Implications For Adaptation Policy Research Articles

Climate risk perception and adaptation of tourism sector in China

Understanding the perceptions of climate change by those working in tourism greatly supports development of adaptation measures in destinations. However, limited evidence of either perceptions or tourism adaptation measures is available from China. Building on protection motivation theory, this study explores how Chinese working in tourism perceive climate change and what their adaptation intentions are. The study demonstrates that the current level of climate risk perception is relatively high, and people feel informed. The results indicate that (1) Information plays an important role in risk and adaptation appraisals; (2) Individuals are more likely to take adaptation measures if they perceive greater climate risks and have higher adaptive capacity; (3) An increase in adaptive incentives would generally support an increase in adaptation appraisal; (4) Providing greater adaptive incentives will motivate tourism staff to take actions and implement adaptation measures. The findings have implications for adaptation policies and strategies in destinations. • A first attempt to examine Chinese tourism employees and managers’ climate change perceptions and adaptation intentions. • The current level of climate risk perception is relatively high, and people feel informed. • Respondents are more likely to take measures if they perceive greater climate risks and have higher adaptive capacity. • Providing more adaptive incentives will motivate tourism staff to take actions and implement adaptation measures.

Rising Seas, Rising Inequity? Communities at Risk in the San Francisco Bay Area and Implications for Adaptation Policy

AbstractIncreasing coastal flooding threatens urban centers worldwide. Projections of physical damages to structures and their contents can characterize the monetary scale of risk, but they lack relevant socioeconomic context. The impact of coastal flooding on communities hinges not only on the cost, but on the ability of households to pay for the damages. Here, we repurpose probabilistic risk assessment to analyze the monetary and social risk associated with coastal flooding in the San Francisco Bay Area for 2020–2060. We show that future coastal flooding could financially ruin a substantial number of households by burdening them with flood damage costs that exceed discretionary household income. We quantify these impacts at the census block group scale by computing the percentage of households without discretionary income, before and after coastal flooding costs. We find that for several coastal communities in San Mateo County more than 50% of households will be facing financial instability, highlighting the need for immediate policy interventions that target existing, socially produced risk rather than waiting for potentially elusive certainty in sea level rise projections. We emphasize that the percentage of financially unstable households is particularly high in racially diverse and historically disadvantaged communities, highlighting the connection between financial instability and inequity. While our estimates are specific to the San Francisco Bay Area, our granular, household‐level perspective is transferable to other urban centers and can help identify the specific challenges that different communities face and inform appropriate adaptation interventions.

Agricultural productivity in relation to climate and cropland management in West Africa

The climate of West Africa is expected to become more arid due to increased temperature and uncertain rainfall regimes, while its population is expected to grow faster than the rest of the world. As such, increased demand for food will likely coincide with declines in agricultural production in a region where severe undernutrition already occurs. Here, we attempt to discriminate between the impacts of climate and other factors (e.g. land management/degradation) on crop production across West Africa using satellite remote sensing. We identify trends in the land surface phenology and climate of West African croplands between 2000 and 2018. Using the combination of a an attribution framework and residual trend anlaysis, we discriminate between climate and other impacts on crop productivity. The combined effect of rainfall, land surface temperature and solar radiation explains approximately 40% of the variation in cropland productivity over West Africa at the 95% significance level. The largest proportions of croplands with greening trends were observed in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, and the largest proportions with browning trends were in Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin. Climate was responsible for 52% of the greening trends and 25% of the browning trends. Within the other driving factors, changes in phenology explained 18% of the greening and 37% of the browning trends across the region, the use of inputs and irrigation explained 30% of the greening trends and land degradation 38% of the browning trends. These findings have implications for adaptation policies as we map out areas in need of improved land management practices and those where it has proven to be successful.

Could Weather Fluctuations Affect Local Economic Growth? Evidence from Chinese Counties

This paper uses historical fluctuations of temperature and precipitation within Chinese counties to identify their effects on the growth of economic outcome during 1996 and 2012. We find three primary results. First, higher temperature significantly reduces the growth rate of county-level income per capita: increasing temperature by 1◦C would lower the growth rate by 1.52 percentage points. Second, weather fluctuations not only affect the level of output, but also affect its growth rate. Third, weather fluctuations have wide-ranging effects. Beyond substantial effects on agricultural output, they also affect non-agricultural sectors, labor productivity and investment. Our findings provide new evidence for the impact of weather changes on economic development and have great implications for adaptation policies.

Developing a holistic approach to the analysis of farmer decision-making: Implications for adaptation policy and practice in developing countries

Smallholder farmers operate within a risky and uncertain context. In addition to climate variability and climate change, social, environmental, institutional, and market-related dynamics affect their agricultural decisions and ability to cope and adapt. In this paper, we develop and apply a set of framing questions to investigate the factors shaping farmer decision-making and how these are situated in pathways of response. Drawing on a literature review of decision-making for risk management, five questions are posed to frame enquiry: what livelihood decisions are undertaken by households, who makes what decisions, when do households make decisions and why do they make them, and how do decision making processes evolve and response pathways arise. This approach conceptualises and explores household decision-making in a holistic manner, moving beyond previous studies that examine smallholder decisions through disciplinary boundaries (e.g. psychology, economics, risk management) or particular theoretical approaches (e.g. bounded rationality, theory of planned behaviour). The framing questions together with key insights from literature are used to design and interpret empirical evidence from Pratapgarh, a tribal-dominated rainfed district in southeast Rajasthan, India. The findings suggest that while resource ownership and access are the main drivers of decision-making, socio-cognitive factors such as perceived adaptive capacity and perceived efficacy to carry out adaptive actions are equally important factors mediating farmer responses. We also find that the holistic approach helps explain how personal motivations and individual perceptions of adaptive capacity interact with socioeconomic, climatic, and agro-ecological dynamics at local and regional scales to mediate risk perception and inform response behaviour. A typology of response pathways demonstrates how different households’ trajectories are determined. Making a case for mixed methods to investigate farmer decision-making holistically, this paper provides an approach that reflects the complex and iterative nature of real farmer decision-making and can be used by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to better understand and describe decision making and to develop informed policies and interventions.

Deconstructing vulnerability and adaptation in a coastal river basin ecosystem: a participatory analysis of flood risk in Nadi, Fiji Islands

Despite the growing discussion on vulnerability and adaptation in urban areas, there is limited research on how smaller towns and cities in Small Island Developing States are being affected by and responding to climate change impacts. This study uses fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM), field visits and semi-structured interviews with 40 stakeholders across 6 different stakeholder groups in the Nadi River Basin, Fiji Islands to identify, analyse and deconstruct climate change vulnerability and adaptation options to manage increasing flood risks. The research evidence suggests that vulnerability to floods in the basin is on the rise due to a complex mesh of three intersecting factors. Firstly, non-climatic pressures such as development, drainage, social change, agriculture, tourism growth and deforestation combine, juxtapose and interact in a rather unique way with global climate variability (interdependent systems) to increase the stress on the river and coastal ecosystems. Secondly, the most vulnerable or at-risk populations like the farmers, squatter households and in particular women within the community have weak coping capacity due to a combination of demographic and social characteristics. Thirdly, vulnerability is on the rise due to climate factors as well as the flurry of unplanned development, redevelopment and degradation of catchment resources. The research findings have implications for adaptation policies. In particular, the basin stakeholders should integrate climate change within sectorial planning processes, actively engage the vulnerable groups, promote knowledge, awareness and social learning, and invest in adaptive management across all levels of decision-making. Structural policy changes to land-use planning and insurance financing schemes are also necessary to address growing risks. These have the potential to enhance local capacities of communities to adapt to climate-induced floods and improve ecosystem integrity for resilience building.

Cross-sectoral impacts of climate and socio-economic change in Scotland: implications for adaptation policy

Understanding the importance of cross-sectoral implications of climate and socio-economic change in Scotland is essential for adaptation policy. This study explored the direct and indirect sectoral impacts of future change using the CLIMSAVE Integrated Assessment Platform. There is great spatial diversity in projected impacts across Scotland, and increasing uncertainty in the direction of change of impacts from the national to regional scale associated with climate uncertainty. Further uncertainty associated with socio-economic change results in 6 out of 13 indicators (artificial surfaces, biodiversity vulnerability, forest area, land-use intensity, irrigation usage and land-use diversity) with robust directions of change at the national scale and only three (artificial surfaces, forest area and irrigation usage) that are robust across all regions of Scotland. Complex interactions between socio-economic scenario assumptions (e.g. food imports, population and GDP), climatic suitability and agricultural productivity and profitability lead to significant national and regional changes in the distribution and extent of land cover types, with resultant cross-sectoral interactions with water, forestry and biodiversity. Consequently, stakeholders characterised robust adaptation policy options, within the CLIMSAVE participatory process, as those beneficial to society (and the country) in all scenarios, irrespective of the direction of change of the impacts. The integration in CLIMSAVE of a participatory scenario development process and an integrated participatory modelling framework has allowed the exploration of future uncertainty in a structured approach and better represented the importance of qualitative information and the social and institutional contexts within adaptation research.

Health risks of climate change: An assessment of uncertainties and its implications for adaptation policies

BackgroundProjections of health risks of climate change are surrounded with uncertainties in knowledge. Understanding of these uncertainties will help the selection of appropriate adaptation policies.MethodsWe made an inventory of conceivable health impacts of climate change, explored the type and level of uncertainty for each impact, and discussed its implications for adaptation policy. A questionnaire-based expert elicitation was performed using an ordinal scoring scale. Experts were asked to indicate the level of precision with which health risks can be estimated, given the present state of knowledge. We assessed the individual scores, the expertise-weighted descriptive statistics, and the argumentation given for each score. Suggestions were made for how dealing with uncertainties could be taken into account in climate change adaptation policy strategies.ResultsThe results showed that the direction of change could be indicated for most anticipated health effects. For several potential effects, too little knowledge exists to indicate whether any impact will occur, or whether the impact will be positive or negative. For several effects, rough ‘order-of-magnitude’ estimates were considered possible. Factors limiting health impact quantification include: lack of data, multi-causality, unknown impacts considering a high-quality health system, complex cause-effect relations leading to multi-directional impacts, possible changes of present-day response-relations, and difficulties in predicting local climate impacts. Participants considered heat-related mortality and non-endemic vector-borne diseases particularly relevant for climate change adaptation.ConclusionsFor possible climate related health impacts characterised by ignorance, adaptation policies that focus on enhancing the health system’s and society’s capability of dealing with possible future changes, uncertainties and surprises (e.g. through resilience, flexibility, and adaptive capacity) are most appropriate. For climate related health effects for which rough risk estimates are available, ‘robust decision-making’ is recommended. For health effects with limited societal and policy relevance, we recommend focusing on no-regret measures. For highly relevant health effects, precautionary measures can be considered. This study indicated that analysing and characterising uncertainty by means of a typology can be a very useful approach for selection and prioritization of preferred adaptation policies to reduce future climate related health risks.

Vulnerability of crop production to heavy precipitation in north-eastern Ghana

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze vulnerability of food crop production to heavy precipitation in north-eastern Ghana, specifically, the upper east region (UER) and the policy implications for adaptation. Heavy precipitation events are a common part of climatic variability; but little attention is given to its impact on livelihoods as compared to droughts in research and policy domains. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on both quantitative and qualitative research methods and data. Rainfall data are analyzed using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). This is compared with quantitative analysis of crop yields and complemented by narratives of farmers from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Findings – The results show that heavy precipitation events often lead to low food crop productivity and this suggests that the latter is vulnerable to the former. Originality/value – Although some adaptation is occurring through a wide range of local measures, these are inadequate for eliminating vulnerability. Thus, additional policy measures are recommended for enhancing farmer adaptation, including: incorporating climate change adaptation policies, including adaptation to heavy precipitation into District Development Planning; building human resource capacity for effective implementation of climate change adaptation policies at district levels; improving market access to seed through improved market infrastructure and rural transportation; establishing Community Seed Banks (CSBs) as back up sources of seed; promoting “nursing and transplant” as an alternative planting method for millet and guinea corn; promoting low costs solar drying technologies for drying food crops; and supporting livelihood diversification through credit and business development services.

Mediterranean agriculture under climate change: adaptive capacity, adaptation, and ethics

In the coming decades, the Mediterranean region is expected to experience various climate impacts with negative consequences on agricultural systems and which will cause uneven reductions in agricultural production. By and large, the impacts of climate change on Mediterranean agriculture will be heavier for southern areas of the region. This unbalanced distribution of negative impacts underscores the significance and role of ethics in such a context of analysis. Consequently, the aim of this article is to justify and develop an ethical approach to agricultural adaptation in the Mediterranean and to derive the consequent implications for adaptation policy in the region. In particular, we define an index of adaptive capacity for the agricultural systems of the Mediterranean region on whose basis it is possible to group its different sub-regions, and we provide an overview of the suitable adaptation actions and policies for the sub-regions identified. We then vindicate and put forward an ethical approach to agricultural adaptation, highlighting the implications for the Mediterranean region and the limitations of such an ethical framework. Finally, we emphasize the broader potential of ethics for agricultural adaptation policy.

Rethinking Social Contracts: Building Resilience in a Changing Climate

Social contracts play an important role in defining the reciprocal rights, obligations, and responsibilities between states and citizens. Climate change is creating new challenges for both states and citizens, inevitably forcing a rethinking of existing and evolving social contracts. In particular, the social arrangements that enhance the well-being and security of both present and future generations are likely to undergo dramatic transformations in response to ecosystem changes, more extreme weather events, and the consequences of social-ecological changes in distant locations. The types of social contracts that evolve in the face of a changing climate will have considerable implications for adaptation policies and processes. We consider how a resilience approach can contribute to new social contracts in the face of uncertainty and change. Examples from Norway, New Zealand, and Canada show how resilience thinking provides a new way of looking at social contracts, emphasizing the dynamics, links, and complexity of coupled social- ecological systems. Resilience thinking provides valuable insights on the characteristics of a new social contract, and social contract theory provides some insights on creating resilience and human security in a warming world.