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Journal Article Parks, People, and Change: The Importance of Multistakeholder Engagement in Adaptation Planning for Conserved Areas(2014) Knapp, Corinne N.; Kofinas, Gary P.; Fresco, Nancy; Carothers, Courtney; Craver, Amy; Chapin, Stuart F."Climate change challenges the traditional goals and conservation strategies of protected areas, necessitating adaptation to changing conditions. Denali National Park and Preserve (Denali) in south central Alaska, USA, is a vast landscape that is responding to climate change in ways that will impact both ecological resources and local communities. Local observations help to inform understanding of climate change and adaptation planning, but whose knowledge is most important to consider? For this project we interviewed long-term Denali staff, scientists, subsistence community members, bus drivers, and business owners to assess what types of observations each can contribute, how climate change is impacting each, and what they think the National Park Service should do to adapt. The project shows that each type of long-term observer has different types of observations, but that those who depend more directly on natural resources for their livelihoods have more and different observations than those who do not. These findings suggest that engaging multiple groups of stakeholders who interact with the park in distinct ways adds substantially to the information provided by Denali staff and scientists and offers a broader foundation for adaptation planning. It also suggests that traditional protected area paradigms that fail to learn from and foster appropriate engagement of people may be maladaptive in the context of climate change."Journal Article Long-Term Community Responses to Droughts in the Early Modern Period: The Case Study of Terrassa, Spain(2016) Grau-Satorras, Mar; Otero, Iago; Gómez-Baggethun, Erik; Reyes-García, Victoria"New challenges posed by global environmental change have motivated scholars to pay growing attention to historical long-term strategies to deal with climate extremes. We aim to understand long-term trends in community responses to cope with droughts, to explain how many preindustrial societies coevolved with local hydro-climatic dynamics and coped with climate extremes over time. The specific goals of this work are: (1) to analyze how local communities experienced droughts over long periods of time and (2) to document the spectrum of recorded community responses to drought. Our research covers over one century (1605-1710) of responses to drought in the community of Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain. Data were collected through archival research. We reviewed and coded 2076 village council minutes. Our results show that the local community adopted a mixture of symbolic, institutional, and infrastructural responses to drought and that drought-related decisions varied through time. We discuss adaptation strategies on the basis of the distinct physical signals of drought propagation and the role of nonclimatic historical factors, such as warfare and public debt, in shaping responses. We conclude that long-term perspectives on premodern history and comparable empirical studies are fundamental to advance our understanding of past social responses to hydro-climatic extremes."Journal Article India's Climate Bet: An Emerging Giant's Alternative Route to Power(2010) Bapna, Manish"Over the past year, India has essentially abandoned the mindset that climate action must be pitted against development progress and has embarked on an ambitious policy effort to decarbonize its economy. Since the Copenhagen climate summit, India has formally pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its gross domestic product by 20-25 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and put in place an ambitious National Action Plan on Climate Change."Journal Article Does the Establishment of Sustainable Use Reserves Affect Fire Management in the Humid Tropics?(2016) Carmenta, Rachel; Blackburn, George Alan; Davies, Gemma; de Sassi, Claudio; Lima, André; Parry, Luke; Tych, Wlodek; Barlow, Jos"Tropical forests are experiencing a growing fire problem driven by climatic change, agricultural expansion and forest degradation. Protected areas are an important feature of forest protection strategies, and sustainable use reserves (SURs) may be reducing fire prevalence since they promote sustainable livelihoods and resource management. However, the use of fire in swidden agriculture, and other forms of land management, may be undermining the effectiveness of SURs in meeting their conservation and sustainable development goals. We analyse MODIS derived hot pixels, TRMM rainfall data, Terra-Class land cover data, socio-ecological data from the Brazilian agro-census and the spatial extent of rivers and roads to evaluate whether the designation of SURs reduces fire occurrence in the Brazilian Amazon. Specifically, we ask (1) a. Is SUR location (i.e., de facto) or (1) b. designation (i.e. de jure) the driving factor affecting performance in terms of the spatial density of fires?, and (2), Does SUR creation affect fire management (i.e., the timing of fires in relation to previous rainfall)? We demonstrate that pre-protection baselines are crucial for understanding reserve performance. We show that reserve creation had no discernible impact on fire density, and that fires were less prevalent in SURs due to their characteristics of sparser human settlement and remoteness, rather than their status de jure. In addition, the timing of fires in relation to rainfall, indicative of local fire management and adherence to environmental law, did not improve following SUR creation. These results challenge the notion that SURs promote environmentally sensitive fire-management, and suggest that SURs in Amazonia will require special attention if they are to curtail future accidental wildfires, particularly as plans to expand the road infrastructure throughout the region are realised. Greater investment to support improved fire management by farmers living in reserves, in addition to other fire users, will be necessary to help ameliorate these threats."Journal Article UN: Caution, Not Climate Tinkering(2010) Conant, Jeff"The UN placed a moratorium on experiments that try to manipulate the Earth's climate."Journal Article Toward a New Conceptualization of Household Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change: Applying a Risk Governance Lens(2014) Elrick-Barr, Carmen E.; Preston, Benjamin L.; Thomsen, Dana C.; Smith, Timothy F."Increasing evidence highlights the importance of context-specific understanding of the impacts of climate change and the need to move beyond generalized assumptions regarding the nature and utility of adaptive capacity in facilitating adaptation. The household level of impact and response is an under-researched context, despite influential decisions affecting local and system vulnerability being made at this scale. Assessments of household adaptive capacity currently assess the influences of adaptive capacity or the influences on adaptive capacity in isolation. We argue that comprehensive assessments need to examine these influences in combination to capture a dynamic and integrated view of households that better reflects their positioning and role(s) in broader social-political contexts. To transition assessments away from examining households as discrete units to recognizing their role within a larger governance context, we outline four themes focused on: (1) analysis of governance contexts, (2) determination of adaptive capacity sources, (3) assessment of cross-scalar trade-offs, and (4) integrated goal setting to facilitate boundary critiques. By considering these themes, the relationships between capacities and actions are highlighted, and the simultaneous outcomes of adaptive choices at individual and broader system scales can be evaluated. We argue that such boundary critique has the potential to yield a more comprehensive assessment of adaptive capacity focused upon cross-scalar influences and impacts."Journal Article New Markets and New Commons: Opportunities in the global casino(1995) Henderson, Hazel"The United Nations is well positioned for the global changes of the information age now engulfing nation-states. The UN role and tasks--as global norm setter, broker, networker, convener, and peacekeeper--are ideally suited to today's world of linked 'infostructures' and distributed power, influence, and knowledge typified by the emerging global civil society. The UN can serve all these emerging infostructures--and be compensated by fostering debates and convening parties to design the needed agreements for operating the emerging 'electronic commons' including today's global financial casino. Technological, social, and some market opportunities in new public/private partnerships to serve the global commons."Journal Article Globalisation: Effects on Biodiversity, Environment and Society(2003) Ehrenfeld, David"The march of globalisation seems inexorable, with effects felt throughout the world. These effects include, but are not limited to, reduced genetic diversity in agriculture (loss of crop varieties and livestock breeds), loss of wild species, spread of exotic species, pollution of air, water and soil, accelerated climatic change, exhaustion of resources, and social and spiritual disruption. The market cannot be relied on to control the environmental and other costs of globalisation. Although its present dominance creates an impression of permanence, a conjunction of formidable limiting factors is even now acting to curb the process of globalisation possibly to end it altogether. Technological fixes cannot overcome these limiting factors. The architects of globalisation have ignored the social, biological and physical constraints on their created system. Critics of globalisation have noted that global free trade promotes the social and economic conditions most likely to undermine its own existence. The same can be said of the biological and physical limiting factors especially, in the short term, the dwindling supplies of cheap energy. The necessary opposition that has formed to counter the worst features of globalisation must keep its dangerous side-effects in the public eye, and develop alternative, workable socio-economic systems that have a strong regional element and are not dependent on centralised, complex technologies."Journal Article IASCP and the Challenge of Managing Global Commons(2005) Jodha, Narpat S."This note in a way represents loud thinking on usability of IASCP model (approaches/ processes/experiences etc. underlying the CPR focused research, advocacy and decision, effectively used in dealing with local CPRs in many countries) to address the governance or management problems of global commons. For doing so, (i) first we identify the key features of approaches/processes focused on CPRs, facilitated by IASCP directly or indirectly; (ii) next we outline the major constraints to effective governance of global commons; (iii) finally, we try to see the indicative match or mismatch between (i) and (ii). The purpose of this note is not a scholarly message but some pre-mature ideas for sharing, developing or rejecting by CPR researchers."Journal Article Global Climate Change and Carbon Management in Multifunctional Forests(Current Science Association/Indian Academy of Sciences, 2002) Pandey, Deep Narayan"Fossil fuel burning and deforestation have emerged as principal anthropogenic source of rising atmospheric CO2 and the consequential global warming. Variability in temperature, precipitation, snow cover, sea-level and extreme weather events provide collateral evidence of global climate change. I review recent advances on causes and consequences of global climate change and its impact on nature and society. I also examine options for climate change mitigation. Impact of climate change on ecology, economy and society?the three pillars of sustainability?is increasing. Emission reduction, although most useful, is also politically sensitive for economic reasons. Proposals of the geoengineering for iron fertilization of oceans or manipulation of solar flux using stratospheric scatters are yet not feasible for scientific and environmental reasons. Forests as carbon sinks, therefore, are required to play multifunctional role that include, but are not limited to, biodiversity conservation and maintenance of ecosystem functions; yield of goods and services to the society; enhancing the carbon storage in trees, woody vegetation and soils; and providing social and economic well-being of people. This paper explores strategies in that direction and concludes that the management of multifunctional forests over landscape continuum, employing tools of conservation biology and restoration ecology, shall be the vital option for climate change mitigation in future."