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Fri, 2009-01-16 16:53 — speel

Global Change Collaboratory (highlighting, but not limited to, climate change)
Submitted by MDMcDonald on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 07:53. General Discussion
Case Study: Great Mekong Basin

Dr. Nguyen Huu Ninh

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

IPCC, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

The Great Mekong Basin (Myanmar, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan province of China) is a collection of rice-based food cultures. 75 million people live in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, in which 60 million stay in Lower Mekong Delta. Only Thailand and Vietnam remain rice exporters of about ten millions tons of rice each year.

What will happen if hydrological system changes expected from global warming, such as precipitation and temperature variances, and sea level rise negatively impact food production conditions in the future? Food crises, energy crises, population explosion, and migration issue related to climate change will cause large-scale social crises and security problems within the Sub-region with impacts on a global scale. These impacts will not only affect Southeast Asia, but the United States interests and national security would also be significantly impacted by global changes affecting food availability in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

There will be a shortfall of food in over 40 nations this year, with North Korea, Myanmar/Burma, and the Philippines being significantly impacted in Asia already. Requests for food assistance from the Southeast Asia, as well as other parts of the world, are causing food hoarding, new black market pressures, and food price escalation globally as a result of current food shortages. Efforts should be undertaken now to understand the emerging challenges in order that viable response plans can optimize rice production under potential climate change scenarios to meet the needs of the Greater Mekong Delta Sub-region and the countries that have become dependent upon its rice exports.

Forecasting an increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration of 400-500 ppm by year 2050, different scenarios show that the mean annual temperature rise is expected to be in the order of 1°C-2°C by the same year. Precipitation patterns are also expected to decrease of 20-30%. The intensity of typhoons is expected to be stronger. Sea level will rise 30-50cm covering large areas of agricultural areas with salinity intrusion destroying agricultural productivity in some of the world's most productive agricultural lands.
This, for example, will change the runoff of Mekong river and increase extreme events during the first half of the 21st Century in the Greater Mekong Delta, as well as elsewhere; floods, droughts and forest fire will become more serious in Great Mekong Sub-region, specifically in the Lower Mekong Delta. All negative changes will directly impact rice production and fisheries in Great Mekong Basin. This could pose an extreme challenge to food security and cause social crisis on regional and global scales.

How should the next U.S. Presidential Administration organize itself to prevent and manage large-scale social crises associated with global change?

* Hotlinks to HDR 2007/08 and the Chapter Asia of the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Climate Change 2007.*

Fri, 2009-01-16 16:55 — speel

Submitted by MDMcDonald on Wed, 09/17/2008 - 08:18.
Janine found what appears to be a good article from the World Bank on "A Primer on Reducing Vulnerabilities to Climate Change Impacts and Strengthening Disaster Risk Management in East Asian Cities" to potentially add to the Summit Global Change Collaboratory background articles. Let me knw if you have any problem with us appending it. The full article is in: Articles Global Change Collaboratory. Executive Summary (197kb pdf) here

I would like us to add some NOAA materials that would be appropriate as well as some materials from the Pacific Disaster Center, the East West Center and other materials that could be drawn on by the developers of the hypothetical event simulation developers, as well as later simulation and real world event responders.

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Fri, 2009-01-16 16:57 — speel

Submitted by JRees on Wed, 10/01/2008 - 14:30.

Dr. Ninh invites everyone to read through Climate Change 2007 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
The report provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date
scientific assessment of the impacts of climate change, the vulnerability of natural and human environments, and the
potential for response through adaptation. The report:
• evaluates evidence that recent observed changes in climate have already affected a variety of physical and
biological system sand concludes that these effects can be attributed to global warming;
• makes a detailed assessment of the impacts of future climate change and sea-level rise on ecosystems, water
resources, agriculture and food security, human health, coastal and low-lying regions and industry and settlements;
• provides a complete new assessment of the impacts of climate change on major regions of the world (Africa,
Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Europe, Latin America, North America, polar regions and small islands);
• considers responses through adaptation;
• explores the synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation;
• evaluates the key vulnerabilities to climate change, and assesses aggregate damage levels and the role of
multiple stresses.

Fri, 2009-01-16 17:01 — speel

Submitted by shirkhodair on Thu, 10/02/2008 - 04:22.

Scenarios articulated by my friend Dr. Ninh are certainly not beyond possibilities. Although we may not yet be able to measure with certainty the level of impacts, we can safely assume that Climate Change and/or Variability will shift disaster risks, severity, and patterns for years to come. These shifts will most certainly affect the growing population’s basic needs (food, water, sanitation, energy, wealth, etc.), leading to unimaginable national security issues from migration and protection to conflicts, around the globe. These will affect every single country’s national interest, and no government alone can face the challenges, regardless of resources.

To make the matter worse, even combined resources of the traditional (geopolitical, realpolitik, etc.) alliances may not be enough. Dr. Maryam Golnaraghi, Head of Natural Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Programme at the World Met Org (WMO) – offered an interesting view which is often overlooked in conversation. Experience shows that (even though necessary,) resource/information sharing in trans-national forums is inefficient, slow, and costly.

Dr. Golnaraghi has been long engaged in risk assessment projects, and is well versed in issues regarding data gaps constraining production of comprehensive risk analysis for better mitigation and prevention.

In a recent conversation on the topic (disaster risks), she yet added another dimension to the complexity of the issue; she keenly noted that there is a lot of work done in the private sector to assess [sectoral] risks, develop methodologies to identify preventive actions, and devise strategies to protect assets. These works, however, are not widely shared for various reasons (e.g., IP, competitive edge, etc.)

Given the complexity of the matter and the diversity of stakeholders (governments and private sector, etc.) and their respective varying interests, a single most important conclusion from the above is that hierarchical (command and control) systems employed in the previous centuries will undoubtedly fail to address the problems, and that indeed a new non-hierarchical/non-traditional approach will be required.

While the Summit’s “Collaboratories” and experts will examine complex issues and possible solutions dealing with such complexities, I’d like to broaden the conversation regarding the strategic role of the government.

So, perhaps, one of the most important contributions of the next Administration is to start fostering an environment in which “unity in purpose” as a mean of solving shared problems can replace the traditional controlled alliances.

Fri, 2009-01-16 17:02 — speel

Submitted by Ginny on Mon, 10/06/2008 - 19:45.

One thing the next U.S. Presidential Administration should do is re-evaluate the Bayh-Dole act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act. I believe that scientific discoveries and innovations can mitigate global warming and the resulting social crisis. However I believe it will take tremendous cooperation and sharing of information between individuals, and Universities. But as documented in this article "The Law of Unintended Consequences"
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/09/19/827288..., the current implementation of the Bayh-Dole Act encourages just the opposite. Universities are encouraged not to share until a patent application has been made. Worse under many University intellectual property policies (for example - http://www.policy.cornell.edu/vol1_5.cfm ) the individual making the decision is not the researcher who understands the need for the product but an office of intellectual property looking out for the University not the public. Imagine if a bean counter at Stanford University had decided to license the intellectual property needed for Google to a rich company for a fast payback rather than to the impoverished inventors. That company could simply have sat on the intellectual property to protect their existing search engine. Stanford clearly made the right decision - http://www.matr.net/article-11816.html but if they didn't, Google as we know it might not exist.
What does this have to do with climate change? For all we know, someone already has the solution (for example a type of cyanobacteria - http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=blue-green-acres, or http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/May/12/ln/FP705120347.htm... )however with the current law there is no incentive to share information. In addition the public has no rights to products it paid to develop and the researcher/inventor has no definite say. How will poor countries ever come up with the licensing money needed to lift their standard of living and advert social crisis? Indeed as this article suggests it is time to rethink the Bayh-Dole Act http://www.innovatingtowin.com/innovating_to_win/2008/03/time-to-rethink...

Fri, 2009-01-16 17:05 — speel

Submitted by chancellord on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 15:53.
As in the previous post, some of China’s policies designed to encourage growth should be a major cause of concern considering the environmental consequences. The fact is, China is a place where a changing climate will have huge implications. The irony of this policy designed to help farmers, is that although their economic well being may improve in the short-term, the long-term consequences of a doubled ecological footprint could be catastrophic. The article that I have attached below summarizes a major multinational study on the potential effect of global warming on Chinese agriculture (the link is below). The findings of the study are grim, it says that agricultural production is likely to shrink significantly as climate change develops.

Consider that at this moment China is largely self-sufficient for the food needs of its population. If Chinese food production decreases, coupled with a growing population, and if this causes China to import more food, food prices could be forced to rise even further. Even the slightest addition of strain to an increasingly tightening world food supply would have severe consequences to the billions that rely on imported food.

http://www.scidev.net/en/news/climate-change-threatens-chinese-agricultu...

Fri, 2009-01-16 17:06 — speel

Submitted by MDMcDonald on Mon, 10/13/2008 - 05:33.

China is engaging in a political and economic program which will potentially nearly double its ecological footprint over the next ten years, by doubling the consumption patterns of the rural poor. At the heart of this move is an effort to maintain employment, and social and economic security during a U.S. and global economic downturn. Allowing poor rural farmers to trade and borrow on land rights may be one mechanism used to stimulate internal economic growth.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=ai0dO6Ig2CKU&refer=a...

howdy folks