Linking stakeholder scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways for policy making in human-water systems

Author(s):  
Mohammadreza Alizadeh ◽  
Jan Adamowski ◽  
Azhar Inam

<p>Climate change has caused many environmental problems, as well as water and food insecurity, and health and social impacts in many parts of the world, and especially in the world’s vulnerable regions such as developing countries. Studies have demonstrated the impacts of socio-economic and climate changes and how they result in water and environmental problems at global and regional scales. Socio-economic variation and climatic change influence the dynamic interaction of human and water systems, and our ability to address environmental problems at sub-regional scales. From this perspective, the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), as a form of alternative development scenarios, were recently introduced to help decision-makers to cope with uncertain futures and improve their policies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. To take advantage of SSP scenarios for policy guidance at regional and national scales, it is necessary to explore the socio-economic feedbacks and water management policies informed by different sub-regional knowledge sharing through stakeholders’ narratives. In this study, we link SSP scenarios developed with regional stakeholders using a coupled socio-economic and environmental model, in conjunction with stakeholder-generated narrative storylines for a sub-region of Pakistan. The framework allows for linking corresponding scenarios across different uncertainty levels to improve regional scale policy making, while providing knowledge regarding the future of human-water systems under a range of plausible future climate and socio-economic scenarios.</p>

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10525
Author(s):  
Andrés M. García ◽  
Inés Santé ◽  
Xurxo Loureiro ◽  
David Miranda

Green infrastructure has acquired greater importance in recent years in relation to climate change adaptation. Green infrastructure planning has been identified as a new and innovative means of land planning that can contribute to preventing the impacts of climate change. However, this has been explored more thoroughly in urban areas than at the regional scale. The present study proposes a methodology including multi-criteria evaluation techniques for assessing the ESS involved in the fight against climate change and for the spatial planning of multifunctional green infrastructure areas based on the results of this assessment. Application of the methodology for green infrastructure planning aimed at confronting climate change at landscape level in the region of Galicia (NW Spain) successfully delimited multifunctional green infrastructure zones. Results show that delimited zones have a higher provision potential for more ESS than protected natural areas and areas that are not part of the green infrastructure.


2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
pp. 1134-1140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitsutaku Makino ◽  
Yasunori Sakurai

Abstract Makino, M., and Sakurai, Y. 2012. Adaptation to climate-change effects on fisheries in the Shiretoko World Natural Heritage area, Japan. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: . In the Shiretoko World Natural Heritage area, many factors have been observed that imply effects of climate change on ecosystems, such as decreases in seasonal sea ice, changes in fishing grounds, and the appearance of non-local species. This study summarizes observed and anticipated effects of such climate change on fisheries in the heritage area and discusses policy and research needs for adapting to these changes. International research and monitoring at the scale of large marine ecosystems (LMEs) is the basis of all policy measures for adapting to climate change. Several measures need to be combined, taking into account the various socio-ecological aspects of fisheries and scales of ecosystems. Such measures of adaptation should be incorporated also into the cross-sector coordination system and the Integrated Management Plan, which were established to manage the World Heritage area. Also, culture is an important part of society, and the World Heritage programme may offer clues for creating a new and peaceful culture based on the LME.


New Medit ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Houda Rjili ◽  
Mohamed JAOUAD

Climate change is a global environmental threat to all economic activities, especially the livestock activity. The South of Tunisia, where animal husbandry is a fundamental element of the domestic economy, is more influenced by these negatives effects due to the arid climate. The objective of this study is to identify strategies and levers mitigation and adaptation to climate change developed by breeders on based on available factors. For this purpose, a survey conducted among 73 breeders on the rangelands of El Ouara, in the South of Tunisia. Results emerges that breeders use various adaptation strategies principally, supplementation, integration agriculture-livestock and conduct’s mode through different types such as association. The result of the model reveal that age of breeder, herd size, agricultural area, member of an association, subsidies and well ownerships are the most factors which significantly influence the adaptation choices of breeders to cope to climate change. The results proved too that adaptation to climate change was inhibited by many factors such as luck of workforce labor, lack of water and financial resources as well the degradation of the rangelands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arefeh Mousavi ◽  
Ali Ardalan ◽  
Amirhossein Takian ◽  
Abbas Ostadtaghizadeh ◽  
Kazem Naddafi ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Ensuring public health is crucial in any policy debate on climate change. Paris Agreement on climate change is a global contract, through which countries have committed themselves to a public health treaty. The agreement has laid the foundation for mitigation and adaptation. This study was conducted to provide an evidence-based framework for policy-making in the health system of Iran in order to reduce the adverse effects of climate change on public health and to increase the adaptation of the health system as a result. Methods This is a qualitative study. We first used Delphi method to extract the components of Paris Agreement on climate change that were related to the functions and policymaking of health system in Iran. Twenty-three experts in health and climate change were identified purposefully and through snowball sampling as participants in Delphi. Data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire. We used SPSS software version 25 for data analysis based on the descriptive indices including the mean, the percentage of consensus above 75%, and the Kendall coordination coefficient. Results Seventy-nine components classified within nine categories were extracted. The most important examples of the implementation of Paris Agreement on climate change in the health system of Iran were: participation in the formulation of strategies for mitigation and adaptation, identifying vulnerable groups, assessing vulnerability, increasing the capacity of health services delivery during extreme events, using early warning systems, using new technologies to increase the adaptation, evaluation of interventions, financial support, increasing the number of researches, increasing the knowledge and skills of staff, and finally public awareness. Conclusions Evidence-based policy-making is pivotal to develop effective programs to control the health effects of climate change. This research provided policy translation and customization of micro and macro provisions of Paris Agreement on climate change, in line with the political context of health system in Iran. Our finding will pave the ground, we envisage, for further steps towards capacity building and enhancement of resiliency of the health system, adaptation interventions, and evaluation, identification of barriers and facilitators for adaptation and decreasing the adverse health effects caused by the climate change, in Iran and perhaps beyond.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenping Xu ◽  
Lingli Xiang ◽  
David Proverbs

While various measures of mitigation and adaptation to climate change have been taken in recent years, many have gradually reached a consensus that building community resilience is of great significance when responding to climate change, especially urban flooding. There has been a dearth of research on community resilience to urban floods, especially among transient communities, and therefore there is a need to conduct further empirical studies to improve our understanding, and to identify appropriate interventions. Thus, this work combines two existing resilience assessment frameworks to address these issues in three different types of transient community, namely an urban village, commercial housing, and apartments, all located in Wuhan, China. An analytic hierarchy process–back propagation neural network (AHP-BP) model was developed to estimate the community resilience within these three transient communities. The effects of changes in the prioritization of key resilience indicators under different environmental, economic, and social factors was analyzed across the three communities. The results demonstrate that the ranking of the indicators reflects the connection between disaster resilience and the evaluation units of diverse transient communities. These aspects show the differences in the disaster resilience of different types of transient communities. The proposed method can help decision makers in identifying the areas that are lagging behind, and those that need to be prioritized when allocating limited and/or stretched resources.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hojatollah Khedri Gharibvand ◽  
Hossein Azadi ◽  
Frank Witlox

Rangeland degradation and vulnerability of livelihoods are two major challenges facing pastoralists, rangeland managers and policy-makers in arid and semi-arid areas. There is a need to make holistic informed decisions in order to protect rangelands and sustain livelihoods. Through a comprehensive literature review on rangeland management policies and livelihood strategies of ‘rangeland users’, it is shown how such policies have affected sustainable rangeland management, how strategies to sustain livelihoods have been incomplete and how there has been a lack of a multi-disciplinary approach in acknowledging them. Accordingly, a set of appropriate livelihood alternatives is introduced and, thenceforth, a framework for their evaluation is developed. Supportive strategies for enhancing resilience are discussed as a research and policy-making gap. In this study, the keys to achieve sustainable livelihoods are acknowledged as ‘livelihoods’ resilience’, where livelihoods need to be supported by access to capital, means of coping with the contexts of vulnerability as well as by enhancing policies, institutions and processes. The paper proposes a set of ‘livestock-based livelihoods’ regarding ‘traditional pastoralism’ as well as ‘their mitigation and adaptation’. Moreover, their transformation to ‘commercial pastoralism’, ‘resource-based livelihoods’, ‘alternative livelihoods’ and ‘migration’ strategies is recognised to be employed by rangeland users as useful alternatives in different regions and under future changing conditions including climate change. These strategies embrace thinking on resilience and are supported by strategies that address social and ecological consequences of climate change consisting of mitigation, adaptation and transformation. It is argued that sustainable livelihoods and sustainable rangeland management will be achieved if they are supported by policies that build and facilitate a set of appropriate livelihood alternatives and keep them in a sustainable state rather than being limited to supporting ‘vulnerable livelihoods’. Finally, future directions for analysing and policy-making in selecting the best alternative to achieve sustainable livelihoods are indicated.


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