001: 4).
Central to
meeting this challenge is
integrated assessment,
the development
and use of policy-oriented computational tools that advance understanding of
human decision-making in environmental contexts through identification of
interrelationships among socioeconomic and biophysical factors (Morgan and
Dowlatabadi 1993). This paper presents an application of an integrated
assessment model that projects land-change trajectories for the southern
Yucatán peninsular region of Mexico. Global change issues are writ large in
this area because deforestation and attendant cultivation threaten one of the
largest remaining subhumid tropical forests and its associated socioeconomic
systems. The region is also the locus of international policy regimes,
national neoliberal transformation, and potentially conflicting regional goals
of development and conservation centered on the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.
The
proposed paper reports on initial results of the SYPR Integrated Assessment (SYPRIA)
with a special focus on the relationship between household decision making and
institutions. The model marries a three component
“actor-institution-environment” conceptual framework to a computational
simulacrum of the region. The SYPRIA model represents the decision making of
actors,
subsistence farming households that are the proximate source of change, with a
computational intelligence technique termed agent-based modeling that draws on
agrarian decision making theory and is specified by household interviews.
Actors engage in activities including, but not limited to, land use,
communication, and movement. The agentbased model also represents actor
participation in socioeconomic
institutions
such as marketing cooperatives and
land tenure that serve to influence actor decision making. Actors are also
influenced by, and in turn directly affect, the
environment
as defined by phenomena such as
vegetation, soils, and infrastructure. The environment is represented by a
method termed cellular modeling that encapsulates ecological research on
natural endogenous transitions and exogenous effects of household actions.
SYPRIA is
innovative in that it moves away from more traditional equilibrium-oriented
mathematic and statistical methods of modeling human-environment
relationships. It instead uses computational techniques that explicitly
accommodate the dynamic, feedback-laden, and cross-scalar nature of
relationships between actors, institutions, and the environment. As such, it
can be used in a research driven
policy context to
help a variety of stakeholders consider alternate scenarios of development and
sustainability.
Literature Cited
Morgan, M. G. and H. Dowlatabadi (1993). "Learning from integrated assessment
of climate change." Climatic Change
34:
3-4.
NRC (2001). Grand
Challenges in Environmental Sciences. Washington, D.C., National Academy
Press.
Robert Mendelsohn
Click Here for
Presentation
Ronald Mitchell
Click Here for
Presentation
Michael Obersteiner, Zuzanna
Chladna, Fabio Dercole, Ulf Dickmann, Elena Molchanova,
Sergio Rinaldi, IIASA,
Laxenburg, Austria.
International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA); IHS Institute for Advanced Studies
Michael Obersteiner:
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA);A-2361; Laxenburg,
Austria; E-Mail: oberstei@iiasa.ac.at
Title:
Adaptive Dynamics - Technology, Institutions and Global Change
Technological change and the
feedback mechanisms with its social correlates, such as economic performance,
are still poorly understood. In this paper we develop a stylized model for the
dynamic interaction between technology, the environment and the market. We
develop an analytical framework that explicitly models the emergence of
product diversity through technological branching, which creates higher
resilience. We also give a theoretical foundation for certain patterns of
technological change, such as the occurrence of innovation clusters. By
combining analytical tools from the theories of population dynamics and
adaptive dynamics the model bridges the scales of micro- and macro-
development. We model processes at multiple levels of aggregation that are
separated along different time scales. In particular, in the model we
distinguish between processes along the market, the innovation, institutional
time scale. Due to its analytical structure and versatility, the model could
potentially provide an integrative platform for various branches of the social
sciences and natural sciences providing new insights into global governance
issues that are consistent along different scale of aggregation and time.
The general theory is then
applied to a specific case of strategic interaction in a multiple stage
cooperate game structure mimicking the ToC problem of global climate change
given fat tailed endogenous impact functions. Preliminary results indicate
that anticipation and early commitment to mitigation are necessary conditions
supplementing adaptation options.
Philippa
Shepherd, James Tansey and Hadi Dowlatabadi
Title: Adaptation in response to
multiple stressors in the Okanagan region of British Columbia
This paper examines the process
of adaptation in the context of water management in a semi-arid region of
British Columbia. Four “early adopter” case studies of water management
practises at the local authority level were selected for the study. Each has
adopted a different water efficiency approach: domestic metering, irrigation
metering, wastewater reclamation and regionalisation. The ecology, quality and
quantity of water resources in the Okanagan are under growing stress from many
pressures, including population growth, intensification of irrigated
agriculture, tourism/recreation activities, logging at higher elevations and
in the foreseeable future climatic change.
While the goal is to inform the
literature on climate change adaptation, the study assumes firstly that local
practices emerge in response to multiple stressors and secondly that action
and inaction in response to currently identified problems can affect
vulnerability to more long-term climate change and variability. The study
utilised a key informant approach to examine the factors influencing the
initiation, implementation and outcome of untapped water efficiency management
interventions, such as demand-side management, at the municipal scale within
the region. The objectives were:
To explore the adaptation
process under multiple stresses in order to understand what adaptation
involves, what triggers adaptive action and influences success and failure,
and whether current institutional structures and values are adequate to allow
for adaptation to occur effectively. Secondary objectives include analysing
the effectiveness of the four management practises and exploring the role of
learning in the adaptation process. Building on the results of this study, we
outline the critical linkages to the wider literature on climate change
adaptation and social learning.
Barry Smit
Department of Geography,
University of Guelph, Guelph, Ont., Canada, N1G 2W1
Title: Adaptation to
Climate-related Risks in the Context of Development
The vulnerability of communities
to climate change is related both to their exposure to climatic and other
stimuli and to the capacity of the communities to cope with hazardous
conditions. This conceptualization of vulnerability is consistent with much
work on hazards, disaster management, community resilience and sustainable
community development. This model leads to an approach to enhancing adaptive
capacity that starts with community-based assessments of vulnerability. This
approach is illustrated for the case of southwest Bangladesh, Aitutaki in the
South Pacific, and Canadian agriculture. Climate change is seen as directly
relevant to the communities, and adaptation is "mainstreamed" as part of
on-going resource management, risk management, and sustainabale development
activities.
Eric Taylor
C-CIARN
National Coordinator; Natural Resources Canada; Ottawa, Ontario
K1A OE8
Eric.Taylor@NRCan.gc.ca
Title:
The Government of Canada's Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Program
The issues of impacts and adaptation are relatively new to both the scientific
and stakeholder communities in Canada. Because of this, relevant impacts and
adaptation research findings are often not well communicated to stakeholders,
even though they are making decisions that have long-term implications.
Conversely, stakeholders have limited input into defining impacts and
adaptation research questions that are relevant to their field. This research
must also, of necessity, draw upon information generated from stakeholders
both locally and on larger scales to provide useful results. To help address
these concerns, the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network
(C-CIARN) has recently been developed. C-CIARN helps to build communication
links between researchers and decision makers. It strives to identify impacts
and adaptation research questions of importance to stakeholders. It
encourages collaborative research projects that cross disciplines and include
stakeholder involvement. Increasing awareness of impacts and adaptation
issues is a key priority of the network. C-CIARN uses an innovative approach
to do this work. It distributes its workload through a set of thirteen
coordinating offices across Canada that represent six Regions and seven
Sectors or themes.
David S G Thomas and Chasca Twyman
Department of Geography,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN UK,
and the Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change Research
d.s.thomas@shef.ac.uk,
c.twyman@shef.ac.uk,
http://www.shef.ac.uk/adaptive
Title: Equity in climate
change adaptation amongst natural-resource dependant societies
Issues of equity and justice are
high on international agendas dealing with the impacts of global climate
change. But what are the implications of climate change for equity and justice
amongst vulnerable groups at local and sub-national levels? We ask this
question for three reasons: a) there is a considerable literature suggesting
that the poorest and most vulnerable groups will disproportionately experience
the negative effects of 21st century climate change; b) such changes are
likely to impact significantly on developing world countries, where
natural-resource dependency is high; and c) international conventions
increasingly recognise the need to centrally engage resource stakeholders in
agendas in order to achieve their desired aims, as part of more holistic
approaches to sustainable development. These issues however have implications
for distributive and procedural justice, particularly when considered within
the efforts of the UNFCCC.
We explore these issues first
through looking, via case studies, at ways in which livelihoods are
differentially impacted by i) inequitable natural resource use policies and
ii) community-based natural resource management programmes in southern Africa.
The central elements of these policy and programme inputs to natural resource
use and their outcomes lead us to consider issues of who benefits, who loses,
and why. Second, we consider new research investigating how natural resource
dependant communities cope with and manage the stresses of climate change and
variability, and how formal and informal institutions may facilitate or hinder
proactive and reactive coping strategies. Finally we consider the placement of
climate change amongst the package of factors affecting equity in natural
resource use, and whether this placement creates a case for considering
climate change as ‘special’ amongst livelihood disturbing factors in the
developing world.
Alexander Thompson
Department of Political
Science- Ohio State University
Title: A Climate for Change:
Uncertainty and Flexibility in the Kyoto Regime
Working from the premise that
states rationally design international institutions, recent international
relations scholarship has sought to explain important institutional features
as responses to specific cooperation problems. This paper looks at the use of
flexibility in the Kyoto regime as a mechanism for overcoming the most
important barrier to cooperation in the area of climate change, uncertainty.
It links specific aspects of uncertainty to specific sources of flexibility.
One conclusion is that many of the perceived weaknesses of the regime are in
fact reasonable solutions to difficult cooperation challenges. The empirical
approach improves on rationalist studies of institutions that look only at the
institutional outcome as evidence that their theory is correct (the features
of the institution are assumed to have been rationally chosen as the models
predict). The paper offers evidence on the actual decision making and
negotiations—during meetings in The Hague, Bonn, Marrakesh and New Delhi—that
led to the institution’s creation, thus directly linking hypotheses regarding
institutional design to the choices made by its creators.
B. L. Turner
Click Here for
Presentation
Kenneth R. Young
and Jennifer Lipton
Department of Geography,
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712.
kryoung@mail.utexas.edu,
jenlipton@mail.utexas.edu
Title: Tropical Andean Climate
Change: Implications for Agriculture, Biodiversity, and their Respective
Institutions
Many decisions must
be made in relation to ongoing and future climate change in the highlands of
the tropical Andes. Mountain glaciers there have been retreating the last two
decades and it is now apparent that ecological zones are shifting
altitudinally. This presents challenges for biodiversity conservation because
plant and animal species will likely shift their distributions and the
national park and nature reserve systems will need to be reevaluated
accordingly. Protected areas with little elevational variation would need to
be increased in size or connected to others using conservation corridors.
Similarly, as ecological zonation and precipitation regimes alter, the
agricultural and pastoral systems in the Andes will be affected. For example,
the location and nature of hazard-prone areas will change. Crop mixes,
yields, preferred varieties, and planting and harvesting dates might all need
to shift. Increased conflicts over use of resources such as water derived
from glaciers are predictable. In addition, there are complex feedbacks to be
expected between land use and changes in biophysical factors. For example,
greater productivity of high elevation vegetation due to warmer temperatures
and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide might convince local people to
increase stocking and extraction rates. Institutional flexibility to deal
with these changes already exists in some Andean land use systems, especially
for those that self-moderate their extractive pressures through social
mechanisms. This may not be the case for the national institutions working on
agriculture and for biodiversity conservation, which tend to take regional,
agglomerative approaches not attuned to local nuances. Perhaps the
increasingly global way that local and national institutions interact with
their peers elsewhere offers one possible solution by facilitating more and
better interchange of information and ideas.
C. Carraro, R. Gerlagh, and B. van der Zwaan (2003) “Endogenous technical
change in environmental macroeconomics,” Resource and Energy Economics,
25(1), 1-10.
