From Inderscience Publishers and United Nations University:
Loss and damage from climate change
Despite attempts at adaption losses and damage from climate change are significant
An open access special issue of the International Journal of Global Warming brings together, for the first time, empirical evidence of loss and damage from the perspective of affected people in nine vulnerable countries. The articles in this special issue show how climatic stressors affect communities, what measures households take to prevent loss and damage, and what the consequences are when they are unable to adjust sufficiently. The guest-editors, Kees van der Geest and Koko Warner of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany, introduce the special issue with an overview of key findings from the nine research papers, all of which are available online free of charge.
‘Loss and damage’ refers to adverse effects of climate variability and climate change that occur despite mitigation and adaptation efforts. Warner and van der Geest discuss the loss and damage incurred by people at the local-level based on evidence from research teams working in nine vulnerable countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal. The research papers pool data from 3269 household surveys and more than 200 focus groups and expert interviews.
The research reveals four loss and damage pathways. Residual impacts of climate stressors occur when:
- existing coping/adaptation to biophysical impact is not enough;
- measures have costs (including non-economic) that cannot be regained;
- despite short-term merits, measures have negative effects in the longer term; or
- no measures are adopted – or possible – at all.
The articles in this special issue provide evidence that loss and damage happens simultaneously with efforts by people to adjust to climatic stressors. The evidence illustrates loss and damage around barriers and limits to adaptation: growing food and livelihood insecurity, unreliable water supplies, deteriorating human welfare and increasing manifestation of erosive coping measures (e.g. eating less, distress sale of productive assets to buy food, reducing the years of schooling for children, etc.). These negative impacts touch upon people’s welfare and health, social cohesion, culture and identity – values that contribute to the functioning of society but which elude monetary valuation.
The publication of this set of research papers is very timely as loss and damage will be a key topic during the climate negotiations in Warsaw next month (11-22 November 2013), and empirical evidence is still scarce. The findings also contribute to the emerging body of literature on adaptation limits and constraints, a topic that – for the first time – is discussed in a separate chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 2 (IPCC AR5 WG2).
The issues that have arisen through this research point to an even greater urgency for ambitious mitigation and adaptation that are sufficient to manage climate stressors. If this goal is missed, loss and damage will undermine society´s ability to pursue sustainable development.
“The special issue of the International Journal of Global Warming focuses on a crucial topic: ‘Loss and damage’ which refers to adverse effects of climate variability and climate change that occur despite mitigation and adaptation efforts,” Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Dincer of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology says. The issue reports on the first ever multi-country study on this emerging topic from the perspective of vulnerable communities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The research papers included show that current mitigation and adaptation efforts are not enough. People across the study sites were not passive victims of climate change. A large majority implemented a wide variety of adaptation and coping measures to avoid impacts of climate stressors, but these measures were often insufficient or came at a cost. The negative effects were not simply monetary, there were cultural losses and non-economic costs, in terms of time investment, social-cohesion and livelihood security, were also widespread. “IJGW positions itself uniquely by addressing the issue and offering solutions,” Dincer adds.
“Loss and damage from climate change: local-level evidence from nine vulnerable countries” in Int. J. Global Warming, 2013, 5, 367-386
In the interests of enhancing global discussions of critical and urgent issues arising from climate change now, the research papers are being made available by Inderscience Publishers free of charge to all readers at the following link:
http://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticletoc.php?jcode=ijgw&year=2013&vol=5&issue=4
Loss and damage from climate change: local-level evidence from nine vulnerable countries
Koko Warner; Kees Van der Geest
DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2013.057289
Abstract: Loss and damage is already a significant consequence of inadequate
ability to adapt to changes in climate patterns. This paper reports on the first
ever multi-country, evidence-based study on loss and damage from the
perspective of affected people in least developed and other vulnerable
countries. Researchers in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the
Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal conducted household
surveys (n=3,269) and more than a hundred focus group discussions and open
interviews about loss and damage. The research reveals four loss and damage
pathways. Residual impacts of climate stressors occur when: 1) existing
coping/adaptation to biophysical impact is not enough; 2) measures have costs
(including non-economic) that cannot be regained; 3) despite short-term merits,
measures have negative effects in the longer term; or 4) no measures are
adopted – or possible – at all.
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Another BS report.
Completerly OT-
You have to do a post on the UK hiding the comparison of nuclear to renewables!
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/10/uk-government-hides-its-own-graphic-comparing-nuclear-to-wind-and-solar/
Adapting to energy poverty caused by carbon strangulation doesn’t seem to appear among their ‘stressors’.
Translation: “Gimme, gimme.”
Wow – more junk. Perhaps those “brilliant” researchers might want to mention all the wars, the insurgencies, over population, Sharia laws, poor to thuggish governments, lack of to no education, rural moving into city life, or any of a host of problems associated with each of these countries. These people are desperate to prove the craziest junk – that is sick.
This is a step towards mandating climate change insurance. It echoes the steps made by Obama and other countries that have mandated health insurance. Create the data that says damage and loss is out of control and leads to unfair harm to some but not to others. Therefore the world powers need to mandate climate change insurance to control and distribute the costs associated with said damage and loss.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal. Most of these nations are basketcases. Several barely meet the definition of a state in the modern European sense. How can one sift out the effect of climate from the usual bedlam and calamity which befalls them?
It’s getting harder and harder to convince myself that higher academic institutions provide a net benefit to the planet. Of course, this is the UN, so they provide a leading indicator for lowering standards.
OMG. Now we’ve descended from climate models to social models. All completely unencumbered by any messy data and totally untainted by reality.
Further study is emphatically not required or desired!
Is this also available in English? I did not understand a thing.
GlynnMhor says:
October 25, 2013 at 12:04 pm
Adapting to energy poverty caused by carbon strangulation doesn’t seem to appear among their ‘stressors’.
_________________________________________________________________________
What stressors? Sudden and abrupt climate change such as the next ice age coming in 4 weeks? The evidence is that these folks seem to have survived climate changing over many centuries, which implies that they will very likely survive the climate changing over the next few centuries. They would do much better if they didn’t have to cope with things like artificial energy poverty brought about first world do-gooders.
Fortunately, this really isn’t science so when I’m skeptical I can’t be anti-science. Focus groups, household survey’s and experts being interviewed. This is science worthy of peer-reviews publication? BS
I wonder if their inability is affected by their lack of food which some of us are burning for food and their lack of affordable electrical power?
Makes one go “Hmmm…”.
This is not science, it is policy advocacy.
”The central research question was as follows:
So, they might as well say: we’re not looking at this as objective scientists, we’re looking to use this to advocate for carbon dioxide mitigation.
Suspicion confirmed in “conclusion”:
”Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions (strong influence on all pathways to loss and damage). Success in avoiding situations in which society faces loss and damage –particularly under pathway 4b – depends on appropriately ambitious mitigation decisions today.”
How about that; if we don’t act now it’ll be super bad. Sounds worse than a used car salesman.
Of course, you can use “science” to build a case for almost anything (like banning water), that’s not persuasive in the least and actually has the opposite effect of you losing all credibility as an objective evaluator of evidence.
http://www.dhmo.org/
http://blogs.plos.org/models/climate-scientists-must-not-advocate-particular-policies/
Recently back from Manila, again, which isn’t to bad on the main roads, has some lovely buildings and an American Memorial cemetery that is hauntingly wistful about the sacrifice the US made in the Pacific War. In its way as lovely as Changi in Singapore
But go down an alley, and it is Third World; mothers in their mid-twenties with five – perhaps more – children; drainage trying to do the job of ten drains; electric wires on poles; derelict buildings next to sky-scrapers; litter almost everywhere.
Manila is crowded.
How crowded? It’s the size of Singapore, which is home to about seven million people. Add the population of London – 10-13 million, depending on who’s counting (illegal immigrants – barely a dozen . . . .); plus sundry Valladolid, Beziers, Karlsruhe, and Sfax. Manila is 21-23 million.
The people – that I met – were lovely.
But the systems of governance [I got that word from Harold Wilson] are barely functional on a good day.
So –
The guest-editors, Kees van der Geest and Koko Warner, could get out more – looking at the quoted Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal – not one of which approaches the Philippines in general development in my [limited] experience: –
Kenya a couple of times.
Mozambique – a friend worked there four or more years ago.
A friend of the wife is from Nepal.
– plus I read the press and the Internet.
In the quoted countries anything could happen, and you can attribute it to, well, more or less any proximal cause – and a shed-load of indirect causes.
‘Climate change’ – but – the climate always changes!
Auto
Oh, my bad assumptions makes bad research:
and all the analysis was:
Loss and damage are all from climate change = extreme weather events
The above table quote was for country local climate-event loss-type
“The publication of this set of research papers is very timely as loss and damage will be a key topic during the climate negotiations in Warsaw next month..”
Very timely as usual for these politically targeted papers. Tropical temperatures haven’t changed. Globally, the temps since 1890 (?) have increased 0.7C (assisted with ~ half of this in the form of step increments in adjustment) – all due to rises in temperate and polar zones, the latter the most.
This is a cynical paper. The damage being done to 3rd World countries lies in food costs not insignificantly contributed to by green/UN policies of burning of food grain for fuel, by withholding funds (World Bank, EU, etc.) for building of cheap fossil fueled power to these countries, and other ways denying this vulnerable sector the potential to industrialize.
Shame, shame
Wealth and liberty, which go together and liberty goes first, are the keys to adapting to just about anything the environment throws. As other commenters noted, the “vulnerable” countries are all poor and all oligarchies, dictatorships, or close enough you can’t tell the difference. With or without climate and weather issues, they are desperately in need of Vitamin L, followed by Vitamin D(evelopment).
Lack of low cost, abundant energy sources would seem to be the largest ‘stressor’ for most populations that find themselves struggling to adapt to changes in the short and long term weather effects. Abundant, low cost energy makes acquisition of clean water, clothing, shelter, food, and sanitation much easier. The vagaries of Life et.al. are sooooo much easier to adapt to, when energy is readily available and easily affordable.
The article is an overt political setup piece for the wealth redistribution and sustainable development agendas embedded in the UN. They selected anecdotal incidents that they construed to be caused by AGW (without evidence-based support) and drew the conclusions they desired to support their bifurcated agenda.
This
Loss and damage from climate change: local-level evidence from nine vulnerable countries
Koko Warner; Kees Van der Geest DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2013.057289
is a political document, not a scientific document.
MtK
Wut. So let’s assume all the worst apocalyptica of AGW. Then, by the current trends that we counterfactually extend to infinity and beyond. This paper is predicated on the ‘inadequacy’ of people to adjust to annual temperature trend identical to one between, just about 2 and 3 in the afternoon. And 3 and 4. And another pair at night.
That despite this, they are inadequately prepared, because, after a heap o’ centuries of infinite progression, they will be inable to cope with a temperature difference between the now when they’re alive and the then when they are so far dead that we’re into carbon dating their corpses. The same temperature variation that occurs…. twice per day.
Nevermind, any notion of the correctness of anything regarding climate. The inadequacy of people in dealing with these issues is not because they’re unprepared. It’s because they’re inadequately immortal.
“The guest-editors, Kees van der Geest and Koko Warner of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany”
After the departure of the BRD government to Berlin following the reunification, Bonn became host city for all UN and globalist organisations including those that want to create the worldwide caliphate.
The town has really descended full scale into madness.
How many of these people are the victims of weather as opposed to climate? How can you tell the difference?
What if you held the same surveys and interviews in 1949, people would still have more or less the same problems – the weather?
These problems have been with us for donkey’s years, yet the world has never been better off. People in developing countries today are better off than they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Look at the Asian Tigers, India, China. Six of the fastest growing economies in the world in the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa (though starting from a low base). Look at Mexico and Brazil. Indur Golkany has over the years tackled many of these life and development issues excellently.
It seems to me they are trying to lump EVERYTHING into global warming. This is dishonest and does not really help. People need better access to abundant, cheap energy, education, health, decent shelter, and good governance. Better adaptation flows from these things.
This, to me, is further proof that the UN is pushing what was called the Bariloche World Model when it was developed in the 70s. It came out of South America with financing from the Canadian Government and was seen as a means of extracting money from the developed North on behalf of the South. It is also consistent with what the New School was pushing in the early 80s.
The presumption of Climate Change puts a panache on the explicit redistribution to the poor from the Bariloche model. Makes it seem necessary and for “damages” instead of you owe us because we are all “one humanity.”
But make no mistake about it Bariloche is consistent with where both the UN and the OECD have been wanting to go for decades as they act as the tax free salaried administrators of a world “in which human needs and human rights, rather than the desires to consume and accumulate wealth, would become the basis for resource allocation.”
Damages gets the desired cash flow without having that kind of graphic sales pitch that might disillusion the people in the countries being told to do with less and shift to a higher quality of life based on relationships instead of consumption.
My word this is all happening so fast and at the same time right now. But the models and intentions have been around for decades. Just a more politically palatable explanation for the attempt at a wealth grab to supposedly close the income and wealth gap among countries and within countries.
Perhaps because the temps are showing what a Statist farce CAGW always was.
DirkH-
if you have never looked at the UN’s Alliance of Civilzations group and the nature of its goals and conferences you should take a look. It came on my radar after the head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said that UNESCO was pursuing Marxist Humanism as its vision and would be working with AoC. It began about 2006, just after the UN expanded its definition of Sustainability to include the social, cultural, and economic.
It should be labeled “Loss and Damage from Living”. The Climate always changes. It is a part of life.