Number of questions: [16]
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Posted on 29/01/2008 17:29:00 |
Dear Expert,
I am a M. Sc. Student in environmental engineering & partime employee of a national NGO working with community in the climate change adaptation, natural disaster & environment. During my work with them, I feel that there is no alternative way to adapt the climate change locally. I want to know you what are those factors that influence the community based climate change adaptation for the most risky under developed country like Bangladesh.
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Md. Maruful Hqoue (from Bangladesh)
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Thank you for the question.
Community based adaptation is site (ecosystem) specific. There are a lot of factors influence the choices of adaptation. The top two I would think of are knowledge and capacity. Knowledge includes adequate weather and climate information and their projections, moden and traditional knowledge of coping with extreme events such as flood and technology that are available to apply to any adaptation activities such as drainage or water-saving technologies. Capacity include the people's educational level, access to finance, preparedness, infrastructure, etc with which they can tackle the expected or sometimes unexpected climate change impacts.
Bangladesh is obviously a vulnerable country suffering quite a lot of floods with heavy losses of lives and livelihoods. Your work is really important and I wish you all the best.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 16:07:25 |
Dear Dr. Jian Liu
I am a pedologist with expertise in landscape to global scale carbon cycle and geomorphology. I am also hoping to use my expertise for the welfare of developing countries.
As a director of the new unit, Climate Change Adaptation, what are you planning to advise/promote the participation of scientists like me?
Thanks, and I wish all the best for the success of the new unit.
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Kyungsoo Yoo (from United States of America)
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Thank you Mr. Yoo for your dedication to our efforts to contain climate change.
I think it is now a critical time for scientists worldwide to work together, and with not only policy makers but planners and practioners on the ground to tackle the adverse impact of climate change. Of course there are a lot of issues such as carbon sequestration in the soil and good land management which needs intellectual input from soil scientists. One of our initiatives will be to develop a world wide network of experts to draw their knowledge and technology that are already available to serve the adaptation needs of people from developing countries esp least developed countries.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 15:56:41 |
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Climate change is such a convoluted problem and adaptation will undoubtedly require dealings not only with scientific/technological issues, but also economical, political, as well as educational ones. As Chief of the UNEP’s Climate Change Adaptation Unit, what will be your priorities and what do you think your biggest challenges may be?
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Yan Jin (from United States of America)
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Thank you for this big question which has been with me since I was appointed.
Our priorities are very much dependent on the needs and priorities from developing countries especially least developed countries and their peoples. If we take a look at the global landscape, obviouly the most vulnerable regions like Africa, Small Island Developing States, south Asia should be given prority. Of course UNEP is only one of the major players of the whole UN system and we should work together to ensure that adaptation efforts really take on the challenges of sustainable development which addresses concerns of both long-term and short term, development and enviroment.
The challenges ahead of us is enormous. It needs efforts all countries and several generations. UNEP is prepared to work with governments and organizations to tackle them, but not to be expected overnight.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 14:08:32 |
dear prof,
to what extend do you belive that global warming is only going to exacerbate the climatic problems associated with urban living?
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john (from United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
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Global warming impacts the global and all sectors and areas of the globe. Urban living is one of the sectors which has to preapre to adapt, but it is not the only one.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 13:58:08 |
Dear Prof.,
Facing with more and more serious environmental crisis, as a senior offical working at UN, what should be taken to prevent or lessen the worsening of
global climate? Additionally, in China, many local or even senior officals obtain
higher GDP at the cost of environment, thus resulting in the worsening of
environment. From your angel, how to obtain a balance between the
economic development and sustainable development? Presently, In China,
a terrible disaster from snowing is coming at us, which, perhaps, is a great
punishment from nature. It is high time that we take effective measure to give our
earth a recovery, as a global govermental organization, what contributions can be done to take human out of the trouble?
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Ren Anshu (from China (People's Republic of ))
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The international community is taking great efforts to contain the challenge of global worming. Governments have worked together and identified 4 building blocks to fight climate change, mitigation (of Greenhouse Gases), adaptation (to impacts of climate change), financing and technology transfer.
For your information, the government of China has unveiled last year a national strategy to combat climate change which is welcomed by the UN. The key component of that strategy is increase energy use efficiency and reduce carbon emission, as well as adaptation, technology and market mechanisms.
UNEP is the principal UN body in the field of environment and has extensive mandate to combat climate change. We will assist developing country governments thru providing our knowledge and technical support as well as capacity building in their efforts to fight climate change, their mitigation and adaptation efforts.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 13:54:26 |
Sir
How to control / manage climate change due to agriculture in developing countries
without affecting food security ?
Prof.K.Jeevan rao
Hyderbad
India
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jeevan rao kalvakuntla (from India)
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Thanks for the question.
Food security is the primary concern of developing countries which should not be compromised or denied. Good practices in agricultural sector however can contribute to reduce carbon emission from agricultural sector such as zero-tillage and other land use practices. This is what we call sustainable agriculture.
Of course agriculture is also a vulnerable sector subject to climate change impacts, such as increased water scarcity, and for that we have to prepare to adapt, with measures such as water harvesting and other water-saving technologies, anti-drought species etc.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 13:15:12 |
Dear Jian Liu,
Given the challenges of natural resources scarcity and use of wood as a source of energy mostly in rural areas coupled with pausity of financial resources and weak capacity to overcome these challenges, developing countries are facing problems in devising appropriate adoptation strategies in line with international standards. In view thereof, what in your openion are the options to overcome these challenges.
Regards,
Dr. Muhammad Khurshid
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Muhammad Khurshid (from Pakistan)
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Thank you for this question.
Sound adaptation strategy should be able to save lives (in extreme weather events), secure livelihoods and life supporting systems in the long-run. It should also cover both development and environment concerns and integrated into sustainable planning process. Of course for most developing countries, poor people are confronted with inaccessibility of natural resources, lack of financial resources and deterioration of ecosystems. And on top of that climate change impacts increasingly on the existing challenges as you described.
In the dilemma of conserving forest verses producing firewoods, I think the international society should provide extra aid in addition to normal development fund to cover the cost of maintaining the forest which can be regarded as an ecosystem service for carbon sequestration, and for which the rights of survival of the local people must be well acknowledged. This is reflected now in the international efforts called REDD (Reduced Emission (of CO2) from Deforestation and Degradation).
A good adaptation strategy should be include the key components such as knowledge/technology and adaptative capacity building. Although impacts of cliamte change are unevenly distributed, but there are no indiscriminate between developing and developed worlds. And in this case, knowledge which enable you to prepare and adaptative capacity which enable you to respond really matter.
If I can oversimply the rather complicated challenges for developing countries to cope with the adverse impacts of cliamte change, we need to tap the global potential of knowledge networks and available technologies, need to integrate adaptation into sustainable development planning and most importantly to increase the adaptive capacity of both these governments and local communities.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 11:10:09 |
Dear Prof,
The global communities are very concern on consumerism, carbon emission and other causal agents...however, the global population rise, family fragmentation with related drivers and the adaptation processes are continuing but they were never in the global agenda. There has been adaptation process
I request for your perception in this regard!
Nakul Chettri
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Nakul Chettri (from Nepal)
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Thank you for this interesting question.
Actually, I would say the importance of adaptation has been taken to the international stage gradually. The world has realised that even if the most serious measures are taken to reduce carbon emission, temperate and sea level rise will have to unfortunately continue for centuries and the impacts will be there as well. This conclusion by world leading scientists represented by the IPCC supported the UN agreement to put adaptation as one of the building blocks, together with mitigation, finance and technology, to combat climate change. I think it is fare to say that the international community has come to the consensus that adaptation is essential and is a must to fight climate change, which particularly true in developing world.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 10:21:31 |
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During our times we all are concerned about major changes in weather patterns leading to climate change debate and mitigation, I am concerned about the impact on gene flow mechanisms, pollination services and pollinator friendly environment which is changeing rapidly. Recent hikes in the prices of agricultural commodities are also being attributed to some extent to pollination failures. Bee populations all over the world are on decline. My question is that what UNEP and other international organizations are doing to assist countries and researchers to focus on this issue for the the development of pollinator friendly technologies.
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Farooq Ahmad (from Pakistan)
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Bee-keeping is an important source of income for the poor people, and of course the world needs adequate supply of honey.
Polination is the key component of the production chain and the process is adversely impacted by climate change. Polination is also an important service provided by the ecosystems not only for honey production, but also for sustaining certain species. UNEP will work with sister agencies such as ICIMOD and CGIAR and governments, through ecosystem management approach and promoting research, technology transfer and application of adaptive species and technologies, to assist poor countries to cope with the challenge.
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Posted on 29/01/2008 09:28:18 |
Dear Professor,
When people talk about climate change, they intend to think immediately of global warming. When country governments and UN organisations discuss new strategies to tackle with climate change, they seem to have more focus on mitigation e.g. reduction of emmision.
As a Rangeland Specialist working in mountain areas, however, I see the declining trend of tempreture in spring and autumn on high altitudes especially on the Tibetan Plateau. In the mean time, there isslight increase of tempreture in winter months, with less but more intensive precipitation in summer. These facts and trends have indeed created harsher living condition for mountain people especially the pastoralists, who entirely or partialy depend their livelihood on natural grass (forage) growing, with longer winter, shorter grass growing period, and drier environment (less precipitation and increased evaporation in warmer winter).
To my knowledge, there are little efforts made in documenting climate change and its impacts to mountain people and their adaptable innovations as yet. As the new Chief of the UNEP Climate Change Adaptation Unit, how would you envisage to fill in this gap and to take more care of mountain people? Thank you!
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Zhaoli Yan (from Nepal)
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Many thanks for the information and the question.
When we talk about the adverse impacts of climate change, our immediate images are the flood in lowland areas and the drought in Sub-Saheran Africa. The impacts on mountain people are not often as visible. The IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report has identified many vulnerable areas and sectors, and mountain is one of the most vulnerable. This has turned an used-to-be hidden crisis for the mountain people into apparent challenge for the international community.
I think it is fair to say that mountain people contributed the least to the climate change but suffer the most of its impact, together with vulnerable people in other parts of the developing world, and they deserve a moral support to overcome the plights exerted by climate change. Of course the entry point for such an effort is to start monitoring and documenting these impacts, and project the future impacts and prepare for them. Using the exisiting ground stations to monitor the process is one way, but the most important things is to interpret the collected information thru research into knowledge and than policy language to support government policy setting and planning process. As far as local community is concerned, the ground stations (for e.g. ecosystem management) can demonstrate to them how to really adapt to the impacts such as too much or too little water, too high or too low a temperature, by devising the up-to-date knowledge and technology as well as indigenous knowledge in an integrated way.
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