Toward a Pan-Pacific Strategy to Reduce Vulnerability to the Effects
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Toward a Pan-Pacific Strategy to Decrease Vulnerability to the Effects of Climate Change Prepared for the Ocean Conservancy By Lara Hansen, Jennie Hoffman and Eric Mielbrecht October 2008 TOWARD A PAN -PACIFIC STRATEGY TO DECREASE VULNERABILITY TO THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE Created for Ocean Conservancy by EcoAdapt (Lara Hansen, Jennie Hoffman & Eric Mielbrecht) Table of Contents Background/Introduction to the Project ..................................................................................................2 The Need for Adaptation Action ..........................................................................................................2 Section One: The Players .........................................................................................................................3 Governmental Organizations...............................................................................................................3 Non-Governmental and Intergovernmental Organizations...................................................................5 Funders ...............................................................................................................................................7 Section Two: Case Studies Adaptation Overview..................................................................................8 Southern Pacific...................................................................................................................................9 Kimbe Bay Resilient Marine Protected Areas Network .....................................................................9 Australia Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Climate Change Action Plan............................11 Community-based Adaptation Planning in Fiji................................................................................ 13 Northeast Pacific ...............................................................................................................................14 United States Pacific Coast Cooperation: Washington, Oregon and California................................14 Community Conservation of Sea Turtles in Costa Rica.................................................................... 15 Bering Sea Fisheries Building Climate Change into Their Planning ..................................................16 North Central Pacific..........................................................................................................................19 Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation in Micronesia ............................................................. 19 Early Warning Systems for Pacific Islands....................................................................................... 21 Pacific Ocean and East Asian Seas......................................................................................................23 Mangrove Restoration in Vietnam .................................................................................................23 Climate Farmer Field Schools in Indonesia ..................................................................................... 25 Agent-based Modeling in the Philippines ....................................................................................... 26 Section 3: Building a Plan for the Pacific ................................................................................................28 Literature Cited .....................................................................................................................................30 Appendix A: The Players .......................................................................................................................A-1 Appendix B: Existing guidance resources ..............................................................................................B-1 20 October 2008 1 Background/Introduction to the Project Developing an adaptation strategy for a region as enormous and variable as the Pacific is no small task. The ecological, political, climatic and socioeconomic realities throughout the region contain all of the extremes that can be found on the planet. Countries around the Pacific have tended to form coalitions along sociocultural lines—Pacific Island nations, Latin America, or the Arctic, for instance. Yet all are bound together by the Pacific Ocean, whose climate systems, currents, and species cross the boundaries of these traditional human groupings. Indeed, some species annually migrate the length or breadth of this vast ocean. The complexity of climate change and its combined effects on human and natural systems in many ways provides an opportunity for governments, organizations, and individuals across this region to join together to develop a shared solution. The goal of this paper is four-fold: 1. Identify those organizations or individuals who have taken action on climate change adaptation around the Pacific Rim, who have expressed an interest in taking action, and government agencies that are likely to be required to address the problem. 2. Outline general approaches to reducing vulnerability to climate change. 3. Present select case studies of adaptation that have been taken already around the Pacific Rim. 4. Integrate the case studies and general adaptation principle into a broader approach to adaptation that can be used as a framework to develop an adaptation strategy for a pan-Pacific coalition. The Need for Adaptation Action Even if the world were to halt all anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases today, it would take several centuries for the climate and ocean chemistry to stabilize, and even longer for sea level rise to slow. This reality makes clear that while minimizing the rate and extent of climate change is still essential, so too is minimizing the vulnerability of human and natural communities to climate change. We have unfortunately waited far too long for action on mitigation alone to be sufficient 1. Successful responses to climate change will therefore require that we deal with both the causes and effects of climate change. This suite of activities is commonly referred to as mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (minimizing the negative effects of climate change on human and natural systems). Adaptation cannot be successful without mitigation as society cannot effectively continue to respond to unchecked climate change. 1 Hansen, J. 2008. Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near. Address to the National Press Club and Briefing to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf 20 October 2008 2 There is insufficient adaptive capacity for most systems to deal with the kind of change that is predicted under business as usual scenarios, and certainly not with any substantial abrupt climate change. The threats climate change poses to the Pacific have been reviewed in a number of documents, notably the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and an increasing number of vulnerability assessments around the region [e.g. National Communications to the UNFCCC; Ellison 2001 for Fiji’s mangroves; Abuodha and Woodroffe 2006 for Australia’s coast),]. This document focuses on responses to existing and anticipated threats. It is not intended to be a comprehensive treatise on adaptation; such resources are available elsewhere (see Appendix B). This document instead is intended to illustrate how adaptation has played out on the ground around the Pacific. In presenting case histories of actual adaptation projects we hope to motivate more players to move beyond planning into implementation. Adaptation can and does take place at many levels: household, community, business, nation, region, or globe. And it can take place in many ways: as the end product of intensive planning based on the latest scientific models, as an ad hoc activity an individual does independently, and anything in between. In some cases, traditional activities and customs requiring little or no capital investment provide the best choice for local adaptation. In other cases effective adaptation may require new technologies and approaches that depend on an influx of outside funding. Regardless of what approach is taken, the most important element of adaptation is simply that it happen. To paraphrase Hay et al (2005), just as today’s development and natural resource management decisions will influence tomorrow’s climate, so too will tomorrow’s climate influence the success of today’s development and natural resource management. The time to act is now. Section One: The Players Appendix A contains a list of the organizations (governmental, non-governmental, community, industry) and individuals who are likely to be key players in developing and implementing a climate change adaptation coalition for the Pacific Rim and Islands. These organizations either have already engaged in some level of adaptation planning or activity, or have the responsibility to do so. The appendix is presented by geography, starting in the north Pacific and moving south, with regional and global organizations listed separately. In the section below, we highlight a few players that are particularly important. Governmental Organizations The level of national commitment to responding to and preventing anthropogenic climate change varies, as does the types of activities being undertaken. The extremes run from countries like the United States, where there is virtually no federal action, but nascent state and regional action,