HELPING COMMUNITIES AND ECOSYSTEMS ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

THE PROBLEM

Along with addressing the emissions gap to reduce the rate of temperature change and climate change impacts, there is also an urgent need to decrease the adaptation gap and to reduce the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to the effects of climate change. International efforts to support adaptation have been increasing in the past years, but several challenges remain when attempting to up-scale adaptation efforts in developing countries. Barriers include limited access to financing, capacity, and knowledge to support adaptation planning and action.

THE SOLUTION

To meet this challenge, UNEP helps build capacity among governments and communities for planning and implementing adaptation actions. UNEP’s approach towards building climate resilience focuses on a range of support services
These services include:

• Supporting research, pilot projects, and other activities that demonstrate how vulnerability to climate change can be reduced through Ecosystem- Based Adaptation (EBA) approaches, which can also contribute to closing the emissions gap through carbon sequestration
• Strengthening the ability of countries to undertake vulnerability and impact assessments
• Providing countries with knowledge, tools, and policy support for adaptation decision-making, planning and implementation
• Improving access to adaptation finance and supporting finance readiness, particularly among Least Developed Countries

THE IMPACTS

Ecosystem-Based Adaptation is a key approach and focus area of UNEP’s overall adaptation portfolio. In this regard, UNEP is working closely with the governments of Nepal, Peru and Uganda to demonstrate EBA in mountain ecosystems and to incorporate EBA in adaptation plans. Implementation of a project on coastal ecosystems in selected Small Island States supported by the European Commission (EC) will begin in 2013. Exchanges of adaptation knowledge, good practices and capacity building through climate change networks are progressing well in Asia Pacific, Latin America and West Asia, with a focus on vulnerability and impact assessments, training and knowledge-sharing workshops, and development of online knowledge management tools.
UNEP is supporting countries to design and implement adaptation projects (with a focus on EBA), under the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Adaptation Fund. Implementation has now started for Adaptation Fund projects in Tanzania, Madagascar and Cambodia. UNEP also recently supported Paraguay to develop an Adaptation Fund proposal.

SUPPORT

Key donors (selected): Germany, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Japan, EC, Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), Adaptation Fund. Key partners (selected): International Union for Conservation of Nature, United Nations Development Programme.

WEBSITE

• www.unep.org/climatechange/adaptation

SUCCESS STORY

UNEP is collaborating with UNDP and IUCN with the support of the German ministry of environment on a joint programme to implement EBA approaches in mountain ecosystems in Nepal, Peru and Uganda. Countries are supported in maintaining and restoring the functioning of ecosystems to provide adaptation services, and in strengthening in-country capacity to implement adaptation actions. Local communities, national government agencies and other actors are closely in involved in the implementation through action-learning and capacity building activities.
UNEP-supported LDCF adaptation projects are starting to deliver results on the ground, for example in Djibouti, where mangroves have been rehabilitated to reduce coastal erosion and floods from sea level rise.
In order to assist national planners and decision-makers select, design, implement and track EBA approaches as part of a wider adaptation strategy, UNEP together with partners has developed a new ‘EBA Decision Support Framework’ (EBA-DSF) draft guidance document. The EBA-DSF centers around four iterative steps and strategic considerations: Setting Adaptive Context – Selecting Appropriate Adaptation Options – Design for Change – Adaptive Implementation. The EBA-DSF is being transformed into a capacity building platform to support the implementation of National Adaptation Programmes of Actions and other adaptation actions. Next steps include the pilot testing and refinement of the framework, as well as the development of practical modules for monitoring & evaluation and community-based adaptation, ecosystem-specific modules, and related training packages.

Source: Re-blogged from http://www.unep.org

Help Save The Earth, There Is No Life Elsewhere

Melting Polar Ice Caps - A Reason To Worry

It should be first noted there is a technical definition of an icecap and the colloquial one; a true icecap is a mass of ice less than 50 thousand square kilometers, while the polar icecaps are much larger than this. However, one will assume the question refers to the total ice mass on the surface of Earth, as melting of the polar caps would necessitate melting of all others.

To begin with, there are currently 30 million cubic kilometers of ice mass on Earth; from using density values, this is equivalent to 27 million cubic kilometers of liquid water.

Earth currently has 361 million square kilometers of surface area in oceans, and 149 million square kilometers in 'land' area, for a total of 510 square kilometers. The source is not clear whether this is the equivalent flat area (i.e. if Earth were a perfect spheroid) or if this is the true area, including raised and uneven terrain.

So, if we only consider the ocean and consider the rise this would present, we are working out the depth 27 million km3 would make over 361 million km2.
From these numbers, simple division tells us the sea level would rise by 27/361 = 74.8 meters beyond its current value.

No information could be obtained regarding the elevation of the Empire State Building; however, assuming it stands at 50 meters above sea level and a 4 meter average storey height, we end up with the sixth floor being new sea level.

The main ice covered landmass is Antarctica at the South Pole, with about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). Antarctica is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

At the other end of the world, the North Pole, the ice is not nearly as thick as at the South Pole. The ice floats on the Arctic Ocean. If it melted sea levels would not be affecte­d.

There is a significant amount of ice covering Greenland, which would add another 7 meters (20 feet) to the oceans if it melted. Because Greenland is closer to the equator than Antarctica, the temperatures there are higher, so the ice is more likely to melt.

NASA finds that thickest parts of Ice Caps are melting faster. This ice is generally called as old ice which is actually formed by ice that has survived at least two summers.
Read Here : http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/thick-melt.html

Melting Ice caps not just affect humans but the entire earth in general. Penguins, polar bears, whales, seals and dozens of other animals who are inhabitants of these polar regions. Imagine. these animals migrating to human colonies to find food and causing chaos. Our greed not just affects us but the entire planet in general.

There is a complete life chain that runs on polar regions. Polar bears, polar foxes, penguins, whales, seals and other creatures. If we disturb them they will disturb us.

Help Save The Earth, There Is No Life Elsewhere

Source:
http://wiki.answers.com
http://science.howstuffworks.com
http://www.nasa.gov

Global Warming's Rising Threat to the Paradise(Soon to be Lost) of the Maldives

Is the Maldives, a country of about 1,200 coral islets and 400,000 people in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka, living on borrowed time? Is it likely to be wiped off the face of the earth in another 40 years, engulfed by seas rising from the effects of global warming?

I’m sure there are people — politicians, businessmen, even scientists — who’d ridicule this notion and the very idea of global warming, but for the Maldives, one of the world’s smallest nations, the fear is almost mortal. The country feels it’s living in the very jaws of death and has pleaded with the world, on many occasions, to come to its rescue.

In 1992, speaking at the UN Earth Summit, the then Maldives’ president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom declared his fear of doom in these words: “I stand before you as a representative of an endangered people. We are told that, as a result of global warming and sea-level rise, my country, the Maldives, may sometime during the next century disappear from the face of the earth.”

In late 2007, at the UN climate change meeting in Bali, Gayoom sounded desperate. “Over half of our islands,” he said, “are eroding at an alarming rate. In some cases, island communities have had to be relocated to safer islands. Without immediate action, the long-term habitation of our tiny islands is in serious doubt.”

But behind these frantic pleas is a growing realisation that action by the global community just isn’t round the corner. The Maldives was the first country to sign the Kyoto protocol to fight global warming, but others haven’t quite shared its enthusiasm. So it has decided to take matters in its own hands and do whatever it can to the best of its ability.

Its immediate goal is to become a fully carbon-neutral country by 2020, switching from fossil fuel to 100 per cent renewable energy sources. It’s thinking of a mix of wind turbines and rooftop solar panels, plus power plants burning nothing but coconut husks. Its long-term goal is to save up enough to buy a new homeland elsewhere and relocate its entire population before the crunch comes.

While carbon neutrality isn’t difficult to achieve, how feasible is the idea of a new homeland? The Maldives’ new president, Mohamed Nasheed, says the savings are to come mainly from revenues earned from tourism. They could. Tourism is a major segment of the Maldives’ economy, accounting for over 30 per cent of its GDP, and the more than 600,000 tourists who visit every year are mostly high-spenders and long-stayers.

But where does one find an alternative homeland for an entire nation? It won’t be easy to find an island that’s high and safe and uninhabited or that’s not a nation already or part of a nation. And though the Maldives has held relocation talks with Sri Lanka, India, and Australia, would any country want to carve out a part of its territory and sell it to another?

Perhaps, the Maldives should start looking for a solution that’s more practical and pertinent. The basis for such a solution already exists in the form of an artificial island that’s being built just off the country’s main inhabited island of Male. It’s called Hulhumale, or New Male, and many consider it a smart answer to the Maldives’ problem of survival.

The Maldives is nowhere more than six feet above the sea level, and seas rising from a global snowmelt could easily swamp it. Memories are still fresh of the devastating 1987 floods that submerged most of Male and the December 2004 tsunami, when 53 of the country’s 199 inhabited islands suffered severe damage — 20 were totally destroyed, and 19 of its 87 luxury resorts were badly mauled.

After the 1987 floods, a frantic government responded by erecting a concrete sea wall against the waves, which now rings Male. However, since the concrete tetrapods can only soften the blow and not thwart the surges altogether, the government also began, in 1997, to build Hulhumale as an alternative refuge several feet higher than the existing height of the rest of the country.

Hulhumale, about four times the size of Male, is actually a shallow lagoon being filled with sand dredged from the ocean floor. Its straight, wide streets, modern apartments, and more than basic facilities have already attracted several thousand people to move there. More are willing to follow to escape from Male’s congestion.

For the Maldives living in fear of doom, this is a possible way out. There are other shallow lagoons in the island chain where more Hulhumales could be built, if needed, to protect its people and economy. It’s going to be costly, no doubt, but at least it makes more sense than looking to buy a new homeland, and the UN, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank might be called upon to help.

Source: business-standard.com