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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Were told that the average global temperature has hardly changed in the last 20 years or so.
There must be some places among the study areas of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal where the climate has hardly got hotter in the last 20 years. If this is so, how can we expect reliable verbals from focus groups, some of whom have not had a significant exposure to temperature change trends in their adult lifetime?
Besides, anecdotes are usually avoided because they are so unreliable. It is so easy to lead an interviewee by carefully phrased questions.
How did these brilliant researchers leave out the heat stroke victims in scandanavia
Late 20th century and early 21st century Sahel droughts are given as an example :
All from Wikipedia (Yeah, I know, but the references are all there, numbered in the text. I’m just too busy to look them all up right now, and I presume this is largely correct. I will be suitably contrite if proven wrong, but please provide referenced links rather than an anti-wikipedia rant)
I would bet my Beatles collection that the reason most of the species that have ever lived are no longer around because of climate change. I also think that is normal. Nature has no soul – use yours at your own peril.
Nature confounds – the Australian continent created a niche for a prime marsupial predator and the thylacine was created. Grasses evolved to kill trees and meadows result. Trees are created to kill every other kind of thing and eucalyptus thrive. Nature heats up and pastoral pansies head up hill to seek lofty opportunity. Continental glaciers melt and the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas are reborn, creating flooded villages and new opportunities. A land bridge to England disappears under the waves and all manner of genetic adaption takes place on the new island. A river gets blocked by glacial ice and 50 years later glacial lake Missoula breaks out and the Scablands of Washington State are created. Thousands of square miles of formerly living things are floated away to the Pacific Ocean and giant Canadian Rocky erratic boulders are rafted to the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon where they become evidence that nature doesn’t care for stagnation. Hydraulic dams squeezing through narrow valleys down river force the water level higher than the tallest buildings to be built in what becomes Portland, Oregon. It’s all over in a month and what ever was to be didn’t happen. Something else happened and that is how nature works.
Nature continually changes. It cannot be stopped so try to stay out of the way. And don’t tell me a silly tale that the current conditions are anything but weather variability. Climate change is a lot of things but it is not subtle.
I wondered about the journal, so I browsed it a bit. Apparently solar is practical in Mauritius based on a 5 year payback and a feed in tariff of just 70 cents per kwh. Yup, just 70. Then there is the paper on neural networks being used to model the energy input/output of dairy cattle in Iran. Apparently the authors obtained data from face to face interviews, after which they pronounced their models accurate despite them calculating that the cows produce more energy than they take in.
http://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticle.php?artid=55818
It isn’t clear from the abstract if the researchers interviewed the cows or the farmers. I perused a few more of their journals with similar results. Lotsa dreck, not much knowledge. Someone must be making money of this thing, no one with an ounce of pride in their work would want to be associated with it.
The marked shift in perception started when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans http://climal.com/resistance-climate-justice.php
DirkH says:
October 25, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Back in 2009 before COP15 I used Google news to find the daily scare from the warmists. Good times, Good times.
>>>>>>>>>>
If you want a laugh, type “uninstall” and see what the first suggestion is. Then type “install” and see what the first suggestion is.
Any “distress sale of productive assets to buy food” in these countries may be due to diverting the raising of food grains to ethanol.
The authors are showing signs of the “El niño se orina en sí mismo” infection. This infection is prevalent amongst alarmist personalities that must feel the warmth.
They should seek medical help immediately.
Petrol in the USA is roughly USD 4 per gallon, reflecting just about its total global costs and a very small profit for the retailer. Imagine if that price went to USD 29. Thats the current situation with electricity. It costs about USD cents 4 per Kw hour but people in Denmark pay cents 29, Germany 25 and Cambodia 25. Thats real stress, thats real theft and thats the real effect of Fraud.
What on earth are they talking about?
Back in 1998 I had the misfortune of being dragged to New York City by a family member on vacation. Then, I had the misfortune of misfortunes, whilst in NY City, by being dragged, kicking and screaming, to a tour of the UN headquarters. Trapped inside, the group I was in was informed by the guide about the UN efforts against colonialism. The guide pointed to a map on the wall showing all the colonized areas of the world before the advent of the UN. Then the guide pointed to an adjacent map showing all those former colonies now being free, having shed the yoke of colonization, all thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the UN. Wow, from this I discovered that my geography lessons had led me astray all these years. I discovered, to my surprise, that Alaska had been a former colony of the United States. And now, as the color coded indications on the maps showed, Alaska, following the creation of the UN, was no longer a colony of the US but a state of the US. Bravo, UN!
And I think, just like it must’ve been hard for some doctors to give up the idea of bleeding people with leeches, it’s just as hard, and possibly impossible, for the UN to give up the idea that all the problems of the developing world relate to colonization. Since the colonial empires have long since scooted from the scene the UN just has to come up with something, somewhere, somehow, that points, however wobbly, to some form of continuing exploitation by those currently nonexistent empires. Voila, global warming. Voila, climate justice.
There’s a problem, I think, with all of this. Wasn’t the United States, um, uh, well, a #%}[xiGxj)%# colony at one time?! Ok, thirteen colonies. That’s even bleeping more! So, if the UN is right, and the West owes the developing world for its exploitation of its former colonies doesn’t the rest of the West owe us good ‘ol Americans a heapa’ change? C’mon, you Dutch, British, French, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Russians (remember Alaska?), lets fork it over. You owe us for our lack of development here in the USA. And, while you’re at it, cut your carbon too, and fork over some more cash and technology for what you still do to your former colony. I want justice.
And furthermore, just as we were able to thrust off that yoke of colonization (almost impossibly without the UN to help us) you had to poison us with your hi falutin’ ideas about something called an Enlightenment that stripped us of our simple culture and acceptance of an all encompassing religiously operated society. We could’ve been that one true religion of peace nirvana and truly shown progress like we jealously see so commonly elsewhere. You wronged us and we need some money.
And the researchers never, for a moment, considered the land tenure
and government taxation systems could be the cause.
Reform of land tenure with reform of the tax system usually fixes many
of the problems.
There’s an “International Journal of Global Warming”??? What?… created just to publish stuff like this??? Why yes, there is! My oh my. How to convert an un-sensible change into Non-sensical change. This is the journal that accepts the manuscripts that “Nature Climate Change” rejects?
I feel ill.
Auto says:
October 25, 2013 at 12:36 pm:
“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.”
It is sad to read that conditions in Manila have changed so little from the time
I was there over sixty years ago. The description by Auto , above, is close to how
I saw it then. Stationed at a US Army radio transmitter site in Caloocan on the
northern edge of Manila , we saw some of the scenes every day, as having no
mess hall (a small unit), we had to drive 3 or 4 miles for chow. And yes, I agree
the people were very nice, despite the conditions. I enjoyed the time there.
Blessed with many natural assets, and a hard-working adaptable people it
could only be political interference that holds the country down .
RSB.
dp says:
October 25, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Nature has no soul.
dp, that is as profound a three-paragraph refutation of the whole climate boondoggle as can be mustered. Thank you.
I hate to think of the financial, health and social damage and costs suffered by the UK during the past five worst winters for years – brought on by global warming.
davidmhoffer says:
October 25, 2013 at 8:58 pm
“If you want a laugh, type “uninstall” and see what the first suggestion is. Then type “install” and see what the first suggestion is.”
I see “uninstall … mactype” “install… Java”…
rather bland.
DirkH;
I see “uninstall … mactype” “install… Java”…
rather bland
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Huh. I get uninstall Internet Explorer and install Google Chrome. I’ve suggested it to several friends who all got the same thing.Just tried it again now, install Google Chrome has now moved to 5th.
United Nations University, just another educational disaster area. Don’t send you kids there unless you want them back as certified morons.
Except for no “abrupt changes” in climate, and considering that the source of the study is as credible as tobacco industry funded smoking studies, it is a great report.
Cant win with empirical evidence…Their answer.. Lie like a rug..
Cant win with fear-mongering.. Make things up that allow them to redistribute wealth by force..
I am so tired of this CAGW crowd just making things up and trying to force feed us this junk. Do Socialists/Marxist/Communist ever tire of trying to force their control on other people?
Evolution would demand that any organisim or group of organisms, when faced with a changing environment, either adapt, relocate or die. Have the basic laws of survival changed? Are people who constantly live under grossly incompetent goverments excluded from basic natural laws?
They can make a lot of money renting out huts to the refugees of global cooling-
gbaikie says: “So places with lovely governments. But they missed N Korea and Cuba.”
Maybe they went in but never came back out because they were instantly hired for better paying positions as propaganda ministers?